A lot of people read the Getting Things Done (GTD) book and like the concepts that are presented but are at a loss as to how to get started. In GTD, David Allen does not espouse a specific system of productivity but rather provides guidelines for how to execute a system that you need to create. The biggest issue I hear from friends and family who have read the GTD books is that there is too much going on in their lives right now to get a system started, making GTD a great idea but too hard to put into pratice.

Unless you are a C-level executive and can afford someone from Davidco to come over and coach you through the conversion, getting started with GTD can be a formitable barrier. In the next four Wednesday posts, I will lead you through one way to get started with GTD by taking the essential GTD principles and presenting a simple system you can use right away to start putting them into practice.  This simple system is not “true GTD,” but rather a short -cut to help you get started.  As you master each small part, you should read the GTD book and upgrade your GTD system.

In this first post, we are going to tackle getting control of your inputs, those things that are coming at you that you need to get done that are keeping you from getting your system developed.

Inputs From Every Direction

Today we live in a world where we get bombarded with requests from multiple sources. Consider “inputs” to be any line of communication that people can use to send a request for you to do something. I would say on average, a person carries 3-5 (or more) inputs. We have phone calls coming in to our home, business, and cell phones. We have postage mail being delivered to our homes and to the office. We have at least 1 email account, but in truth most of us have more than that. With all these inputs transmitting requests for us to do things, it is clear why feel overwhelmed and cannot seem to get our footing when trying to get started with any kind of productivity system. Before you can begin implementing any kind of system, you will have to get control of all of your inputs. Once you can control the stream of requests and information coming at you, your overall anxiety about the GTD methodology will lessen, and then you can focus your attention on getting your GTD system built.

How To Get Control Of Your Inputs

There are two goals that we are going to accomplish in this first part. First, we are going to create a single location to index all the things you need to do. This index, which you are going to create, will be the one place you will go to figure out what things need to be done and when they need to be done. It will also become the first place you put anything that comes in, so that you don’t forget it. This takes the place of the traditional GTD Inbox. Eventually you will get an inbox created, but for now, lets just get that mess of inputs under control, so that you can focus on getting an inbox set up.

The second goal that we want to accomplish in this section is to clean up all your inputs. If you have not been very organized, then you likely have a desk full of papers, a phone with leftover voice mail messages, and hundreds of email messages in your various inboxes. Within that mess are some things you need to be doing, which are now buried in a pile of junk. We need to find those important things and get them indexed, so that you don’t forget them, and then throw out the junk. By learning to keep your inputs clean and organized, your overall anxiety will decrease. You will feel a sense of control that you may have never experienced before.

Get Some Paper and A Pen

Until you have the time to develop your system, we are going to go low-tech. Get a spiral notebook, something that is going to be easy to write on with lots of pages. Then get yourself a reliable pen, and finally get some paper clips. Now we can get started.

One of the first principles of GTD is that you cannot trust your brain to remember things. We need to get things out of your head and indexed someplace. The notebook is going to be your index of the things you need to do. This notebook is going to form a GTD crutch for you. Later on you will have a more refined system of keeping track of your various tasks, but for now, we are going to get them into the notebook and out of your head. This notebook is going to be your home base for the time being. So be prepared to take it with you from home to work and back again. Open that notebook up and write the words “To Do” on the top of the page.

Collect Your To Dos

Now that you have an index in which you can record all the things you need to do, you are going to have to go through your various inputs and write all the things you need to do down in the notebook. For each message you read, determine if there is anything you need to do with it. If there is, write it down in your notebook. If there isn’t, then determine if you need to keep it as a reference. If you need to keep it, file it in whatever system you currently have for filing things, even if that is just a pile or a nondescript folder. We will get better ways to file later. For now, put that info somewhere you can find it later. If you don’t need to keep the message, throw it out right now.

You are going to clear each one of your inputs at a time. It does not matter where you start. You can tackle the toughest to the easiest or vice versa. You know yourself. Start with the one that is going to give you the best feeling of success when you finish it, and give you the motivation to do the others. Once an input is clear, keep it that way. This may seem daunting, at first, but there are a few tricks we can use to get things cleaned up:

• Abhor Clutter: You must come to hate clutter when comes to your inputs. Clutter paralyzes the mind. If you have a few hundred emails in your inbox, and you only have 5 emails to answer, its going to seem like a mountain to do, because of all the clutter before it. Keeping things clear of clutter will help your mind to focus on what is important.
• Clear Daily: Get into a habit of clearing of your inputs every day. This will help you avoid clutter. Clearing all your inputs, at least daily, will keep you better organized and up to date on what people are asking you to do.
• Do Not Be A Packrat: This is something that many people fail to understand: Not Everything That Comes Across Your Desk Matters. I stressed this phrase because you must learn not to keep every piece of paper or email message you are sent simply because someone put your name on it. You must learn to view all messages with suspicion, and always ask yourself, “do I really need to keep this?” If you can’t come up with a valid reason for keeping it, throw it away.

That covers the general philosophy of controlling your inputs. Now, let’s look at a few classes of inputs and how you can get them under control:

Postage Mail

• What To Record: Write in your notebook any action you need to take based on the mail that you get. Write down what action you need to take, and if it is due at a certain time. If it is a bill, write down: “Pay Cable Bill before December 15th.” Then take your bill and fix it into your notebook with a paper clip, so that you know where this bill is when it comes time to pay.
• How To Organize: The signal-to-noise ratio of postage mail is quite small. Most of what arrives in the mail is junk. Even the important mail you get is often full of junk. Bills often have extra pages that can be discarded. Find the important parts and just keep those; throw the rest out.

Voice Mail

• What To Record: Listen to your messages and write down what you need to do into your notebook. Most things are going to be calling someone back: “Call John about the meeting next week.” Use another part of the notebook if you need to write down any notes about your phone message.
• How To Organize: Discard voicemail messages after you have written them down. Any important facts you already recorded in your notebook. Your voicemail inbox should only temporary storage not a vault to keep valuable business information.

Email

• What to Record: Read each email message and determine what you need to do with it: “Email latest projections to Marketing.” Good emails are pretty straight forward on what you need to do. Bad ones are a bit tricky to figure out, but dig around in there, you will find what the sender wants.
• How To Organize: Email is one of the easiest places to create clutter. In general, people do a terrible job of organizing their emails. There are two things you need to work towards when it comes to email. First, delete every non-essential email that you receive. If you don’t need an email either as reference material or for something you are working on, get rid of it. Second, get everything out of your email Inbox. Do not store messages in your Inbox. You don’t keep your household bills in your mailbox at home, so stop storing important messages in your email inbox. There are hundreds of articles on various blogs about this. Look up the words “inbox zero” on Google and read up.

Your Inputs Are Under Control

If you have done everything above, you now have a notebook full of things you need to, but your email Inbox is now empty, your voicemails are clear, and hopefully your desk is a bit less cluttered, having thrown away all that junk. Make sure you get into a habit of clearing your inputs at least daily, every half day (once in the morning, once at lunchtime) is even better.  As you do, your list in your notebook is going to keep growing.  Don’t worry about that.  You always get more things to do; that is just a fact of life.

Now you have this pretty daunting list of things in your notebook. Start doing them. Pick something off the list and do it.  When it’s done, cross it off.  Scan the list and find things that have due dates; you should do those first. Don’t worry about being too efficient at clearing your list. We are going to get to that in the next article.

Making It More GTD 

The next logical step is to establish an Inbox at work and at home, and to create some more organized lists using the concept of Contexts and Projects.  The Getting Things Done book speaks at length about Inboxes and what David Allen calls “Ubiquitous Data Capture.”  Once you have mastered clearing your inputs with the techniques above, you can then look into incorporating an Inbox into your system.

Next week we will tackle the concept of Processing your Inputs, so that you make the best decisions about what to do with those inputs as soon as they come in.