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May 24, 2006

Implementing GTD

One of the things I love about our approach is that we are system neutral. In seminars, I'll often demo Outlook or Lotus Notes because they are easy to project on screen, but GTD can really work with any system, tool, or planner as long as you work it. David says a good system is a "complete, current, total-life reminder system which you review regularly."

I encourage people to choose their system or tool like they would pick their car. Choose one that you like, you trust and that matches your style. Some people are more digital than others and really like everything streamlined and searchable electronically. I'm seeing lots of people these days choose a hybrid system of electronic and paper, where their main hub is on their computer, but they print out their calendar and tasks to carry around with them for on-the-fly changes. For years I used a Time/Design paper system and loved it. It was only when I became a Palm geek in the late 90's that I let it go. Otherwise, I loved the visual appeal of a paper system.

There is an amazing wealth of materials out there about getting started with GTD. A few of them we've authored for specific tools our clients use and a few have come out of GTD champions who took it upon themselves to share their knowledge (thank you!):

David Allen Company whitepapers:
GTD and Outlook
GTD and Entourage
GTD and Lotus Notes (hopefully coming summer 2006)

GTD Community whitepapers:
Gary Stringer's whitepaper on GTD and BlackBerry
Bryan Murdaugh's how-to guide for GTD and Gmail

And certainly Merlin Mann's site, 43folders.com, is worth a visit.

Posted by Kelly at May 24, 2006 09:55 AM

Comments

It's also worth checking out some of the wiki-based implementations, particularly those based on TiddlyWiki. I've been testing out MonkeyGTD (http://simonbaird.com/monkeygtd/) for the last week and it's one of the easiest, cleanest solutions I've seen. I've been able to use it without thinking once "oh but only if it did it this way". The urge not to tinker with it, for me, is a sure sign of how good it is.

Whether it will stand the test of time (deleting old stuff isn't particularly easy, and being a plain old HTML file, I don't know how performance will degrade as the file grows) I don't know, but I'm certainly sticking with it for now.

Posted by: Neal Dench at May 25, 2006 12:30 AM