Getting Things Done, also known as “GTD,”is a time and activity management method, and the title of a book by David Allen.

GTD posits that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them somewhere. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.

Unlike other time management experts, Allen does not emphasize creating and managing priorities. Instead, he supports creating lists of tasks that are specific to a context, for example, having a list of telephone calls to make or errands to do. He also suggests that any new task that can be completed in less than two minutes should be done immediately (the two minute rule). The psychology of GTD is based on making it easy to store, track and retrieve all the information related to the things you need to get done.

GTD Principles
Here are Allen’s four basic GTD principles:

1. Collect: Capture everything that you need to track or remember or act on in what Allen calls a bucket: either a physical inbox, email inbox, tape recorder, notebook, pda, or any combination of these. Get everything out of your head and into your collection device. All buckets should be emptied at least once per week.
2. Process: When you process your inbox, follow a strict workflow:

• Start at the top.
• Deal with one item at a time.
• Never put anything back into ‘in’.
• If an item requires action:
  • do it (if it takes less than two minutes),
  • delegate it, or
  • defer it.
• If an item does not require action:
  • file it for reference,
  • throw it away, or
  • incubate it for possible action later.

3. Organize:
Allen describes a suggested set of lists which you can use to keep track of items awaiting attention:

• Next actions - For every item requiring your attention, decide the next action to take.
• Projects - every ‘open loop’ in your life or work which requires more than one physical action to achieve becomes a “project.”
• Waiting for - when you have delegated an action to someone else or are waiting for some external event before you can move a project forward, this must be tracked in your system and periodically checked to see if action is due or a reminder needs to be sent.
• Someday/Maybe - things that you want to do at some point, but not right now.

4. Filing: Allen says that a filing system must be easy, simple and fun. Even a single piece of paper, if you need it for reference, should get its own file if it doesn’t belong in a folder you already have.

According to Allen, you then need to review and do. Given the time, energy and resources that you have at a particular moment, decide the most important thing for you to be doing right now, and do it. Any organizational system is no good if you spend all your time organizing your tasks instead of actually doing them

For further reading, visit http://www.davidco.com/

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