Stress-free productivity does exist

If you capture all the stuff that command your attention, clarify what they mean and what to do about them, organize the resulting tasks and reflect on them when appropriate, then your daily actions are found in these three lists:

“GTD is not for me”, “I’m not an organized person”, “I haven’t found the ideal application”. These are some excuses that I often hear from people that have tried unsuccessfully to bring order to the chaos that reigns in their lives. Have they really tried? I don’t think an attempt to do something without total conviction for a couple of weeks can be called a try. If you are eating fried food and pastries for 10 years, is it realistic to return your cholesterol level to normality in just two weeks? It took me some months to change my eating habits, and even more time to get the desired results.

It is the first stage through which any possible action or task has to pass. First of all you have to catch it. Capturing is to collect everything that might represent something you have to do into a reliable system you will process and review later. So simple: noting down something in your notebook, recording a thought in a voice memo, entering a task in your favorite application…

Productivity. A concept so simple to be defined and so difficult to be analyzed. Personally, I rather the shorter definition: doing more with less. Put that way, maybe it doesn’t look a big thing, but don’t be fooled. This powerful concept is the key to measuring the efficiency and evolution of economies and societies, and determines companies profitability and people quality of life.

The Next Actions list may contain a large number of possibilities. These actions must be done as soon as possible, but what criteria should you use to choose the most appropriate action to do at all times? These four, in this order: