As we have seen in previous instalments of ‘Healthy Time Management’, David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method can be an excellent choice. This method is a reliable and easy-to-use option that allows you to capture all your tasks, ideas and commitments in an objective way, reminding you what to do and when.
The first steps of the method consist of: capturing the ideas and concerns that go round and round in your head as they appear, in order to later clarify what you want to achieve with them and what the next possible action is to move towards that goal.
If you have followed the advice in previous articles, you will have at most six containers in which to collect all the misplaced objects and unfinished business: a box, a physical folder, a physical or digital notebook, a digital repository or file, a task application and email.
You will also have filled these containers by capturing all the pending issues in your life, both work and personal, reviewing every place in your home, your workplace, meeting notes and, above all, pending issues that only live in your head.
I hope that you have then processed them one by one, to clarify what it means to close that issue and find the next concrete action to take.
- If there is no action to be taken, then you will have to delete it, leave it in incubation or save it for reference.
- If, on the other hand, you have to do something to move forward, you will have to delegate it, leave it for later or do it immediately if it takes less than 2 minutes.
Congratulations! After this exercise you will have emptied all the containers.
That sounds great! But wait! If I take them out of the input container, where will I put them? Won’t I forget them if I don’t have them in sight?
To prevent this from happening, in this instalment we will focus on the next step of the GTD method: ‘Organise’. Your objective here will be to ensure that everything has a designated place, which will make it easier for you to find information and make clear decisions about what to do next and remember when you have to do it. Shall we start?
Define the key categories
As we have just seen, after clarifying each issue you will have to decide where to put it. The proposal is that you have the following categories in your task app and in your email client:
- Inbox
- Urgent: tasks that you have to do yourself, take more than 2 minutes and you have to complete as soon as possible.
- Next actions: tasks that you have to do yourself and take more than 2 minutes.
- Waiting: delegated tasks to review.
- Maybe / someday: tasks set aside for later.
- Projects 1… N: issues that need more than one task to complete. These folders would be for your task app only, they are not necessary for email.
- Archive: for completed tasks or emails that you may need in the future. In principle, this folder is only for your email, it is not necessary for the task app, as they are normally hidden when completed.
In addition, you should have a digital filing system, and if you need to, a physical one too. The latter, even in the digital age, can be useful for keeping your home or workplace paper-free. For example, for storing shopping receipts, paper invoices, bank contracts, medical tests, the minutes of the neighbourhood meeting, notes or school certificates, your children’s beautiful drawings, etc.
The way you organise these files, digital or physical, should be as simple as possible so as not to waste time finding the right folder when filing a new entry or when you need to find it in the future.
Projects: we haven’t talked about this folder before!
Until now I haven’t mentioned this type of folder, because in reality they might not be necessary, it depends a lot on the type of issues you handle and how you are going to manage them within your task app.
In a previous article I suggested that, if in order to complete one task you have to complete another first, you create that second task. For example:
- ‘Client X report: executive summary >> PTE detail KPIs for the month’
- ‘Client X report: obtain monthly KPI details’
This is useful when an a priori simple matter ends up becoming complicated, but when what we have on our hands is something that we know in advance is going to require several actions and has a specific end date, then we are dealing with a ‘project’, and it can have the enormous privilege of having its own task folder.
Careful! It’s not about duplicating here each and every one of the tasks that will have to be completed to finalise the project, but only those that require your immediate attention. The idea is that you put a ‘bookmark’ at the point in the planning where the project is, so that when you review this folder later you can see what the next specific action is, from among those available, that you can do to move the project forward.
Also consider whether all the issues that meet the definition of having several steps and an end date require a folder. In some cases, it is enough to include the steps within the notes of the parent task itself. Remember, this system, or whatever one you decide to implement, works as long as it is maintainable over time and easy to use.
There is one exception to this rule and that is ‘endless’ or ongoing projects. If for you it is a sufficiently bulky source of pending issues, you can consider including other folders such as ‘Family / Friends’, ‘Holidays’, ‘Finances’, …
Do I set a reminder or do I schedule it on the calendar?
This will depend on whether the task has to be done at a specific time or on a specific day or whether the task has to be done as soon as possible. That said, it seems obvious that the former go on the calendar, but it can be very tempting to include the latter as well. On the calendar you should only schedule three types of things:
- Tasks to be done at a specific time, i.e. meetings, appointments or scheduled calls.
- Tasks to be carried out on a specific day, regardless of the time.
- Time to process information that you need to know that day, for example, to prepare for a meeting or for a colleague returning from holiday.
Please take special care to reserve your diary only for these things, otherwise you will no longer trust your calendar, and you will start moving appointments from one day to another, thus detracting from the credibility of deadlines and encouraging procrastination. If you reflect it in your calendar, it must be done that day or never.
Keep the entries at zero
Now that you know how to organise tasks to get them out of the inbox, it’s time to get down to work. And not just with the to-do list.
Perhaps until now you have preferred to have your email inbox full of hundreds, if not thousands, of emails so that you ‘don’t forget them’. Have you ever stopped to think how many times you go over and over the same email and how inefficient that is in terms of time? It’s as if every time you opened the mailbox you went through all the letters, read only some of them and put them all back inside until you decided what to do with them, and so on every day, or in the case of email, several times a day.
This applies to all inboxes: the pile of unsaved receipts, the unread meeting notes… you have to decide what you want to do with each item in them and then organise it in the right place, outside the inbox. Having a zero inbox will not only help you concentrate on new entries, but will also save you a lot of time every day.
I’ll share some personal examples with you, in case they help you find a way to implement it in your case:
- When my children were little, I had a very large plastic box in the living room where we would leave the misplaced toys that were lying around the house throughout the day. Before going to bed, the box would be emptied to put the toys back in their place (or play with them again…). Even today I have a basket in the kitchen where we leave the random junk that ends up there, and once a week it goes back where it belongs.
- Before using the GTD method, I saved all my emails, even sent ones, in folders by project, which in turn had subfolders by subject, and all in a single Outlook file. The idea was to quickly find an archived email by searching in the right folder, but the reality ended up being that I didn’t always remember which folder I had left it in — there could be more than one! And, what’s more, as it was a very large file, Outlook took a long time to search, if it even found anything at all. Now every January I generate a new Outlook file in which I only have 5 folders, not only do I find emails much faster, but I also don’t waste time choosing which folder to save them in.
- After a while using the GTD method in my digital world, I was encouraged to apply it to the physical world. I bought three sturdy magazine racks, transparent sleeves and cardboard folders, as well as several zip bags. I went all over the house collecting all the official or useful papers from drawers, cupboards and other filing systems. I dedicated a magazine rack to each area: finance, health, studies. Inside each one I put a folder by subject or by person. I labelled the zip bags, one to keep the shopping tickets ‘on hold’ in case I need to exchange something, and another bag for ‘guarantees’ (of these I also keep a photograph). Now we are no longer too lazy to put the papers back in their place when we get home, instead of leaving them in any drawer to see what to do with them another day, and I know where everything is.
Simplify your tools
Use lists, folders, applications or systems that work for you. It is very important that whatever you choose is simple to use and maintain, that you don’t duplicate efforts and that it doesn’t take you more time to use it than not to use it (apart from the initial extra time it takes to get it up and running). That’s why I advise you to keep it simple, with as few inboxes and folders as necessary for it to be useful to you.
By the way, so far we have always talked about a digital task app, but if you prefer analogue, you will only need: a notebook and a pen that you can carry with you wherever you go to capture new issues; and a filing system where each ‘folder’ can be differentiated with a separator, each task can be a note on a sheet of paper (in which case you have to be aware that you will have to rewrite the issues and tasks when you move them to their destination) or a whole sheet of paper, to move it more easily between folders, as you prefer. The important thing is that all the issues are out of your head, in a safe place where they can be captured, processed and reviewed, easy to update, avoiding duplication or loss of information.
Conclusions
‘ I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then’ Alice
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
I hope that little by little you will see the form to the Getting Things Done method that I propose to you to manage your time in a healthy, relaxed and serene way, knowing that at every moment you are choosing to do (or not to do) what moves you towards your goals.
I will remind you of some concepts:
- Capture: Empty your head of worries, write them down in your to-do list.
- Clarify: Review your list to clarify what it means for you to complete that task and what the next concrete action is that will help you move towards your goal.
- Organise: Move the entry to the appropriate folder within your system.
Don’t worry if the proposed organisation doesn’t seem to suit you right now, give it a try and you may change your mind. My advice is to try to put the system into practice little by little. For example, you can start with email, generating a new PST file, creating the proposed folders and emptying your inbox (if you have a lot of emails, I suggest you archive the oldest ones and focus on processing and organising the most recent ones). When you’ve been practising with email for a few weeks, you might be able to install a task app and start applying the method there as well.
If you already have it and want to move forward, you can learn more about the next steps, review and execute, of the GTD method. You will find more information on its website: Getting Things Done (GTD) method by David Allen
And if you falter, remember what motivated you to apply healthy time management techniques. Take action and enjoy the journey!
