GTD essentials, the magic of getting things done

"Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up - not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing (and not doing) at any time."
David Allen

So how do you get things done? Here you can find the GTD essentials.

Do you have to do lists? How do you organize your time, your calendar, your short and long term projects?

Getting things done

I've had different methods of organizing my time and manage my to do lists. But it all changed once I came across the excellent Get Things Done book by David Allen.

It's a simple and effective system with principles that are applicable to everyone. I highly recommend this book as it contain essential tools to get things done.  Have a look on the summary below.

Essentials to Getting things done:

1. Collect: record everything externally to reduce mental stress and allow your creativity to foster. You have to take note of all ideas, actions, reminders and random information. Write down everything you need to remember. It's liberating to free your mind to actually do the tasks instead of having to remember them all the time. 

The method to store all your items can vary according to your preference. It can be a notebook, a spreadsheet, your email inbox, a physical inbox, your PDA / blackberry or an online GTD website.

2. Process: once you offloaded all ideas and items to your inbox, process them into these 4 following options:

  • do it if it's less than 2 minutes or
  • delegate it or
  • postpone it or
  • if it does not require action, store if appropriate for future reference

3. Organize: work on your inbox and define what are the next action for each item. If there is more than one action, group related activities into on project, so that you can track them easily. In order to do that you might want to divide each action in sub-tasks. For example: "Organize summer holidays" becomes "Research destinations and dates", "Discuss and agree with partner", "Book air tickets online", "Buy travel insurance".

What if there's not next action? For actions that don't depend on you to be completed, categorize them as waiting.  For actions that are not for immediate completion, mark them as someday and archive for future review.

Additionally, you should also categorize your actions based on your context / location. For example, you can have a list for home (@home), another one for work (@work), another one for the road (@travel) and a random one (@errands).

4. Review: once you stored and organized all your actions, it's critical to review each list weekly and decide which actions you're actually going to do. If you decided what you want in the short and long term goals, this review will help you identify gaps and give you the energy to complete the outstanding next steps.

5. Do: having an intelligent system in place for your projects and priorities will certainly give you the extra time and peace of mind to get things done. But if you're still struggling or are overloaded with pointless work, perhaps it's time to do less.

Essential GTD sites, resources and softwares:

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