Introduction to GTD

A world of inefficiency and chaos

“Chaos always defeats order because it is better organized”.- Terry Pratchett

 

We live in a world oversaturated with information and tasks, especially at a time when the global financial crisis is testing us facing a merciless competition, and facing suppliers and customers with unlimited demands.

Everyday, we accumulate emails, calls, orders, notes, tasks, commitments… In any moment, the priority, urgency or importance can be changed. The personal and professional things are mixed. The plannings are becoming inefficient and useless. Finally, the tasks are executed by reaction, depending of what is required or depending of the priority in that moment, without a clear vision about the goal nor how much is neccesary to be done, with the feeling of not knowing what is being done and why it does.

It tends inexorably to chaos, working exhaustively in the midst of a dense fog that blinds the true image of our work, without feeling just advance, feeling only that the result does not justify nor reward the efforts.

In the School they teach literacy, math, science and other disciplines, but they don’t teach some complementary and necessary powers, like personal organization techniques, which help you to do anything better and more efficiently in any scope, such as in studies, in the professional and in the personal one.

Usually, we learn to organize reactively and instinctively, depending on the circumstances that arise. Based on trial and error, we are creating our own organization system, in order to impact on our world least possible, not to improve it.

At the last years, personal organization has been in constant research and improvement. The benefits of implementing a personal organization system is invaluable, and the results substantially enhance our productivity and the quality of everything we think and do.

Personal organization using GTD and Workflowy

Workflowy is a very useful little wonder, that allows you to do many things with very few concepts, and, best of all, it is very easy. Its original concept is the organization of ideas, similar to a mental map, but instead of a graphical tool lines and balloons, use the system well-known hierarchy, organizing the notes by groups, levels or indentations, depending on the depth of each concept from the more generic (first level) to the most detailed (last level).

GTD Free: Open Source for your personal organization

GTD (Getting Things Done) is an organization method that improves the personal organization and increases the productivity, thanks to an efficient tasks management system in which you put more focus in action, delegating all pending tasks in trusting places and eliminating them from your mind. This method was conceived by David Allen, and is used by million of people around the world, due to its efficiency and simplicity.