GTD “!Daily Disciplines” Category

Through the years, I’ve learned that the key to my success is the maintenance of certain daily disciplines. These are not big things—just small incremental items that, over time, have shaped my life. All total, they take about 90 minutes. My current list includes:

• Read the Bible
• Pray
• Review Scripture Memory Verses
• Read [title of whatever book I’m currently reading]
• Review Life Plan
• Plan Day
• Work Out

You may have a similar list or one that is very different. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that you focus on doing those things that you believe will incrementally lead to your success.

Because I’m not a disciplined person by nature, I try to get these tasks done before the day begins and a thousand other distractions come calling. For me, that means getting up early and knocking these items out first.

Using David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” System, I enter these items into Outlook and assign the “!Daily Disciplines” category to them. Just like the “!Today” category, which I have written about previously, the !Daily Disciplines category sorts to the very top of my task pad list in Outlook. It’s the first thing I see:

If you have a list like this, and it’s the same every day, it’s a pain to have to enter it in from seven days a week. One option is to enter each of these tasks once as a recurring Outlook task. One the surface, this sounds like a great solution. Everyday Outlook presents you with a new list. Perfect! Or is it?

I tried this for a while and it just didn’t work for me. With my job, I travel a lot. And, unfortunately, when I’m on the road, and my schedule is less predictable, I may not get to these items every day. If I miss a couple of days, and Outlook automatically creates new recurring tasks, they start to multiply on my task list. If I miss a couple of days in a row, I may have as many as three of each item. Frankly, I don’t like to be reminded that I am blowing it! (It’s also a pain to have to delete the extraneous tasks.)

Instead, I wrote a simple VBA program to enter all of my tasks with one click. If you are interested in this approach, stay with me. It’s easier than you think-even if you have never written a line of programming code. In my next post, I will provide you with the actual code and take you step-by-step through the process.