I swear by the Getting Things Done system and wrote a two part primer a few months back, the system was life changing for me.  I get at least one or two people weekly asking me about the system and on how to get started, so by writing this up in my blog, I now have a reference for them on how to get started.

Here are my posts:

How I get things done / Kicking some butt on your email inbox – Part 1
How I get things done / Kicking some butt on your email inbox – Part 2

Now, Merlin at 43 Folders has now also written a three part article marking his 1 year anniversary of Getting Things Done. They are great posts!

A Year of Getting Things Done: Part 1, The Good Stuff
A Year of Getting Things Done: Part 2, The Stuff I Wish I Were Better At
A Year of Getting Things Done: Part 3, The Future of GTD?

Once you adopt the system and if you use Outlook, you’ll find that tasks is your most important view from Outlook. If you use the GTD Outlook Add-In (which I strongly recommend) you might want to also paste in the GTD Police Macro that I found recently on the Getting Things Done Add-In Support Forum.

With the Getting Things Done Add-In, you will find yourself driving completion of projects by creating new Outlook tasks and asking yourself, “What is the next action that I need to take this project forward?”. The Task is assigned to a project. It can be a bit of a pain creating new tasks whenever you complete a task for a project,  as most projects take more than one step to complete. 

The GTD Police Macro simplifies it all by monitoring your tasks folder and when you complete a task that is associated with a project, a dialog box opens asking you whether you want to create a new Next Action for the project. Answering yes causes a task form to open and automatically assigned to the project.

The last resource I give you for the new year is Sylvia’s Getting Things Done Resource Page where you’ll find diagrams and links. Office Zealot has an awesome GTD section as well with links to articles and blogs!

Big thanks to Lenn Pryor who a couple of years back let me know about Getting Things Done. It changed my life, let me know if you adopt the practice.