Still struggling with implementing GTD

[unstuffed]

Hi Alison

This sounds like a really good way of doing it. One question do you ever have stickies which you have already prepared for projects which you decide not to work on this week and what do you do with them?

Sharon

Yes indeedy. It sometimes happens that I don't get everything done that day, so the sticky hangs around, then when I do the next review, I swap active projects so that sticky becomes inactive.

All I do then is stick the sticky on the inside of the folder that contains the project that's just become inactive. So for instance I have to write a film review a week for a website I'm involved with. I had a sticky that said Rewatch Tomie 2, but alas, I didn't get to it in time. So the weekly publication date for the website passed (we only update once a week, and we write a blurb about what's coming up in the next week in cinema/TV/DVD). So the project became inactive at the next review, and I just stuck that Tomie sticker inside the Cinema Reviews folder.

All my groups folders are those funky ones with a little pouch on the right hand side, so the papers don't slide around. This means the sticky stays nice, and it's there for when the next review puts the project back into active. Plain vanilla manila folders let papers slip about, and don't seem momentous enough for me (picture a stout, bewhiskered British Tory of Edwardian vintage, and that's the impression I'm aiming for ).

I also date all my stickies, and indeed my projects. This forces me to pay attention to how long I've been avoiding doing something. Otherwise, some stickies get done straight away, while others hang about forever and go stale. This also means that stickies for projects that go inactive then active again will tell me that the project has been hanging about, and I should really move it on at least one step.

Works pretty well for me. YMMV.

 

[wbc]

Hi!

Thank you for all the replies. I am still struggeling with my implementation
but I am doing better every day. I think my biggest problem was the question
when to process NAs wich is also topic of this thread .
I also tried to process my NAs on the fly and therefore I never realy was in the
flow.

I was listening to the GTDfast audiobook as I was running a half marathon on monday and I suddenly realised why I wanted to process NAs on the fly. The
reason for this is, that David Allen gives an example of how to deal with NAs
like this:
You realise that you don't have paper inboxes and you need 3 of
those - and if you are blackbelt - you write "buy 3 inboxes" immediately on a
@errands list.

And I can say, that writing NAs, for which I even know which context they are
in, on a sheet of paper and throw it in my inbox for later processing changed
my life.
Because I don't have to think about the NA/Stuff-thingy right away.

-wbc