Work will be a bit quieter for the next few weeks so this is when I try and get caught up on paperwork and just take a bit of a breather.
Last week I decided to do a bit of re-organisation in an attempt to not get so behind with it all. I am going back to using GTD (getting things done).
I used to use it pretty thoroughly a few years ago and I still do parts of it, but its time to get more organised and get back into the full swing of it.
GTD has five basic steps:
Capture: Collect what has your attention. So anything that is on your mind is written down, papers & notes that need something done with them are all collected and put in an inbox, or in one place, ready for processing.
Clarify: The next step is to make a decision about every item in your inbox, handling each item once. There are eight different ‘buckets’ you can put the items into:
- trash
- someday/maybe
- tickler file
- reference
- waiting for
- next actions list
- calendar
- projects list
There are some excellent diagrams of the GTD processing showing this. If it takes less than two minutes to do something then you just do it straight away, if its longer than that then you put it in the appropriate place. I’ve set up a tickler file at work which is already been helpful. GTD also suggests you organise next actions by context (home, computer, email, errands,etc).
Organise: Put is where it belongs! What I like about GTD is that its very flexible. Everyone organises differently and a quick search will show you many different paper based and online based systems. Mine is a notebook that I use for capture and next actions. Anything that enters my head that I need to do I just write it down straight away so I’ve ‘captured’ it and can forget about it. I also bought an A4 page to a day diary which is where I’ve created some checklists for habits I’m working on and the days top 3 next actions for various projects. For my work calendar I use outlook.
Reflect: Each week do a review and do a mind sweep to capture anything else that needs your attention. So lists are reviewed and updated.
It seems the system has changed a little since I last read the book but the basics remain the same. I am just using it as I did in the past. It can appear quite complex at first and I think its easy to get distracted by the organising instead of actually just getting things done – some peoples systems are quite complex! But for me it feels good to get back to it and though I still have a lot of ‘stuff’ to process at home and at work I am already being more productive. GTD doesn’t separate home and work life which I like.
