海角大神

Getting things done 101: Corral your projects into one notebook

In part five of the series on getting things done, a look at how to collect all the things you should do into a single notebook.

This is the fifth entry in a fourteen part series discussing the time management classic by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings through July 16.

, we discussed what exactly you need to have in place to get yourself organized (time, a bit of space, and a few supplies). What鈥檚 the first step in that organization process? Collecting. In other words, now is the time to corral all of that stuff you鈥檝e got floating around in your mind and in various places.

What exactly does that mean? To put it simply, you鈥檙e just going to spend time gathering all of the stuff you need to do and haven鈥檛 yet completed into one place. A lot of it is going to be in your head, but you鈥檙e going to want to get it out of there. Other things will be spread throughout your house. Quite a few will probably be on your computer. Some may be in your car. Some may be at work.

It takes longer than you think. Allen, on page 104, estimates a few hours:

When I coach a client through this process, the collection phase usually takes between one and six hours, though it did take all of twenty hours with one person (finally I told him, 鈥淵ou get the idea鈥�).

Most people expect that the process will take just a few minutes, but it doesn鈥檛 work like that, not if you鈥檙e thorough. The first time I thoroughly did this (sometime in 2005), it took me about four hours to put everything down.

Every once in a while, I do the whole thing again, just to make sure nothing I need to be addressing has fallen through the cracks. It still takes me about two hours to collect everything.

Now, it鈥檚 important to note that I鈥檓 collecting stuff for both my personal life and my professional life. I work from home, so the line between the two in terms of my 鈥渢o-do鈥� lists is often incredibly blurry. Many days, I practically alternate between 鈥渨ork鈥� tasks and 鈥減ersonal鈥� tasks. Plus, with the type of work that I do (it amounts to being a freelance writer when you bundle everything together, I suppose), there are always lots of little things I need to be remembering, so my collection time for professional stuff might be longer than it is for others.

Still, even if you鈥檙e unemployed, the collection process should take a good hour, minimum.

Another important part of this equation is that all you should be focused on is collecting stuff, not actually doing stuff. It can be really tempting when you鈥檙e collecting together all of the stuff to actually do many of the simple tasks, but that鈥檚 actually counterproductive because you never actually end up collecting all of the stuff you need to collect. Allen explains on page 105:

There are very practical reasons to gather everything before you start processing it:

1 | it鈥檚 helpful to have a sense of the volume of stuff you have to deal with;
2 | it lets you know where the 鈥渆nd of the tunnel鈥� is; and
3 | when you鈥檙e processing and organizing, you don鈥檛 want to be distracted psychologically by an amorphos mass of stuff that might still be 鈥渟omewhere.鈥� Once you have all of the things that require your attention gathered in one place, you鈥檒l automatically be operating from a state of enhanced focus and control.

The interesting part about this really is the sense of control and freedom you get when everything is collected in one place鈥� but I鈥檒l get to that again in a minute.

So How Do You Actually Do It?
Rather than go into great detail about how Allen explains it, I think it works best if I explained exactly how I鈥檝e done it in the past that worked well for me.

First, I just sat down with a big, thick notebook in front of me and started thinking of all of the stuff left undone in my life. Each item took up a full page in that notebook, giving me plenty of room to jot down any notes about it that I need to remember.

As I wrote down a task, I literally tore the sheet out of the notebook and tossed it in the inbox on my desk.

What did I think about? Allen offers a list of things to think about several pages long, starting on page 114 of the book. Here鈥檚 a sampling from the 鈥減ersonal鈥� part of the list:

Projects started, not completed
Projects that need to be started
Commitments/promises to others:
- Spouse
- Children
- Family
- Friends
- Professionals
- Borrowed items
Projects: other organizations
- Civic
- Service
- Volunteer
Communications to make/get
- Family
- Friends
- Professional
- Initiate or respond to:
=== Phone calls
=== Letters
=== Calls
Upcoming events [...]

This giant list goes on for several pages. I simply spent a moment thinking about each item and jotting down everything that came into my mind related to it. I didn鈥檛 worry about duplicating items, either, because I can deal with duplications later on when I process the pile. My goal is to collect everything, not to worry about organization.

After that was done, I toured my house, visiting every single room in it. I looked into cabinets and closets and dresser drawers. Whenever I saw something that needed to be done, I jotted it down in that notebook (one item per page), and when I returned to my office, I tore out all of those pages and tossed them in my inbox. In some cases, I actually picked up the physical item, like mail and magazines and such.

Key places to look include your email inbox (print off all emails that require some action), desk drawers, countertops, closets, the inside of any and all cabinets, the little drawers in your end tables, the top of your refrigerator, the back of the laundry room, and so on. Every place where you鈥檝e hidden away stuff because you were unsure how to deal with it is a key place to look. And if you鈥檙e like virtually everyone else in America, you鈥檒l find a lot of stuff you haven鈥檛 dealt with.

The first time I did this, I had almost 1,000 things in my inbox. I鈥檓 not kidding in the least 鈥� it was an amazing pile of stuff. And here鈥檚 the thing 鈥� you probably will, too.

In fact, one common problem is that you completely overwhelm whatever you have set up as an 鈥渋n鈥� basket. Allen is there for the save, on page 108:

If you鈥檙e like 98 percent of my clients, your initial gathering activity will collect much more than can comfortably be stacked in an in-basket. If that鈥檚 the case, just create stacks around the in-basket, and maybe even on the floor underneath it. Ultimately you鈥檒l be emptying the in-stacks, as you process and organize everything. In the meantime,though, make sure that there鈥檚 some obvious visual distinction between the stacks that are 鈥渋n鈥� and everything else.

I certainly had several stacks. At the time, we still lived in the old tiny apartment, so the stacks took up much of the kitchen table for a day.

It鈥檚 easy to get overwhelmed when you see that kind of accumulation. I was a bit overwhelmed at first, but what I found was that when I realized that everything I needed to take care of in my entire life was in those piles and I didn鈥檛 have to think about them at all any more, it became much, much, much easier to deal with all of it. I didn鈥檛 have to have items stuck in my head to remember them any more and for the first time in a very long time, my mind wasn鈥檛 crowded with lists of things left undone. That filled me with a lot of physical and mental energy as I began charging through the big pile of stuff, processing all of it.

What usually scares people about the pile is that they鈥檙e not sure what they鈥檙e actually going to do with all of that stuff. 鈥淲here will all of this stuff go?鈥� they鈥檒l ask themselves. Allen riffs on this on page 118:

When you鈥檝e done all that, you鈥檙e ready to take the next step. You don鈥檛 want to leave anything in 鈥渋n鈥� for an indefinite period of time, because then it would without fail creep back into your psyche again, since your mind would know you weren鈥檛 dealing with it. Of course, one of the main factors in people鈥檚 resistance to collecting stuff into 鈥渋n鈥� is the lack of a good processing and organizing methodology to handle it.

And that鈥檚 exactly what will happen next 鈥� building a good organizing and processing methodology to handle all of that stuff in your inbox.

Next time, we鈥檒l look at chapter six, which focuses on the 鈥減rocess鈥� portion of this system.

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