Well, today was the collection day. For those of you have have not read or are not familiar with the Getting Things Done methodology from David Allen, the collection day is where you collect all of your “stuff” into your inbox. This is a different task for everybody but I would like to explain how this was for me.

I now work from home in my home office. This is a 10ft x 10ft room with a desk, cupboard and bookcase done out in a very Ikea fashion. About six months of “stuff” has collected in the various drawers and shelves in my study, so today was the day to collect all of this into my inbox.

In preparation, I purchased two 80 liter storage crates that I would use as my oversized inbox. Armed with these I set about clearing and collecting my stuff.

For this collection task, I tried to stick to the guidelines in Chapter 5 of the Getting Things Done Book. I was very tempted to go my own way with this but as I had allocated the time, I thought that I may as well follow the guidelines in the book and do it as it should be done.

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Now that the book is read, there is no time like the present to start. I have allocated a day to collection, and also as long as it takes to processing. This is one of the benefits of working for yourself. You control your own time.

Chapter 4 of the Getting Things Done book is concerned with setting up the time, space, and tools to make a start with the whole GTD methodology. This is something which I have been waiting with excitement to start, but something that has to be planned.

Lets look at each of the three items, starting with time.

The book recommends that you spend two whole days on setting up your GTD system. Ideally these days should be together and not split up. As with any task like this, immersion in it makes it a lot easier as you can focus on the task at hand. OK, time is no problem and this is important so the dates are set in my diary.

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There is an upcoming seminar over at the Mindjet Blog that is now open for registration. The Webinar is on Wednesday 28th March at 1000 PDT.

I have registered for quite a few of these and due to me being in the UK I normally miss the live webinar due to the time differences but by registering you get emailed the link a fter the event to listen to the recorded webinar.

The details of the webinar are as follows:

Consultant and eProductivity Specialist, Eric Mack, will give us a tour of his world and how he works and how he uses Mind Manager as a visual thinking and planning tool. He will discuss how he uses Mind Manager as a visual dashboard and planning tool for project and action management. He will also share how he uses Mind Manager on a daily basis as a support tool for getting things done with the GTD methodology and how he uses Mind Manager as a research support tool for Knowledge Management. Finally, he will show us how he uses MindManager to brainstorm and track projects and actions stored in Lotus Notes databases. In addition to using Mind Maps at work, Eric uses them when home-schooling his children and when coaching robotics teams. We’ve asked him to share a little bit about how he teaches the kids to use Mind Maps to organize their thinking and strategy when planning for a paper or a competition. At the conclusion of the webinar, Eric will be available to answer your questions.

Sounds like one not to miss!

Well, after a couple of months of fragmented reading, I have just finished reading the Getting Things Done book by David Allen. This was the whole purpose of this blog so I gave it a good push towards then end in order to get it done before my 34th birthday! (which is tomorrow).

Fantastic book, cannot wait to get started. Reading he book has opened my eyes to the massive amount of open loops that I have in my life right now. These vary from business to family, and personal items.

I have really read the book well, and made a lot of notes that I am going to go back over and write about in this blog.

Now, I am just creating my shopping list and I will be visiting my local office supplies store over the next few days. I plan to allocate two days to the “collecting” phase at the back end of this week.

Exciting times ahead, and I cannot wait to share my findings. Just got one quote from the final chapters of the book that I would like to leave you with.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started,

The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks ,

and then starting on the first one.

Mark Twain

Well, it is my time to get started….

I recently discovered a great application that is saving me a ton of time. This is called TextExpander, from SmileOnMyMac.

I discovered this application after watching MacBreak Episode 63, which has Merlin Mann covering TextExpander.

Merlin has also posted a new blog item about using TextExpander to help with Amazon associate information in Blogs.

Be sure to check these links out and give TextExpander a try, if you are lucky enough to own a Mac that is!

I wrote about Tracks in an earlier post on my blog. Tracks is a Ruby on Rails GTD application that does take some getting working. I have not yet looked at any GTD applications as I want to finish the book and start on my GTD process before I jump in at the deep end playing with the eye candy applications.

Anyway, super review of the application over at the Cranking Widgets website that sure is worth a read before you spend the time installing Ruby and Rails to get Tracks working.

A few people have reviewed the new online application, Nozbe, for getting things done. Of of these reviews that is worth reading is the review from the Getting Things Done Blog. The official Nozbe blog is also worth a read.

I have found these three Tutorials on how to use Nozbe via YouTube. Be sure to check them out.

Follow the link to view the other two videos

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Today, the 1st of March 2007 is a pretty big day for me. Yesterday, was the last day that I was employed by the business that I co-founded and have helped run for the last five and a half years. Today, is the start of the next chapter in my life and one that I am really looking forward to.

For the first time in my life I have the one element that most do not, and that is time. I am going to be really cranking up this blog, and a few others, such as MindCert.com, as well as working on a few more web based ideas.

The GTD methodology is more important than ever now to me, as I have a lot to do, and a lot that needs to be got done. Time to put all of this to practice.

Just stumbled across Mind Meister at www.mindmeister.com. Well, how fantastic is this!

I am such a fan of Mind Mapping, of which I probably map at least one item a day, and this will be a topic of conversation of many coming blog posts on this site. Well, Web 2.0 meets Mind Mapping in the form of Mind Meister. This is an online Mind Mapping tool that seems to work brilliantly. You can even share maps with other users. Sure, it is not as featured as MindJet Mind Manager but, this is free!

This is currently in private beta, however, I have a few invitations left (around 20) so be sure to post a comment to this post and include your email address and I will invite you to try the beta.

This is something that has got me quite excited as I am a big believer in the benefits of Mind Mapping and having such a fantastic free tool such as this really will help spread the word and benefits of Mind Mapping.

Be sure to post a reply to this post and give it a try for yourself!

In a previous blog entry, I introduced Chapter 3 of the Getting Things Done book by David Allen. We looked at Horizontal and Vertical focus with respect to our projects and I explained the difference between these two methods of project planning and review.

We are now going to look at the three planning models that are covered in Chapter 3 of the GTD book. These planning models are:

• The Natural Planning Model
• The Un-Natural Planning Model
• The Reactive Planning Model

Lets start by looking at the Natural Planning Model. The Natural Planning Model really is nothing new. It is not some fantastic new model devised by David Allen to help us plan and manage our projects. it is however, the planning model that is recommended by David in his Getting Things Done book. The Natural Planning Model is based upon the planning that we do on a daily basis, using just our brains. For example, think of how many tasks we plan on a day by day basis that we do not even bother to write down as these are normally classed as mundane tasks. For example, getting dressed, or driving to work. All of these can be thought of tasks but we just go ahead and plan them without any thought whatsoever. We utilize the planning aspects of our brain that are conditioned for this natural type of planning.

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