Getting Things Done

A while back (about 2 months), I bought the Getting Things Done book, and attempted to do some cleanup of my life. The book's aim in on teaching how to make sure that all the things that are inside your head are written down somewhere, so that when you do need to focus, you can, without having the "psychic stress" of keeping track of all these different things.

So has it worked? I would say yes. My email inbox last year had 500 odd emails in it, and I had this bad feeling that there were things in there that I had missed. Nowadays I make it a daily ritual to make sure that I have got ZERO emails in my inbox. All the emails are now either filed away for reference or put into an action list. It is a great feeling for me to be able to leave work with a clean inbox.

My filing system has been simplified. What used to be many subfolders under generic folders such as "Personal", "Work", "Projects" have now all been consolidated into one flat heirarchy. Every folder is by topic. Same for my physical filing as well. It was put under the test and I got the relevant document out in 20 sec. Not too shabby :)

Things to note: it is sometimes overwhelming to see how many "to-do" action items there are, but the feeling that you know just about everything you need to do at a certain time brings forth a calmness. There is no more of that "oh no, have I forgotten something that will bite me in the ass later?" feeling.
The book emphasises a weekly review to make sure that the stuff in the folders remains fresh. This is something that I've been a bit lax on. Need to keep doing that, or else I won't trust the system.

So for anyone that feels the need to get their house into order, I recommend this book. Get it and see if it helps!

Damn! four cheap calls already:

are you just moving your emails to another folder so you can't see it :) i started doing this after my inbox got to 1092 (unread) messages but they just sat unread in other folders instead!
mushiejc (link) - 20 March '07 - 13:10

Haha, it does feel like that once in a while :) That review thing seems to help, though. 1092 messages is very impressive :P
jookboy - 24 March '07 - 04:19

Good stuff mate! I follow a similar system and it works a treat ... except for the fact that I find there are some actions that continue to get transferred from one list to another (usually the medium to high importance, but not urgent variety) ... have you found a system to avoid this issue?
Scraps - 09 April '07 - 19:43

The key seems to be to write the action in a way where it is DEFINITELY the next action. That seems to make it easier to do.
Jookboy - 16 April '07 - 09:25