Capture Everything. Then Get Rid of the Unnecessary

If you follow the GTD philosophy in your personal organization you already know that one of its most important principles is to capture quickly and without thinking every thing what comes to your mind, so that you can continue with what you were doing without distractions.

Yes, it’s easier said than done. Because you don’t always do it, do you? This happens because you have the hobby of “thinking” while you are collecting. You can’t avoid it. You have something in your head, but it doesn’t seem so important, so you don’t capture it. Or you think it’s just an idea you probably will not run, so you don’t capture it. Or you think there is a 95% chance that that idea, action, information, or whatever, ends up in the trash of your organizational system, so why bother?

Well, in addition to the benefits you already know, capturing gives you an important psychological benefit that you’re probably missing: When you capture absolutely everything and later you do the exercise of clarifying what each of those things you’ve captured actually is (even if you just decide to do nothing and eliminate that element from your system) you get a full awareness of what you are going to do and also what you should not be doing.

This method helps you to always be well focused. It forces you to take a healthy diet of incomplete things that you want to deal with in your personal universe. Capture everything, even to throw it in the trash.