This link:
http://lisapeake.robertpeake.com/archives/37-Emergency-GTD.html
has an article on Emergency GTD by Lisa Peake. Whenever I fall off the GTD wagon I use David Allen's suggestion of "yellow-taping" (i.e. stashing for later processing) out-of-date lists and projects, and then use Lisa Peake's article to get current.
This is how I do it:
1. "Yellow-tape" all my out of date lists/projects.
I use Outlook as my GTD "hub" and index cards as my "take-with-me" lists. So I create, under my Outlook Tasks folder, a folder called something like "yellow-tape tasks" into which I slide all my old out-of-date commitments. I can still access them if I have to, but I don't have to process them until I'm back on GTD track. The index cards task lists (Next Actions by context) I toss, because I'll recreate current lists in the next step.
2. Follow the steps of Lisa Peake's Emergency GTD.
This is, in essence, an emergency review, compressing the steps of collect/process/organize/review. I open a document on my computer, and begin typing out a list of "what's on my mind," as completely as I can manage for about 5 minutes or until you feel the pressure coming off. Then I begin processing each item as I would any collection list: Outcome? Project or action? Etc. As soon as I have a clear sense of what I NEED to do now and what I CAN get done today, I stop doing this and get to work.
If I have time later in the day--I'll begin moving the items I came up with into appropriate action lists in Outlook and my index cards. If I don't have time, I'll repeat the Emergency GTD process daily until the crisis has passed and I have time to do a proper weekly review.
I love this method because when I'm off track, it's generally because l feel too busy to do anything like reading the whole book or listening to the GTD CDs or taking two days off to collect my stuff. This way I can find my way back to a fully-functioning GTD system with a short series of small steps.
Dina