Let’s look at the problem. You’re a manager or developer, you have a full workday ahead of you with meetings, projects and a multitude of other tasks lined up. You’ve about 8 hours in the day and 40 hours in the work-week to get all this done. At home you have more tasks waiting for you like buy food, do some internet banking, feed the dog, buy the girlfriend/fiancé/wife that St. Valentine’s gift she is hoping for and the list goes on…
Doesn’t this seem disheartening?
David Allen approach GTD has radically changed the way people all over the world get work done.
A quote from Wired said: “A holy book for the information age”.
Allen’s GTD technique’s goal is to make it easy to store, track and find all the information related to the tasks you need to get done. The main principles of GTD are Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do.
Collect: Called ‘the bucket’ can be done by different means, depending on your preference and lifestyle. Its goal is the get all your tasks out of your head and on a storable medium. Popular methods are paper, word or excel documents or a software alternative. It mainly consists of creating lists of things that are specific to a context or action.
Process: When evaluating and processing each action, a working structure should be strictly followed. If that action can be done in 2 minutes it should be done immediately.
Organize: Sorting tasks are crucial. Dividing them up into manageable categories like Next actions, Projects, Waiting for and Someday/Maybe. The reasons for this are explained in the book, but mainly it’s for you to see what tasks can be done now and what needs to be done first before a task can be done.
Review: Reviewing task should happen at least daily, it’s no use to anyone to have an outdated task list.
Do: This is the most important principle, but if you are prone to procrastination it can be the most difficult. In “Getting Things Done” David Allen lists ways to over come this and getting your task done.
More hints at overcoming procrastination can be found at lifehaker.com.
Here is a link to a Two Minute timer to help you keep too the two minute rule and a GTD Wallpaper to help you stay in the Getting Things Done mindset.
The book is a good read and will definitely help you organizing you life better.
Research links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done/
http://tags.lifehacker.com/software/getting-things-done/
Tiaan - any suggestions on how to make lists for other people to do all your work so you don’t actually ever have to do anything except manage lists?
Just a wild flyer
Excellent article - thanks, I will try pick up the book and have a read…
I haven’t read this book or adopted this methodology, but I’m starting to think about doing so, based on your article. I ran across your website doing another search, but you reminded me I have downloaded a template for a Lotus Notes database that was developed based on this methodology (I was not involved in creating and don’t benefit from that product) — it’s a free download that I loaded on my work computer and opened but haven’t done anything with. Maybe now I will try it. I put a download link in the website field of your reply form. http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Information_Management/Personal_Information_Managers/Getting_Things_Done__GTD__for_Lotus_Notes.html |