Introducing Google GTD

I've always felt that traditional time management wasn't enough, and never too found of a strictly separated personal and work life. Everything that needs to be done, we need to, well, get done. Or, we renegotiate the agreement we have with ourselves and others.

After having studied the Getting Things Done (GTD) framework for quite some time (book, seminar recordings, other research), I first thought it was too simple, then I thought it was brilliant. The beauty of it is that you don't separate work and personal life, you don't focus on purely daily or weekly activities, and you take care of everything that comes into your life and wants a piece of your brain. You never miss anything, even future ideas and thoughts that you may never act upon, but would like to keep somewhere.

This somewhere is your GTD system, which takes over the role of what your brain is less good at - remembering things - and puts you in the mood of calm, stress-free productivity. Now we are not just talking about the "boring productivity" - what to bring up at next meeting, how to handle your work emails, etc - but also "fun productivity" - which countries to visit next, where to take next scuba dive, organizing a party, etc. Actually, I happen to think that work is fun, but the point is, it's all stuff, and it's all important, if you've made a commitment to it... It's your life, manage and enjoy it!

GTD is a methodology developed by The David Allen Company, and aims at getting control of your life and workload, both business and personal, current and future. You can get a quick overview from my own previous Getting Things Done (GTD) presentation.

This blog will later go into more details of an enhanced GTD framework I've come to live by, and focus on how to implement a GTD system using primarily Google (Gmail/Google Apps etc) and some third party services. Keep on reading...