Host’s note: You will notice that Art Gelwicks stopped speaking about 13 minutes into this week’s ProductivityCast about the GTD step, Organize. Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties. Our apologies for any parts where it may sound like we jumped from segment to another; it’s likely where Art was speaking and his audio wasn’t available.

That said, this is episode three, on Step Three of the Workflow Diagram / Map, Organize, in our nine-part series on the Getting Things Done (GTD) personal productivity methodology and eponymously-titled book, from the perspective of the ProductivityCast team–as long-term practitioners, critics and observers of GTD.

“Being organized simply means that where something is matches what it means to you. No more, no less.” ~David Allen

In this cast, we cover how and where to organize after clarifying items in our inboxes, so that we can effectively trigger next actions when we have discretionary time to make progress on our projects and tasks.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit http://productivitycast.net/041 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

If you'd like to discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Organize - Getting Things Done (GTD)

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes | Organize - Getting Things Done (GTD)

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life by Shawn Achor

“Getting Things Done: The Science behind Stress-Free Productivity” (p. 5 flowchart with processing/organizing questions)

Evernote

Remember the Milk

Google Calendar

Mind42

Simple Mind

FreeMind

Tony Buzan

Goodnotes 4 (iOS)

Raw Text Transcript | Organize - Getting Things Done (GTD)

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist 0:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life? Then you've come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity here your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

Welcome everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm recently Smith and I'm joined with my co host goes to pronounce. How's it going to gusto.

Augusto Pinaud 0:26

It's going to. Well, good morning.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:28

Hello. Hello. And we have art galleries with us today. How's it going art

Art Gelwicks 0:32

doing pretty well, so far? Guys?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:33

How about you guys? I am doing well. I glad to hear you're doing well. And we're going to hope that our listeners are doing well. And in this cast, we are going to talk about organizing, and we're going to be talking about it in the GTD flavor getting things done by David Allen flavor in this series that we've been ongoing. And we're going to talk about the idea of what is organizing? How do we define organizing, at least in the context of getting things done? Well, then talk about how each of us organizes our projects, next actions and other items, whether that be in a traditional list or otherwise. And then we're going to talk about some of the challenges that we know people face in getting organized in GTD and then maybe how to overcome them, or at least commiserating with you about the travails of getting organized and GTD. So let's start off with the definition of getting organized. David Allen basically says, He says, having a total and sing I'm quoting now out of the book, having a total and seamless system of organization in place gives you tremendous power, because it allows your mind to let go of lower level thinking and graduate to intuitive focusing on distracted by matters that haven't been dealt with appropriately. But your physical organization system must be better than your mental one, in order for that to happen. So being organized means nothing more or less than where something is matches what it means to you. So that's getting organized, and David Allen's definition and I'll add a little bit more here to this art. And then I'll turn it over to you in the sense that I was recently reading an article by Francisco SES, who is the proprietor of facile things, the the software, the GTD inspired software manager, and he starts off his article here with something that's actually very salient. He says, quote, while some people believe that GTD is a personal management system, somewhat complicated to implement. The truth is that it's extremely simple, technically, it's just about managing lists. And that's something that is available to all of us lists let you capture an inventory of all your activities and review it when necessary, and quote, so in essence, Francisco is absolutely right. David Allen is basically saying here that what you want to do is to be able to have a an external physical system, whether that's physical or digital, but basically an external system that should be airtight so that your your mind can relax. And it is really all about managing lists.

Art Gelwicks 3:19

I do agree with that very much. It is absolutely about managing lists. But the problem is that the term list almost creates a difficulty because it I can't help but go back to that will chest not a place for everything and everything in its place. When you're doing like physical declutter, that's one of the things that comes up and mental organization of your content has to have some sort of a physical component for it to be useful. I mean, we can organize our the insides of our brain no matter how hard we try. And I mean, unless we're Sherlock Holmes and in our mind palace, it's not happening. So we have to have some sort of a construct that's helping us organize. So to me, defining that following that chestnut have a place for everything in the thing and everything in its place really helps me galvanized around the organization piece. The problem I get into with that is

not going down the rabbit hole of everything having its own spot, really thinking about like the the Chinese herbalist medicine cabinets, where every little thing has a drawer that's almost to a level of minutia, where it becomes unmanageable to. So to me, the organization is if you need something, can you get to it, can you find it without increasing your stress or your work, but even that, that's I don't know that that's necessarily a good definition.

Augusto Pinaud 4:54

What am I saying, for me to be able to put the things in the place, I'm going to find them what I need them, if that makes any sense, is how you're going to get all that input and put it in a way that you are going to be able to find it in the easiest and most effective way when you actually going to need it, to do something about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:24

Right. I think the great example is Sean Acker in his book, and the the name is escaping me now. But I'll put the link in the show notes. But he talks about this idea of being able to, and this has been a long kind of rubric for many people, which is, you know, you put out your gym clothes in the morning, so you kind of stumble over them, you can't miss them. In the morning, when you have your clothes stacked right next to your bed, right, you put it on a chair next to your bed, on the floor next to your bed. And when you get up in the morning, they're there at your feet. So you're ready to get dressed. In essence, that's a list it's a trigger, right? It's, it's basically you're incapable of missing it, you know, unless you learn to levitate, you shouldn't be able to see your clothes sitting there in front of you in the morning. And what you're kind of all talking about is the idea of doing that consistently across your entire world. So that you are you have it available to you when you need it where you need it.

Augusto Pinaud 6:28

Additionally, when I when I talk on coach and work with people, and they will die, the organizing part is difficult. I tend to tell them, well, let's change the perspective on this and think that being organized. It's really a gift you're giving to yourself. Because you don't organize this stuff that yes, is to find it on the on the moments you needed the most just so you can be happy. Yes, is looking at you know, if you pick that example is looking at your calendar the night before and saying, geez, tomorrow, I have a really packed day. And unless I do my exercise first thing in the morning, it's not going to happen. Then you real quickly reorganized that. But being organized at the end of the day is nothing than a gift you're going to give to yourself or your future self in this case. Because the reality is though things that you're putting the system are you want to do it or you need to do it. And what better thing that been able to accomplish that on the best place, you know there is nothing more exasperating. And this has happened to everybody that goes to the grocery store gate, get back home and discovered you forgot milk, okay, because milk was not in the list because you haven't process or because you never write it down. And it is extremely frustrating. So you need to change that perspective that it's not that being organized is hard or difficult.