SWG’s Guide to GTD on Mac and iPhone

I took most of my blogging time for the past two weeks to try to accomplish one of my resolutions this year: implementing “Getting Things Done” (GTD).

What is GTD?
For readers that don’t know, GTD is a methodology and framework by David Allen to help you manage your tasks at home and work. The core workflows of GTD is:

1. Collect
   
2. Process
   
3. Organize
   
4. Review
   
5. Do
   

You can find more information at Wikipedia’s entry on GTD and David’s Allen’s book, Getthing Things Done.

My interpretation of GTD workflow in detail

Collect
So basically, in the collection phase, you are devising a system that can capture all the things that goes on in life.

Process
In the processing phase, you have to sort that pile of stuff into three piles

1. trash
   
2. things that have reference value
   
3. actions or things that may suggest an action 
   

While your sorting, if you come across any actions that can be done under two minutes, do it at that moment.

Organize
In this phase, you have two piles from the previous step:

1. things that have reference value -
   These are things that should be filed away in a reference system.
   
   
2. actions or things that may suggest an action -
   Most likely, you will end up with a big list of actions.  The list will probably have too many items for mortals to comprehend, and, therefore, we must break down this lists into multiple lists so that we can comprehend. After these actions are organized, we are then able to make sense of them and extract the actions or tasks that should be done. The critical part is trying to devise a system so that you actions are properly captured and get visibility at the right times. In other words, actions needs to be reviewed so they are not just buried and get forgotten. 
   

Review and Do
These two phases lets you find out what you should do next, and then do them.

The tools
For me to implement GTD, my setup involves the following tools.

Hardware

1. iMac
   
2. iPhone
   
3. physical inbox tray
   

Software

1. Things for iPhone and Mac
   
2. Together for Mac
   
3. iCal
   
4. Mail
   

For the next few posts, I’ll be writing about my experience implementing GTD. In particular:

1. Collection points setup
   
2. Setting up the reference system
   
3. Processing and organizing actions and tasks
   
4. Recurring actions
   
5. Critical tasks to allow GTD to work
   

Hope you will enjoy this series of posts and find it insightful! Thanks for reading!