Investigative reporter seeks ideas for using GTD

[kkerr]

I'm looking for ideas from other journalists about how they adapt David Allen's GTD method for reporting. I'm an investigative/enterprise reporter who needs to track tips (by phone/email/web/snail mail, etc.); track stories (perhaps with two story lists: short one- or two-day "projects" under the GTD plan and much larger "projects" that could take weeks or months?); always keep a list of story ideas to pull from on a slow day, etc. I plan to set up my own tickler file and am very familiar with and a huge fan of them. But I'd very much appreciate any tips and ideas to get my reporting more focused and organized. Thanks.

 

[ero213]

I'm looking for ideas from other journalists about how they adapt David Allen's GTD method for reporting. I'm an investigative/enterprise reporter who needs to track tips (by phone/email/web/snail mail, etc.); track stories (perhaps with two story lists: short one- or two-day "projects" under the GTD plan and much larger "projects" that could take weeks or months?); always keep a list of story ideas to pull from on a slow day, etc. I plan to set up my own tickler file and am very familiar with and a huge fan of them. But I'd very much appreciate any tips and ideas to get my reporting more focused and organized. Thanks.

I'm not a daily reporter or anything but I work in the journalism field. GTD works very well for the shifting priorities of this type of work. The challenge will be to find the time to work on larger/more important investigative pieces if you have daily or weekly reporting to do. I think the only way around this would be to schedule "appointments" with yourself to work on these. Other than that you can probably use all of the methodologies David Allen outlines in his books.