1. It feels weird to keep stuff on your mind
Capturing what has your attention is a key practice with GTD. Getting better at GTD means you are capturing what’s on your mind when it shows up, moment-by-moment and keeping something ON your mind, well, it just feels weird.
2. You empty your inboxes regularly
No getting around this one. If your inboxes aren’t processed to zero on a regular basis (at least weekly in your Reviews), you won’t fully trust your priority decisions, because of the unknown factor of what’s lurking in any unprocessed stacks.
3. You don’t fight the Weekly Review
The Weekly Review is the glue that keeps GTD together. Getting better at GTD means you willingly create the space and time in your life to get clear, current, and creative and no longer make excuses that you don’t have time for it.
4. You feel good about what you’re not doing
This one is big, but can be subtle at the same time. GTD is as much as about feeling good about what you’re choosing to do, as it is feeling good about what you are choosing NOT to do. The latter comes from having a complete and current inventory of projects and actions so you know what’s not getting done when you are getting other things done.
5. You naturally start projects asking, “What’s the purpose?”
Projects don’t always arrive in neat packages. And, the purpose you see may not be the purpose others see. Getting better at GTD means you clarify the purpose on the front-end of projects, to make sure you and any others on the project are aligned to the “why?”.
How are you doing on these? Any areas of improvements?
–by Coach Kelly Forrister
Was having a convo with someone in my office today about my in-box being empty at the end of each day. The suprise on his face was one of total incomprehension.
Truth is it’s like that at the end of every day. I just wouldn’t feel right if it wasn’t. 100 emails a day?… makes no difference, I know how to process them, where to position the ones that count and need my actions, understand and put them into contexts with time and energy factors helping me process to maximum pay-off.
Yep. It’s taken 2yrs but living GTD every day and I feel so energised and relaxed.
Can’t thank GTD enough.
Fantastic John! Thanks for sharing.
Here are some shortcuts I am using to tame my inbox and boost my GTD routine: Mailstrom – a really fast way to organize and clean up your inbox. Especially empowering for those who are starting from an uncontrolled 5.000+ inbox like me ;). Boomerang Mail: Highly useful for sending mails at a specific time (e.g. Writing them on the weekend and sending them automatically on Monday morning). Evernote: I send important mails directly to my Evernote inbox for further processing.