My GTD Forms

As I explained in My GTD System (2011), I have designed my own forms for my paper GTD system. I must acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the people at D*I*Y Planner who gave me the initial ideas behind most of these forms.

The forms are:

  1. Notes/In
  2. Next Actions
  3. Someday/Maybe
  4. Waiting For
  5. Agendas
  6. Projects List
  7. Project Plan
  8. Project Next Actions
  9. Contacts

Notes/In:

This is the “in tray” where everything is collected for later processing (unless it can go straight to Next Actions, etc.)

These forms are used for meeting notes, jottings, ideas, etc. One of the Filofax “TODAY” markers is used to indicate the next or current page. The form is here.

Next Actions:

Once it’s been decided that there’s a Next Action needed to progress something it goes on one of these forms. The right side of the header (next to “Next Actions”) can be used for the Context (“Calls”, “Computer”, “Errands”, etc.). The “Start” column is for the date the Next Action was added and its use is optional – it’s just a way of reminding you how long the Next Action’s been hanging around. The “Action” column is for the action and “Due Date” if there is one – note that if the action needs to be done on a specific date it should be on your Calendar and not on your Next Actions list. The form is here.

Someday/Maybe:

These are Actions or Projects that you want to capture but don’t what to do anything about right now. The form has three columns for you to use as you wish. The form is here.

Waiting For:

These are actions where you’re waiting on someone else. The form allows you so say “Who” you’re waiting for, “What” action you’re waiting on them to complete, and “When” you expect them to deliver. The form is here.

Agendas:

The Agendas form is for topics that you need to raise the next time you see a person or group or attend a meeting. The right side of the header is for the name of the person, group or meeting. Again there are three columns – “Start”, “Topic”, and “Due Date” – to be used in a similar way as with the Next Actions form. The Agendas form is here.

Projects List:

The Projects List is for the more than single action things that need to be kept track of. the area to the right of the header can be used to indicate the type of Project. I have separate Project Lists for Business, Home and Personal but I keep them all in one list using the first column indicate the Project’s status (“A” for Active, “S” for Someday/Maybe, “X” for Completed/Cancelled); the second column for the type of Project (“B” for Business, “H” for Home, “P” for Personal); the third for the Project title and the last for the Area of Focus – the first two columns are narrower and the last column wider in the version I use compared to the one shown here.

Project Plan:

There are two forms used for capturing the details of Projects. The Project Plan form allows you to record the Project Title, Purpose, Goal and any Notes. The back of the form allows you to brainstorm Next Actions and their Due Date – the actual Next Action on each Project must be transferred to your Next Actions list – this is just for your forward thinking! The form is here.

Project Next Actions:

The Project Next Actions form is just a simpler Project form without the Goal, Purpose and Notes page where it’s pretty clear what the Project is and you just need a form to record some of the Project’s potential Next Actions. The Title of the Project can be recorded on the right side of the header. The form is here.

Contacts:

The final form in this is just a simple form to collect “Name/Address” and “Contact Info”. The form is here.

These forms are the main ones that I use. There are some others that I will introduce to you later, including an “Annual Events Checklist” that I use to make sure that I don’t miss a birthday, anniversary or other key event during the year.

My GTD System (2011)

It’s now a while since I wrote about My GTD System.

Although the basic principles of its construction have not changed, some of the detailed implementation has been tweaked, most recently as a result of the GTD Connect Webinar on Paper GTD Systems.

I have been working a “GTD-esque” system for over 10 years since I first came across David Allen in 2000. At that time David had published some of his ideas on the Internet. I don’t think they had been branded as “Getting Things Done” and it was a year later before his “Getting Things Done” book was published. My GTD system replaced a Time Manager system that I had acquired about 10 years earlier. Claus Moeller’s Time Manager system, for which I still have many of the books and guides, brought together the hard landscape of the “Calendar” and a list of “Key Areas” (akin to GTD’s Areas of Focus) with “Tasks” (GTD Projects) and “Activities” (GTD Next Actions). The alignment with GTD isn’t perfect and the Time Manager system had a much firmer connection between these Key Areas, Tasks and Activities and the Calendar which probably worked better in the more certain times of the 1980s and early 1990s. The Time Manager system had wide range of forms to suit different purposes and had its own ring binders that had a different ring configuration to all other binders. Operating such a system was costly unless your employer was willing to foot the bill!

Probably the key flaw in all these so-called “time management” systems was the idea that time could be managed.

So, after flirting with several of these systems, I read David Allen’s book and realised that the system that he was proposing was “technology agnostic” and I could, in fact, design my own system around his GTD principles. Since that point I have always had a paper system but I have continued to try electronic solutions.

The nearest I have ever come to going totally digital is with Microsoft Outlook with the GTD Add-In. I still use this as Outlook is the favoured email system for the majority of my clients though their systems usually preclude the use of the GTD Add-In whilst on client sites. A couple of years ago I swapped my ordinary mobile phone for a PDA (a Palm Treo running Windows Mobile) and I thought I could go completely digital. I came fairly close but there were still times when the paper system won through. A more recent move to an iPhone gave me another chance to try a full digital solution but there is still no one tool that meets all my needs. I think that eProductivity would probably be the answer but that requires Lotus Notes and that’s a bridge too far. So I’m back, where I feel comfortable, with a paper system.

This time I will try to explain the whole system in more detail and point out some of the recent changes. I must stress that the system is still, and will always, be changing as my needs change. When I wrote the original article I explained that I have been a freelance quality management consultant for the last twenty years working with a variety of clients of varying sizes.

Over the next couple of years that is going to change as I plan to give up full time work and spend more of my time doing what I want rather than what someone else wants me to do. I plan to continue to follow the philosophy behind GTD but the system must be flexible and perhaps, above all, cheap to run. Apart from the David’s books and CDs,  membership of GTD Connect, a memorable attendance at one of David’s seminars (in Minneapolis where I managed a short personal chat with David who is such a nice guy),  the GTD Add-In, and a few other bits and bobs, I  have never bought any GTD “forms”. I have made my own (in Microsoft Word) and these have evolved with the system. As I mentioned above, the recent GTD Webinar on Paper GTD Systems caused me to change the style of some of these forms and to simplify the structure of the system itself.

The paper system I use is still housed in an A5 Filofax. It is now set-up with the following dividers:

  • Plastic protector covering a Mindmap showing the layout of the Filofax
  • Plastic pocket to collect odd scraps of paper, bills etc.
  • Notes/In with blank ruled sheets containing notes taken (and some blank sheets)
  • Calendar section with Annual Events Checklist (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) and printed calendar pages from Outlook (two pages facing each other covering one week). The Weekly and Monthly Checklists are no longer used
  • Action Lists, currently including Anywhere, Calls, Computer, Errands, Home, Online, Read, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe
  • Agendas (now has its own section as a result of the GTD Webinar on Paper GTD Systems)
  • Projects & Goals containing the Projects List and Areas of Focus List. All the different types of project (Business, Home, Personal, Someday/Maybe) are now in one list rather than being in separate lists.
  • Project Plans & Notes where all the Action Support material for projects is held.
  • Reference containing useful lists and other material
  • Contacts
  • Spare Forms

My Filofax structure is replicated on my computer system with a file structure that matches the structure within the Filofax with a few subtle differences:

  • 0 Front
  • 1 Notes/In
  • 2 Calendar
  • 3 Action Lists
  • 4 Agendas
  • 5 Projects and Areas of Focus
  • 6 Project Plans & Notes
  • 7 Reference
  • 8 Contacts
  • 9 Spare forms

These folders are mapped and synchronised across two computers (desktop and laptop) and on a cloud using Dropbox and also, at the moment, Sugarsync whilst I decide which one to go with in the future.

In the next article, I will introduce you to some of the GTD forms I have designed and how I use them.

GTD for free

Courtesy of GTD Times, the official blog for the David Allen Company and GTD, here’s a list of FREE GTD resources:

  1. GTD Times – helpful advice, tricks, tips and strategies for implementing GTD
  2. Podcasts – including the best practices with David Allen and his team
  3. Coaches Corner – articles from the GTD Coaches
  4. GTD Connect - a two week trial of the online learning centre packed with GTD goodies
  5. Articles, Handouts and Learning Tools – essays from David Allen on GTD best practices
  6. Tips and Tools – useful tips and tricks
  7. GTD-IQ – how do you measure up against GTD?
  8. GTD Facebook Fan Page – chat with other GTDers
  9. GTD LinkedIn Network – network with business-focussed GTD people
  10. Twitter – follow David and the coaches and GTD Twitter-based classes @GTDSpecialEvent
  11. GTD You Tube Channel - fun and useful videos of David and the GTD practitioners
  12. Productive Living Newsletter – David’s newsletter
  13. David at Google – overview of the keys to control and perspective
  14. Discussion Forums – ask questions and search for answers about GTD

“Winning at the game of work and the business of life” doesn’t need to cost the earth!

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – A-Z Filing System

“The lack of a good filing system can be one of the greatest obstacles to implementing a personal management system” – David Allen in Getting Things Done.

You need a good filing system or your in tray will get clogged up with stuff you should have filed.

Your filing system needs to:

  • take less than a minute to file anything
  • easy to use
  • fun to use
  • current
  • complete

You will need one or more filing cabinets. If you can get them go for the ones with a moving plate to hold the file folders upright rather than hanging files. If it’s one with hanging files – label the folders you put in instead of the hanging folders and only only put one file per hanger. But don’t let them get more than three quarters full.

Keep a stack of new file folders handy and invest in a labeller. I use a Brother P-Touch 65 – it’s battery and mains operated and can make fancy labels as well as plain ones but I think it may have been superceded by the P-Touch 80. David Allen has this handsome beast on his desk that connects to his laptop via a USB socket.

Typeset labels “change the nature of your files and your relationship with them” says David . They’re just easier to pick out and look more professional if you take them into a meeting.

When it comes to labelling your files, Keep It Simple Stupid! Think about how best to label folders so that you can quickly find what you’re looking for. If you have lots of files it may make sense to devote a whole filing drawer to finance. If you wanted to file all your credit card statements, for example, then if you have a separate finance drawer just labelling your folders – MBNA, John Lewis, etc. would be fine but if you’re mixing all your reference files together then labelling these ones “Credit Card MBNA” and “Credit Card John Lewis” would be better. If more than one person needs to access your filing system consult them about how best to label the folders.

And don’t forget to purge your files occasionally – at least once a year!

My GTD System (2009)

The first thing to say about my implementation of David Allen’s systematic approach to Getting Things Done is that it is a constantly evolving system to meet my needs. As my needs change and as I gain more insight into GTD and how it may help me in any particular situation my system gets modified to a greater or lesser extent.

So my system may not suit you and perhaps to help you understand why my system is configured this way I need to describe how I work “at the business of life and the game of work”.

I have been a freelance quality management consultant for the last twenty years. I work for a variety of clients of varying sizes – the smallest was three people – all the way up to large government departments of hundreds of people. More often than not, because of the size of these clients, it’s just one client at a time. At the moment I have two clients, both fairly large and one, a utility company, requires my services more or less full time for at least three months. The other one is a government department, but this is just a small consultancy requirement of about one day a month.

In addition to looking after these clients, I have all the responsibilities of running a small business – keeping accounts, training, keeping up to date generally, maintaining a website and this blog. Plus all the usual responsibilities that go with being a husband and a father.

I’ve had a GTD system of sorts for over 20 years. I’ve always been “relatively” organised and I had a paper organiser long before anyone knew what one was. Mine was an A4 binder with dividers for calendar, action lists, projects and reference material. Don’t forget that David Allen didn’t invent GTD out of fresh air. He looked at what worked and pulled it together into a systematic approach. There’s much in GTD that we already do without realising it’s part of the GTD system.

In about 1984, I went on a training course based on the Time Manager system. This, like the Time Design system that David worked with before devising GTD purported to be a way of managing your time to get things done. It had Key Areas, a bit like GTD’s Horizons of Focus, Tasks and Activities (GTD Next Actions), Calendar, Notes, Contacts etc.

I worked this system for several years with some success but it never really coped well with the increasing amount of stuff that was starting to hit me and all of us as we got into the 90s.

I became aware of David Allen around 2000 through finding a few of his ideas on the Internet. Many of these basic principles are still on the DavidCo website as free downloads. These include how to configure a paper organiser, how to set up a tickler file, etc.

Then I bought David’s Getting Things Done and read it cover to cover in a few days and began implementing the system. In many ways this was just revamping my old A4 binder but now I was using A5. For a while I used my old Time Manager binder but eventually I replaced it with an A5 Filofax.

This Filofax is set-up with the following dividers and has been unchanged now for several years:

  1. Plastic protector covering Mindmap showing the layout of the Filofax
  2. Plastic pocket to collect odd scraps of paper, bills etc.
  3. Notes/In with blank ruled sheets containing notes taken (and some blank sheets)
  4. Calendar Section with Weekly checklist for the current week, Monthly checklist for the current month, Annual checklist for the year (birthdays and anniversaries) and printed pages from Outlook, one week over two pages, for at least 13 weeks
  5. Action Lists, currently including Agendas, Anywhere, Calls, Computer, Errands, Home, Listen, Office, Online, Read, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe
  6. Projects (each section preceded by a list of the Projects in that section) Business Projects, Home Projects, Personal Projects, Someday/Maybe Projects
  7. Reference containing useful lists and other material
  8. Spare forms
  9. Contacts

Although I use Outlook, my system is essentially based around the forms in my Filofax. These forms are updated by hand but they are also held electronically in a folder on my PC called Filofax.

The subfolders in Filofax match the paper Filofax and the Filofax folder also fits onto an 8MB USB memory stick that I can take from computer to computer.

This configuration has remained unchanged for over two years now and seems likely to stay with me for some time.

The next major update will be when I start to develop my Areas of Focus now that I’ve got Next Actions and Projects under control.

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Tickler File or Bring Forward File

What it consists of

The TICKLER FILE or BRING FORWARD FILE consists of 43 folders:

31 daily folders labelled “1″ to “31″

12 monthly folders labelled with the months of the year

The daily folders are kept at the front, beginning with tomorrow’s folder (for the example used in Getting Things Done where today is October 5th, this would be the folder labelled “6″).

The remaining daily folders (in the example, “7″ to “31″) are filed behind this followed by the monthly folder for next month (in the example, this would be “November”) and then the daily folders already used (in the example, “1″ to “5″). Finally there would be the remaining monthly folders for the remaining 11 months (in the example, “December” to “October”.

So you would end up with a set of folders (following the example) labelled thus:

[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[November]
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[December]
[January]
[February]
[March]
[April]
[May]
[June]
[July]
[August]
[September]
[October]

How it works

  1. Each day, empty the daily folder for that day into your in-basket.
  2. File the empty folder at the back of the daily folders (in the example, “6″ is emptied and placed behind “5″ to now represent November 6th).
  3. When the next monthly folder is reached (in the example, “November” after “31″ has been emptied) the monthly folder is emptied into your in-basket and then filed at the back of the monthly folders to represent that month next year.

Tips and Tricks

Be sure to update your Tickler File every day and if you’re going away for a few days process all the folders ahead for the days you’ll be away.

Use the folders to file:

  • travel documents and tickets for events on the day you’ll need them
  • bills on the days you need to pay them
  • print out reminders for each birthday and anniversary and file them in the appropriate month to be moved into the appropriate day in due course. It’s a good idea to file reminders a few days ahead (especially if the due date is at the beginning of a month) to ensure you get a card and present ahead of time

There is a free factsheet on the Tickler File available on the David Allen website. There is also a set of 43 sturdy plastic letter size file folders, open on three sides. The GTD Tickler files are blue-grey with black trim and appropriately labelled (in five languages!) Please note that this is expensive to ship as the folders weigh over 5 pounds. Although the folders are letter size, they take A4 papers quite happily.

You can, of course, easily make and label your own set of folders but they are unlikely to last as long as these strong, purpose built folders.

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Two-Minute Rule

Would you like to extend your life by 6 months? Then follow this simple rule: If you can get an action done in less than two minutes then do it now!”

This works because it will take you longer than two minutes to write it down on one of your lists of NEXT ACTIONs, recall it when it’s appropriate, figure what it’s about and get in done – so just do it, or as someone I knew used to say JUST F****** DO IT or JFDI.

This can be as simple an action as “I need to refill my fountain pen”. By the time you’ve written that on your list you could have done it so just do it!

Once you’ve got to the DO phase you’ve only three options:

  1. DO it now if the action takes less than two minutes.
  2. DELEGATE it to someone else if you’re not the most appropriate person to do it.
  3. DEFER it by putting it into your system on one of your CONTEXT lists as something to be done later.

Some people seem to get hung up on what they can do in exactly two-minutes. It’s not the time that’s important, it’s the principle. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a minute or ten – it’s just a rule of thumb. If you think you can get it done “in the moment” then get it done and out of the way.

It’s a useful technique to use when you’re doing your WEEKLY REVIEW. You may want to restrict the cutoff to one minute if you haven’t got much time or extend it to ten if you’ve got plenty of time.

The two minutes isn’t a hard and fast(!) 120 seconds. Use your common sense. Perhaps another way to phrase the rule is “if you can do the action in less time than it would take to put it on your list, retrieve it at a later date, and do it then. Do it now”

If you use the GTD Outlook Add-In then the latest version has a built-in Two Minute Timer and the David Allen Company has one in their store.

Do

DO is the final phase of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow.

Now that you’ve COLLECTed and PROCESSed everything that has your attention, ORGANISEd all the open loops to make sure that OUTCOMEs and NEXT ACTIONs have been decided on and REVIEWed everything to ensure that it’s current, you now have to decide what to DO.

To make the right choices, you need to think about where you are (CONTEXT), how much time you have (CALENDAR), how much energy you have, and what your priorities are.

If you’ve listed your NEXT ACTIONs according to CONTEXT as we discussed in ORGANISE, it should be easy to identify what actions you could accomplish by looking at the appropriate list. Pick something off the appropriate list that you have the time and energy to DO.

We will return to priority at some future date when we look at the HORIZONS OF FOCUS but for now we’ll just identify what these horizons are:-

  • RUNWAY – Your current NEXT ACTIONs (look at these daily)
  • 10,000 FEET – Your PROJECTS (look at these weekly)
  • 20,000 FEET – Your responsibilities (look at these monthly)
  • 30,000 FEET – one to two-year goals (look at these quarterly)
  • 40,000 FEET – three to five-year goals (look at these annually)
  • 50,000 FEET – career, purpose, lifestyle (look at these annually)

This has been a very quick run through the Five Phases, so feel free to post any questions as comments. In the meantime take a look at the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free and don’t forget the basic manual on how GTD works in David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Review

The REVIEW is the most important of the 5 phases of mastering workflow but it’s the one most people struggle to do.

However, it’s essential, once you’ve got all your open loops under control, that you keep them that way otherwise you’ll lapse back into your old ways and get completely out of shape!

How often you do a REVIEW is up to you but the oprimal frequency is weekly – it’s usually referred to as the WEEKLY REVIEW.

There are three parts to the REVIEW:

  1. Get CLEAR
  2. Get CURRENT
  3. Get CREATIVE

Get CLEAR means:

  • get all the loose papers, receipts, etc. that have accumulated since your last REVIEW into you in-basket ready to PROCESS (this is a mini-COLLECT!)
  • get anything that’s in your head out and written down an in your in-basket
  • PROCESS all outstanding items in your in-basket

Get CURRENT means:

  • review all your NEXT ACTION lists and cross off anything that’s done and add any new NEXT ACTIONs that this triggers
  • look back over your calendar since your last Weekly REVIEW for any remaining NEXT ACTIONs and add to your NEXT ACTIONs lists
  • look forward over your calendar for the next few weeks and capture any NEXT ACTIONs triggered by this
  • review your WAITING FOR list checking off completed items and look for any needed follow-up on these and other items and capture any NEXT ACTIONs on your lists
  • evaluate the status of all your PROJECTs making sure that you’ve at least one NEXT ACTION on each

Get CREATIVE means:

  • review your SOMEDAY/MAYBE list and transfer any PROJECTs that have now become active to your PROJECTS list and delete any SOMEDAY/MAYBE items that are no longer of interest
  • think of any new things you want to be doing that you can add to your GTD system

One of the key tricks with the REVIEW is finding the time and space to do it justice. Book a meeting with yourself or take all your lists to your favourite coffee shop and shut out the rest of the world whilst you put your world into order.

Next week we’ll look at DO, the final phase of mastering workflow. Then we’ll go back to the beginning and look at some of the tips, tricks and tools for each phase and I’ll show you how I’ve implemented GTD. Don’t forget – you can get an overview of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free!

Organise

Now that you’ve COLLECTed everything that was on your mind and PROCESSed everything so that you know what each item means to you (what’s the expected outcome and what’s the next physical action to move it forward) we can start to get ORGANISEd!

Most people, when they try to implement GTD, have a problem with separating PROCESSing from getting ORGANISEd. But this is a key step because in ORGANISE you build the trusted system that will allow you to release all the stuff that’s clogging up your brain and allow you to reach the GTD “nirvana” of being totally buried by the amount of things you need to do but having nothing on your mind – what David Allen calls a “mind like water”.

But you’re not there yet!

First you need to group all the results of what you’ve PROCESSed into appropriate categories so that you can retrieve and REVIEW them when you need to – remember that REVIEW is the next phase of mastering workflow.

The four key categories are:

  1. PROJECTS – projects you are committed to finish that will take more than one action
  2. CALENDAR – actions that must occur on a specific day or specific time
  3. NEXT ACTIONS – actions that need to be done as soon as possible
  4. WAITING FOR – projects and actions that you’re waiting for someone else to do

For each of these categories you need to make a list of each item you’ve PROCESSed that falls under that category. For CALENDAR items that’s easy – they go on your CALENDAR.

A list of PROJECTS is just that.

A list of WAITING FORs is also relatively simple to compile.

The lists of NEXT ACTIONS should be broken down into separate lists depending on the context in which the action will take place. This is a key principle of GTD that differs from other activity management systems – listing actions according to where they happen.

Typical CONTEXTS are:

  • AGENDAS – lists of the people you need to communicate with, and meetings planned, with the topics you need to discuss
  • ANYWHERE – list of actions that have no restrictions on where they can be carried out
  • CALLS – list of calls you need to make, by type of phone (mobile, landline, etc.) if that’s appropriate
  • COMPUTER – list of actions that require a computer
  • ERRANDS – list of things you need to do whilst you are out and about
  • HOME – list of actions that need to be done whilst you’re in your home environment
  • OFFICE – list of actions that require you to be in your office
  • READ – list of articles, books, etc that you’ve decided to read
  • SOMEDAY/MAYBE – list of items and actions that you might wat to do at some point but not now

So now, armed with your lists of NEXT ACTIONS for each of the CONTEXTs above plus your list of WAITING FORs and PROJECTs you’re ready to go into action. But before we do that, next week we’ll look at the REVIEW phase that’s key to GTD – how you keep your lists up to date.

Then we’ll look at the final phase – DO – where you actually Get Things Done!

Again you can get an overview of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free!