Getting Things Done, abbreviated GTD, is “an action management method created by David Allen” (Wikipedia).

I happened to stumble across GTD when I was looking for useful and rewarding audio books to listen to while I was running, and while it hasn’t exactly changed my life it has definitely made it more easy to live in.

At the time (about a year ago), I was living and working in a very stressful environment. I had just started my first game studio (Black Drop Studios), together with three others, as well as begun the third and final year of my Bachelor’s program in game design. It is safe to say that I was in dire need of action management in order to maintain any semblance of sanity.

So what is this fabled action management you say? Well, what David Allen proposes is that you implement a system in which you place all of your projects, thoughts, actions, ideas etc. The main purpose is to get EVERYTHING out of your head and into a system that you can trust to keep track of all your data.

The definition of stress, at least for me, is lack of control. When I have an abundance of things floating around in my head that needs my immediate attention I tend to get stressed out and then my efficiency and focus levels drop accordingly. So with GTD, as soon as a thought pops into my head I write it down and get it into the system. This could be any thought at all, e.g. something to do, something to read, someone to see or somewhere to be. It doesn’t matter what it is, I just write it down and get it into the system. This is called Collecting, and is the first of the five different phases of the GTD workflow.

Once you have collected something you place it in your Inbox, which can be either a physical box or part of a digital action management application. Since I am quite tech oriented, I mainly use digital tools, but I have recently begun to use physical Inboxes both at home and at work. The collection process should be as quick and smooth as possible, so that when you remember that important, mission critical data, you can capture it instantly. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you have no means of collecting the data, so always have pen, paper, or your digital organizer, close at hand.

When you collect data this way you don’t deal with things as soon as they appear. This might seem like a sure way to get stressed, but the thing is that as soon as I capture a thought and put it into my Inbox I can relax, because I know that the thought is now safe and that it will be dealt with. This part of GTD is definitely the one that I have managed to really incorporate in my everyday routines, which has resulted in heaps of data that needs processing.

This leads me to the next phase of GTD, namely Processing, but that is for a future entry.