I have been reading “Getting Things Done” by Dave Allen recently, and tried to adopt some of the principles in my everyday life. I started maintaining a list of all tasks in Notion, and have been following it for a few weeks. This morning as I was explaining how Agile works to a friend, it stuck me that GTD == Agile.
There’s a lot of overlap between the GTD principles and how we manage our work with Agile. Which essentially means that as effectively I use Agile at work to manage my product (SAP SuccessFactors Compensation), it can be used quite effectively to manage your life as well.
Here’s a recipe for how to implement this for you –
- Write down everything you want to accomplish (product vision → life vision)
- Create Epics for big projects that lead you there.
- Break down epics into manageable tasks → stories
- Have a big backlog of all tasks
- Prioritize backlog and pull items into the Sprint (week long?)
- Assign story points to each task
- Over tea/coffe, have a daily scrum with your life partner
- Measure your velocity, how many stories/tasks you are able to complete outside of your meetings and emails.
- Measuring velocity will help you plan for next sprints better.
- Have a Sprint review at the end of each week and see what can be done better.
So there you go, try this out and let me know what you think of it.