GTD after moving

P

PsychTau

0
Hello!

I've been reading this board for a long while, but never really posted. Now I need some good feedback.....

I'm moving this week 14 hours away from my current home. While it's a little too late to fully use GTD to organize this move (I'm sitting on the floor amidst a pile of boxes.....), I do have a full week in my new home before I start my new job. I would like to use the GTD process to completely organize and capture everything in my "home office" so that I will have some sort of control before work starts.

So, any advice on how to do this? I already have one box that's labelled the "Inbox" for pieces of paper that I uncover while packing that need to be processed. I guess in essence, my entire office bedroom would become the inbox. My thought right now is to GTD each box as I open it. That would take a while, but I'm tired of all the extra crap that I have and not being able to put my hands on info that I need.

I have a filing system (that will be tweaked, but it's a good start) so I'm not 100% starting from scratch. I guess I need some good ideas and some encouragement, because this will be an overwhelming task, to say the least.

Thanks for your help!!! (Beware I may not be too responsive after Wednesday, because we leave Thursday, and I don't know when the computer will be up and running again).

PsychTau
 
This isn't in line with the essential elements of GTD, but you might want to designate a second-tier inbox which would hold things that need to be dealt with on a short-term basis but not immediately. This will give you an opportunity to move more rapidly through your "HUH!" stacks and get the truly urgent and 2-minute things out of the way while not letting something important languish.

One warning - if you take this approach you just need to commit yourself to return to that second-tier inbox as soon as you complete your first pass through your stuff. There would be a great temptation to avoid returning to the second-tier inbox because you will feel a great sense of accomplishment after completing the initial triage and you may naturally resist something which may upset that feeling of acocmplishment.

After about 12+ weeks of GTD I'm doing something similar to what I just described above, and I can tell you that it takes an extreme act of will to tackle that second-tier inbox. On the other hand, this sets up a system whereby you can trust that something urgent or of hig priority isn't missed while you are getting underway.
 
Can't resist commmenting because the mess I am using GTD to get out of includes the results of several ill-planned moves, as well as baseline fuzzy thinking and committments to too many things. Most of all, define a successful outcome of your unpacking process and its various stages. If you are going to process everything you unpack, you may need to give some guidelines to yourself and you may end up with some SDMB boxes. I would keep to the A to Z file system if you are expecting to put a lot of stuff into new folders, but I might keep fincial and essential personal papers in their own location. My situation involves a backlog of papers and objects, but something that is truly helping me is that I as I unpack, I am enter on my desk top's Palm Software my projects, NAs, and entering names and addresses. One other hint, using either a hand-entered address book or your address list, one can note where you put things. For example, my basement and my garage are two of the furthest points from each other in my whole house and there is utility cupboard about 1/2 between. Under "E" I have Electric Drill --Utility Cupboard (date).
 
Can't resist commmenting because the mess I am using GTD to get out of includes the results of several ill-planned moves, as well as baseline fuzzy thinking and committments to too many things. Most of all, define a successful outcome of your unpacking process and its various stages. If you are going to process everything you unpack, you may need to give some guidelines to yourself and you may end up with some SDMB boxes. I would keep to the A to Z file system if you are expecting to put a lot of stuff into new folders, but I might keep fincial and essential personal papers in their own location. My situation involves a backlog of papers and objects, but something that is truly helping me is that I as I unpack, I am enter on my desk top's Palm Software my projects, NAs, and entering names and addresses. One other hint, using either a hand-entered address book or your address list, one can note where you put things. For example, my basement and my garage are two of the furthest points from each other in my whole house and there is utility cupboard about 1/2 between. Under "E" I have Electric Drill --Utility Cupboard (date).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top