New to GTD and love it, but now I hate everybody!

[rexpo]

David mentions this phenomenon briefly in part 3 of the book: now that I'm organised, have a full overview, and never drop the ball, I'm frustrated with others who don't prioritise properly and forget things.

I don't really hate everybody, but my boss has been annoying the beans out of me lately. We share IT support and maintenance tasks where I work, but he has the final say in what gets worked on and when. His decisions are all knee-jerk, his office space is full of stacks of paper and scraps of notes, and his email inbox has over 5000 mails in it - as was mine before I did the big collection and processing bonanza back in december (though I had only a 2 foot high stack in my paper inbox, and *only* 2500 mails in my email inbox). To make matters worse, he's a volunteer fireman on the side (and anyone who knows or is related to a firefighter knows, they looove putting out fires). What I'm getting at is that the prioritising of work to be done in our little IT department is determined by the height of the flames, not by preemptive planning.

I'm sick of it. This past week has been hard, and I have been on the verge of losing it several times. I had been given so many relatively unimportant and impromptu tasks to do (while he was working on more of the same) that by thursday I had to force him to sit still for fifteen minutes so I could show him a sampling of my projects list. I chose about 10 things that were only days away from being overdue, and things that were about to explode. Before we had even gotten through 3 of them (and after he'd yelled at me for wasting time trying to prioritise our departments tasks - that's his job) his phone rang. The file server was full. Again. The sad irony is that point 6 on my list was "Fix file server disk space problems", which he had forgotten about, and for which I had a next action that I could never complete, because he was constantly giving me "important" tasks that had to be done right away. He wasted half an hour patching it with gum and duct tape (i.e. it's gonna fill up again soon), and by the time he finished with that I had to leave for an appointment.

He did say that we need a shared overview of all the projects in the department, and a support ticketting system, but how am I supposed to share such a system with an oaf who can't even manage his own work?

Oh that felt good to vent I feel really stuck here - I like my job a lot, but boss never sits still long enough to have any kind of discussion, and I feel that if I were to talk to anybody else at the office about this that I'd either be making him look bad, or going over his head.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? How to cope?!

[GTDWorks]

I posted a while back about this sort of things with my boss. I kept plugging away at implementing black belt GTD and he noted that I was one of two people he could completely trust to get work done well and on time.

Earlier this week, he shared that he had just purchased "Making It All Work" and had been reading it. In fact, in a major project review meeting, as we discussed a certain call he would need to make, he grabbed his BlackBerry and said, "Hey, if you can do it in less than two minutes..." and smiled broadly and placed the call right there in the meeting!

Keep working on your implementation, be willing to be open about your projects with your boss so you keep your sanity, and just give it time.

[RenaudL]

Same feeling with my boss and the entire organization. Constant change of focus. I've already complained last year that it was not allowing me to deliver a consistent level of productivity. The first month of this year has been dreadful, it was so bad that I crashed last week and is taking some time off, to clean my head and avoid a more dramatic "burn out".

[rexpo]

Keep working on your implementation, be willing to be open about your projects with your boss so you keep your sanity, and just give it time.

Thanks for the reassuring words.

I have decided to suggest that we have weekly meetings where I will, among other things, show him my projects. I think the trick is going to be to get him to also consider the low-priority projects (i.e. ones that aren't on fire yet), and explain to him that all I'm concerned with is the next action.

In other news, I've discovered that Getting Things Done has been translated to Norwegian, and I just ordered a copy - just in case

[EMarkM]

@ the OP: same story here - word-for-word in fact! I'm also in IT support. You could have been typing my story there (except for the "me being 100%" part - I still have a little way to go).

I also am thinking, for the first time in my life quite seriously, about going self-employed. My father made a bit of a mess of doing that, but I am much better organised than he will ever be.

I'm considering this route after reading a posting from someone on the Motley Fool financial forum: "I have only ever invested in myself". I am beginning to find that I am liking, trusting and respecting the company I work for less and less, and that I would rather be in charge of my own destiny.

Good luck with your situation: only you have the power to change your own universe.

[rexpo]

@ the OP: same story here - word-for-word in fact! I'm also in IT support. You could have been typing my story there (except for the "me being 100%" part - I still have a little way to go).

I also am thinking, for the first time in my life quite seriously, about going self-employed. My father made a bit of a mess of doing that, but I am much better organised than he will ever be.

There sure have been a lot of posts in this thread about going self-employed! I too have thought about it, but for now it's still a high-altitude someday idea for me.

Great to hear from a fellow IT guy. Are you in the same situation now, or was this a while back? How are things going now? It looks like what I need to do is give my boss a sense of ownership of my big project list (and try to keep him from screwing it up) as we work through real prioritising in weekly meetings that I'm gonna make him attend

One strange development that has come about in the past few days is that one of bosses open loops keeps getting triggered every time he sees my project and task lists. "We need to implement a computerised customer (user) support ticket tracking system", he says, "We can just have all the departments projects in your lists - how am I supposed to know when stuff gets done?" (ah the irony he actually said that!) I keep dreading the thought of implementing such a system with him, because he doesn't have the discipline, skills, or overview to use it properly - I've been using Outlook for years, but it wasn't until I read the book that I learned how to use it "properly"!

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm 100% yet, but I did set up the office equipment and workspace at home and work before I started processing any of my inboxen. Now that in is empty, I have a functioning system that I review every week. Still not finished processing at home, still lots of tweaking to do, and I'm still trying to find a mobile device that will sync outlook tasks properly (I use the Outlook GTD plugin). but that is a discussion for another thread...

[EMarkM]

Great to hear from a fellow IT guy. Are you in the same situation now, or was this a while back? How are things going now? It looks like what I need to do is give my boss a sense of ownership of my big project list (and try to keep him from screwing it up) as we work through real prioritising in weekly meetings that I'm gonna make him attend

Still in the same position: hence me thinking about leaving and going it alone!

Good luck with your own endeavours

[Conrad Sallian]

Has anyone else had similar experiences? How to cope?!

I had. You say that you keep everything perfectly organized due to GTD. That's your advantage. I presume that you do everything that's on your side perfect, and if anything is overdue then it's your boss's fault, not yours. So whenever your boss is ranting simply explain to him whose the fault is.

You don't have to say that directly. Just let him know that you have him on your waiting list and the project in question isn't moving forward because it's awaiting his decision on it.

And the last thing - try to be forgiving to people. I'm sure your boss, though not very good in GTD, is very good at other things. Being a firefighter, for example. That's very honorable a profession, by the way, saving people's lives.

In my opinion, GTD is all about perfecting yourself, not forcing other people into the right way of things.

[rexpo]

And the last thing - try to be forgiving to people. I'm sure your boss, though not very good in GTD, is very good at other things. Being a firefighter, for example. That's very honorable a profession, by the way, saving people's lives

Very true, he is good at many things - thanks for the reminder

My cousin is married to a firefighter, who once said "you can always tell who the firefighters are at the scene of a fire - not by their uniforms, but by their huge smiles". Very cool and very reassuring to know!

I didn't mean to knock firefighters as such, lord knows I am personally very thankful for them in more ways than one. I just felt it illustrated his approach to work, and my work situation quite well.

[NewbGTD]

Well look, at least if there's ever a fire where you work your boss can GFD (get fires done!)

Don't have first hand experience here so i'm just putting myself in your shows for a minute, but what I would do, is, quit.

No just kidding. I have no idea. Make future plans to be your own boss. Thats what i did.