Principles of GTD

In this blog I wrote shortly how to getting things done.

Collection

The meaning of this principle is that all the thoughts that “crowd” in our head should be recorded on any media such as electronic organizer, voice recorder or simple notepad. The main thing is to liberate the mind from the information that is not necessary at that moment.

In addition, all records should be revised at least once a week to confirm their relevance and to make the necessary adjustments.

Processing

The main thing on processing of information is that any action that take less than 5 minutes should be done immediately. It is effective to start working from the top of the list and moving further in order.

According to Allen’s algorithm of processing information, you can do following with each case in the list: to implement, to outsource, to postpone, to keep for reference, throw away or moved to the list of things which should be done later.

Organization

To control the actions which should be done, David Allen suggests following:

Follow-up actions. There should be elements which will done step by step. For example, elements of “making a budget”. To make a budget you need to do the following steps: to communicate with colleague and to request datas, to find out the cost of necessary materials, etc.

Projects. We should take as project, any aim that will be reach by more than one consecutive steps. Projects should be periodically reviewed to ascertain that we on right way.

Deffered. In a situation where the case should be transferred for execution or when its execution must be preceded by another event, there is a need to monitor it from time to time. This will not overstay the terms of its implementation.

Someday/maybe. These include things to which it’s possible you’ll decide to return upon the occurrence of certain conditions.

Review

The creation of lists and notes will not produce the desired result, if not review as often as possible, and preferably do it every day. Thus it is necessary to choose the most important task at the moment and to proceed immediately to its implementation. It is not recommended to start with light action, avoiding difficult. Thus, you will only aggravate the situation, accumulating a pile of hard work. The optimal solution is a consistent task execution.

Actions

According to David Allen, you should pay more attention to the implementation of each task and not to its organization. There are more chances to finish task without problem.