Implement GTD with Doit.im－ (1) Collect

 

Overview

 

As a time managing sofeware, Doit.im is designed and developed based on the principles of Getting Things Done by David Allen from the very beginning. So here, we'd like to state the five stages of GTD in a simple way first so as to make all better understand GTD and better use Doit.im.

Getting Things Done is a mature theory concluded by David Allen on personal and organizational productivity. As David said in the book, "The power, simplicity, and effectiveness of what I'm talking about in Getting Things Done are best experienced as experiences, in real time, with real situations in your real world. "

Generally, GTD methods are based on two key objectives: 1) capturing all the things into a logical and trusted system outside your head and off your mind; and 2) disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the 'inputs' so that you will always have a plan for 'next actions' that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment.

Thus, GTD's more than a to-do list. It guides people to make their minds focused and turn uncontrollable stuff to actionable "next actions", thus leads people proceed to the pyramid of success, of their values and lifetime goal. That's also what Doit.im hopes to reach.

Horizontally, the management on workflow by GTD can be divided into 5 stages, and David Allen finds it helpful to separate these stages. So here, we'll also talk about how to implement GTD with Doit.im in separated steps.

How to Implement GTD with Doit.im

1.  Collect "Stuff" 

GTD Theory

"Stuff" is anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn't belong where it is, but for which you haven't yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step.  
And Collect is the start point and most important step emphasized by GTD from the beginning to the end.   

Principles of Collecting "Stuff" :

• Just collect during the Collect stage, don't do any processing;
• 100 percent capture unfinished things to move all "stuff" into a trusted system out of your mind;
• Minimize the number of collection buckets;
• Make sure you empty the collection containers regularly (This principle will be embodied in the next step) 

 

Doit.im's Implementation of GTD

On the upper left of the box list in Doit.im stays Inbox.

In Inbox, there is a Quick-add box, which is showed in nearly all boxes actually, but we suggest you fix the collecting act here in Inbox.

Since the aim of Collect is to capture all things off your mind, successive collect without interruption should be the best way to do it. And with the Quick-add box, you can successively input and enter to collect all the to-dos in your mind.

Meanwhile, you can see the "+" (New Task button), which is designed to add single-step, actionable event.

To separate the 5 steps, we recommend you use the Quick-add box rather than New Task button. Only when you've put all the things into a trusted a system outside your head, and then get notified to join a meeting at 2pm next Monday (and what you need to do is just go and join it with no need to prepare or do anything else), then, just cick the "+", pick a time (2pm next Monday) and context (say, Office), fill in some notes maybe, and save it.

We don't suggest you use the "+" to collect in other cases. Because if you do this, you would have the desire to fill in other details since all the input columns are unfolded. But during the collecting, the "Stuff" are not "Actions", they are not actionable. But this time, you want to arrange it at the moment but still have other things in mind, so you might just pick a time for it and when the time comes, you would find it so difficult to handle and have to re-process, which would cost you more time and energy. For instance, I collected a task named "Travel in Western Europe", it's simply not actionable and needs processing and organizing to be divided into actionable "Next Actions", say, "Check the airline ticket price""then call if Lynn would like to go together", etc. And in another aspect, due to the processing occurs before the completion of collecting, you're likely to forget something. 


So, New Task button could be used only when your head is empty and the thing you're collecting is an actionable "Next Action".