Getting Your Messy Life In Order

We’ve touched on this before by recommending the book, but today we’re going to give an overview of the absolute most core essentials of the “Getting Things Done” method. If you’re unfamiliar, this will be enough to get you going. If you’re already familiar, this may be a handy reminder!

First, you’ll need:

• A big table
• A block of small memo paper squares—post-it note sized, but no need to be sticky.
• A block of A4 printer paper
• A big trash bag

Gathering everything

Gather up not just all your to-dos, but: all sources of to-dos, too, and anything else that otherwise needs “sorting”.

Put them all in one physical place—a dining room table may have enough room. You’ll need a lot of room because you’re going to empty our drawers of papers, unopened (or opened and set aside) mail. Little notes you made for yourself, things stuck on the fridge or memo boards. Think across all areas of your life, and anything you’re “supposed” to do, write it down on a piece of paper. No matter what area of your life, no matter how big or small.

Whether it’s “learn Chinese” or “take the trash out”, write it down, one item per piece of paper (hence the block of little memo squares).

Sorting everything

Everything you’ve gathered needs one of three things to happen:

• You need to take some action (put it in a “to do” pile)
• You may need it later sometime (put it in a “to file” pile)
• You don’t need it (put it in the big trash bag for disposal)

What happens next will soothe you

• Dispose of the things you put for disposal
• File the things for filing in a single alphabetical filing system. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to get one, so write that down and add it to the “to do” pile.
• You will now process your “to dos”

Processing the “to dos”

The pile you have left is now your “inbox”. It’s probably huge; later it’ll be smaller, maybe just a letter-tray on your desk.

Many of your “to dos” are actually not single action items, they’re projects. If something requires more than one step, it’s a project.

Take each item one-by-one. Do this in any order; you’re going to do this as quickly as possible! Now, ask yourself: is this a single-action item that I could do next, without having to do something else first?

• If yes: put it in a pile marked “next action”
• If no: put it in a pile marked “projects”.

Take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it in half. Write “Next Action” on it, and put your pile of next actions inside it.

Take a sheet of A4 paper per project and write the name of the project on it, for example “Learn Chinese”, or “Do taxes”. Put any actions relating to that project inside it.

Likely you don’t know yet what the first action will be, or else it’d be in your “Next Action” pile, so add an item to each project that says “Brainstorm project”.

Processing the “Next Action” pile

Again you want to do this as quickly as possible, in any order.

For each item, ask yourself “Do I care about this?” If the answer is no, ditch that item, and throw it out. That’s ok. Things change and maybe we no longer want or need to do something. No point in hanging onto it.

For each remaining item, ask yourself “can this be done in under 2 minutes?”.

• If yes, do it, now. Throw away the piece of paper for it when you’re done.
• If no, ask yourself:”could I usefully delegate this to someone else?” If the answer is yes, do so.

If you can’t delegate it, ask yourself: “When will be a good time to do this?” and schedule time for it. A specific, written-down, clock time on a specific calendar date. Input that into whatever you use for scheduling things. If you don’t already use something, just use the calendar app on whatever device you use most.

The mnemonic for the above process is “Do/Defer/Delegate/Ditch”

Processing projects:

If you don’t know where to start with a project, then figuring out where to start is your “Next Action” for that project. Brainstorm it, write down everything you’ll need to do, and anything that needs doing first.

The end result of this is:

• You will always, at any given time, have a complete (and accessible) view of everything you are “supposed” to do.
• You will always, at any given time, know what action you need to take next for a given project.
• You will always, when you designate “work time”, be able to get straight into a very efficient process of getting through your to-dos.

Keeping on top of things

• Whenever stuff “to do something with/about” comes to you, put it in your physical “inbox” place—as mentioned, a letter-tray on a desk should suffice.
• At the start of each working day, quickly process things as described above. This should be a small daily task.
• Once a week, do a weekly review to make sure you didn’t lose sight of something.
• Monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews can be a good practice too.

How to do those reviews? Topic for another day, perhaps.

Or:

Check out the website / Check out GTD apps / Check out the book