GTD Tips and Tricks

[Yynatago]

Hi all,

I reckon a forum on personal effectiveness just would not be complete without a thread on GTD. In fact, Steve has a whole blog category dedicated to it, so it must be important!

For those of you who do not know what these holy acronyms mean, GTD refers to the system introduced by David Allen in his book "Getting Things Done". Check out their introduction to GTD , then grab a copy of the book and read it

So what GTD related Tips and Trick do you have up your sleeves?

Here is a couple of gtd related websites and blogs for those who are interested:
http://www.davidco.com/blogs/
http://www.43folders.com/

Regards,
From Shannan

[Dave Kaminski]

Originally Posted by Yynatago

For those of you who do not know what these holy acronyms mean, GTD refers to the system introduced by David Allen in his book "Getting Things Done". Check out their introduction to GTD , then grab a copy of the book and read it

I read a copy of the book after suggestion from a reader of Ramit Sethi's blog iwillteachyoutoberich.com I didn't get much from it, but maybe that's a personal reason. I guess i'll have to consider re-reading it if it gets a lot of positive attention on this board. I certainly need to push myself a bit harder when it comes to effectiveness.

[JohnnyJimJams]

I have recently read GTD. And I loved it. The first chapter is the most awakening. And the rest is a great, if a little drawn out by its nature.

The most valuable tip I got from the book, is that your head is not a good place to organise certain things. Your head is constantly swimming with emotions and distracting thoughts. Somethings that are concrete, should be put to paper to free up mental resources.

Johnny

[MSC2471]

I borrowed the Getting Things Done audio CD through my inter-library loan system, then went out and bought the book. I feel like there are times in my life where I haven't been quite as organized as I would like to be, and I was one of those people in the past that would have piles of paper all over the place that I would shuffle around and never properly take care of. So I loved David Allen's system for delegating and dumping material in a quick manner- I've de-cluttered my apartment as a result.

Matt

[Alvin]

I read the GTD book after seeing so many rave reviews of it online, especially from 43 Folders and Matt's productivity blog (both excellent!).

I didn't completely get everything in the book but I tested it out and while the results weren't mindblowingly fantastic, it changed my life enough that I wouldn't go back to doing what I used to.

The best practices that I love doing from GTD:

1) Write everything, everything and everything down.

Or capture it in any way. I agree with David Allen 100% on this one, ideas and thoughts float around in mindspace with too much randomness to trust that they'll stay there perfectly, always and until the right time.

Good ideas usually come at the strangest places, I can be riding the train and go 'hey, I should read that book I saw online yesterday!' but forgotten a while later, unless I capture it down.

2) Process things immediately.

GTD has a 2 minute rule, if it can be down within 2 minutes, do it now, or process it immediately either as unactionable, in which case you store, or actionable, you schedule.

Using the above example, it's great to capture the 'read-the-book' idea, but troublesome if I'm reminded of it all the time. So I create a 'locations-read' category where I file it in so I'm only looking at that list where and when I can do something about it.

3) Only schedule in things you really, really want to do.

I can't help it. I'm an idea nut, I love generating ideas and I want to do everything. Pretty soon, my tasks lists became more bloated than a sinking ship and I got stressed just by looking at it.

That's when I realized the power of the GTD 'Someday/Maybe' list where I could throw everything I would have liked to do, but didn't really want to commit to do.

And filling up my tasks lists with stuff I really wanted to do didn't only make me less stressful, it also encouraged my ability to make real decisions on what to focus on, and get more things done.

GTD Primer: What To Do When You Know Nuts About GTD

A great resource for GTD newbies is Black Belt Productivity's GTD Primer.

[norbert]

GTD has changed my life guys. It really made me stress-free and organized. I used to revisit the book and the audio materials over and over again and I always catch something new. Although I've been GTDing for more than a year now, I just realized that it doesn't claim to help you stop procrastinating. In fact, David himself says that the worlds most successful people are the biggest procrastinators. Procrastination is not a bad thing. GTD is about always having a list of constructive things to do, so when you procrastinate, you do it constructively. Make sure to visit Merlin's 43 Folders. There are a bunch of new mp3 interviews with David Allen which will give you an overall introduction to GTD. If you happen to be a GTD veteran you can still benefit from this material.

[tgl]

I haven't read the book at all. What I've learned about GTD, I've gotten from googling the net. 43folders is a great site, but there are many other great GTD sites out there as well.

GTD is a lifesaver. I was already creating contextual lists before I stumbled onto the system, but GTD laid out the whole program for me. It's a terrific thing and I highly recommend it.

[Yynatago]

The GTD Podcast "Productive Talks" with David and Merlin are great to listen to. It's like listening in on a conversation between two influential speakers about GTD. Here are the links to the first five from 43folders:

[http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/10/productive-talk-procrastination/]
[http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/12/productive-talk-leaks/]
[http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/16/productive-talk-someday-maybe/]
[http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/23/productive-talk-04/]
[http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/30/productive-talk-05]
[http://www.43folders.com/2006/11/06/productive-talk-06/]

Download the mp3 and enjoy.

Regards,
From Shannan

[norbert]

Do you know if they'll post more episodes?

[Yynatago]

Originally Posted by norbert

Do you know if they'll post more episodes?

I think there will be plenty more episodes to come. It seems to be an ongoing thing and they haven't mentioned any limits on how many they'll do. They will probably release them less often as time goes on, like Steve's podcasting

I subscribe to the master rss feed from David's website which includes any new podcast in the series.

Regards,
From Shannan

[trekr5]

Hi all

I'm interested in the GTD method as I seem to be getting distracted unecessarily.

Is there a piece of GTD software that anyone knows of?

[norbert]

Kingless GTD for the Mac
gtd-php for PHP
but the Hipster PDA beats them all.

I am also working on a professional GTD application but it isn't close to release yet. Until then, I'm actively using my Hipster PDA.

It's about the process, not the tool, really.

[HaWran]

I've read book once half year ago. Great first impression, great technique. Second half of the book was little bit boring (imho), so many details about what to do and how to do that and I personally didn't get much out of it. But this book has overall impact of to my life - no doubts

[kevinw1]

Originally Posted by trekr5

Hi all
Is there a piece of GTD software that anyone knows of?

There's no one piece of canonical GTD software because part of the idea is that you set up a system that is fine tuned and customised to you specifically: developing that system is part of the... um... system It may not even be software - many people use paper-based systems.

The book really is the best place to start, but there are many online places to get info too, David Allen's website and 43Folders being two of the best (URL's elsewhere in this thread).

Kevin

[JeffS]

I also LOVE the "write everything down" part of things. Quick story to illustrate the point: this past week I finished a bunch of big projects that had consumed me for a while, and while I know there are a bunch of different directions I could go from here, I was basically frozen for hours, not knowing what to start or what to do next.

Finally, I got out a notebook, wrote down everything I was thinking about, started to organize it a little bit, and--BAM, suddenly my motivation was there, I could start working, my mood was better. It was incredible. Half an hour, three pages of notes, and I felt like a different person. It's been tough for me to really write EVERYTHING down, but the more I do it, the more I realize the genius of it. We (I, anyway) spend so much time planning and tweaking the plan that it's easy to forget how much brainpower is wasted doing those things.

[Hilary]

About software - UltraRecall comes with a template you can use for GTD. You can also adapt it for use with just about any system of your own devising.

[Sky]

I enjoyed Allen's book, but I also enjoyed Covey's top-down approach to organization. I tend to be a big picture kind of guy, so just focusing on individual to-do's drives me crazy -- the purpose gets lost in the shuffle.

However, writing things down is extremely helpful (especially having paper around when I have a random idea), as too many things in my head makes me forget many of them. On the other hand, my best ideas are often connections between two seemingly disparate thoughts, making it valuable to leave as much as I can handle in my head. Plus, writing everything down is inefficient.

Has anyone developed a good system of writing down certain things while still focusing on the big picture? I'd like to optimize using both a top-down approach and a bottom-up approach.

[Ilya]

I've created a computer set-up that works for me in Outlook.
I have a separate outlook file that i keep on a flash drive. I've used ideas from
Setting Up Outlook for GTD site.
The idea is to set up Outlook contacts to masquerade as Projects. This way you can assign tasks for the projects and have hierarchical organisation - something that native Outlook tasks lack.
So the pipeline is as follows - i capture everything in notebooks that I carry in my wallet or straight into outlook. I treat all things to do as projects - write the end goal and the necessary steps in description. Then assign the next action task for the projects. The tasks are dispayed sorted by the context and then by project. When a task is done, I go back to the project the task belonged to and assign the new next action untill the project is eventually complete.
When I first did the capture process it took me a long weekend and I ended up with more then 700 tasks, many of which were multy-task projects. Then I've realised why I was so stressed and why I had the feeling that I'm not doing enough. When I've got all this stuff out of my had my stress fell to zero and I saw for the first time that I'm actually doing a lot of things and achieving a lot. It was a breakthrough.

[Jim]

Have you guys ever tried Tracks?

If you don't want to invest the time to get Tracks running on your own, here are a few hosted solutions.

It really streamlines the GTD process.

[Yynatago]

Originally Posted by trekr5

Is there a piece of GTD software that anyone knows of?

I have previously stumbled upon this website which is an online implementation of GTD.

http://icommit.org/ , which redirects to GTD V2

Regards,
From Shannan

[Milo Riano]

Originally Posted by Alvin

I read the GTD book after seeing so many rave reviews of it online, especially from 43 Folders and Matt's productivity blog (both excellent!).

The best practices that I love doing from GTD:

1) Write everything, everything and everything down.

2) Process things immediately.

3) Only schedule in things you really, really want to do.

GTD Primer: What To Do When You Know Nuts About GTD

A great resource for GTD newbies is Black Belt Productivity's GTD Primer.

I haven't read the GTD. I agree with Write everything (1) but not processing things immediately. I would always assess whether it belongs to urgent or important.

[tgl]

Originally Posted by trekr5

Hi all

I'm interested in the GTD method as I seem to be getting distracted unecessarily.

Is there a piece of GTD software that anyone knows of?

There are others for the Mac. Personally, I prefer Kinkless GTD, which I'll probably be using until Omni comes out with OmniFocus. Omni makes the excellent OmniWeb (currently on sale), OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle... and others. They do such good work.

I've heard good things about Midnight Inbox, which is still in beta.

[tgl]

Oh yes, and Tracks seems to be really cool. And you don't necessarily need a web connection for it. It's a bit technical to install on your computer, but it can be done.

[kevinw1]

Originally Posted by Milo Riano

I haven't read the GTD. I agree with Write everything (1) but not processing things immediately. I would always assess whether it belongs to urgent or important.

"Process" has a specific meaning in GTD, which is not that you actually DO the item, but that you look at it, decide what/when to do about it, and enter it into your system. So, assessing whether it's urgent or important or both, and whether or when to do it, is part of processing.

Kevin

[norbert]

That's what finally got me to empty my e-mail inboxes 3 weeks ago and they are still empty today! It was about processing the inbox. Which is far not close to completing the items in there. I have transferred the items that need action to be taken to my GTD system. "So what?" you might ask, "now you have the same tasks at some other place but you haven't moved forward". But that's not true. Now I have them in my trusted system so my head and inboxes are empty and I can focus on whatever I do with no distractions.

Why not go empty your inboxes now? Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. Remember, the goal is to get everything out of there, not to finish anything.

This has also helped me to finally establish the habit of answering e-mails in 2 minutes after they arrive.

If this all hasn't convinced you, allow yourself 20 minutes to listen to Getting Things Done with Email.

[Elias]

Originally Posted by trekr5

Hi all

I'm interested in the GTD method as I seem to be getting distracted unecessarily.

Is there a piece of GTD software that anyone knows of?

Thinking Rock ist the best one!
ThinkingRock
elias

[norbert]

The next Productive Talk episode has arrived.

[Alvin]

Originally Posted by Sky

I enjoyed Allen's book, but I also enjoyed Covey's top-down approach to organization. I tend to be a big picture kind of guy, so just focusing on individual to-do's drives me crazy -- the purpose gets lost in the shuffle.

Has anyone developed a good system of writing down certain things while still focusing on the big picture? I'd like to optimize using both a top-down approach and a bottom-up approach.

I find Covey & Allen's practices to be a good mix. Allen is right when he says it's pretty useless to focus on the big picture if you can't get the nitty gritty done, and that good practices on the ground level can help you get clearer on the higher altitudes.

Covey is right when he says you don't want to be climbing the ladder pretty efficiently, only to find it was leaning on the wrong wall when you get to the top. The purpose & principle-centred live gives you drive, but he's not that great into operational specifics.

I find it more effective for me to come from the top-down, to have my values and mission clarified which then drives my actions. The day-to-day stuff still needs to get done, but that clarity helps me to answer the question 'is this what I really want to devote my time to?'.

Also, I love using Covey's idea of 7 roles to plan out my goals for the week. At the end, or start of the week, you map out what roles you have in play for the coming week (father, son, manager, musician, etc.) and answer 'what one thing can I do in this role that would make the biggest impact in my life?' and go do that. It's been a very powerful, and fast technique for me.

Originally Posted by norbert

"So what?" you might ask, "now you have the same tasks at some other place but you haven't moved forward". But that's not true. Now I have them in my trusted system so my head and inboxes are empty and I can focus on whatever I do with no distractions.

Exactly! For example, one of my favorite GTD lists is my @Read category. At first, it was @Bookstore, a list of books I wanted to check out while at the bookstore.

But even with this list, I got stressed. I wondered why when I realized while they were books I wanted to read, I couldn't possibly buy all of them (big list!). When I changed it to @Read, so it could be at the store or at the library, my stress factor dropped because that area of my life suddenly became more clarified.

That's the power of processing. A cool concept!

[Stephen]

Hi

I checked out a link for using outlook as tool for GTD

Managing GTD Projects in Outlook

I like the concept so I tried to follow the instructions but cant get past step 2!

When I get to...""In the "Projects Properties" window, select the "Project" form in the drop-down list next to "When posting in this folder, use:"""

I can only get a drop down of contacts or forms --ie No Project!!!

What am I doing wrong??

[Fizzgig]

Hi Stephen

I've set up this system both at home and at work and I had the same issue when I set it up at home. Now, I can't remember the exact procedure but I vaguely recall that I had to publish the "Project" form as one to be used in the new 'Projects' folder I had created within Outlook, rather than just as a standard 'Contacts' form. Unfortunately i can't double check this as i'm at work at the moment, but I hope it might help in some way.