The Mechanics of “Getting Things Done”

The comment I hear most often from small business owners when I suggest they need to blog, use social media, and attend networking events, is that they have no time. Today I’m going to fix that. I’m going to give you more time!

David Allen's "Getting Things Done"

I’ve been using GTD for a couple of years. After our Business Builder Book Club read David Allen’s Getting Things Done, everyone went around for months, and still do, saying things like, “Ok, what’s the Next Action.” Overall, I’d say only The E-Myth and Duct Tape Marketing contributed more or had a greater overall impact on our book club participants.

The primary objective of GTD is to have ONE container into which you’ve placed every single thing in your entire life that you need to organize and/or remember – EVERYTHING! If you leave one thing out, you’re back to relying on your memory because you won’t be able to trust your system.

I have turned my email into a GTD system that works very well for me and I’m willing to share it. It seemed strange to me that I couldn’t find a more direct route to my end result but I’ve tried a ton of things including writing my own Access application but nothing has worked as well for me as this does. It works better in a package that offers color coding like Intellect! from Chaos Software (which I absolutely love for small offices that need to network their PIM/CRM). I’m currently using it in Outlook and it does ok without the colors. Everything syncs with my cell.

The main premise is that I email myself, or sort email from others, into sets of folders. The general folder system can be created in almost any way. It’s the Action folders that carry the heart of the system. They are:

TODAY

Add Regular E-Mail Sorting Folders

Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Next Week
This Month
Next Month
1st Qtr
2nd Qtr
3rd Qtr
4th Qtr
Next Year
Two Years
Five Years
Ten Years
Life
Each main folder can have as many layers of subfolders as are required to organize your information in a way that is pleasing to you.

Generally, short time frame folders hold “next action” items while major projects and subproject folders are contained in the appropriate longer term folders. I create as many subfolders as I need as many layers deep as I need. I do sometimes wish it was a full relational database since there are relationships between some of the deeper items but If I have to, I’ll duplicate messages each with a reference to the location and reason for the duplicate. Then I simply drag information around from folder to folder.

You may want to add a “waiting for” folder. I’ve had them, deleted them, put them back, etc. I finally decided that I didn’t want it. I’d rather have it sitting in a specific day folder because it’s easy to follow up on. If you delegate to someone, they replay with a simple “DONE” at the end of the subject line. You find the email you sent asking that the task be completed, and in most cases, just delete them. It may mean that you now send a new email to yourself or someone else that represents “next action” on that chain.

I borrowed nomenclature from QuickBooks except in reverse. I use Next Action:Sub-Project:Project in naming tasks. For me, since I have The Inner Office, TaxCrunchers, my little web design company, NumberCrunchers, the book club, DTM Coaching, my husband’s business, and personal, I code each item to indicate which area of involvement the task is for. That’s where Intellect’s color options made life easy. Every company has its own color so even as emails come in through the various email accounts they are automatically color-coded. In Outlook, one has to use longer names/subject lines to accomplish that breakdown. I suggest starting each message with a capital letter or two to differentiate and enable sorting.

Today’ s tasks get put onto the calendar so they are assigned time slots. At the end of each day, I review Today, to re-evaluate anything left over and delete or reassign. I also look at the folder with tomorrow’s name on it and drag those items to “Today” since I work out of “Today” every day. [I know that sounds confusing but I can’t think of a way to say it better.] When I started I didn’t have the “today” folder but then I wanted “today” to be separate and to come first so I set that up and I’m happy with it. At the end of the week, one has to pull the contents of “Next Week” into the appropriate day folders. At the end of the Month, I review “Next Month”, at the end of the quarter, the following quarter, etc. The date of the email maintains the original timeline. If you have to, you can always add notes and forward it to yourself. That adds a new time stamp and you can delete the original message.

If I have paper files or links to electronic files for any task, I find it helpful to add the item descriptions and their physical locations to the email, or links in the case of electronic files, so I don’t have to hunt around for things. As the quantities of outside info that I simply want available to trigger thoughts or to back up something I write grows, I find myself needing to develop more tools. I think I will have to use web bookmarking services better.

I set aside four days for full organization and implementation. I’m fortunate in that my partner, who was my assistant at the time, is the most highly organized individual I’m ever met. She came to me at 15 with a fully developed DayPlanner. My personal office was the dark hole of an otherwise bright, shiny, and well organized, business universe. I asked Racheal to help me set up paper filing organizational systems ahead of time so we had a plan for hard materials. I literally dumped the contents of all of my desk drawers into a large box and emptied out all of the shelves and cabinets so the space would be empty to accommodate the new organization. If anyone wants to ask her advice, or rent her, you can reach her at rrenfree@inneroffice.com.

Like anything else, organization is a habit. I’m still working on it. It’s easy for it to start getting out of hand. There’s always a whole bunch of “stuff”, physical as well as electronic, that you just don’t want to throw away, but it really doesn’t fit into your system, and it really isn’t needed for a project. I still keep too much of it and periodically throw it all out. You can scan it to pdf or just make files full of random materials. If you do that, have a “Random Materials” file in your email and email yourself info on everything there. Make sure you use keywords that will help you search for it later.

Now, for a paper-oriented system for the “I hate computers” crowd, I’ve experimented with a series of self-made pads. We generate a fair amount of scrap paper. I take letter sized paper and tear it in half. Pile it all neatly with the precut edges on the left, top, and bottom, and bind it from the top with various colored binder clips. The color of the clips is part of the organization. Within a pad, I’ll use colored paperclips to indicate various conditions, for example, red means I’m waiting for something. You can use large clips for large pads and smaller clips for small pads. You can make pads for various time frames and projects. Describe each pad by using the first page as a cover. You can then move pages from pad to pad quite easily to control your workflow. You certainly don’t have to re-use paper but I feel like I’m being a bit “green” while being well organized by making my own and I do much prefer the binder clip pads to any form you can buy in stores.

You absolutely cannot have multiple systems, however. It just won’t work. The premise of the system is that you can give your cares to the container and rest secure that it’s perfectly ok to forget everything! That doesn’t work if everything isn’t in one container. One big point that’s often overlooked in GTD is that it works best as a comprehensive system. I’ve gotten everyone I know to participate in my system. If they don’t, I have to fill it in for them by sending myself the required input. Everyone in our office emails each other everything. We may speak something out loud but at the same time we’re emailing ourselves, or the other person, salient points of the conversation. We ask clients to email us. We prepare emails for ourselves while we’re on the phone with clients. As soon as we hang up, we can email those notes to both them and ourselves, if needed.

Since we also track time, completed tasks show up with a more detailed description in our time logs. [Except that I’m really bad at that.]

The most important thing for me about being productive is to make sure I clean my desk and organize the next day’s work each night. I have to break it down to actually scheduling tasks so every minute of the entire day is laid out on my desk when I get there the next morning. If I don’t do that, I flounder.

While it is true that you do not have to completely organize everything in one setting, you do have to include organizing everything left unorganized in Projects and Next Action items. Assign a time, and complete each remaining organizational project just as you would any other project.

With the time you save by not having to hunt for things, you’ll have plenty of time to do marketing and other far more useful tasks.