I honestly have no idea how people would be able to function without this, especially if you’re living in Singapore. With how fast-paced society is, plans and ideas constantly popping up, advertising and social media algorithms bombarding you with content, how do you remove the distractions, and prioritise what’s important?
The solution: The GTD Productivity System created by David Allen. If we were like our primitive ancestors, living in nature without the constant bombardments of modern society, then this system might not be necessary. But David Allen foresaw how rapidly our modern society was evolving into, and articulated the solution back in 2001.
I have used the system for the past 5 years, and it has been remarkable. I’d be far more stressed, overwhelmed, unproductive and at a loss without it. It is truly a remarkable system that I recommend everyone try. In this post, I’ll describe the principles and method of the system (Though if you’re serious about incorporating this, I highly recommend reading David Allen’s book ‘Getting Things Done’ for more details and suggestions on how to adapt the system to your life):
Principles:
The GTD system (GTD stands for ‘Getting Things Done’) is basically a note-taking system where during your day, if any notable ideas, to-dos, or plans pops up in your mind, you write it down somewhere, organise them later, and then review them. If you look at the lives of highly productive people: top students or lawyers or businessmen, very likely they’re not just counting on their brain to recall things, they have some kind of system where they physically take note of ideas and organise plans.
The core principle of GTD is this: Simply counting on your brain to remember and store ideas is insane. Any important ideas or plans that you haven’t dealt with, takes up space in your mind, and that slowly builds up and overwhelms you. If you’re in such a state, you constantly do things that are trivial to feel less overwhelmed, while neglecting actually important tasks that gets you closer to your life’s goals. You’re feeling more stressed, and working harder, yet achieving less.
So the solution: you create a system where you organise and review those ideas. Because there are plenty of things that seem interesting that you may want to do (watch 30-minute Hong Kong protest video suggested to me on Youtube, or Go to Gardens By The Bay), or things you can’t do right away (like a movie that’s coming out in 3 months, or a friend from overseas you’ll meet 2 weeks later). That fills space in your mind, until you either do it, or you note and review it. And since there are hundreds of things you want to do that you can’t or shouldn’t do right away, you should just take a note, and review it.
Steps
So these are the steps and routines of the GTD system I personally use and recommend (But obviously, your life might be radically different from mine and there are certain lists I neglect that might be great for you. So once again for more detail on the system and to find the lists and strategies that best suit you, read David Allen’s Book ‘Getting Things Done’).
Basically, I have an ‘inbox’ note, both on my phone and on my computer (You can use any notetaking apps or even paper and pen, I use Google docs). Any to-dos, events or ideas that pops up in my head that I haven’t had before, I place it in the inbox (For example, I could note: write blog post about importance of public protest in Singapore. Or Go Explore Little India. Or read Sun Wu Kong Books). I write the most recent ideas at the top of note so the oldest ideas would be at the bottom.
I also have a ‘Now’ note. This I put whatever things I want to do within a day or so. If I know something is a ‘Now’, I place it immediately at ‘Now’ instead of the inbox.
After about a week, I look through the inbox starting from the bottom, and either I split it up into different lists, discard the idea if I don’t think it’s important enough to care about, or if the task takes less than a few minutes, I just do it right away (Like disable Amazon Prime subscription for example).
The list I use most often: the someday maybe list. These are stuff you think you want to do at some point in your life (Go to Chinatown, learn drawing, reconnect with Uncle George, whatever).
Then there’s your Calendar, where obviously you put events or deadlines you have to meet into specific dates (For example: Tuesday post donation blog post by 6pm, Mom buying food at 8pm. Or August 22nd, Cousin James’ Wedding at 2pm St Juniper’s Church.) On your phone you can even put alarms to remind you.
Then there are lists that are specific to your situation. I place a lot of stuff on my ‘someday maybe’, but once it seems like there’s so many items that are similar in theme, I create a new list for it (For example: ‘Blog Post ideas’, or ‘Movies I wanna watch’:).
So naturally, there’s also the Projects lists, all the steps and stuff you wanna do for a specific project (Like Learning painting list: get painting books, buy supplies, try painting once a week, ask best friend George for painting tips etc.)
And then there’s all the stuff in your inbox that you just wanna store, like contact numbers, workout routines, diary entries, notes from books etc. So you can put all of that in reference lists and folders. You can put an index in the front of your reference folder to find things easily. All I do is just have a content page with the topics in order (eg. Contents: Letters, Workout routines, Notes from books, Dream diary etc.)
And by the way, we’ve just been talking about written notes, but all the stuff in the inbox and lists can of course also be physical items. So either you can have a physical inbox and reference area solely for arranging physical items, and/or you write a note in your inbox telling you where that physical item is and what you want to do with it (cameras at corner of bedroom, sell it someday maybe).
So with all of that, I write in my inbox (Or Now list) whenever ideas pop up in my head. I look at my Now list every day and delete it once the task is complete. I look through the inbox and split it up into lists once a week. I review those lists maybe once a month, and the reference folder once every 3 months. How often you process the inbox and review the lists is up to you. Matter of fact, David Allen recommends processing the Inbox every day and reviewing the lists every week (Though for me I never needed to be that frequent). Also if you’re just starting out, you definitely should spend a day, or many days, just doing GTD. Placing every idea you ever had in your life down on your inbox, generating hundreds or thousands of inputs, and then splitting it up into respective lists.
It’s quite a lot of steps for a fully functional GTD system, which is why David Allen said you probably need a year or 2 before you get a black belt in GTD. I recommend incorporating just a few of the most important steps at a time. So maybe just start off with writing everything in your inbox and setting up a Now page (Or depending on you, maybe your calendar or certain projects lists are most important).
Conclusion
Gone are the days where you have an ingenious idea for your life, you randomly write it down on scraps of papers you found lying in airport, and eventually it’s lost within junk and just forgotten or discarded. Plenty of great, life-altering ideas are formed by people every day, yet they’re never prioritised or acted on, because they’re drowned out by all of modern society’s distractions. The GTD system rectifies that.
It’s also said that any important plan or idea that isn’t processed, takes up space in your mind, space that could otherwise be spent on creative thinking, generating new and innovative ideas. So you haven’t just lost the great ideas you’ve created, but also the ones that you could have created.
It’s time to stop feeling overwhelmed, to be more creative, and to prioritise and do what’s most important for your life. It’s time to Get Things Done, it’s time to do GTD.
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