Written by Daniel Mundy | 09 December 2009

I have three in trays, from top to bottom: IN, stuff to take home, reading material.

If something comes my way, it goes to IN. When I get an email, unless I can reply in 2 minutes and be done with it, it is printed and goes to IN, and is moved to my Sorted folder in Outlook.

 

I have a basic VBS script running on my laptop which pops up every 20 minutes and reminds me to process one item from IN. I follow the GTD workflow diagram to process this one item, nothing every goes back to IN.

minutes = 20
seconds = minutes * 60
milliseconds = seconds * 1000

do
userContinue = msgBox ("Process one item from in tray. Continue?", vbYesNo + vbSystemModal )
yesVal = 6
if userContinue = yesVal then
Wscript.sleep milliseconds
end if
loop While userContinue = yesVal

My planner is strictly GTD with some minor tweaks.

In my actions list, I have sticky arrows to mark items to focus on. They are colour coded to help me pick a task and do it, without worrying that I should be doing something else with my time.

• Red: Critical or high priority - do not let them stay red long - just do it! (use sparingly so that it does not lose meaning)
• Yellow: The client or my boss is chasing me up on this, probably because I have left it too long!
• Green: I have a chance to earn some brownie points by completing this task, or doing so will prevent a fire
• Blue: I should be spending time on this (I have lots of blue)