Where do you put daily recording of events(ala Franklin Covey)?

[BillyIdol]

Ok,

Let's suppose you are shopping for cars and you make notes (daily recording of events) for 5 cars a day for 3 days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. In the GTD system, where would you record that information?

John

[Tsutter]

Hi there! I am not an expert in this in any way, so I do not want to be at all presumptuous. However, my question back to you would be: where do you want to/ need to see it? GTD is more a methodology than a system. That's what's so great about it. You can adapt any system you like to the natural planning and work flow models.
In your example, you might take the notes about these cars on a notepad, notebook, legal pad or portfolio. When you are done taking the notes (say on Tues), tear off the page and put it in your "In" box. Then, following the model, when you process "In" (sometime in the next 24-36 hours) you will see those notes again and will then make a decision about what they mean to you and what you need to do with them. Your choices will be many based on your decision/ need. You can create a new file for them called "New Car Research." You can place them in a traveling file called "Support Materials." You can transfer the relvant information to your PC and then scan or store the notes digitally. Or you can toss them because you already bought the car and no longer need the notes.
If you like to keep all your notes/ thoughts in one place (like the DRE in Covey), then you can certainly still do that by using a single journal or notebook to keep all your thoughts, notes andmind dumps. The key is to make sure that that notebook, like anything else, winds up in "In" so that you can process the "stuff" in there and make appropriate decisions about what it all means to you and what you need to do about it.
Hope that helps!

[dschaffner]

Let's suppose you are shopping for cars and you make notes (daily recording of events) for 5 cars a day for 3 days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. In the GTD system, where would you record that information?

I'm not sure I understand the question. If I needed a place to keep the notes I've recorded about each of the cars, I'd keep then in a folder labeled "cars".

- Don

[Brent]

Agreed with Don. It's project support materials, so it goes into your filing system under "Car Shopping," or whatever you name it.

[mcogilvie]

Ok,
Let's suppose you are shopping for cars and you make notes (daily recording of events) for 5 cars a day for 3 days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. In the GTD system, where would you record that information?

For those who missed it, the old Franklin methodology is to put the day's collection of information on the right-hand side of a 2-page-per-day planner. The system made extensive use of pointers (references) back to information to avoid rewriting. When I was trying to make it work, many moons ago, I found it to be very fragile. While having a date attached to information is sometimes useful, it is typically not very useful to have all the information attached to a given date all together. It is usually better to have all the information attached to given project collected together. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this, with folders (paper and software) the obvious tools. Of course, GTD is pretty tool-agnostic.

[kewms]

Why do you need the log?

The standard Franklin method is great if you need a chronological record. Say if you bill for time, or if you need a detailed log for CYA purposes. It's the record you turn to when the Congressional hearing chair or the prosecuting attorney asks you exactly when a particular meeting on a particular topic took place. (Of course, it's also a record that such entities love to subpoena.)

If you're collecting project-specific information, on the other hand, you might want to store it in a project-specific way, such as in the "car information" folder that others have mentioned.

Personally, I use a variety of methods.

For interview notes. notes from conferences, or notes from meetings with clients, I use a bound notebook with pre-numbered pages. The back pages become an index to the volume. These are all situations where I need to capture a large number of items at once, and where I might need to refer back to the notes for several projects over an extended period. These situations, in other words, come the closest to the traditional "diary" application.

For ideas and short notes -- including gems I glean when processing the above notebooks -- I use index cards. They're cheap, portable, and easy to shuffle around, which makes them ideal for transient applications like interim "working notes" for specific projects.

Most data from outside sources -- articles, web pages, emails -- comes to me electronically, so I store it electronically, mostly in a DevonThink database. Electronic storage has the advantage of infinite searchability and replicability, plus it's much more scalable when large amounts of material are involved. I suppose I could scan or transcribe my paper notes to electronic form, but the rewards have never seemed to justify the tedium (to do it myself) or the cost (to hire someone).

Hope this helps.

Katherine

[DanGTD]

You can make a project "Buy a new Car", and make the info about each car you view, as a note linked to that project. If the date is so important to you, add a line with the date.

If there are brochures too, add them to your reference material folder.

[Oogiem]

Let's suppose you are shopping for cars and you make notes (daily recording of events) for 5 cars a day for 3 days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. In the GTD system, where would you record that information?

I do it in 2 places. In my calendar I'd track how much time I spent shopping for cars because I use my calendar in a historical fashion for what I actually did as well as future plans. But the notes and stuff about what I saw would be in a folder for New car or car shopping or some other name so I can find all my notes in one place.