I have been striving to organise myself since I was born, or so it seems. A couple of years ago I got into David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity and that has been very helpful in clearing my desk and keeping my inbox empty.



Whether it is because of my personality (INTP last time I checked) or some other quirk that I have (and I have many), I have found that GTD hasn’t provided a complete answer for me. Although GTD talks about reviewing your life in terms of short term goals, longer term goals and life itself, the book itself is a little sparse at this point. In an interview with David Allen he said that this was an area that perhaps needed expanding. While he thinks about doing that I need to crack on with things though.



GTD has been for me a very ‘reactive’ approach to organisation. Dealing with items as they arrive, sorting them and dealing with them as and when they need to be. This works perfectly well and as a system is great. It is basically a bottom up system. I like to see the big picture, I like to view things a whole and therefore I crave a top down approach. The problem is, when I have tried top down approaches before I don’t get anything done, or I get things done way past the deadline.



Therefore I am working on my own hack of GTD (as most people do and as David Allen says use what works for you.) The main mantra of GTD is probably to aim for what is called the ‘mind like water’. This is that everything needs to be out of your head and onto lists. If it is in your head, it is on your mind and therefore causing you stress, worry and stopping you from being fully productive. My problem has been that the big things are also on my mind and so I need to deal with them. In this, I have found Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change really helpful.



The next steps I am going to take to move forward in this are the following. I’ll keep you all up to date on what I am doing and perhaps you’ll find some of the things helpful too.

• Write a Personal Mission Statement
• Create my 3 to 5 year goals
• Create my 1 to 2 year goals
• Note my areas of responsibility (this will provide me with things that need to be regularly done)
• Keep a list of projects
• Keep contextual next action lists handy

Although GTD advocates the above I want to be more proactive in putting things into my own ‘inbox’, for GTD purists I suppose it is making sure I do a weekly review and regular ‘mindsweep, but for me it is more about making sure my top down relates to my bottom up, and no that isn’t a euphemism.