Update: I've received some great suggestions and links to other resources in the comments to this post - check them out and feel free to add your own tips and experiences.
You should also check out a great riff on this topic by John at Success Begins Today [link]
-- Dwayne
As a long-time Getting Things Done (GTD) follower, I love it and I hate it. I love it because it's simple, powerful, and flexible. I hate it because it's too flexible. I've had a hard time getting a specific workflow down and sticking to it. GTD doesn't have rigid "props" for me to use as mental queues like many other systems (with the Franklin-Covey systems, you can "ground yourself" to the daily task list - with GTD, there are a number of lists).
Part of my new year reset is to try to streamline my use of GTD and establish better rituals to help me keep up a consistent approach to evaluating my choices, scheduling, etc. (if you've visited here in the past, you'll know that this sort of thing is a recurring theme for me - I'm a bit of a GTD binge user).
If you have experiences or resources that have helped you create a set of daily habits for GTD, please let me know.
Please note that I'm not after yet another copy of David Allen's GTD Workflow chart - I know that one very well. What I am looking for is something that provides periodic nudges to condition me to automatically look to the lists, etc. as I find myself in between scheduled tasks. Something about the way I'm wired causes me to drift away from my lists, and I think I need some cues to bring me back to them.
This might be easier if I had the same routine every day, but I travel a lot and end up doing a lot of opportunistic things based on the work that I do. Rituals that will work regardless of location, time, etc. would be best. Other considerations are that I work with Outlook as my calendaring program (synced to my Treo 650 via Goodlink), and am using KeyNotes and KeyTasks to sync my notes and tasks with Outlook (Goodlink doesn't handle categories - that's a fatal flaw).
As I dusted off the old search engine, I've found some great articles from other practitioners that I think are worth sharing.
- Sylvia's GTD diagrams Sylvia's stuff seems like it'd be easier if I worked in the same place every day, but this is the closest I've found to what I'm looking for
- Dave Pollard on a streamlined workflow for GTD
- Michael Hyatt on his "Daily Disciplines" (this is a promising approach)
- 43F on a daily GTD workflow
- Steve Pavlina on Quarterly Planning time (doesn't help me with my daily workflow, but I thought it was very useful anyway)
The interesting thing I've noticed is how many of my blogging pals have already commented on the articles I've found - I don't feel so alone in this after all
Got others? Please share.