It’s ‘back to school’ season and it’s time to get productive! I will talk you through the main principles of the Getting Things Done method and a quick set-up, so you can try it straight away.

I am a planner fanatic and hoarder, who loses any self-control at the sight of unique stationary. Planners make me happy, but there has never been one that has made me feel in control of my everyday productivity like the GTD method. Hence, after a year of using Erin Condren planner, a Rolls-Royce for planner maniacs, which I found to be a great art tool, rather than productivity tool – I am coming back to GTD.

GTD method simplified:

What is GTD?

To summarise, it is a method of organising your mind, so that you have the headspace to focus on the right things. You might not end up getting more things done, but you will get the important things done, have your ‘life administration’ in order and sleep better at night.



Implementation

Here, I distill concepts I found to be of the most impact and how you can implement them right now. All you need to do is download a free version of Evernote, and follow along. If you find you like the method, but miss you are also a physical planner fanatic – the next post will cover how you can set one up for GTD.

Principle Number 1: Don’t store any information in your head, create an inbox

Your mind is great for creating ideas, but not holding them.

Without realising, we often get ideas and reminders of items we need to do, popping up in our heads.

These are called open loops.

Only half of the problem is that there is a risk you won’t recall them in the right context, hence your productivity suffers.

Another significant part is that those open loops are stored in your headspace, your RAM, leading to internal mental overload. This can even lead to serious consequences like anxiety, insomnia and an inability to focus. Have you ever woken up thinking: “I feel like I forgot something important?”

The solution is to get all those mental loops and items that ‘ring your bell’ out of your head and into somewhere. And then commit to putting everything there, in that one place – no matter how varied the items seem. This commitment to one (or as few as possible) ‘mind dumps’ will help you trust that place to always hold what your mind should not.

What are those collection tools?

If you are using Evernote – it’s perfect, you can have a mobile version with you at all times. But it can be a notebook, a note on your phone or a physical box where you put post-it notes. Have as few as you can get away with and ideally one.

In Evernote: The First Step is to create a new notebook (as everything in Evernote must belong to a notebook) – let’s call it ‘Getting Things Done’.

Create your first note and call it ‘Inbox‘ – to capture all incoming thoughts and to-dos.

Here in each separate line, you write down everything that is in your head – an idea, a reference, a to-do item. You can even take a few minutes now, and start with writing everything that has been on your mind, from ‘pay the water bill’ to ‘get a new job’.

It’s not a personal diary – if you’ve been worried about your neck pain, don’t go on a rant about it or how you should deal with it, just simplify to:

neck pain

At this point you are not processing or classifying anything – you are not trying to work out what to do with each item, or even in what context it belongs, we’ll get there. For now – just capture it.

Principle Number 2: Calendar is not your to-do list

Let’s imagine you decided to do some gardening on Monday and have prepared all the appropriate tools. However, it might just so happen that it rains, or aliens come into your backyard or you get bitten by a poisonous snake.

At the end of such a day, you feel disheartened that you couldn’t complete your daily task and end up re-writing it on to the next day (or whenever aliens plan to leave).

That’s why a calendar doesn’t work: priorities change, sometimes the action needs more actions to get it done. Also, you have no idea how long the task will take unless you’ve done it before and whether you will have enough resources to perform it.

The calendar is still important, but for a different purpose.

There are only three things that go into your calendar:

• Time-specific actions (appointments)

• Day-specific actions (deadlines for submission of accounts)

• Day-specific information (birthdays)

The item should have a 99% chance of being done on that day/time or you don’t put it in the calendar at all.

Principle 3: Process Your Inbox

When we have time, we process an inbox.

We take each item from an inbox, one by one, indiscriminately and process what they mean and what to do about them. We do that by asking ourselves a set of questions:

Is an item actionable?

if YES,

We then do one of the three things: do it, delegate it or defer it.

Does it take less than 2 minutes to complete?

If Yes – we do it right away

If No – we can do one of the 2 things:

Delegate it, if we are not the most appropriate person to complete that action (or we are just lazy).

Evernote: Create a note called ‘waiting on’ where you will keep track of delegated items.

Defer it for later into:

Calendar – if the item is day or time specific, assign it into the calendar e.g. trip to the dentist

Context List – if the item is location or person specific, i.e. require to be somewhere or to speak to someone create a separate list and place that action there (e.g. Context List: Supermarket, action: buy basil)

Evernote: You’ll probably find that at least a few of the following common list headings for next actions will make sense for you:

“Calls”

“At Computer”

“Errands”

“Office Actions”

Project List – if the item requires multiple to-do’s to complete we create it’s dedicated project and identify – what outcome would make us cross this out? E.g. Trip to Italy; Outcome: I booked my trip to Italy/or I went to Italy. We then list the next action we need to take to move the project forward e.g. research flight tickets).

Evernote: create a dedicated project note for each item that requires more than one to-do

You might wonder, how about items that don’t require any actions?

It can be one of the few things:

Someday/maybe. Something that might need to be done later (someday/maybe).

Evernote: Create a “someday /maybe” list of actions or project. You can set a reminder in the calendar to review it.

Reference. The item is potentially useful information that might be needed for something later (reference).

Evernote: create a separate note, unless it is related and crucial to your one of your projects, then it’s your project support material – create a heading in your project file.

Bin it – if there is no use for the item – cross it out or remove.

Principle 4: Review

It’s one thing to write down what you need milk, it’s another to be at the store and remember it. It helps to set up the time to review your notes at appropriate intervals in order to make sure, that they are up to date. This is a framework I follow:

Daily: Calendar – things will die if you don’t do them

Daily: Review your next actions: your lists and your projects.

Every few days: “Waiting For”

Weekly: “Someday/Maybe” lists (need to be reviewed only as often as you think they have to be in order to stop you from wondering about them)

It might seem like a lot of novel routines and concepts, but as soon as you start using the system, you will realise how intuitive it is. If you still find the whole system too overwhelming, feel free to distill to only the concepts that work for you. I find that the most useful by far is having Inbox/ one trusted ‘mind dump’ – that’s where magic happens, as you free your mind from too many open tabs. Stay tuned for the physical planner post!