I have been in search of the perfect system for managing information, for many years. Franklin Covey has a great system. GTD is a great system. Whatever you do, you just need a system that that’s practical and doesn’t leak. My new system isn’t perfect, but it works. Everything is captured and I’m in control of most of my Universe.

There’s plenty of internet fodder about Getting Things Done, but I had a request for my personal system based on GTD principles.

Basic Principles

Set goals and work your way backward – 5+ year goals, 3yr goals, 1yr goals. Review the 5+ every six months. Check in on the others quarterly.

Mindsweep regularly. Capture everything you need to remember and document it in the system. Try to write everything down in an active voice. This is challenging the first week, then it gets easier.

Everything can be classified by 2 types of categories: a) action categories which describe when I’m going to do something and b) contextual categories referring to what dimension of my life the item relates to, e.g. personal, clients, etc…

Everything starts in the inbox and every day the inbox is emptied. All items are processed by doing, deleting, delegating or deferring for later. Do anything that takes less than 2 minutes. Delete anything that you can’t define or don’t need.

Review tasks that are further out on weekly or monthly basis.

The Tools

Toodledo is my weapon of choice in capturing, classifying and processing for many reasons that are too numerous to go into here. First of all, the system makes it easy to implement the GTD model by providing for infinite searching, sorting and classifying by contexts, tags and other categories. The tool is well integrated with many different applications including: GCal, Twitter, Email, RSS, Jott and more…

Vitalist is the second runner up. Simple, elegant interface and user experience.

How everything is categorized

Action Categories (Somewhat Universal)

Inbox – everything starts here
Next Actions – These must be done as soon as possible
Next 7 Days – To do within the next week
Next 30 Days – To do within the next month
Hold (Defer or Tickler) – Defer until a later, specific date
Waiting For – Something I have delegated or waiting for
Someday – Review monthly and adjust
Maybe – Review monthly and adjust
Reference – Categorized and tagged references (notes, birthdays)
Projects – Anything with 2 or more steps. I code for clients and job numbers

Contextual Categories (Individual Centric)

Personal (Practical roles, e.g. parent, friend, workouts, husband, etc…)
Client-Specific (I do this to view actions categories by client)
Professional Network
Personal Development
Prospecting – Opportunity development

Tags

R&R – anything that I need to review or research like articles, blog posts etc..
Project Numbers – or whatever syntax you use to code client work

And Finally – Email

A month ago, email was a nightmare experience. I used outlook and could never properly coordinate or sync all of my email between two different computers. I receive a lot of email between several different accounts and I need to follow up, save and review on a regular basis. I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner, but I moved all of my email to Gmail. It’s tagging system is intuitive, automated and easy to configure.  I moved all of my contacts to Google and sync everything wirelessly to my Blackberry. It’s simple, smart and efficient.

I use a similar method of processing email. Everything can be categorized into at action category. I keep it extremely simple: 1) Next Actions which must be done as soon as possible. 2) Follow-Up which must be done “soon” and 3) Hold – items that need to be deferred for later. I review these on a weekly basis. In addition, I use another 7 or 8 Contextual Categories to give further meaning, like client codes and R&R (Research and Review).

That’s it. For me, it’s thorough, fast and manageable.

Photo Provided under a creative commons license by Jurvetson.