GTD or Getting Things Done: A World Without Worries Over Forgotten Things
"The mind is for having ideas, not holding them." - David Allen Here we go with the second part of our series of blogs on getting things done. You can check out the first blog here. Let’s continue from the point where we’ve left off.
The result of practice
The practice was to write down the problem that is troubling you most at the moment. After that, you should write your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation. And finally, you should write your next physical action to bring that desired outcome closer.
I bet you felt a little bit motivated, you got the feeling that that thing is under your control, and now you are more focused. But what was it exactly that helped you? The answer is, thinking. In the GTD-system it’s very important to capture, clarify, organize, reflect on, and engage with things. If a thought appeared in your head, it should be captured so that it doesn't whirl around in your mind. So in this blog, I want to concentrate on the very first step, capturing things, creating a basket of bugs that distract your mind.
The start of everything
First of all, you need to set time aside for collecting every bug. How much time do you need? About 10 to 20 hours. Personally, I was doing these steps for a week, two hours a day. But if you have a free weekend you can dedicate your Sunday to implementing GTD.
Second of all, where to collect everything. It depends on your preferences and your imagination. You can use whatever you like that is the most convenient for you. I used Trello for collecting everything and for organizing things later. You can use other apps as well. Here are some of them that my friends recommend: Todoist, Microsoft Planner, Notion, Ticktick, and, of course, physical baskets of information such as notes with paper-holding trays. I won’t focus on each of these baskets. Just use what you like the most!
And one more important thing!
It is essential when you are collecting things to use the 2-minute rule. If you can complete a task in 2 minutes, just do it!
Ready, set, go!
And now be ready, ladies and gentlemen because we are starting our 15-hour crazy tour that will help you free your mind. Remember, your task is to collect everything — literally, every little thing. Get it all out of your head! Here are some tips on how to accomplish this:
Look around! Maybe the tasks are already around you. Need to clean up your workspace? Oh, you don’t have pens and you should buy them? Maybe you have a houseplant that needs watering? Write everything down and do those tasks if you can do them in 2 minutes!
Try to remember every "I need to…": I need to call my friends and tell them about that party. I need to do my homework. I need to go to the training that will be in 2 months. I need to watch The Lord of the Rings. I need to update my playlist. I need to read War and Peace. And so on and so on…
Trigger list
Here, I included some contexts of your life that will help you to capture everything. You can go from top to bottom and think about every context trying to remember the things you should capture. Sometimes you should just get distracted to remember things you forgot. That’s why I was making my list for a week. When ideas came to my mind I immediately jotted them down in Trello. Capturing ideas or just things you should do is very essential. Every time you see a bug you should capture it. You don’t need to think about things twice. It will only make you less productive. Okay, anyway, here is a link to the trigger list.
The outcome
Another very important question. When do I stop? Because my tasks are endless. Well, eventually you will realize that there is an end to them. The best outcome is when you are trying to remember another task you need to complete but after 30 minutes you are realizing that everything is already in your basket which is full. That’s the key part of capturing! You have nothing to distract you in your head because you’ve captured everything. And later when the task will appear you should capture it immediately like that Pokemon. So yeah, that’s it for today. Try to create a full basket of your tasks, ideas, and thoughts. And in the next blog, I’ll describe how to work with that basket.
