Agile Thinking meets personal development using GTD

How do you apply Agile principles of continuous improvement, constant inspection and adaption to personal development?

How do you create meaningful backlogs and to-do lists for personal life pursuits?

This sketchnote shows how I merge three major concepts: David Allen’s Getting Things Done, Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle and Agile principles.

• Start with your Why!
• Write your life story. How does this story start, where is it now and how is it going to end.
• Identify your 7Fs(Faith, Family, Field, Friend, Fun, Finance and Fitness). They are the core areas of our lives that should be balanced.
• Create a backlog of things in these areas that will create balance.
• All meaningful SNA(strategic Next Actions) are tied to 7F initiatives. SNAs are your to-do’s tied closely to your initiatives. They should be simple tasks that require no additional input from any other task. Like ‘Call Mom’ or ‘Purchase xyz license’.
• Whenever you’re putting things in your to-do or whenever great ideas cross your mind that suggest execution, ask yourself the question ‘how do they fall into my meaningful goals? How do they align with my 7Fs?’
• Do you need to have a backlog containing every single to-do? Refer to GTD’s 4Ds- if it will take less than 2 minutes, Do it. If it will take more than 2 minutes, Defer or Delegate. If it’s just mere information, Delete.
• Find time every week to reflect- to course correct. How did you do last week? Did you achieve what you planned for? Then celebrate! Did you fail? Then what could have been done better?