DIY: Getting Things Done

As a first DIY project, I thought I could share my own Thrifty Techie version of David Allen's popular GTD system.

So what is GTD?

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a term usually referring to the system David Allen outlines in his book, “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” If you want a comprehensive guide to this system without having to go out and buy the book, Trent from The Simple Dollar has a great 14 part series explaining GTD as described by David Allen, while using practical examples from his own life to illustrate how the system works. I would definitely recommend going out and reading either the full book, or at least Trent's summary, but here is a quick jump start guide just to give you the gist of it.

GTD is composed of five basic principles: collect, process, organize, review, and do. Each one of these steps has its own set of benefits, but the real power comes from using them all together.

Collect – Our brains are not very reliable. We are bombarded with hundreds of tasks to do, names to remember, great ideas, facts, and other information, only to forget half of it by the end of the day. To make matters worse, keeping all of this information in our heads greatly reduces our ability to focus on specific tasks. How can you expect to concentrate on writing that report when you are simultaneously trying to remember to meet your friend in an hour, pick up groceries on the way home, and the other five errands you need to run that day. David Allen suggests using an inbox to throw anything that comes your way. Whether it's bills you just got in the mail, lyrics from a song you just heard on the radio and want to look up later, or a great idea for a blog post you want to remember. You'd be surprised with how clear your mind can become just by dumping everything on paper and collecting it in one place.

Process and Organize – This pile of items you've just collected can quickly grow into a jungle of uselessness if you don't continually process it into actionable items. At the end of every day, I go through my inbox and place everything into a category. Things that can be done in less than 2 minutes are done right then and there. This usually includes any emails I wanted to send, papers to be filed, maybe a new blog I wanted to check out. Anything I can't get to until something else happens first gets put into the “waiting” pile. For example, I can't make that presentation until Bob gives me the numbers to use, or I can't fix Bob's computer until the parts arrive. At this point the only things left are “next action” items. These are the tasks I will use as my to-do list for the next day.

Review – This is definitely the hardest step of the entire process (at least for me it is). No matter how on top things you are on a day to day basis with the first three steps, there are always going to be little things that slip through the cracks. Maybe a few tasks get pushed to the back of your inbox keeping you from ever getting around to completing them. Or maybe you forgot to write down a couple home repair projects you were planning on getting around to at the end of the month. The only way to combat this is your weekly review. Once a week, you just sit down, and go through your inbox, to-do lists, action items, and project folders to make sure everything is in the right place and nothing is forgotten. You can also use this time do do a complete brain dump and just get everything out of your head and written down into your GTD system.

Do – GTD is a great system for capturing and organizing all the information and different tasks you run into everyday. Once you have a nice list of things you need to do, you need to decide on what to do first. David Allen uses a combination of time and energy you have available to decide what would be a good task to start on. Stephen Covey, author of, “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” suggests prioritizing your tasks using some version of his urgent/important matrix. I would say this is the one area I'm still exploring, trying to find a good balance allowing me to get the maximum productivity out of my day.

Whats next?

So that was your quick introduction to GTD. Now that you have an idea of what it is, I would still recommend picking up the full version of the book, or at least reading Trent's rundown of the system on The Simple Dollar. It's worth getting the full technical details of how this system works, as well as a full explanation of how following each step can benefit you. Hopefully it will inspire you to get started today. Following this post, I want to share some tweaks I've made to the system to gain better flow with my more digital life. I'll be posting on:

-how to set up your email to work right along side GTD

-how to set up Evernote with GTD

-how to set up Google Tasks and Google Calendar with GTD