During his initial description of the collecting process, David Allen talks about taking everything off of (and, in some cases, out of) your desk and plopping it into your in-basket for processing (whether it will ultimately translate into a task/project notwithstanding). Having a desk at home (which I share with my wife) and a desk at the office (all mine), I’ve come to realize just how great an impact the state of your work area can have on productivity. Much like you can tell a lot about a man by his shoes, you can tell quite a bit about a person’s mental state by looking at their work area.

With regards to my co-desk at home, I’ve taken to adding a quick cleaning of the desk to my weekly review. My wife (not a GTDer – yet) has a few small stacks of paper/letters/bills/etc. that she keeps in the corner of the desk, as well as a few odds and ends that may get left out over the course of the week. This isn’t really a problem, per se, but I’m somewhat anal about the state of my work area. Which leads me to my work desk…

Now, I’d like to tell you that I run a tight ship while I’m at work, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. I’ve got my in-basket, index cards, paper clips, etc. – all the essentials. The problem is the right-most side of the area (that I can’t see while facing my computer). That tends to become the “toss it over my shoulder and deal with it later” area. Clearly, this won’t do. A personal goal I’ve set for myself is to make a thorough desk-cleaning party of my review at work (I’ll explain why I do two reviews some other time – suffice it to say, it’s the best method I’ve come up with thus far).

I know I’m not saying anything new here, but I look at keeping a clean desk in much the same way I look at keeping a clean head – maintenance is required

Technorati Tags: gtd, productivity, work, desks, clarity

I’m a real all-or-nothing kind of guy. If I discover a new band or musician that I like, I’ll immediately acquire everything they’ve made (which may explain my subconscious aversion to The Beatles, but I digress). So it would follow that I would sleep better knowing that my capture methods were truly ubiquitous; that I [...]

Over all of the previous iterations of my GTD system, Google Calendar has always been a common thread. While all my other tools moved toward paper-based solutions, I always stuck with Google Calendar because it was (almost) as “always-on” as my paper tools. I could add events and get alerts from my cell phone, from [...]

Punky over at WhatsTheNextAction.com has posted a list of 5 different GTD systems/tools he’s tried and subsequently stopped using, as well as why he stopped using them.  A very useful list for new GTDers looking for ideas on how to design their personal systems. Obviously, everybody has a different way of working best, so this [...]

My new buddy gtdfrk from flickr (I’d post his real first name if I knew what it was – sorry has a really cool Moleskine hack using an Infobook and a labeler to create pocket-sized GTD system.  Definitely worth checking out if you’re an analog GTD’er on the go! Technorati Tags: moleskine, gtd, analog gtd, [...]

[Edit] A special welcome to all the visitors from lifehack.org – thanks for stopping by! As previously mentioned, my lovely wife bought a Moleskine Memo Pocket for me for Christmas. After carrying it around in my non-wallet back pocket for about a week, I started to get a little bothered by how cumbersome it was, [...]

A couple nuggets I picked up while spending a year writing a custom credit card processing gateway from scratch (pro tip: avoid doing this if you can). Short Version is you should always walk inside and pay the attendant instead of paying at the pump, here’s why (long version):

Let me start off by saying that I’m still a budding GTD’er, so this won’t be the be-all, end-all guide to doing a weekly review. This is just the method that I’ve established (so far) and it’s worked pretty well.

Most of you have probably already seen this, but if you haven’t, the mann has posted a fantastic collection of GTD-related links (to previous blog posts) over at 43Folders.  Definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in some of the intricacies of GTD.