Well it’s time to kick off with my implementation of Getting Things Done. Last weekend I collected a whole load of ‘stuff’ and ‘open loops’, and manfully resisted any urge to actually ‘do’ anything :)

It turns out that I now have hundreds of things in my in-tray – far too many to attempt to go through them in one session. I also have a filing cabinet and a PC, both full of disorganised stuff, plus a house-full of little jobs that need doing. I’ve just noted as many of these as I can on pieces of paper and parked them in the in-tray for now. At some point I’ll have to sort out the filing cabinet and the PC, but for now they each just have one note on the pile.

At this stage I have no idea what next-action lists I’m going to need. Nor have I any idea how I’m going to use my laptop, iPAQ and paper notebook in the process. So my approach to implementing the process is just to start from here. I’ll create the lists and files as I go, and as each item requires. The first thing I need to do is to map the various collection tools I use, so that I know where to look each day for items to process.

Loads of these will end up being grouped together into little projects, and I’m sure most will be put into the sometime/maybe pile. We’ll see how things turn out. For now, time to begin processing that Outlook inbox…