My GTD Forms

May 14th, 2011 By The Quality Manager

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.

Posted in Getting Started, GTD, My GTD System, Next Actions, Projects, Someday/Maybe | 2 Comments »

My GTD System (2011)

March 24th, 2011 By The Quality Manager

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.

Posted in GTD, My GTD System | No Comments »

My GTD System (2009)

September 23rd, 2009 By The Quality Manager

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.

Posted in Areas of Focus, My GTD System | No Comments »