My GTD System
I adopted the GTD methodology almost one year ago, even before I own a Palm Treo 650. I tried several software to make GTD work more conveniently and effectively. Through some practices, I believe probably I could establish my GTD system “officially”.At first, let’s review the original GTD conceptual diagram from David Allen’s book at first:
From the above diagram, we can conclude four types of utilities which may be necessary if you are applying GTD with a digital device (PDA or PC or UMPC)
- Inbox
- ToDo List
- Calendar
- Project Planner
And then look at my own system diagram:
The major software I am using to apply GTD are:
- Natara DayNotez:
I take this as the main inbox. We can type words into it directly, and if your hands are not free for typing, you can just take a photo or record a piece of voice.
DiddleBug, BugMe, Slap are also recommended. No one is the best, just use the one you like.
- Life Balance:
It’s an awesome ToDo List application, but not only a ToDo List. With the context support, we can easily get what we should do at a particular time and spot.
- Iambic Agendus: Datebook, Contacts
- Natara Project@Hand: A client on Palm for MS Project files.
- Natara Bonsai: A outline utilities, if need to plan a project with few resource and dependency, this is enough.
The detailed process is:
- When some ideas, tasks and other stuff come out in my brain, I just open DayNotez and type into it or take a voice record. I map DayNotez to “Opt+Hardkey2″, so that it can be accessed quickly. These coarse stuff are put in the “inbox” category. If I am free for a while, I will process those stuff in the “inbox” category. If it is not actionable, change its category to “Reference” or “Maybe”.
- If it is actionable and can be done in 2 minutes, do it right now and change its category to “Processed”.
- If it can’t be done in 2 minutes, but also a one step action, I will create a todo entry in Life Balance with a particular context and category.
- If it can be broken down, use Bonsai or just Life Balance, or MS Project on PCs to break it down, and then create entries in Life Balance.
- When I am changing my context(spot, time or target contact), I will change the context in Life Balance as well and do the next action according to the order.
The contexts in Life Balance:
I use three flags to make up a context. The first one indicates whether it’s a next action or a “waiting for” action. The second one tells the spot or target contact. And the third one is just a category which is used for import and export. Some example are: !NextAction@Computer$FamilyLife, !NextAction@LvQi$Career.
