Time and Focus Required for Proper Clarifying/Organizing

[ivanjay205]

Hi everyone,

I really love GTD and do very well with how much clarity and focus it gives me. However, in my job function (and in personal my life) I get a lot of requests per day. It is not uncommon for me to get as low as 5-6 but as many as 20 captured items per day in my system. I do capture them diligently. However, I find that the time and energy required to clarify and organize these is pretty significant. if it is 5-6 no problem. But when it starts getting north of that I dont really have the time, or frankly focus to do it properly and end up opening the laptop back up at night.
I am wondering how most handle this? I do move some to my someday/maybe list but I would say 50-60% go right into my productivity system in Omnifocus. I try to be diligent about properly breaking things into projects but again when it is nearly time to go home and this is the last thing on my plate.... well cheating presents a good option I will regret later.

My current workflow is to clarify 2x a day. I do it first thing in the morning for anything that showed up on my drive home or in the evening and again last thing before I leave work for the day. In the morning if the list is long I find myself good on the first 5 or so and after that eager to get into my day. At the end of the day same thing. First 5 or so are good and after that I want to hit the road.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Oogiem]

I get a lot of requests per day. It is not uncommon for me to get as low as 5-6 but as many as 20 captured items per day in my system

That seems really small to me, But I typically capture 8-10 items at night when I wake up and go through 2-6 pages of a small notebook during the day. Capture is easy. I would rather capture and toss than not capture and lose something.

I am wondering how most handle this? I do move some to my someday/maybe list but I would say 50-60% go right into my productivity system in Omnifocus

I try to allocate 1-2 hours a day just to properlt process my inputs and capture items. suring the day. When I run short of that time, (like over the last couple of week) my system is not geat, I know I ma missing htings and I have to work hard to stay afloat WhenI allocate enough time things flow smoothly and I cantale alot more inputs in any goven timeframe..

My workflow is that I do morning stuff (for me that's the first 2 hours afer I get up) things like coffee, breakfast, check weather, read my list of next actions that I know about by context and read the news. Another thing is to process the notes I took overnight because if I don't process my notes early in the morning I can't decipher my midnighht handwriting. Morning chores take an hour or 2, depends on how much hay we have to deliver to the sheep. Then I allocate about half an hour to do inbox processing. I almost never get through that, it's email, other electronic inboxes, more witten notes and things I've thought of when I first got up. Then I have my focused high quality work time. usually 3 hours solid. Then a break for lunch (half hour) and then after lunch in my lowest energy time I spend an hour or so handling all my inboxes. Then more focused time, followed by evening chores, dinner, maybe some TV and then what I am doing now, responding on forums, handling low energy tasks, trying to clean out most of my inboxes, reading fiction books and stories, cleaning up my PKM system, etc.

In my experience if I don't allow enough time to process new stuff I never feel like I am in control. So I'll et things slide to get enough time very couple of days to really process my inputs.

Someday/Mybe is your friend, when in doubt, dump to your S/M list(s). BY the time you get around to reviewing those lists (for me that's quarterly) some of the tasks and projects may no longer be relevant. When that happens I gleefully delete the action and assocated resource material or I put it int the appropriate S/M lst.

 

[ivanjay205]

Thanks, I actually made a lot of tweaks since this post based on some self reflection. I have moved to asking myself first is this actionable as I always did. Second question (which is the new one) is knowing my current committments does this have the potential of getting my attention this week? Assuming not I send it right to someday/maybe. This way I will pick up on my weekly review. This has been giving me a new level of clarity I did not experience before (which has resulted in even a lot more new capturing as the ideas are flowing more lol)

So that is all a good thing but a new challenge! more ideas but that is the point of GTD truthfully!