Processing: Getting Started, problems and solutions

The next phase of Getting Things Done I want to cover is processing. Processing is the art of taking things out of your in-box, examining them, and then deciding what to do about them. For my initial round of processing, I decided I would look only at my notebook. In my notebook, for every other thing I have identified as an in-box, I have added a to-do such as "process work desk in-box". As far as I am concerned, "process work in-box" is a single task, although you are not allowed to remove if from your processing list until it is completely empty.

Step one:

look at the first item in your in-box. Determine if you need to do anything about it. If you do need to do anything about it soon, go to step three otherwise go to step two.

Step two:

If you can just throw it away, chuck it in the bin.
If you need to do it at a particular time future, file it in your tickler system (I'll talk about my tickler system in the future)
If you want to do it sometime, but have no immediate plans as for when, put it into a someday/oneday list
If you might need to reference it, chuck it in a file

And it is dealt with. Remove it from your in-box and return to step one

Step three:

Work out what you must do next, in order to complete this task.
If one action will complete the whole task, go to step five.
If it will take multiple actions to complete the whole task, go to step four.

Step four:

Congratulations, you have a project. Add this project to your project list
Think of the first action, and go to step five. If you can think of other actions that need to be added to the system, follow step five for each of these

Step five:

If the next action can be done in 2 minutes, do it.
If the next action can be delegated, delegate it
Otherwise, add the next action to a to-do list.
You should have a to-do list for each context in which you can carry out tasks (for example, on the telephone, at a computer, at the shops). Add the action to the most appropriate context.
You are finished. Remove the item from your in-box and start again.


Problems and solutions:

Q: In step one, I say "If you do need to do anything about it soon, go to step three". What is soon?

A: For me, the definition of soon is "possibly within the next two weeks". Why? Because I review my system every week, and so have at least a weeks notice of anything I need to do something about. In fact, soon is a bit more complicated than that. Essentially, it is a question of whether you need to begin implementing the task now or not, but anything that needs doing within two weeks must be on a list.

Q: In Step five, I talk about contexts. As an IT professional, I never find myself in a situation where I don't have a phone or a net connected computer (in fact, my mobile phone is a net connected computer). What contexts should I use?

A: Just because I don't ever find myself without a phone or a computer, I keep these as contexts. I currently use contexts to describe the type of activity, not the physical location. In fact I have three physical locations: work, home and at the shops. I have another location 'elsewhere' which I use to fit in anything that doesn't fall within one of those locations. 'At the shops' covers anything I want to buy in the immediate future, and keeps these shopping list items away from everything else I may have to do.

I keep the contexts 'computer' and 'phone' because I may want to do these actions either at work (during lunch hours), or home (or indeed at the shops... as I said, my phone is net connected).

My elsewhere context is for things I need to do at miscellaneous locations. Because I manage my to-do lists using rememberthemilk.com, I can use their location options to assign them to specific places (such as a friends house, or the hotel where I am getting married)

Q: Some of the items on my to-do list happen so frequently, that the moment I process them I think they ought to wind up in my in-box again.

A: I've noticed this too. All these things are part of my daily or weekly routine. Every morning, for instance I brush my teeth, add my weight to a spreadsheet and eat a nutritious, wholesome, breakfast. Every evening, I talk to Herself on the phone. Every Thursday morning, I put the bin out, and every Monday at work, I attend a status meeting.

How do I handle these? I don't put them on my to-do lists at all. Instead I have daily planner cards, one for work, one for home.

These cards (held in portrait mode) have 3 horizontal lines drawn across them, breaking them into 4 sections. The two central sections have 4 vertical lines down them, giving me 5 columns.

In the top and bottom sections I place tasks which need to be done in the morning and evening every day (top for morning, bottom for evening). In the middle two sections I put tasks specific to a particular day, morning and evening (Monday on the left, Friday on the right, top for morning, bottom for afternoon). My daily cards don't have any space for weekends (which I tend not to try to structure), but 6 lines would give you seven (possibly too thin) sections, should you need them.

My explanation of these daily cards has been a bit rushed here, so I'll give them a full treatment in a few days time, providing some blanks and some examples - including a top trick which has made Herself much happier about how tidy our house is, with hardly any work on my part.