Yesterday, and for the first time in about 14 months following my knee injury, I ran for 20 minutes. Now, to some that might seem like a lot. To me as a past marathonian, it seems like precious little. However, you have to take victories as them come – sometimes in small increments. I am not sure to be able to build back up to 3-4h which would be required to return to the Big Race, but I sure hope that I will be able to. Good news: no knee or leg pain today, so far so good.
I got to thinking about the period of time 20 minutes. It’s not a long time, and not a short time either. There is a free magazine distributed in the Paris Metro called 20 minutes which is probably the average duration of a journey here and so the magazine is meant to be scanned and/or read in that time period. Other things you can do with 20 minutes:
- Watch almost an entire episode of Weeds or Californication if you skip the titles and ending credits
- Listen to the sublime Metallica Beyond Magnetic EP
- Filter 50 emails once your GTD system is in place and functional
- Write 5 short emails for quick responses to questions
- Answer one long question by email
- Participate in a WebEx before your mind turns to jelly
- Scan your Facebook News Feed while following two or three links that you find interesting
- Prepare dinner for the kids – something on the stove top in any case
- Skin and slice kilo of carrots (I am trying to optimize this, but it is still time-consuming
- Bathe and dress the kids for bed (applicable to showers but not to baths)
- Advance about 100 meters during Paris rush hour traffic on the Peripherique (primary reason why I avoid the Periph’ like the plague)
- Run between 3 and 5 kilometers depending on your fitness level
- Swim about 1 kilometer (at least at my turtle-like speed)
- Climb one route and secure your buddy for one route in indoor climbing (something else I miss dearly)
- Do one 500m vertical descent and take the life back up to the top (give a medium-size line at the lift)
- Drink a Starbucks coffee and eat a blueberry muffin and write a rambling blog post 
So there are lots of things that can be done in twenty minutes. I am glad that I am able to do the running one and hope to push this to 25 minutes tomorrow.
For implementing GTD you can use this this application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote and Google Calendar, and also comes with mobile version, and Android and iPhone apps.