This is my weekly write-up series on implementing GTD- Week 1
So last week we talked about how I was groking the concepts of GTD by going through initial chapters of book.
I also did a retrospection on how I have been trying to manage my life and why I was failing till now. We will quickly go through my earlier practices which were not so fruitful in effectively managing my time —
So I spend my last week with a diary with me all the time to note down every task that ever crossed my mind. It was so extreme that I had to make sure that no thought ever crossed my mind twice. I was writing down all the task/project which I was working on currently, left undone in past, future projects I had in my mind.
Finally I had list of around 100 small/big tasks. I knew this was not my exhaustive list for all my pending stuff. So I went through my mails, folders, my current todos setup, evernote, notes app, reminder app, calendar etc. This also included my reading list, movies to watch list, travelling plans etc.
Idea here is everything that might take your mental space or which might spark the fear of slipping out of mind should be entered in the system. Everything has to be tracked.
I also spent my last week to figure out which tool I will be using to implement GTD, there are many tools out there which I wont go much in detail.
I settled on Trello after my research due to following reasons —
a. I am very comfortable with this tool and I know it’s capability and flexibility.
b. Trello also has immense support of plugins to automate your board like moving your due date to google calendar or saving your links to evernote are few examples.
c. Trello is platform agnostic.(unlike reminders app of Apple)
d. I know it is in active development phase as it is under safe hands of Altassian unlike Wunderlist which I afraid will be shutdown by Microsoft anytime.
After settling on tool, it was now time to put it to actions.
I went through few references to understand how people are using Trello to implement GTD, here are they —
And finally I processed my entire inbox items and it looks something like this —
(WIP) GTD Trello setup
This is the output from my initial processsing this is still work in progress. I still need to decide on the following things —
While reading and implementing GTD I have realised I have become more conscious about my how I spend and manage my time. Hopefully I integrate GTD deeply into my life and get full benefits out of it.
See you next week 👋✌️