GTD is the acronym, and common nickname, for Getting Things Done, a time and personal organization management methodology, written by David Allen. The book of the subject can be found at Amazon here, David Allen’s company is here, and his own explanation of what GTD is can be found here.

I personally use the GTD methodology, with a few minor tweaks to my own circumstances and preferences, as is common to many practitioners of it. I use a Blackberry as my primary communications tool; it often becomes my always-available capture device (read the book…), as it is always with me. But, depending on the circumstances, I may also use a HipsterPDA, again, modified to my own purposes (which is the whole point of the hPDA), or Microsoft OneNote, or MindJet MindManager — the important thing, in GTD terms and techniques, is that no matter who I create actions or record information, everything ultimately ends up in one Inbox, for later processing. In my case, I use Microsoft Outlook, and the NetCentrics GTD Add-In.

The book retails for less than ten dollars. There are a multitude of sites, blogs and discussion groups around the web discussion the application of the methodology; you could read those without having read the book first, but the maximum benefit comes with the book. It’s an easy read, although actually implementing the processes for the first time may require you to set aside a weekend, or a series of evenings (everyone’s circumstances are different). If you only read one organizational management guide book, this would be the one I recommend.

The rest of the “GTD” category on this site will have comments about specific situations and scenarios relating to the implementation and use of GTD, and any relevant articles about the topic I see and recommend. The separate “Time Management” category will contain more general observations and links.

Check it out, let me know what you think – comments are always welcome.

(Sidebar: This is a backdated post. I’m actually writing it at 12:20 on November 20th. I want to put this into the early part of the GTD category as an explanatory post, as I intend to refer someone to this, and the whole category block. I’m also interested to see if the post, being backdated like this, turns up correctly in the RSS feed, if at all, as a basis for future knowledge).

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I don’t know that I agree, but the picture amused me.

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Email Processing and GTD, Some Thoughts

Starting Assumptions/Perceptions/Facts:

• Receives approximately 50 pieces of email direct to his inbox, per day, not counting mailing list messages.
• Gets overwhelmed with 20 4- and 5-way conversations in brief (10 minute) periods of time.
• Isn’t doing formal weekly reviews at present.

It’s important to remember from the get go that GTD is a system that sets out some guiding principles, rather than being an absolute set of procedural rules that have to be followed. Almost everyone that implements GTD, unless they actually work for the David Allen Company, are going to end up “tweaking” it somewhat, either modifying, removing or adding components, thoughts and methods, from other formal methodologies or from their own experiences, for their personal comfort and benefit.

That said, GTD is predicated on a couple of core elements:

• That everything goes into the trusted system, regardless of what that system is (Outlook, 3×5 cards, Moleskine, segments of toilet tissue stuck to the wall, whatever), unless it can be dealt with in a 2-minute “do it and lose it” moment.
• That trusted system has to be reviewed on a regularly scheduled basis. This is summed up in the phrase “Weekly Review”, as that turns out to be one of the most common, and “better” review frequencies.

Dealing specifically with you, I think one of the first things that I suggest is differentiating your email as soon as you see it into one of two types:

• Conversational email, which is the 4- and 5-way stuff referred to in my assumptions, based on our chats, and which you have a service level responsibility to address as quickly as possible, and
• Non-conversational email – everything else, that comes in directly to you, and can be dealt with in the normal GTD process – do it, defer it, delegate it, or delete it.

As an aside – I’m completely not considering mailing list email – my (brief) view on that is that if it’s important, and needs participation, process it as part of your regular email processing. If it’s informational only, put it somewhere out of sight, and refer to it as and when you have the spare bandwidth for this.

So, where are we? My understanding is that you’d like to “work from zero” in the Inbox, which is a good principle to work to, but that you’re getting overwhelmed, somewhat, with the conversational email. Turning email off and only processing it once an hour or so isn’t an option, because of your service level agreements. My ideas are outlined below, but they rely on two extra Outlook tools:

• the Getting Things Done Add-In. Not everyone is comfortable with this, but equally, a lot of people are, and I think it’s somewhat underrated. It does take a little bit of practice and getting used to, but it’s actually a very good “straight” interpretation of the GTD principles, IF you can accept using the Outlook Tasks interface. Not everyone can… An alternative is to implement the equivalent of this yourself, using either the PDF that David Allen publishes, or home-brew. Consistency is going to be important though.
• Any of the readily available desktop/email searches, emphasis on the email. My current preference is the MSN Desktop Search, but LookOut, Google or Yahoo variants are all going to work out fine.

So, specific recommendations – this is based on me thinking through “if I was in position, how would I make this work?”. These are ONLY suggestions, and I readily recommend ripping them apart and customising them to yourself, and even ignoring them completely if that’s appropriate to you.

1. Have Outlook visible on a second monitor if possible, as a reduced size window if not, or check it regularly via Alt-Tab, new message popups, or the display “toast” feature. You may want to do some more tweaking with your auto-preview and preview-pane options here – what has worked previously may need to be tweaked to deal with things in a GTD manner.
2. If new mail comes in and it’s conversational, deal with it. Engage in the conversation, get information as needed, provide information and solutions as requested – that’s what they’re paying you for J
3. If you generate Actions as a result of those conversations, and you’re not going to do them right-away, remember you’re only a hot-key away from putting that task into Outlook – CTRL-SHIFT-K.
4. When you’ve finished your conversation emails, LEAVE THEM. Just leave them in the Inbox. They’re marked read. Don’t worry about them.
5. While you’re flying through your Inbox dealing with the Conversational stuff, if you come across a Non-Conversational, LEAVE IT ALONE. Leave it marked unread, and move on to the next message. The only exception I’d make to this is if you get something that’s clearly instantly deletable – the announcement about a car with its lights left on (unless it’s yours!), the “donuts in the kitchen!” announcements, etc.
6. Plan a couple of “Process Email” tasks into your day. I can’t recommend specific times and durations, because that’s going to be unique to you, but play around with it. And then USE those times – process the unread mail in your Inbox – because it’s ALL non-conversational, REAL email to you. One at a time, by the book – read it, and then delete it, defer it, delegate it, or do it. Remember that you can still have your Rules setup to bypass this and alert you, me and the National Command Authority if necessary for messages from your wife, your boss or your bookie… Remember, the idea is to get to a “trusted system” – put whatever safeties in place you need to make that happen.[i]
7. When you’re processing these non-conversational emails, you should also be moving them out of your Inbox as you process them:
   
   • Delete – that’s obvious.
   • Delegate – use the Add-In button. Forward the message where it needs to go, and if you need to, have it put a reminder on your calendar or task list. Both options are there. The Add-In will move it out of your Inbox.
   • Defer – put it on your calendar or your task list, whichever is appropriate. The Add-In will move it out of your Inbox.
   • Do it – do whatever’s there, and then file or delete the message, or file the message for later reference. One of the reasons I suggested the desktop/email search is to make filing easier – just put everything in the same archive folder. Retrieve it using the search application. By all means, put a GTD Project tag onto the email if appropriate.
8. At the end of every day, go back to your Inbox, and move all those messages that are left into the archive folder – because all that’s left there now is those marked-as-read, conversational emails, right?
9. At the end of the day, consider doing a mini-review. Have a look at your calendar for tomorrow – anything coming up you’d forgotten about, missed the reminder of, etc.? Run through your task lists – anything showing a deadline, or anything that just makes you go “uh oh” when you see it, and make you want to pull it into the calendar, or even your Inbox? (There’s a button in the Add-In that can instantly move anything you’ve processed out of the Inbox back TO the Inbox. You can do this to reprocess it, if you want to. It’s not recommended, but there are exceptions to every rule!).
10. The biggie. At least once a week, if you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to find time to do a proper Review. Scharff used to say “if you can’t Measure, you can’t Manage” – well, the GTD version of this is “if you don’t Review, you aren’t Getting Things Done”. There are a number of checklists out there that include a LOT of things you can include in your Review, and I can send you one if you want, but at a fundamental level, you just need to know that everything you’ve put into your system is in a place that it’s going to get done – either the Calendar, or appropriate context-based Task items, and that you’re aware of what’s coming up.

After that, possibly the hardest part of the concept, and one that needs some personalisation, is “working in contexts” – you have to be able to sit there and go “OK, I’m in the office. I have no conversational emails to process, and I’ve processed my Inbox to empty. I have three hours before my next time-based activity (the calendar stuff), so I’ll look at my tasks and see what I have in “@Office” and “@Computer” and see what’s appropriate to work on now.

If you find you have stuff on context lists that you’re consistently not doing or not getting to – take them off the context list and put them on the calendar. Commit yourself to doing them in that time.

There’s no doubt that implementing time management methodologies, of any flavor, requires change both in perception and in the mechanics of how things are done on a day to day basis, and sometimes in the usage of tools. Sometimes those changes are easy, and sometimes not so. Experimentation is necessary, although there’s a trap of “too much experimentation” – the goal is for you to find a methods that works for you, is comfortable, and perhaps most importantly is EASY so that you keep doing it.

Everything before this is just my thoughts. I hope they help. Do let me know how you get on.

Gary
2005-10-17

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