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GTD for free

Courtesy of GTD Times, the official blog for the David Allen Company and GTD, here's a list of FREE GTD resources:

1. GTD Times - helpful advice, tricks, tips and strategies for implementing GTD
2. Podcasts - including the best practices with David Allen and his team
3. Coaches Corner - articles from the GTD Coaches
4. GTD Connect - a two week trial of the online learning centre packed with GTD goodies
5. Articles, Handouts and Learning Tools - essays from David Allen on GTD best practices
6. Tips and Tools - useful tips and tricks
7. GTD-IQ - how do you measure up against GTD?
8. GTD Facebook Fan Page - chat with other GTDers
9. GTD LinkedIn Network - network with business-focussed GTD people
10. Twitter - follow David and the coaches and GTD Twitter-based classes @GTDSpecialEvent
11. GTD You Tube Channel - fun and useful videos of David and the GTD practitioners
12. Productive Living Newsletter - David's newsletter
13. David at Google - overview of the keys to control and perspective
14. Discussion Forums - ask questions and search for answers about GTD

"Winning at the game of work and the business of life" doesn't need to cost the earth!

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools - A-Z Filing System

"The lack of a good filing system can be one of the greatest obstacles to implementing a personal management system" - David Allen in Getting Things Done.

You need a good filing system or your in tray will get clogged up with stuff you should have filed.

Your filing system needs to:

• take less than a minute to file anything
• easy to use
• fun to use
• current
• complete

You will need one or more filing cabinets. If you can get them go for the ones with a moving plate to hold the file folders upright rather than hanging files. If it's one with hanging files - label the folders you put in instead of the hanging folders and only only put one file per hanger. But don't let them get more than three quarters full.

Keep a stack of new file folders handy and invest in a labeller. I use a Brother P-Touch 65 - it's battery and mains operated and can make fancy labels as well as plain ones but I think it may have been superceded by the P-Touch 80. David Allen has this handsome beast on his desk that connects to his laptop via a USB socket.

Typeset labels "change the nature of your files and your relationship with them" says David . They're just easier to pick out and look more professional if you take them into a meeting.

When it comes to labelling your files, Keep It Simple Stupid! Think about how best to label folders so that you can quickly find what you're looking for. If you have lots of files it may make sense to devote a whole filing drawer to finance. If you wanted to file all your credit card statements, for example, then if you have a separate finance drawer just labelling your folders - MBNA, John Lewis, etc. would be fine but if you're mixing all your reference files together then labelling these ones "Credit Card MBNA" and "Credit Card John Lewis" would be better. If more than one person needs to access your filing system consult them about how best to label the folders.

And don't forget to purge your files occasionally - at least once a year!

My GTD System

The first thing to say about my implementation of David Allen’s systematic approach to Getting Things Done is that it is a constantly evolving system to meet my needs. As my needs change and as I gain more insight into GTD and how it may help me in any particular situation my system gets modified to a greater or lesser extent.

So my system may not suit you and perhaps to help you understand why my system is configured this way I need to describe how I work “at the business of life and the game of work”.

I have been a freelance quality management consultant for the last twenty years. I work for a variety of clients of varying sizes – the smallest was three people – all the way up to large government departments of hundreds of people. More often than not, because of the size of these clients, it’s just one client at a time. At the moment I have two clients, both fairly large and one, a utility company, requires my services more or less full time for at least three months. The other one is a government department, but this is just a small consultancy requirement of about one day a month.

In addition to looking after these clients, I have all the responsibilities of running a small business – keeping accounts, training, keeping up to date generally, maintaining a website and this blog. Plus all the usual responsibilities that go with being a husband and a father.

I’ve had a GTD system of sorts for over 20 years. I’ve always been “relatively” organised and I had a paper organiser long before anyone knew what one was. Mine was an A4 binder with dividers for calendar, action lists, projects and reference material. Don’t forget that David Allen didn’t invent GTD out of fresh air. He looked at what worked and pulled it together into a systematic approach. There’s much in GTD that we already do without realising it’s part of the GTD system.

In about 1984, I went on a training course based on the Time Manager system. This, like the Time Design system that David worked with before devising GTD purported to be a way of managing your time to get things done. It had Key Areas, a bit like GTD’s Horizons of Focus, Tasks and Activities (GTD Next Actions), Calendar, Notes, Contacts etc.

I worked this system for several years with some success but it never really coped well with the increasing amount of stuff that was starting to hit me and all of us as we got into the 90s.

I became aware of David Allen around 2000 through finding a few of his ideas on the Internet. Many of these basic principles are still on the DavidCo website as free downloads. These include how to configure a paper organiser, how to set up a tickler file, etc.

Then I bought David’s Getting Things Done and read it cover to cover in a few days and began implementing the system. In many ways this was just revamping my old A4 binder but now I was using A5. For a while I used my old Time Manager binder but eventually I replaced it with an A5 Filofax.

This Filofax is set-up with the following dividers and has been unchanged now for several years:

Plastic protector covering:-

1. Mindmap showing the layout of the Filofax
2. Plastic pocket to collect odd scraps of paper, bills etc.
3. Notes/In with blank ruled sheets containing notes taken (and some blank sheets)
4. Calendar Section with Weekly checklist for the current week, Monthly checklist for the current month, Annual checklist for the year (birthdays and anniversaries) and printed pages from Outlook, one week over two pages, for at least 13 weeks
5. Action Lists, currently including Agendas, Anywhere, Calls, Computer, Errands, Home, Listen, Office, Online, Read, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe
6. Projects (each section preceded by a list of the Projects in that section) Business Projects, Home Projects, Personal Projects, Someday/Maybe Projects
7. Reference containing useful lists and other material
8. Spare forms
9. Contacts

Although I use Outlook, my system is essentially based around the forms in my Filofax. These forms are updated by hand but they are also held electronically in a folder on my PC called Filofax.

The subfolders in Filofax match the paper Filofax and the Filofax folder also fits onto an 8MB USB memory stick that I can take from computer to computer.

This configuration has remained unchanged for over two years now and seems likely to stay with me for some time.

The next major update will be when I start to develop my Areas of Focus now that I’ve got Next Actions and Projects under control.

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools - The MoSCoW Rules

Though not really part of the GTD systematic approach, the MoSCoW Rules, often applied to priorising in project management, can be useful in helping you decide what order to do the tasks on your lists.

"MoSCoW" in this context stands for "Must o Should Could o Won't"

Firstly, what tasks MUST you do today? These should be at the top of your list and headed "MUST DO TODAY". Draw a line under this list.

Secondly, what tasks SHOULD you do today? These appear next on your list and are headed "SHOULD DO TODAY". You should only tackle these when all your MUST DO list has been completed. Draw a line under this list.

Thirdly, what tasks COULD you do today, but only if you have the time and you've done all the MUST do, and SHOULD do tasks? List these under the heading "COULD DO TODAY" and draw a line below the list.

Finally, what WON'T you do today? Writing tasks on this list helps you to confirm that they're not as important as anything in the three categories above. Also, it reminds you that if you catch yourself doing one of these tasks, you should stop and go back the top of your lists and work down again.

Working through these lists top down should motivate you to get the MUSTs and SHOULDs done so that you can feel good about doing some of the COULDs but not feel bad about not doing any of the WON'Ts!

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools - The Tickler File or Bring Forward File

What it consists of

The TICKLER FILE or BRING FORWARD FILE consists of 43 folders:

31 daily folders labelled "1" to "31"

12 monthly folders labelled with the months of the year

The daily folders are kept at the front, beginning with tomorrow's folder (for the example used in Getting Things Done where today is October 5th, this would be the folder labelled "6").

The remaining daily folders (in the example, "7" to "31") are filed behind this followed by the monthly folder for next month (in the example, this would be "November") and then the daily folders already used (in the example, "1" to "5"). Finally there would be the remaining monthly folders for the remaining 11 months (in the example, "December" to "October".

So you would end up with a set of folders (following the example) labelled thus:

[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[November]
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[December]
[January]
[February]
[March]
[April]
[May]
[June]
[July]
[August]
[September]
[October]

How it works

1. Each day, empty the daily folder for that day into your in-basket.
2. File the empty folder at the back of the daily folders (in the example, "6" is emptied and placed behind "5" to now represent November 6th).
3. When the next monthly folder is reached (in the example, "November" after "31" has been emptied) the monthly folder is emptied into your in-basket and then filed at the back of the monthly folders to represent that month next year.

Tips and Tricks

Be sure to update your Tickler File every day and if you're going away for a few days process all the folders ahead for the days you'll be away.

Use the folders to file:

• travel documents and tickets for events on the day you'll need them
• bills on the days you need to pay them
• print out reminders for each birthday and anniversary and file them in the appropriate month to be moved into the appropriate day in due course. It's a good idea to file reminders a few days ahead (especially if the due date is at the beginning of a month) to ensure you get a card and present ahead of time

There is a free factsheet on the Tickler File available on the David Allen website. There is also a set of 43 sturdy plastic letter size file folders, open on three sides. The GTD Tickler files are blue-grey with black trim and appropriately labelled (in five languages!) Please note that this is expensive to ship as the folders weigh over 5 pounds. Although the folders are letter size, they take A4 papers quite happily.

You can, of course, easily make and label your own set of folders but they are unlikely to last as long as these strong, purpose built folders.

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools - The Two-Minute Rule

Would you like to extend your life by 6 months? Then follow this simple rule: "If you can get an action done in less than two minutes then do it now!"

This works because it will take you longer than two minutes to write it down on one of your lists of NEXT ACTIONs, recall it when it's appropriate, figure what it's about and get in done - so just do it, or as someone I knew used to say JUST F****** DO IT or JFDI.

This can be as simple an action as "I need to refill my fountain pen". By the time you've written that on your list you could have done it so just do it!

Once you've got to the DO phase you've only three options:

1. DO it now if the action takes less than two minutes.
2. DELEGATE it to someone else if you're not the most appropriate person to do it.
3. DEFER it by putting it into your system on one of your CONTEXT lists as something to be done later.

Some people seem to get hung up on what they can do in exactly two-minutes. It's not the time that's important, it's the principle. It doesn't matter whether it's a minute or ten - it's just a rule of thumb. If you think you can get it done "in the moment" then get it done and out of the way.

It's a useful technique to use when you're doing your WEEKLY REVIEW. You may want to restrict the cutoff to one minute if you haven't got much time or extend it to ten if you've got plenty of time.

The two minutes isn't a hard and fast(!) 120 seconds. Use your common sense. Perhaps another way to phrase the rule is "if you can do the action in less time than it would take to put it on your list, retrieve it at a later date, and do it then. Do it now"

If you use the GTD Outlook Add-In then the latest version has a built-in Two Minute Timer and the David Allen Company has one in their store.