The core of a Getting Things Done system is an always-available task manager. You also need constant access to a calendar (that stores only time-specific activities): I use the iPhone native calendar, which I don’t bother syncing with Google Calendar.
Whenever you might have spare cycles (commuting, waiting for something, etc.) you need access to a To Read pile. It’s likely you’ll have a few piles that are more or less portable. I’m still looking for a good place for web material; maybe Instapaper is it? I have a To Watch playlist on YouTube, but mostly I just ignore people when they recommend videos (sorry Alex! I’ll explain why in another post).
Your life has a bunch of inboxen like email, voicemail, face-to-face discussions, your imagination, etc. GTD advises having as few as possible. It’s important that once you examine an item in an inbox, you either complete it immediately or move it to your task management system (“zero your inbox”). I actually keep a small, separate task management system for email both at work and personally.
One issue is that Google Reader doesn’t work well with GTD. I need to figure out how to separate the feeds that are inboxen from those that are “maybe read”. For now it’s separate enough from my GTD system that it doesn’t cause chaos.
Tags: gtd
[...] My Google Reader feeds are divided into three corresponding stacks: [...]