There are five parts to GTD
- Collect
- Process
- Organize
- Reviewing
- Do
The basic principles of GTD are just common sense.
First, collect all the things you have to do and write them down. If your tasks are all recorded you know that they won’t be forgotten. If you know you’re not going to forget things you’ve just removed one cause of stress.
Next, organize your work so that jobs get done at the right time. This stops the feeling that you’re drowning in trivial jobs when should be doing something more important.
Having done that, do the work. If you have all your tasks organized properly you can look up a couple of five minute tasks when you have ten minutes spare, when you have a longer stretch of time you can get down to a more challenging task.
Review your system every so often. Priorities will change, you’ll need to reorganize your work to take this into account.
GTD involves writing down all your jobs. It doesn’t matter whether you do it on paper or use an IT solution such as Evernote or my preferred solution, Emacs. Everything you have to do – making a phone call; sending a birthday card; starting a big project; buying a book to read… write it down.
Tony Ballantyne Tech 