GTD: Its more about ‘habit’ than the latest ‘app’.

Since I started on this journey of using GTD as a methodology to get more done it becomes very apparent that you can get caught up in the detail a little too much which defeats the point.

I am guilty of being dazzled by the various apps that are now available to support GTD and the wider topic of being more productive in our busy lives.   I’ve spent hours reading blogs, reviews, clicking links and being totally sidetracked.  The likes of Tooledo, Evernote, RTM, Microsoft Add-ins are all great each one offering a good a platform to build on; but to be honest that tool to capture and manage lists is only half the battle.

My advice to anyone starting up with GTD is to choose one or two apps and stick with them for a while – explore its functionality and review it after an agreed period of time and if needs be use something else but in the meantime move on.  Look at the bigger picture and ensure other parts of the workflow are covered.

The next key aspect of GTD for me and the toughest one is getting into the ‘Habit’ of using your system consistently and ensuring that you review the contents of lists as often as you need to, so you can sit back and know you have everything that has your focus in hand.

I’m trying to move more towards establishing habit, a routine that I need to go through and setting goals that I can complete each day.  For me that’s the next big challenge (and as a person who struggles to put his keys in the same place twice, habit and routine don’t come naturally).

So what’s the next step…well I want to get back to my GTD workflow and reacquaint myself with Evernote, RTM and Gmail for capturing, managing Lists and scheduling work but its the ‘Habit’ part that I want to crack and I think that is the key to a more fluid GTD workflow.  I’ve had a look at Joesgoals and have read some good stuff on Productivity501 so well go from there..tbc