Universal Productivity Concepts: The GTD “Process”
Posted on April 27, 2009 by LJ
Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.
As I looked back through my Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity book, I realized that there are some universal truths in
it that can apply, and should apply, for anyone interested in being productive. While I officially no longer practice
Getting Things Done, I found that I still use a few of the concepts all the time. I decided to hunt out these universal truths. The first universal concept can be found at Universal Productivity Truths: The GTD Capture
Processing
Make Decisions
If you subscribe to the notion that capturing everything is essential to any productivity system, then the next
logical step is that you must do something with what you have captured.
But processing is more than just looking over your piles. It is about making decisions about what needs to be done.
I have in-box-itis. I would sift through my in-box, picking out things I felt I could do, leaving things behind. Then
inevitably I would find that I had forgotten about something or missed a deadline. By making decisions about what you
need to do with each item, you are moving it forward to being done.
Standard Handling
The second universal truth that lies below the processing part of GTD is that you must be consistent in how you
handle things.
Example: let's say you have two books, both of which must be returned to the library. If you put one in your car
so that you can return it the next time you are out, and one in your refrigerator with the same purpose, which book
will be returned? The answer to that question is "It depends." If you expect your books to be in the
refrigerator, then the one there will be returned. If you expect the books to be in your car, that book is the one
that will be returned.
It's a silly example, but it illustrates a point. Each item that needs to be handled needs to be processed in a
way that is consistent with other like items. It doesn't matter where you keep the list of calls to be returned,
as long as they are all there.
These two concepts are fundamental to any productivity system: make decisions about what needs to be done, and handle
things in a consistent manner.
Photo by lumaxart
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