GTD & Organization

I've been busy the past week working on setting up a GTD system. I've been reading the blogosphere and webpages about setting it up and making it work. I have the book waiting to order from Amazon, but I decided I'll get started.

I've made a rather pleasant discovery that what I have to process-my inbox so to speak isn't really all that much. I was apprehensive since I've read of people needing laundry baskets for their inboxes. I have a accordion folder of notes I've already organized and a single plastic letter tray with a stack of papers to process. Outlook has been set up and I'll be getting the whitepaper to double check. I've been a follower of FlyLady since 2002 off and on and it shows. I have a rudimentary routine set up already, just gotta do it so to speak. I've gotten some things setup in Outlook already like birthdays, anniversaries, and family events. Financial papers like bills, statements, and receipts are in a 13 pocket accordion check file and each week I add receipts to Money and to PearBudget which tracks my cash expenditures. I also download updated statements from my bank to Money and check to see what bills need to be paid. My books have been cataloged so I have a good idea of what I have so I won't buy duplicates unless the book in question is falling apart like some of my David Eddings books. I do have to move my addresses from my analog address book but that's not essential since the book in question is easy to find. I'll be using a second 3-ring binder to make my own planner with preprinted address pages and printouts from Outlook of my daily, weekly and monthly calendars along with tasks and plenty of paper for notes.

My system so far is as follows:

• Outlook XP: For calendar, project management and to-do list and a contacts list

• Thunderbird: Email and newsgroups since I've had issues with Outlook and its email threading

• FireFox: For browsing and with Sage installed RSS feeds

• White letter size legal pads for notes

• A 2" 3-ring binder for my Control Journal

• EverNote: I'm using it for notes and webclippings and I could have used this a long time ago.

Edit: Added link to David Allen's page explaining GTD

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