By now, the chances of someone being a active and widely read participant in the blogosphere and not having heard of David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" are likely slim. Site that feature articles relating to "GTD" implementation, sites like 43folders, Lifehacker, and lifehack.org, are doing major amounts of traffic to an eager audience looking for new ways of improving their productivity. Even some sites that don't specialize in lifehacks, productivity pr0n, and "15 Ways To Clear Your Inbox" seem to have jumped on the bandwagon and make reference to GTD related items on occasion.

As someone who is about as naturally unproductive as they come, I am fascinated by the ways people keep themselves productive, especially if that method seems simple and comprised of common sense ideas. The little I was able to pick up from reading the sites above convinced me that David Allen's system met those two criteria, so I swung by my local literary megastore for a copy of the book. After reading the book, I searched about online and discovered that everyone but me had written a review of the book. This post is my attempt to rectify that.

First, the book itself. Much of the advice and technique offered in the book is not new I suspect. What is new is the total system presented when these things are joined together. David Allen spins new and, in many cases, fun ways of looking at to do lists, calendering, and filing. The only complaint I came away from the book with is the writing style. Since Mr. Allen's primary audience is busy executives, he writes in a form of bizspeak that they are comfortable with but which the average schmoe (me, for example) finds tedious and uninformative. To put it another way, the book would be stronger if the writing style were as no nonsense as the advice it presents.

Next, the GTD process itself, or more accurately, my implementation of it. I realized early in the book that the process in its entirety was not going to be for me; I am simply not busy enough to make use of the full system. But, several of the ideas are so useful and simple to implement that it seems sinful not to put some of the ideas to use. Of use here is an article at PigPog.com called "Doing GTD Without Doing GTD" that was very helpful in breaking down what parts of the system might be useful to someone not going all the way. My own meager wiles and the PigPog article have led to the following system, which I am still tweaking slightly.

• The first obvious (for me) part of the system to keep is the concept of getting rid of to do lists, and instead using Project and contextualized Next Actions lists. I use Backpack by 37signals, which I have set as my homepage, to manage both sets of lists with my Next Actions list as the main page. For those who have not read the book, the difference between NA lists and to do lists is that NA lists are composed only of actual next actions that can be accomplished, contextualized by things like @computer or @phone, not vauge projects and actions mixed together (e.g. 'call jeff about burning pirated copy of photoshop' not 'get photo editing software'). I also use Backpack to store my general lists, like wishlists, gift ideas, ideas, and the occasional one line bits of flotsam I pick up on the web.


• Next, I kept the idea of instant capturing, and always having a capture tool on hand. I carry two Moleskine Cahiers in my pocket, one lined and one blank, and a mini G2 pen. Also, in deference to my propensity for overpacking, I carry a picopad in my wallet. I love the Cahiers because they are so light and bendable that I forget that I am carrying them, unlike the standard Moleskine I used to carry. I can also use my cell phone as a sort of capture pad using the Gmail as a journal hack by setting up new contacts for each tag I use and then SMSing myself. In the unfortunate and unlikely failure of all these, I have an iTalk for my iPod.


• Finally, I started using a calendar to help remind me of upcoming events. This may seem like the most "duh" of the parts of the system to have already been using, but paper based calendars never worked for me, so the advent of web based tools has been a huge boon for me in this area. Even though Backpack, which I already mentioned above, has a nice new calendar app built in, I prefer Google Calendar, mostly due to the ability to SMS (I am very big on SMS) new events to your calendar. I still use Backpack's reminder system on occasion, and if they add new features like the one above, I might switch over completely.