.::output >> /dev/null::.

If there is one thing that I particularly liked about David's book is the fact that he relies on the simplest thing possible; simple but not simpler! As Einstein said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler". David does not try to enforce only one methodology of doing GTD. In fact he suggests a few that might work. When you read a book and realize that the author is not limiting his methodologies to just those that can be exercised under some rigid subset of tools, you begin to tell yourself that this guy might actually know what he is talking about and is not merely out there to sell you his tools for hundreds of dollars. His writing is clear and each page is embellished with relevant quotes from other sources. Moreover, his writing is easy to read. He knows when to be forceful and he knows when to be suggestive. There is a lot that one can re-learn as I discovered for myself while rereading certain chapters over so that I may present a more realistic view of GTD in this article.

Because David's GTD method is so simple, you can actually just begin practicing it by reading chapter 2 and 3 of his book in the bookstore. As a matter of fact, you might not even need to buy his book! However, do buy his book to read the rest of the chapters as he expounds into how to maximize success within each step. The end chapters are more of his own personal experience with the methods which he advocates. In addition, this .pdf file might help you jolt your memory. I keep one on my desk to refer to. Realistically, if you are interested in learning more about GTD, these two links are recommended:

• A summary of how to do GTD: http://pigpog.com/michael/blog/2004/07/productivity-gtd-getting-things-done.php
• A personal account of success with GTD: http://www.marktaw.com/blog/GettingThingsDone.html

For the rest of this article, I would just be going over the major steps of GTD and why I think that these steps actually work. At the end, I present some examples of things that you should avoid while doing GTD--expect somewhat of a personal caveat. Before continuing, if you are not familiar at all with GTD, at least read the .pdf file that I recommended.

1. Collect
   By collecting all the "stuff" that you know you have to do and everything else that seems to exert some form of interest to your brain, you help caulk yourself from missing anything. Collecting everything that is even superficially important to you is important because it is the first step of trying to get things done. You cannot get things done if you do not even know what things you have! Collecting all these "stuff" also has the added benefit of being to measure how much things you have to do.
   If you are able to amass everything into a box that would be excellent. Of course, as David suggests, if the item is too big to go into a box, just write down a representation of that item on a piece of paper and toss the paper into the box. Moreover, collecting everything and putting them into one place will always let you know where your stuff is. Henceforth, we shall call that collection box the inbox: the place where anything that is even remotely useful must go in there.
   As a fringe benefit, if you are extremely religious when doing this for the first time, you will also be able to collect things that you thought you had forgotten. By putting them all in front of you, you begin to realize that you have even more things that needs to be collected. Just go ahead and collect them. However, avoid things such as supplies, decorations, etc; things that you do not need your active participation in changing the value of their existence.
2. Process
   Processing is simple when you know how. By taking one and only one thing out of your inbox each time, you will be able to focus your energy on processing this item. Moreover, by not choosing which item to process first, you ensure that you do not neglect any item in the inbox. This is important because as of this moment onward, all those items are equal, none are more equal than the rest. All of them deserve your attention. You will get to decide how much of your attention soon enough.
   David's key to the successful processing of any item would be the ability to identify what you are going to do next with this thing. In fact, the first thing you do is determine whether you can tie any action to this item. If it is just something that you think might be useful as a reference to you, then there is no action associated with it. However, if it is an article that you want to read, then there is the "read" action tied to it. Items that have no action assigned to them will be kept as reference. What if the item is both "unactionable" as well as unusable as reference? Throw it away! The rationale behind this is of course that they will always be things that need to be disposed of. The faster you do so, the quicker you can focus your mind on more important things.
   One of David's only mandate of deciding the action that is going to be associated with this item is that the action must be the very next action that you can perform that will spur this thing forward to completion. It must be the very next thing that you can do. It must be clear and it must be visible. If it is not visible, then it is probably not being specified the right way. Taking a vacation is not really the next action; maybe calling the travel agent for the tickets is a better next action. Because next actions also lead to completion of the current task, spending time thinking of them is not wasteful. As a matter of fact, by just spending some of your gray cells on them might help you uncover more actions that need to be done before completing this task.
   Furthermore, by thinking of the actions, you also get a clearer picture of who is supposed to do it. You might not be the person that should be doing this, or you might need someone else's input before you can even proceed. By determining the next action, you are able to tell whether you should be doing it or not. In addition, if you determine that the next actions that must be performed require a lot more steps than you anticipated, then you will want to organize those steps as described later on.
   Also if that action is only going to take 2 minutes of your time, why don't you just do it? Simple tasks should be done the moment they appear whenever possible. If you do not do them now, it is likely that you will not do them later.
   In my opinion, processing the information as well as you can would be the most substantial step in GTD. Whenever possible, identify what is your own gain in doing this action. As Bobbi Depoter puts it in her book Quantum Learning, we should always identify the WIIFM factor: the What's in it for Me? factor. If we can see the benefits of doing so for ourselves, it might just motivate us to go further.
3. Organize
   Once you have all your next actions defined, it is time to organize them. David is not very forgiving of to-do lists. To-do lists, to him, are not going to provide enough information on what to actually do. So he suggests putting tasks that need to be done at an exact day and time into your calendar. Those are your specific-time tasks. And if you are able to determine that you need to do some tasks on certain days but you can be flexible with the time, then jot that down in your calendar as well but list is as an all-day event. Finally, respect your calendar. Thou shall view the calendar as sacred. Put things that have a specific day or time associated with them into the calendar and nothing else. Not only does this reduce clutter, it also prevents you from feeling stressed over things that need not be completed on that day itself.
   What about the other tasks that do not have a specific time associated with them? These are the next actions that you put into list--not just any list, but list that have triggers associated with them: @someday/maybe, @waiting for, @next action, @call etc. Incidentally, the @ in front is used in Perl to let you know that the variable is a list! I bet David does not know that, he uses the @ so that when you sort those files in a folder, it ends up at the top. These lists have specific triggers to them. For instance, @call. When you have a bit of time left and a cellphone at hand, you can quickly browse through that list and get a few phone calls done! Imagine if you have one gigantic to-do list instead; it would be hard to actually filter out the calls that you need to make. And that is what I like about David's list. Organizing them will help you determine which actions can be done under different circumstances.
4. Review
   A simple but quintessential step to the success of GTD. If you do not review, you will sink slowly but surely into the mess that prevented you from getting things done in the first place. Reviewing is a good thing to do: it refreshed your memory of the things to do. It triggers your brain and jolts it so that it knows that they are things to be done. And if you review enough, you will also consciously notice that you have done some of the actions already and can mark them off. This gives some sense of accomplishment and psyches you up for the next task that comes your way.
   Reviewing is not limited to reading your action lists only. There is a lot more to it. Review shallow and review deep. Review deep when you need to go into the details. Review shallow when you want to focus on the big picture: how are all these actions going to help me accomplish this task?
   Reviewing helps you find more things that you might have missed as well.
5. Finally,... do!
   This is the single most important step. All those previous steps are just to prepare you for this one. You know what you need to do, when you need to do it, so now just go for it and get it done!
   If only life were that simple. Fortunately, David has some suggestions to help you decide what to do:
   • Context: what resources do you have at your disposal now?
   • Time availble: how much time do you have at hand?
   • Energy availble: on a scale of 10, how much energy can you devote?
   • Priority: is this really what you should be doing now?
   Of all these criteria on deciding what to do, David never suggests neglecting your gut instinct. Trust your gut on what to do next.
6. And my personal own: Celebrate!
   After you have done something that has been nagging at you for a long time, you really deserve some celebration.

You might be thinking to yourself after reading those paragraphs (and also the recommended readings like I suggested, I hope) that David's GTD method is really simple and effective. Indeed it is. GTD is meant to be a no hassle, freely doable form of getting things done. Which brings me to my next point: why do people complicate it? Why must they even bring up the issue of what tools to use? And devote whole forums talking about it?

Consider this thread here. I am glad that someone has the audacity to suggest just going cold turkey and implement GTD however you find that you like it. David never mentions what is the best way to do it. You do not need to user a PDA if you do not have one. If you like using pen and paper then so be it. Personally, I am glad that David does not take part in these kinds of forums. In fact, because it is so relevant, I am going to quote that person:

Okay, it's the beginning of a new year, so I'd like to put forth a simple, slightly heretical, and easy-to-implement technique to combat procrastination. Three easy steps:
1) Fully accept that your current understanding of GTD (and whatever other personal productivity methods you have studied) is good enough -- that means, unequivocally, "enough already!"
2) Quit, completely, one-hundred-percent, totally (can I say it any other way), trying to improve, tweak, or change your methods, computer programs, pda setups, and whatever else you regard as necessary support systems.
3) Stop visiting, at least for a month or two (or more), this forum, all other sites and forums (including my GTD with Outlook site), and any other resources that you currently think help you get things done.
This is a cold-turkey approach. Be bold; go with it!
Look, procrastination is an illness, and addiction, just as debilitating as any other. I should know; I'm a recovering procrastinator, having struggled with the disease for at least forty years (okay, if you haven't caught it yet, go back to the subject of this post and find my "middle name".) All this "searching for the next good method or program" and tweaking of approaches is nothing more than feeding the addiction. We continually think that if we make this one more change to our system, or add this one more computer addin, we'll be ready to go. Come on, let's get real. That's like saying that we'll get drunk one more time tonight, because tomorrow we'll get sober once and for all. Come on, let's get real.
Go cold turkey! I can just about guarantee that what you already know and have in place in terms of systems is good enough to overcome ninety-nine percent of your productivity challenges (okay, maybe only 98%). Focus on what you already know how to accomplish. Apply what you already know (most importantly, the Next Action). You'll be amazed at where you can go. Come back in a week, a month, or six months, and report on your progress. I promise that you will say something like, "wow, what was I doing all that time. It's so simple; I just stopped tweaking, and I never stopped Getting Things Done!"
Best Wishes to All for a year full of getting things done and improving your outlook.....Bill Kratz --- http://home.attbi.com/~whkratz/ (one last visit and then that's it if you're going cold turkey!!)
-andersons (gotta love that last tag after his signature!

All right. This has been an extremely long entry. I feel good about letting it all out though. GTD is a good methodology. And it shall remain as that. It is not the end of the world if not one uses it. In fact many other people do not even practice it. However, if you have nothing else to try, why not just try GTD? The results might be rewarding.