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GTD: Collecting
If you want to be truly effective,
you’ve got to have a way
of getting things out of your head and into a trusted system. GTD: Collecting is the first
step.
We need a way of capturing and collecting everything that
comes at us, which
these days is a lot. As David points out in the Getting
Things Done book, a lot is collected
for us
automatically: email, voice mail, things in your physical
in-box - if
you have one.
On top of the things that are automatic, we've got
to have ways of collecting everything else, like the actions and
projects we think of, errands to run, shopping lists, birthdays, and
the list goes on and on....They key here is that no matter what shows
up - or even more importantly, where we are or what we're doing when
it shows up - we've got to be able to get it out of our heads
and into a
trusted
system where we know we wont lose track of it.
Examples of "in" include:
- Physical in baskets
- Pen and Paper
- PDA's
- Voice Mail
- Email
- Voice recorders, either in your phone or separate
To be effective,
have as many in-baskets as you need, and as
few as you can get by with.
By now you're probably thinking I already have all of those
things...thanks for the brilliant
insight....
There's a key concept you're probably missing:
You
must empty "in" regularly.......
Emptying
"in" doesn't mean you need to do anything with the item, other than
deciding what
is it and what's
your next action, which
leads us to....Processing,
and the fantastic flowchart by
David Allen that I
mentioned earlier.
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