Tag: “Capture”

Perfection can kill your intention to implement changes and make things that lead you to a better situation. Many of my blog readers tell me how hard it is to apply GTD for them. They become desperate for not reaching the levels David Allen describe in his book. My answer is always the same: just start to implement it, then refine the details slowly but steadily. Find something you can improve in each stage of the process, small changes that do not involve too much difficulty. If you are able to chain these little improvements, the return obtained will be spectacular. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Capturing is the first phase of your personal organization system, in which you try to capture all your incompletes and stuff in one location: your Inbox (not to be confused with the e-mail inbox).

It is impossible to reach the state of relaxed control that GTD promises if there are things that only exist in your head. Thinking about the same thing several times is an inefficient way to spend your time and energy, as well as a source of stress.

It is great to have powerful tools that give us confidence and enthusiasm, but let’s face it, all this functionality is sometimes translated into complex personal management systems. Either because we do not go beyond the basics in the learning phase, or because we do not perform a self-analysis, reflection process about how we are using it, software sometimes becomes an inert stuff in which we do not evolve.

One reason for the success of GTD as a personal productivity tool, is that it is the first one that urges people to make a complete inventory of everything that makes up their current reality, before starting to implement the method.