Understanding the GTD: Introduction, Collection and Processing - Part 1 of 3

In this podcast, Ricardo starts the series of 3 podcasts about the time management method called Getting Things Done, created by David Allen. In this first episode, Ricardo explains what is GTD and comments on how he uses it to organize and get all his work done.

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Episode transcript

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hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes BM podcast. Today. Finally, I decided to stop procrastinating and I decided to record a podcast that I was looking to record long, long time ago about GTD or getting things done. A lot of people ask me Ricardo how do you manage your time? Because I'm very active. I have my volunteer work. I have my work. I live abroad.

I live in Denmark and I have my business. I have books. I have podcasts that have everything and I need to manage all this stuff at the same time and how I can do that. And the answer it it's basically I use GTD and I started using this around probably three, four years ago, and I had great help from a good friend from Brazil called Danielle Bird. Danielle works with GTD and he did a coaching with me and he, I could learn and develop.

And right now I could not leave without GTD. And I want to share in the series of three podcasts, how do you use GTD? And please, I'm not a professional. I don't work with GTD. I'm just a happy user. OK. I'm just a happy user and I'm not on this business, but I think that good things we need to promote. And as product managers does, is it something that helps a lot? Us too, our ti if what we need a GTD was developed by David Allen in a very popular book called getting things done.

And first, if you want to start learning, probably this is the book to start with. And basically what he says on this book is that you need to clear your mind. You need to empty. You cannot leave with things in your brain, hurting you all the time. Oh, you need to call. You need to do, you need to call. And you always start to becoming afraid of forgetting things. So he basically did. I'm doing just some adaptation for this.

Podcast it's basically a five steps process. First, the Collection the data Collection. That is the way you process an organize. Then we have the revision and finally designation. So let's talk about each of them. The first one is Collection that are Collection. This is the first thing you need to know. You need to empty your mind. Everything you need to write down, you need to take notes.

So if you like to have a note pad, you have a note pattern right on the notepad So it's. When something comes through your mind, you are inside a bus inside the Metro driving. You stop the car quickly and you quickly write this. You can, you can record, but you take this out of your mind. You just need to remember. It's not okay. I have this in a note, for example, I use technology to do that. So I use my phone, my tablet, or my computer.

And immediately I write out in a restaurant, someone talks about the nice movie, and I say, watch in this movie. And immediately I don't need care into it. Stay remembering the next day. Whew. And what's the name of the movie that he said, so this is becomes pointless. So first thing is to take everything from your mind. The second is the Processing an organization does is something that is you do once a day. And this takes around one hour.

A lot of people say a one hour of all of my life. I'm so busy. I promise, you know, a few spend one hour on this. You'll save time 10 hours because mass only distract you our ability to do work. So it's very, very important to understand that the Processing is basically your take dr. Imagine that you took note of every single item you have in your mind and you put every single one sheet of paper, okay?

Then you throw in the box. Now it's time to empty the box and every a task we'll be evaluated. So you take the first one you read. And then the first question, what does this, is this a natural? Is this something that requires an action or it's not an action is just an information. First. It fits not an election. You have basically to things to do first, throwing it away, put it in the trash does is not relevant. It's was just something in my mind.

Then it's irrelevant now. Or this is something that could be something new, interesting in the future. And you don't want to lose that piece of information. Then what do do, you can put this into a list or into a context call. Future may be someday. I don't know, whatever. So you just put this in the lease just to make sure that you know that in the future, you may take a look on that for me, I put in a context called future and I just stroll there.

Okay. Throw there. No, let's take the order sites. It's an action. It's something that will require is a phone call, a meeting, an email, whatever. OK. It's a natural. And then I do the first question. What is the first action? Because maybe that piece of paper you wrote, it's not just one action. It's a set of actions. For example, let's suppose I have a wonderful idea yesterday about write in the book.

Then I cannot put, just write a book because this is not one task. I need to define the title. I need to define the context. I need to define the public. Sure. It's a project. So when you have more than one task, you create the project and then you check the first task of that project. And then you ask, how long does it take to do it? If it takes less than to a minute, do it now. Now immediately, if it takes more than two minutes and you need to do something with that, but this I will share with you with the nodder five minutes being Podcast next week about GTD see you there.

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