Comments on: GTD Organization Suggestions?

By: Jeff Murray

Jeff Murray — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:14:11 +0000

I have so many Outlook rules to automatically put my e-mails into specific folders, it’s like an engineering nightmare in itself. Notepad has always been my tool of choice for the Todo list - nice and simple. I have a little app called ‘AlwaysOnTopMaker’ that I use to make notepad on top of everything, that way I can see my todo list go down as the day goes on and delete items as I take care of them.

GTD is certainly something I’d like to look at (when I get time) since I recently read an article on David Allen and he looks like he’s doing pretty well

By: Ryan Anderson

Ryan Anderson — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:41:04 +0000

I’m a big fan of the inbox zero concept. Personally, I have a folder called !Action, !Waiting, and !Respond, with the properties set to give me the number of how many items it contains. I use an offline to-do list, the mission-critical things I need to do on the back of a 3×5 card so it can’t get too long, and just keep a running tally of things I need to do eventually in my notebook.

I take a look at the action and waiting lists every morning, and every Friday, I’ll go through and actually parse the leftover stuff as action items for the next week.

I find the problem with the GTD system is the time spent organizing, which can get onerous. Try a bunch of ways and figure out what works best for you.

By: Stodge

Stodge — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:00:12 +0000

“Another way to look at my thought is: which is better–take on a million things and do a half-baked job on most of them and flake on the rest… or take on a few things and do a great job?”

“No amount of organization or efficiency can help if you’ve simply taken on too much work!”

I agree. When you don’t control your schedule/work load or your organisation only gives you 50-75% of the resources you really need to complete a project I find that you don’t have a choice. It wasn’t until I had control of the schedule that I could really avoid the hours and hours of overtime we used to do and concentrate on increasing quality and productivity. I tried hard to prioritise critical issues and fixes and defer minor ones to give us a fighting chance of meeting the deadline and the expected feature list.

Email is greatly overused here and probably drastically reduces productivity. Unforunately it’s a bad habit that’s hard to break.

By: Brian Robbins

Brian Robbins — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:29:45 +0000

That’s a really good point Phillip, and one that Jimmy Guterman just wrote about on his O’Reilly Radar blog. No amount of organization or efficiency can help if you’ve simply taken on too much work!

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:04:27 +0000

I suppose I should read the book. My approach is fairly low tech: just don’t take on so many things that it becomes overwhelming. If I just say “no” to red-flag obligations and yes to things that are very interesting, things seem to work out. Even when I say yes to too many tasks, it usually works out because so many other people are so flaky that things fall through.

Maybe I’m lame but I do think this approach has kept me pretty sane and relaxed. Having said all this, I get busy and stressed at times… but from the sounds of some people’s schedules, I think I’m in the low 1% of getting things done.

Another way to look at my thought is: which is better–take on a million things and do a half-baked job on most of them and flake on the rest… or take on a few things and do a great job? I’m not saying this is the only choice, but it’s my way of looking at things.

By: Armando Alves

Armando Alves — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:03:32 +0000

Oh, if you really have the time (that you’ll get once you put GTD rolllin), check th Inbox Zero presentation that Merlinn gave at Google.

By: Armando Alves

Armando Alves — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:55:38 +0000

There’s the lo-tech (moleskine or hipster PDA) and the hi-tech (blackberry) road.

As for web based solutions you can use tools such as GTDtiddlywiki, Remember the milk or the fine products from 37 signals.

Personally i rely on MS Exchange, and a calendar moleskine, with side pocket were i keep assets and a mini notebook for sketches.

The best GTD workflow is a matter of personal tuning, but if you need more help check http://www.43folders.com/

By: Brian Robbins

Brian Robbins — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:21:22 +0000

The “flag e-mail for followup” combined with Outlook reminders has been my system for a few years now, and it’s worked fairly well for me. The one point that David Allen made which really resonated with me though is the difference between things that need to get done, and things that need to get done on a specific day.

I’ll typically have 5-20 Outlook reminders coming up for things that I need to do, but only 1 or 2 of them have to be done at a specific time. That means that I have to keep that knowledge in my head, and the idea behind GTD is to be able to get it out of your head in a system that you trust (so you no longer have to constantly think about it). To that end he says that you should treat your calendar almost as a sacred thing, and ONLY put things in it that absolutely must be done by a certain time or they can’t be done later.

It makes a lot of sense, which is why I’m going to give it a shot. We’ll see how it goes.

By: Stodge

Stodge — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:46:45 +0000

Good post - there are times at work that I have 20 things I need to prioritise and eventually do. Most I can remember, but some I forget. I don’t really have a system - I typically don’t write much down and because management love email, I just mark emails for follow-up. Our customer is in the UK, so there are lots of emails flying around to and from them, so I mark those for follow-up too. Though once they’ve been moved from the inbox they don’t show up in my follow-up folder for some odd reason.

So any suggestions are welcome here too!