THe Fundamentals of GTD

The Fundamentals of GTD – Part 1 This is the 1st installment in a series on the fundamentals of GTD. This is not the “text book” version.

This is not intended to be a complete overview of all things GTD. I will present what I see as the fundamental “rules”.

By following a few simple fundamentals, you will be “doing GTD”. The actual implementation of GTD will look different from person to person. Part of the beauty of GTD is that actually implementing the GTD system is more art than science. When you start doing GTD, you personalize it. You tailor it to how you work.

The Collection Process Step 1 The first part of the collection process is called “doing a mind sweep”. That is, getting anything and everything out of your head and onto a piece of paper (or many pieces of paper). Anything gets written down. Nothing is too small.

Need ideas? How about: • • • • • • • • •

Things you need to talk to your boss about.

A list of things you need from the grocery store.

The steps you need to take during your next project.

A great wine you want to try.

A phone call you have to return.

A birthday present you need to pick-up.

A meeting you need to prepare for.

A letter you need to respond to. …and on and on and on. Anything goes.

The idea here is to free your mind of having to remember all your stuff. As you relieve yourself of the burden to track all of these things in your head, you achieve what David Allen calls “a mind like water”. A mind that is free flowing like a river; free to generate new, creative ideas without the burden of all those other things clogging the free flow.

Merlin Mann from 43folder.com put it this way: “The idea behind the mind-sweep is to identify and gather everything that is making claims on your attention or is likely to affect the larger areas of responsibility in your life — everything that’s quietly burning cycles, stealing focus, and whittling away at your attention — so that you can then decide what (if anything) must be done about each of those things.”.

Important rules for the mind sweep: • • • • •

Don’t do these things now. There will be time to do them later.

Keep one list. Don’t categorize your list. Don’t create multiple lists. Don’t skip things because “you will remember to do it later”.

Consider anything pertaining to your work life and your home life. Don’t mind sweep only part of your life.

Do it in one session. Don’t break up your mind sweep time into multiple sessions.

Commit. Don’t give it hobby effort. Give it all you have.

Credited to Tim K w •itkow ski•nd http://w w w.m ygtdstuff.com /

Step 2 After the mind sweep, it’s time to collect all of the other things that will eventually end up on your to-do list. Anything you plan to read, any bill you intend to pay, that pile of unread mail on your kitchen table, your unopened e-mail; let’s get all of it in one place. Well, let’s shoot for 2 places. One spot for all your material to-do items – A plastic inbox will do. One spot for all your electronic to-do items – Your e-mail inbox will do.

So we now have 3 places with all of your “stuff”.

1. The list generated from your mind sweep 2. Your plastic inbox 3. Your e-mail inbox.

In part 2, I will talk about what to do with the output from your collection process. The next step is to Process all of this stuff you’ve collected. That is, figure out what to do with it. That sounds like a daunting task, but don’t worry. There are only 4 possible choices. Simple, right? You’ll love it!

The Fundamentals of GTD – Part 2 In part 1 of this series we talked about collecting all of your stuff. Now we need to do something with it.

The Processing Process The processing of your things following the GTD system is pretty simple.

1. If the item is not actionable, file it.

2. If the item is actionable, decide what the next action is.

3. Once you know the action: Do it, Delegate it, Defer it or Delete it.

That’s it! Now let’s take a deeper dive into each of these steps.

First, decide if the item is actionable.

Non-Actionable items If the first item you take from your pile of stuff is a receipt for the television you just purchased, put it in a file called receipts. If the item is a magazine you finished reading and you want to keep it for reference, put it on a shelf with your other reference materials (better yet, clip the one article you liked and only save that one article). If the item has absolutely no value to you and it was simply cluttering up your desk, by all means, throw it away!

Actionable Items Next, decide what the next action is. Break your items down to small actionable tasks. Deciding on the next action is sometimes simple: If you are faced with an unpaid bill, your next action is to write a check and mail it.

Deciding on a next action is sometimes more challenging: If the item from your mind sweep was to plan a party, you could have many next actions. For GTD to work, you need to break things down into the smallest actionable tasks. Planning a party may include

Credited to Tim K w •itkow ski•nd http://w w w.m ygtdstuff.com /

making a call to rent a room, going to the store to buy snacks, or sending invitations to your friends.

Once you know the next action, you can decide what to do with the item.

Do it Be careful with this one. Keep in mind you just finished collecting everything and you should now be in processing mode. If you embark on a 2 hour mission to complete the action associated with something from your pile of stuff, it will be difficult to get back to processing. Use the 2 minute rule. If you can do it in less than 2 minutes, then do it. If it takes any longer than 2 minutes, this is not the right time to take action. Remember, you are in processing mode.

Delegate it Are you the right person to action the item? You do not have to have people working directly for you to delegate. You might ask your boss to do something. A colleague, a friend, your spouse, etc.

To make sure things get done, I have a file with the name of each person I delegate things to. When I delegate something I make a note in the file and periodically review to make sure the task was completed.

Defer it I keep 3 types of deferred item lists: 1. As soon as possible (ASAP). These are things that will take longer than 2 minutes to complete and I need to do them when I have time. I group my ASAP items into context related lists. Things I need to do while at work, things I need to do at home, things I need from the grocery store, things I need from the hardware store, agenda items for recurring meetings that I host, things I need to talk to my boss about.

2. Things to be done on specific dates. These are things I add to my Outlook calendar. A paper calendar would work just as well too.

3. Project work. For project, like “plan a party”, I keep a separate file with all of the tasks (action items) written out. When it’s time for me to work on my party planning, I pull out the plan a party folder and work the actions.

Delete it This is my favorite. Don’t be afraid to simply delete it or in the case of non-electronic items, throw it away. Not all things that you thought were good ideas last week are good ideas this week. If you don’t need it, toss it.

Summary In part 1 you collected all of your stuff into three buckets: 1. The list generated from your mind sweep 2. Your plastic/physical inbox 3. Your electronic-mail inbox In part 2 we discussed processing all of these items by following these three simple steps: 1. If the item is not actionable, file it.

Credited to Tim K w •itkow ski•nd http://w w w.m ygtdstuff.com /

2. If the item is actionable, decide what the next action is 3. Once you know the action: Do it, Delegate it, Defer it or Delete it.

The third and final part of this series will focus on sustaining your newly organized system. This is called the weekly review. The weekly review is the key to keeping all your stuff current.

The Fundamentals of GTD – Part 3 In Part 1, we talked about collecting all of your stuff.

• • •

Performing a mind sweep and collecting everything in your head.

Collecting all of the material to-do’s laying around your office, kitchen table, notes scribbled on the back of bar napkins, etc.

Collect all of your unread or unactioned e-mail messages.

All of these things should be in considered in your INBOX (either real or virtual).

In Part 2, we reviewed the processing phase, or said another way, what to do with all the stuff in your INBOX. It comes down to 3 simple possibilities: • • •

If the item is not actionable, file it.

If the item is actionable, decide what the next action is.

Once you know the action: Do it, Delegate it, Defer it or Delete it.

Now it’s time to talk about sustaining this system. This is called the Weekly Review. The Weekly Review is the most important part of this system.

The weekly review is critical, yet simple - repeat the Collection and Processing phases. That’s it! For clarity, let me break this down into a bit more detail.

First and foremost, be sure to dedicate a slot of time during your week to actually perform the Weekly Review. I like to set aside an hour on a Sunday night for my formal Weekly Review. Some people prefer 1st thing on a Monday morning, some people prefer last thing on a Friday afternoon. It’s up to you.

Again, the most important commitment you need to make is to “Just Do It”.

The Weekly Review Process can be split into 3 sets of activities: Get Clear 1. Collect all your loose papers and unprocessed mail into your INBOX. Process your INBOX 2. Get your e-mail INBOX to zero. Process everything in your e-mail INBOX 3. Perform a quick mind sweep. Get everything out of your head, decide what the next action is, and process it – get it on the right list.

Get Current 1. Review your upcoming calendar. Are you prepared for the next week’s events? Is there something you need done by a specific time? Is anything missing?

2. Review your project lists. Is there anything you need to do this next week? Do you need to schedule time on your calendar for project specific work?

3. Review your action lists. Is there anything that needs to be done this next week? The week after?

Is there anything else that needs to be on one of your action lists? Have you made time on your Credited to Tim K w •itkow ski•nd http://w w w.m ygtdstuff.com /

calendar to do some of the things on your action lists? Is there anything you can mark as done?

4. Review your follow-up file. Are you up to date on the things you have delegated? Are people getting things done that you’ve delegated to them?

Get Creative 1. Consider longer term things you want to accomplish. Do you have them on a list? If not, create a list of your long term goals – keep in current each week, 2. Tweak you system. Do you have lists setup for all of your projects, agendas, follow-ups? Are there lists you don’t use? Do you have too many lists? Do you have to few lists? It’s your system, it needs to work the way you work.

That’s all it is. Basically, your weekly review is your opportunity to get your system current and tidy things up.

Again, these are my views of the fundamentals of the GTD system. For those who have read David Allen’s book, you may have a different interpretation. Part of the beauty of GTD is that it is flexible enough that you can adapt it to how you work. This series has been about how I work the system. This has been all about how GTD works best for me.

In summary, GTD for me is: • • •

Collecting all my stuff – Doing a mind-sweep Deciding on the next action for each of items. Then, Do it, Delegate it, Defer it or Delete it.

Each week, perform a weekly review

My desire is that you found this overview useful. I hope you found a nugget or two you can use to Get Things Done.

Credited to Tim K w •itkow ski•nd http://w w w.m ygtdstuff.com /