What is GTD*?

GTD is short for "Getting Things Done*". It's a system for personal productivity created by David Allen. Here's a more formal definition.

Here, you can learn about GTD, and how to do it using Note Studio.

Important:
Now, there are many different ways to do GTD, and Note Studio is only one of them. Unless his official website says otherwise, David Allen does not endorse Note Studio, and we have no connection with his company.

In fact, we designed Note Studio long before we heard about GTD. It's only after our users kept telling us how they loved Note Studio for GTD, that we thought we'd better investigate what GTD actually was. Now, we're converted!

If you're interested in GTD, why don't you check out David Allen's website. We highly recommend both the GTD book and the audio book.

* GTD® and Getting Things Done® are registered trademarks of Davidco

Note Studio GTD Refresher

6. Processing the Inbox

I've just told you that it's really important to get your inbox to empty. In GTD, the aim is to get your inbox to empty, and keep it that way. Of course, as soon as it's empty, it will start to fill up again, but then next time you 'process' your inbox, it should go back to empty. Empty inbox is your basic, desired state.

So what does Dave Allen mean when he talks about 'processing' your inbox? Well, he definitely don't mean that you actually have to do the work itself. No way. Processing means examining the contents of each item in your inbox, identifying what it is, and deciding what to do with it. You will find that things fit into three broad categories.

Discardable items

These are items which have no work embedded in them. You can delete them, throw them in the bin, burn them, whatever.

Reference/Someday-maybe items

There are some items which don't create any tasks for you to do, but contain some reference information that you might want in the future. For example, it might be someone's business card which you want to put into your list of contacts. It might be a phone number, or a document. This type of item makes it into your reference system.

Alternatively, it might be an item which you're not going to act on now, but you might in the future. This might be information on a course you're thinking of taking one day, or so on. GTD allows you to keep track of things like this in your some-day maybe lists.

Action Items

These items actually create work for you to do. It might be a bill you need to pay, a phone call you need to reply to, or a report you need to write.

Tips For Emptying Your Inbox

Once you have identified what sort of item you are looking at, then you put it into your system. Either you discard the item, you put it into your reference system, or you capture it in your list of action items. Once it has been classified, the item is removed from your inbox. This is why your inbox goes back to empty.

Sometimes you will look at an item, and not really be sure what to do about it. If asked, you'd say "I need to think about that for a while", then you'll want to put it straight back into your inbox. Resist this temptation. A lot of the time, it's just an excuse for sloppy or lazy thinking, rather than thinking properly right now. GTD does require that you think rigorously. Will you really have more information later? Or are you just deferring making a decision, because it's more comfortable that way?

If you genuinely will have more information later, then fine. Put it into your action system, as something you're waiting for. I talk about how to handle items you're waiting on in a separate section. But when you do that, you're actually handling that item. It no longer remains in your inbox. There is no reason to leave things in your inbox.

How often would you process your inbox like this? At least once per day. Obviously, processing your inbox needs to be a quick task, not something you dread. This is why you need to have an empty inbox, so it doesn't have time to get very full. This also means that you can't take too long to process any particular item.

For example, one of the GTD structures is a read/review pile. This might be a journal that you will read later. People want to leave that journal in their inbox until they actually read it. No - putting it into your read/review pile takes 2 seconds, and actually gets the item out of your inbox.

You should be getting the message loud and clear that an empty inbox is very important. In fact, the first thing you should go out and do, when you start using GTD, is empty your inbox. This might mean going through five thousand emails, and getting them out of your inbox! My advice for a task like this is to set up a separate mailbox called "old inbox", and dragging the entire contents there. Then, you still have all your old emails, for reference purposes (and you'll be surprised how rarely you'll actually need them), and you have a completely clean inbox. If you're a neat-freak, you can go through that old inbox later and sort your emails, if that's what you prefer to do. But get that inbox empty! And once it's empty, keep it that way! It will actually change your life.

Note Studio and Processing Your Inbox

Normally, as I process my inbox, I create or update projects. These projects are represented by individual pages in my Note Studio GTD book. I use Note Studio as my official, definitive list of all my projects, no matter which path the item took to reach me (which inbox it came from). It's important to have all your projects listed. If you don't, if instead you have some projects listed in Note Studio, others in a notebook, others in your diary, then you never actually have a definitive list, so you don't have all the information you need in any one place.

Having all my projects in my GTD book means that I can also hot-synch them to my Palm, which means I can carry all this information around with me, and have it available no matter where I am, or what I'm doing.

Contents ~ Next