GTD system, proven over the years of practice

Our reader Oleg Bondarenko shares his proven over the years GTD-system organization of businesses and their lives. It is no secret that we know about GTD and like almost all the mechanics, but is rarely able to use them for a long time. We are confident that the success story in this field you might be interested.

Next concisely shows the personal GTD implementation in a form that has stood the test for years. Maybe someone can help.

Incoming tasks, ideas, thoughts divide as follows:

• What you can shove in the right of another artist, just push down. Add tasks, reminders, "Check the execution."
• What you can do right now for 5-15 minutes. I sit down and do it.
• Which requires more time or can not be executed right now. This includes task-reminders such as "XXX Check the condition of the project." Immediately I drive in the list of tasks on your phone or Google Tasks - all synchronized.
• What is interesting and could be promising. I take off the bunch in Evernote. About once a week reviewing, sort of notebook. Something grows into a problem.

More details on the 3rd item.

To successfully manage a list of tasks need hard formalization, minimization of costs for management and data acquisition. This is achieved as follows.

Each task has a structured type name: Project | object | Act

Project - a large group of tasks, short code such as home, office, CLIENT1,... for each project should be an average of 1-10 tasks. If the task Project consistently higher allocate part in additional projects. Thus, the grouping of tasks always one level. As shown, a visual grouping of tasks in a multi-level tree is actually unnecessarily laborious and reduces the motivation for the effective use of the system.

Search Project tasks performed basic functions: search or sort - my favorite way.

An object - a subject or a person on which you must perform an action. all just here.

Act - elementary action that is necessary to perform on the object.

Another overriding point: each task comprises execution date. If you are not sure about the term of the problem, the current place. If you put the current date and neither of which is no longer embark on, tomorrow will be the task in the list of expired and you have to take a decision thereon. For example, to remove articles about life.

Sometimes a certain project emerges list of tasks, timing and sequence of execution which is not currently clear. In this case, I am looking for some kind of a common task: Project Tasks. In comments enumerate a list of tasks. Over time, the situation becomes clearer, something is deleted, something turns, something grows into a separate task. In any case, even such a group record, I define the date - when it is necessary to seek and to audit.

And the last. In my practice about 50% of the tasks are not executed (Or can not be executed) on the selected date. Much depends not on me. Tasks such as "project status check" in general are lengthy and require periodic attention. Something refined and supplemented. Such problems are constantly postponed to a later date. This is normal (in which, incidentally, is a huge plus electronic organizers). Manual labor for postponement is useful in the sense that, sometimes, suggests an important idea.