One major reason other systems fail the user is that you are forced to do priority #1 even if you are not in the proper context to do it (you CAN’T start the task), if you don’t have enough time to do it (therefore you WON’T start the task since you won’t have time to finish), or if you don’t have the energy necessary to do it (again, you won’t even start).

http://www.timemanagement.com/the_single_most_powerful_productivity_secret.html

My approach to GTD is with software for programs like Outlook, or anything I use daily. Outlook Track-It is a great plugin for followup email reminders. I recommend you grab this addon if you ever forget to reply to mail.

I would recommend checking out http://www.Gtdagenda.com for an online GTD manager.

Oh, and I had a chance to chat with Mr. Allen, who follows not only GTD, but EffTD.

Part one of the interview can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/EffTDGTD

I know you’ll enjoy it. You pretty much ave to.

Eventually yours,
Mike Vardy

Before I open KMyMoney, I run to Mint to eyeball all my balances on every account I have, then go to KMyMoney and see which accounts are in need of updating, and then run the updates on those accounts.

I do this religiously every morning. I don’t spend any time tracking where my money goes… all I want to do that morning is A) get my new financial data B) post the transactions C) look at the balances and go enjoy my day.

My Sunday Habit is different. That’s where I actually analyze what is going on in my financial life. This process takes 15 minutes to an hour. All my bills go into a box in my desk. Sunday is the day that I acutally look at them.

“OK, I have a couple medical co-pays, I’ll cut checks for those today. Ahh, rent is due this week, I’ll cut a check for that. Hmm… I get paid on Friday and I can zero out my credit card balances on that day; let me go into BillPay and set those to go out.”

As each bill gets taken care of, I have a big red PAID stamp (can get these at OfficeMax) which has the date and check number fields on the stamper. I write down the date I took care of the bill, the check number if there was one, or I write “BP” in the field if I took care of it with Bill Pay.

My filing cabinet has 12 folders in the front labeled JAN-DEC. I dump all those bills on my desk in the folder for that month. These are my “TO BE FILED” folders. Every 1-2 months or so I clear out the papers in these folders and move them to the appropriate folders in my filing cabinet. Anything that needs to be shredded I keep in a bucket next to the filing cabinet. When I’m done clearing the filing cabinet, THEN I shred all that stuff at once. I usually do this chore when I clean my office.

I do things this way so that way most of the time I don’t do any work to organize myself but yet I am still quite organized. I have:

A Daily Routine – Small tasks that I do each day that take no more than 2-5 minutes to do. Updating my finance software and checking all my balances on Mint is this task. These are tasks that only involve a few mouse clicks.

A Weekly Routine – Regular tasks that I do each week. For finances which I do on Sat or Sun, it consists of looking at upcoming bills, checking on my brokerage accounts, writing any letters that need to go out, I go back through my finance software and make sure my transactions are categorized correctly (and I update Mint as well), and then I review where I’ve been spending my money and I look at my budget. I set up bills that need to go out and then I toss them in my filing cabinet to be filed later.

A monthly routine – Arduous tasks that take some effort to do, such as clearing and organizing my filing cabinet (30mins to an hour), identifying documents I need to hang on to for my taxes, scanning old documents, shredding, and reviewing my long-term financial goals and my progress.

Daily and immediate “brain dumping” removes a lot of stress by putting an end to recurring thought patterns that are meant to help you remember. Getting things onto the to do list allows you to “dump” it out of you RAM memory, so you can stop reminding yourself the action steps related to annoying questions like”did you move that money to the other account yet? did you remember to order new checks yet? did you call to replace that card that the magnetic strip keeps failing?” Whatever you add to your financial to do list may actually do just that- remove it from your mental radar. The weekly review becomes the only way to get it back on your radar if you didn’t do it immediately.

The weeks I’m having difficulty maintaining the GTD system are also the weeks I thought I could skip the weekly review. Then stress enters my mind again becasue I lose trust in my ability to remember everything. Trust in the system was a big stress reliever for as long as I kept the system moving. Put things on the list to remove immediate stress and then due the weekly review to prevent stress and numbness that comes from a more long term fear “what am I forgetting?”