GTD Phase 1: Collect

Posted on May 1, 2007 by
Categories: Productivity

Originally published 17 Jan 2006

Since I am currently without my PDA (it’s in the repair shop), I am taking this time to review and re-read the book. In a series of posts, I’m going to go through each of the phases of the GTD methodology: Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do, and list how I am using them.

The collect phase is when I gather everything together. It can be big, small, multiple step or not. In order to do this, I need to have tools.

In GTD, David Allen says that the tools must be convenient. He also says that I need to have as many in-boxes as I need, but only as many as I need. So let me take a look at my current in-box list:

  • PDA: Agendus, a basic Palm app overlay
  • PDA: Slap, a quick Graffiti entry point that will fling things into the basic Palm apps
  • PDA: Diddlebug, a freehand note tool with alarms
  • Email: main home, webmaster, GMail, yahoo
  • Voice mail: cell phone
  • Voice mail: home answering machine
  • Notebook: my standard all-notes book
  • Notebook: my reading notes
  • Notebook: my handwritten journal
  • In-box: on my desk at home
  • PC: Agendus, my desktop calendar/to do/phone etc

(I do something unorthodox in GTD standards: I do not keep my professional and personal life mashed together into one place. The reason is that I have many professional lives, so to speak, in the multiple clients I support. Also, my work belongs to my clients, so all of my notes, tracking, etc. are done on their systems. So I will disregard the work inputs, like work email, work voice mail, one for each client.)

PDA: For strict input, Agendus on the PDA is not the best, as it requires multiple taps to get to where I can put something in. However, Slap and Diddlebug can share the same hardware button and be processed at a later time. I will have to discipline myself to use only these two applications as in-boxes on my PDA.

Email: Last year I pared myself down to the list of emails above. I choose to maintain these email accounts for different reasons. My main home account is for family and friends. My Yahoo account is used when doing anything on-line so all spam generated off of these goes directly there. Gm ail is used to filter email and handle all of my email lists. And the webmaster account is there because I can’t get rid of it – it is tied to the domain name.

Voice mail: I can’t really simplify any more on these. Generally what happens is if I get a message in either system, it is either dealt with immediately with a return phone call, or the gist gets written down on a sticky note and put in my physical in-box.

Notebooks: David Allen says that the low-tech things are usually the ones where most gains can be made. In my case he is right. I have three notebooks, and all dedicated to a specific purpose. If I were to consolidate these notebooks into one, I would gain by only having to use one at a time (and I would no longer have the excuse that I didn’t have the right notebook with me to avoid doing something). An AHA moment that came while considering this was that the notebooks are far too often a dead end. My book notes get put in but never reviewed. If I used the notebooks as an in-box and then transferred the information into the appropriate electronic system I would gain a review of everything I had written down, along with the ability to search once the item is on my PC. Resolution: use one notebook and process it as an in-box.

PC: I use Agendus as an in-box, and what generally ends up happening is I copy and paste everything into Bonsai, which I use to do my project and next action lists. From there, things are linked back to Agendus during Hotsync. I need to put things directly into Bonsai in order to keep everything in the same spot, and also to avoid having the disconnect I am currently experiencing with my temporary lack of PDA.

Summary: I need to stop using Agendus (PDA and PC) as an in-box, and use only one notebook, which will get processed as an in-box.

I will report back on this to say how it is going in 30 days.

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