Question: You say you shouldn’t write anything on a day when it doesn’t absolutely have to be finished by then. Furthermore, you tell that priorities are depended on time, energy and a lot more, but I miss one thing there: deadlines. What if I make a list of things to do, and find on Monday that there was something I should have done on Saturday or Sunday, but didn’t do it because I didn’t go through my entire list?

David Allen: Deadlines (especially “hard” ones that you have external commitments about) should be tracked on the Projects list, and any pre-warnings inserted on appropriate dates in your calendar (that’s “day-specific information”, e.g. “Budget due in 10 days” would be on your calendar 10 days ahead. )  That, plus regular Weekly Reviews, prevents what you describe — missing deadlines.

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Question: Projects are my stumbling block. In fact, what do you do when everything you pick up seems to be yet another project (a multi-step thing to do)?  The other options are easy to me compared to managing the multi-step things to be done.

David Allen: Big key is simply to keep track of them all. And have a place either digitally or manual, to hold all relevant collateral materials and thinking. At some point you’ll either get used to lots of commitments, or make fewer. Probably both.

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A GTDer asked: I am using the GTD Outlook Add-In software. Should I create subprojects?

Coach Kelly: I personally don’t use the subproject feature of software.  For me, everything is just a Project. But if you do decide to use it, it can be a nice way to sort major components of a large project. For example, let’s say you are getting married.  You could have “Get married” as the project that you track, however, there would be many, many
steps that would fall under that.  Some people would choose to create subprojects for each of the major components, such as:

Project =
Get Married

Subprojects =
Rehearsal Dinner
Ceremony
Reception
Honeymoon

I’d say it’s an optional feature in the Add-In, not required. Only use it if it helps you. Don’t use that feature if it seems confusing or more complicated than you need. [Addendum: this is my universal feedback for people on creating your system.  Use as many features as you need, but as few as you can get by with.]

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Question: How did you organize your tasks?  Am I suppose to have a main Projects category and corresponding action tasks categorized @home, @work, etc?

David Allen: Yes, for me “Projects” is a category, just like the action lists of “Calls”,  “At Computer” etc. They are  simply flat lists, tied together with your review of the whole system.

Question: If there are 5 (or likely more for me) separate sections in a folder to track everything, how do you pull everything in a project back together rather than having it all scattered?   [Read more →]

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Dear David and Co.,

About three years ago, on a long plane ride, I was able to fully deploy GTD into a paper-based system.  I had read the book. And the book suggested writing down all active Projects, Tasks, and Waiting Fors.

After writing down all my projects, I looked at the list. It was easy to see I had too many irons in the fire.  Looking at the Projects list, I knew what I had to to next.  More importantly, I knew what I had NOT to do.

Within several hours of getting off the plane I was able to gracefully unplug for three major initiatives which a) were soaking up a lot of time, b) did not mesh well with a heavy travel schedule.

This was a revelation. It was the first time I felt that I could control my work world. Up to that point, my work, and my interests had been controlling me.

With a functioning GTD system, I now end up launching far fewer new projects. Paradoxically, this enable me to get much more done.

Thanks for your hard work in bringing such a useful system to the world.

Steedman Bass
Cambridge, MA

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Do YOU know the best practices of GTD?

Although they’ve been recorded for our GTD Connect online learning center, we have been posting the GTD Best Practices series to our free public podcast as well, for all to benefit from.  These informal podcasts are a great way to learn the essentials of GTD.  Here is the series:

Best Practices of Collect

Best Practices of Processing

Best Practices of Organize

Best Practices of Review

Best Practices of Doing

If you like these podcasts, GTD Connect has over 110 recordings like these, with more added every week, that you can play on the Connect site or  sync to iTunes.  It’s a great way to learn coaching tips from David and the staff, listen to interesting interviews with GTD’ers (Evan Taubenfeld being one of the recent ones), watch the “Slice of GTD Life” videos and more.  Good stuff.  Check out the free trial of GTD Connect.

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Here’s a great Q&A between David and a new GTD’er.  To appreciate David’s response, it helps to understand the GTD definitions for projects and next actions:

Projects = Your outcomes that require more than one action step.

Next Actions = Your next physical, visible action steps. Some are project-related, some are not.

Question:

If a project requires, by your definition, at least two steps, I am not clear about how many of the needed steps to put into my action list.  For example, say I have a project with 20 steps.  I may be able to do the step 1, but if I had also put down 2  or 3 steps of that project, I might have done more on the project.   Presently I have about 57 projects, but some are monster projects I’ll be working on for months.  Others I can list two steps and it’s done very quickly.  A few projects are so trivial–but important enough to be listed–that some days I don’t do the one item I listed as the next step for that project.  I could put it into the “Someday” list, but I know I’ll do it sooner than that, so it stays around not being done.  I’d rather do step 2 and then 3 and then 4 of a more important project (I might be on a roll!) than complete one whole project that is easier to do but less important.  So I’m a bit unclear about how much of one project to put in my action list.  I find myself doing the “Weekly Review” every day, so I can add more steps from more important projects.  Could you share any thoughts about how to solve this concern?    [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from Ryan Oakley

Whether you’re a proficient OneNote user or just started using it after reading my GTD and OneNote article posted on GTD Times it doesn’t take long to populate the software with a tonne of pages and a tonne of information (yes, I am Canadian).

First, some definitions:

MS Office OneNote 2007 is a digital notebook that provides people one place to gather their notes and information, powerful search to find what they are looking for quickly, and easy-to-use shared notebooks so that they can manage information overload and work together more effectively.

ActiveWords is a Windows application that relates words and actions, giving you instant access to what you want, making you more productive, and improving the quality of your work.  (Editors note: ActiveWords was also featured in a podcast by David Allen.) [Read more →]

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