Initial experiences with GTD

It was been almost a week since I got started reorganising my personal planning system and its worth taking a checkpoint of what I have found so far. As my previous posting indicated, I am implementing the processes outline in the book Getting Things Done. Here's a summary of what I have done to date.

Day one: the first step was to gather my initial Inbox of loose ideas. This turned up some interesting things. Here is a sample of things that went in: a pair of brown trousers whose pocket needs fixing, a cat figure that my mother wants me to repair, an iPod brochure and a note that said "Study: Cupboard" on it. It definitely felt good to collect stuff into one spot. Luckily, my work situation at the moment meant that I could process that stuff from home too.

Day two: this was when the fun began. I had to work out what each of the Inbox items meant. Was there a pending action on that item or was it just reference material that needed to be filed? Also, as a result of going through this process I had to think about the contexts that those tasks needed to be done in and how I was going to remember them when that context came about. This is critical for me as I am a big one for having things that need to be done during office hours and completely forgetting about them once I get to work. One of the most well known parts of GTD is the Next Action lists with names like "@Home" or "@Computer." As a result I now have a set of lists for all the contexts I could identify, all stored in my very own Hipster PDA. My lists are: Projects, Waiting For, Agendas, @Shops/Errands, @Computer, @Work, @Home, Calls & Emails and Someday/Maybe.

Day three: I guess this is when I started using these tools in earnest. One of the biggest themes that came out of my Inbox processing was that I had a very messy storage system. So, a lot of my next actions were tidy this or clean that and this is what I spent most of my time looking at. Boy, did I throw out and delete a lot of rubbish - and there's still more to come. In my two email systems, I have no inbox items, with every email being processed in some way. My personal file storage is now unified so that I can add a file to my laptop and sync it to my USB key. That study cupboard is still on the todo list.

Next steps: I have read to the ninth chapter so far where the author is talking about how to prioritise next actions. At this point I am happy to just see how the general process goes and fine tune it a bit. My current level of busy-ness is such that I can probably delay thinking about the priority mechanisms for now. I'll read ahead anyway, just to soak it in, but I suspect I'll need to revisit it at a later date. Beyond that there are topics about deciding how formal to manage the projects and then three chapters on the philosophies behind the processes. I think I'll do alright to work on the mechanics of the system for now.

All in all, I feel good at the moment, knowing that all my actions are tracked in a simple, easy to access format. This does not mean that I am more likely to do them, but it does mean I spend less time trying to remember what I need to be doing.