So, basically, you make your stuff into real, actionable items or things you can just get rid of. do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment.put your stuff in the right place, consistently.create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values.get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now.identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops).This is a really summarized version, but here it is, PowerPoint-style: Your “stuff” has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Jeez Louise, what the hell am I, Superman? Worst off, we’re too neurotic to stop thinking about it, and we certainly don’t have time to actually do everything in one day. Stuff has no “home” and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Here’s how I define “stuff:” 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. That’s “ stuff.” Amorphous, unactionable, flop-sweat-inducing stuff. Getting Things Done succeeds because it first addresses a critical barrier to completing the atomic tasks that we want to accomplish in a given day. It’s time to get your act together, hoss. You’ll also eventually want to grab some of the other GTD essentials, like a ton of manila folders, a good label maker, and a big-ass garbage can. (You can support 43 Folders by buying the book from Amazon, but it’s also up at ISBN.nu and, of course, on shelves at your local bookstore). It also gives you time to pick up your own copy of the book and get a feel for how David’s system works. Like I did the other day with Quicksilver, I wanted to provide a gentle, geek-centric introduction to Getting Things Done, so that you can think about whether it might be right for you. (It probably takes a backseat only to the Atkins Diet in terms of the number of enthusiastic evangelists: sorry about that.) I’ll be talking a lot here in coming weeks about Getting Things Done, a book by David Allen whose apt subtitle is “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” You’ve probably heard about it around the Global Interweb or have been buttonholed by somebody in your office who swears by GTD. Please be sure to also visit related pages, browse our GTD topic area, plus, of course you can search on GTD across our family of sites. This article was originally posted during the first week of 43 Folders' existence, and, pound for pound, it remains our most popular page on the site.

Organizeme and gtd