Getting Things Done, a technique that helps to self-organize

Ma. Loreto Arriagada/Robert Koch

In this last year and given the change in the way of working, it has become necessary to find effective organizational methods, such as personal kanban, bullet journal, Getting Things Done (GTD) among others.

It is not new that we are working from home and work has come to invade our daily spaces and mixes with the daily routine. In this context, we need to find a suitable method to help us not to feel overloaded, to prioritize, and not lose sight of what we should do.

A year ago, we heard someone talking about “Getting Things Done” and found it interesting. We took the official course and then put it into practice.

A bit of theory, where does this GTD come from?

Getting Things Done is a way of managing activities developed by David Allen. GTD is based on the principle that a person needs to free his mind from to-dos by storing them in a specific place. GTD has 5 fundamental steps: capture, clear out, organize, reflect and run.

In addition to this and to clarify, GTD recommends these 5 main lists, however, as the system evolves, more lists appear. There is no one list that will always work.

1. Inbox.
2. Next actions.
3. Waiting list.
4. List of projects.
5. Someday / maybe list.

Capture

The first step to apply GTD is called mental sweep, which consists of giving myself time to empty everything. How do we do it? capture the information.

You can find the most appropriate way to capture the information. Some people use notebooks, some applications, post-it, etc, however, the most important thing is to capture the information somehow and that it is a reliable source for you.

“If it’s on your mind, write it down or record it in some concrete way. It doesn’t matter how you capture these thoughts, as long as you get them out of your head and have them all easily accessible to you, your review “. ( David Allen)

Dangers: Believe that you must do everything immediately. Try to find the perfect tool to get started.

Clear out

This is a strategic step in GTD that you decide if an item is a project, next action, or reference. In this step you can ask yourself the next questions: Is it actionable? Is it a single step? Is it a task for me? For example, if you need to make an activity and this activity includes more than one sub-task, this activity can be classified as a project. If the activity is only one task, this is a single step.

The two-minute rule is great because if you have a task, and this task takes less than two minutes, GTD says, do it immediately.

Recommendations to clarify:

1. Process your inbox as often as possible.
2. Process one thing at a time.
3. The two-minute rule is your best friend, don’t skip it.
4. Block time for clarifying tasks.
5. Timeboxes can help you to limit the time that is used to clarify in a single task.
6. Keep your Project lists updated.
7. Delegate tasks.

Dangers: Not taking the time to clarify thoroughly.

Organize

When we clarify the topics, this stage of organizing appears. We place each topic in its respective list (see diagram), then the recommendation for you is to add dates to your calendar list so as not to forget committed dates, delegate projects to other people, file away reference material, and sort your tasks often. This is similar to ordering your workspace, if you do not have your workspace organized, you will start to lose some things.

Dangers: No deadlines set in our work.

Reflect

This step is the most important for GTD and we are dedicated to a special space for this. A weekly review is an opportunity to do a retrospective, it’s time to think about the past week, reflect on what went well and what didn’t, and get a plan for the week ahead.

In the beginning, it is quite difficult, requires practice and we are constantly reviewing our system. If not, adjust, change, add, or delete lists that you make feel confused or do not add value to you.

Dangers: Don’t evolve our system over time

Run

In the GTD method, you use four criteria to decide what to do next: Context, time available, energy available, and priority.

At this moment you can work in the GTD method, and the general recommendation is you need to keep it simple.

Weekly Review: A behavior to implement GTD

In my experience, Weekly Review is the core practice of GTD methodology.

It helps to:

- Organize and improve the whole system step by step;

- Move all my inputs to zero,

- and clarify the things I need to do with a holistic vision.

How do I do it? I have a checklist. I review this weekly checklist every Friday at 3 pm. With each item on this checklist I do:

- Capture all the “inputs” (papers, emails, Whatsapp) and also flush all the ideas off my brain.

- Check the “next actions” list, all “projects” lists, my last week’s and next week’s calendar, and my “waiting for” list; trying to find what to do next on each of the lists.

- Check my “someday” list in case something is relevant to do it now or just trash it.

- Add some improvement to my system (add a label, simplify a list, discard things that are not relevant, and so on).

Dangers: The first thing you should do is to execute the Weekly Review on a weekly basis: Pick a day, add a reminder in your agenda and do it; no matter if you review the entire checklist or not. Do not expect a perfect Weekly Review. A good one is enough. Do not skip it. Do it no matter if you only check a 10% of the checklist.

To finish, GTD is a methodology that has several years and lessons learned shared in different blogs and forums, so it was not unknown to us. It was only through the need to find a way to organize the tasks that made us investigate GTD, to understand it, and be able to apply it in a better way. At the beginning it was quite difficult, as we already mentioned, it requires perseverance and not skipping the fundamental steps. Does GTD help us? The answer is yes, we invite you to try it and see what lessons you can share with us. Each person is different and there is no single recipe, but by following the tips and the diagram it is possible to make an effective implementation.

You can find more information in https://gettingthingsdone.com/