Reading David Allen’s personal productivity manual, Getting Things Done, is fast becoming a rite of passage for young entrepreneurs.  Some even go a step further and write up their top implementation tips for a GTD system, others have created software to catalogue each and every to-do.  In the spirit of getting this blog going I’d like to share my 2 pages of notes which I think do a fairly good job of wrapping up Allen’s 258 pages - who knows, maybe he started with 2 pages of notes and the publishers felt it needed a bit of padding…

Or if you are impatient/can’t read my scrawl, here are the key insights.

• Write down everything which you need to do in an actionable form (ie butter toast rather than make breakfast) and add it to an organised to do list.
• Have other lists for longer term goals / responsibilities / life plans / anything you want to keep check on.
• Keep you lists tidy and review them every week (or month for longer term ones).

I’ve made sure everything I need doing is captured for quite a while now and can vouch for the piece of mind created by having a feeling of control over your tasks.  I’m going to start regularly checking my longer term goals, I’ve sometimes let these slip as I haven’t created actionable items which can fit into the daily actions list.

I’ve still got a long way to go, has anyone (ever) mastered:

• Emails - that dangerous todo list which anyone can add to
• Capturing todos when on the move (my notepad doesn’t fit in my pocket…)