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Lately I’ve been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s the book that has helped so many people become more productive and focused.  Many friends are talking about, and the books and tools seem well worth the money. That said,  I’m still getting the hang of it, but I like the concept, and I’ve already seen benefits.

The general approach is to capture anything and everything that has your attention, and record it somewhere.   That way, your brain can let go of the task to remember it.  From there, the next step is to identify the next action that needs to be taken, as well as finding the desired outcome. Complex tasks should be broken down into smaller, achievable subtasks.   In the course of your organizing, you’ll also structure your task lists and reminders to be in separate categories for different projects, locations, or pieces of your life.   From there, you set up a regular review, looking over what has been accomplished, re-prioritizing tasks, and evaluating newly added tasks.

David Allen summed it up well with:

Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up — not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you’re doing (and not doing) at any time.

It’s easy to set up once you know the general structure.   It’s a bit harder to adapt your life to it.   certain tasks, such as “Pay Mortgage” can be nicely repeated, and are pretty isolated.   More complex tasks, such as “build a 747″ are a bit harder to capture.  Fortunately, I don’t have to build a 747, and if I did, I hope wouldn’t be doing it alone.

I’ve been using a tool called iGTD2 as a tool to collect and organize my “things to get done.”   So far, it’s been working very well.   There are tasks  that don’t get captured, or tasks that never quite seem to make it to the “to do now” priority, but I expect that will come with practice and experience.