First, you ADD to the To Do List

Part of the challenge of the "Getting Things Done" (GTD) approach is that you start by ADDING to the list of what you have to do.  It feels counterintuitive.  If, like me, you are motivated to learn GTD because you feel overwhelmed with your obligations, why would you want to add new stuff to the list?

The GTD system describes the "five stages of mastering workflow".  The first of these is the one that, to me, initially makes me feel MORE overwhelmed.  I'm giving it a shot anyway, trusting that it will lead to a greater feeling of control once I get it all done.  Here are the stages:

1. Collect:  Accumulate into one or more inboxes ALL the items that are grabbing your attention:  pieces of mail, things that you might want to do something about.  You brainstorm in various ways to figure out all the things you need to think about in your home, your projects, things related to your goals, and to the roles you play in life (homeowner, parent, spouse).
2. Process:  Decide what all this stuff means to you.  For each item, do you file it for reference?  Is it something you don't need after all and can throw away?  Is it something you MIGHT want to do something about, but aren't ready to commit?  Or is it something you need to do ASAP and--if so--clarify what outcome you are trying to achieve and exactly what is the next step that will move you toward this outcome.
3. Organize:  In this step, you organize the things you just clarified:  filing things you want to use as reference, archiving e-mails, moving action items into separate "To Do" lists for Home, Work, Errands and other "contexts".  By "context", Allen means that you organize tasks by the setting in which you can  DO the tasks.  Thus, when you are looking at the "Home" To Do List, you are not needlessly distracted by the list of things you can only do at "Work" or when "Running Errands".
4. Review:  Every week, review your action plans, project lists, and goals to update them so that they are more likely to lead you to success.
5. Do:  Each day, review the lists of immediate action steps, update them briefly, and then act.  Allen has a variety of tips for picking what tasks you do at what times.

This is all logical, but that first step is hard for me.  My Task Lists are already so long, my inboxes are usually so full, that the last thing I want to do is run around finding more things to dump into these inboxes.  Today was one of those days when I had collected a ton of stuff in my inbox at work and found it painful to try to process it all.  But I'm still going at it.

I've had one big success lately.  I've been doing the "Processing" step so often with my e-mails that I've managed to cut the number of messages steadily from over 400 a few weeks ago to less than 25 the last few days.  I hope to see zero soon.