Periodically, I go through an organization “kick”. My day-to-day life can get chaotic and cluttered, and it’s nice every so often to go through, clean up, and create some order out of the mess.
The past few rounds of reorganizing my stuff have evolved into something resembling the Getting Things Done method that has gained a near-cult following in some circles on the net.
My current organization scheme is what I’ve pieced together and adapted from the book and various online sources. I will admit that I had a bit of frustration in assembling my system because I couldn’t find anything close to a ready-made system that would work for me.
In the hopes that my efforts interest or help someone else, I’ll share what I’ve done.
To make life easier, I’ve organized this section of the website into six pages:
- Introduction (this page)
- Principles — a five-cent summary of GTD and a bit of background on my unique situation
- Tools — the hardware and software that I use
- Contextual Task Lists — information on how I organize my to-do’s
- Processing "Stuff" — a brief primer on how my to-do list gets populated
- Periodic Reviews — the key part of making all this work
- Setting Up Outlook — how I’ve set up my copy of Outlook 2007 to work with my system
- Files — flowcharts and macros I assembled in developing my system
- Links — links to useful sites
Hi Mike,
Great stuff here. I must agree that although GTD is great, it fails to provide some real processes. Your addition is more than welcome.
Cheers, Esteban
[...] a disabled spouse, is that my schedule tends to be rather chaotic. So, I rely on a PDA (and GTD strategy) to help keep my head straight about where I’m supposed to be when, and what I’m trying [...]
I’m thankful you’ve explained how GTD works for you. I’m trying to implement it in my day-to-day. Do you know if Microsoft Entourage for the Mac will work the same way as your Outlook does?