GTD and Narrowing Focus
Sometimes my GTD lists become greatly overwhelming and then it becomes difficult to decide on what is truly important for the day. The following are some methods that have helped me:
- I make sure to use my calendar (Google Calendar for Sharing and Exchange Calender for personal use, which I synchronize with my Google Calendar with OggSync) for only items that truly MUST happen on that day… or else.
- I use Outlook to manage my tasks using the Priority field to denote which item should be at the top of the list.
- Then when I do a quick review, I only look at those items with high priority that are in the appropriate context.
- I have contexts called @@Critical Tasks - Business and @@Critical Tasks - Personal. I use double @ signs to put those categories at the top of my Outlook list which I group by Category and then sort by priority, then subject.
- I am still debating whether these items should also have an additional context (in addition to @Critical Task such as @Home), since in GTD it is frowned upon having multiple categories.
- When I am mobile and I don’t want to open up my laptop I use Pocket Informant with Catagory on my PDA which gives me excellent category views with icons which help me when I just want to look at my critical tasks, but also see what context they belong in.
- I have also created @@Daily and @@Nightly contexts to make sure that I complete certain tasks that are required daily, such as my affirmations, planning, review, journaling, reading and goal reviews.
Following are some notes on the environment where this system is used. I am CEO of four technology companies that are extremely agile. Besides that I am married with a two year old child. A busy schedule indeed. The Life 2.0 system, which I write about at my blog. I am developing this solution is an attempt to make life simpler and expand innovation opportunities.