I’ve blogged a few times on David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done system. Recently I’ve made a few tweaks and had some successes, and I thought I’d share. Hopefully it will be a help for those of you having challenges with getting and staying organized.

Call me slow, but it took me a while to really get my head around getting my email Inbox to zero each day. I had a really bad habit of leaving actionable emails in my Inbox until I took action. Guess what? Since they didn’t hit my task management system, they never got done. Duh!

Now, at least once a day, I clear my entire Inbox. If an email needs to be filed, I file it (or send it to Evernote). If it’s something that needs to be acted on, I capture it in Action Lists, my iPhone GTD management system.

It’s nice to end my day with a clean Inbox. And things aren’t sitting, waiting for me to get to them. If you aren’t capturing emails in your task management system now, I highly recommend you start.

Now for the shameful admission. Yes, I sometimes fall off the GTD wagon. About six weeks ago, I was really off the wagon. And I wasn’t getting much done. I was making meetings, and my blog was getting updated, but lots of other things, including writing projects, just never seemed to get off the back burner.

A couple of weeks before my writing retreat, I decided enough was enough. I need to walk the talk I use with my clients, so I committed to touching Action Lists every day.

Guess what happened? Yep, I became a lot more productive and was getting more done in the same number of hours. Long-abandoned writing projects are advancing! Hmm. Work the same amount of time. Get more done. Kind of cool.

How do I stay on the wagon? Getting my emails in Action Lists was part of it. The other was tweaking how I use the GTD system. I like a daily to-do list. GTD advises against it, but it works for me. And not having it wasn’t. So every morning, I open Action Lists and see what’s in my Today screen (confusingly named Inbox-not to be confused with my email Inbox). Then I check my calendar and see how much time I have for tasks. Finally I go to my context or project lists and add things to my Inbox. At the end of the day, I make sure my Inbox is clear. If I couldn’t get to everything, I move tasks to another day.

I do check my projects throughout the day, just to be sure I’m not overlooking something. So I’m using a variant of the system, but as I tell people, it’s better to use a less-efficient system that you will use than the perfect system that is ignored. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to use it the “right” way. Until then, I’ll settle for being productive my own way.

One more “secret” to getting things done. I disconnect from phone, text, Twitter and email for at least an hour a day to give me time to really focus on certain creative tasks.

Check off “write tomorrow’s blog post.” Six more things on my list for today.

Anyone else have good tips to share for staying productive?

Tags: GTD, task management, time management

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 8:05 am and is filed under Time and Task Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.