Getting Things Done (Gtd) is the brainchild of David Allen. If you’ve been around the World Wide Web anytime within the last 6 years then you’ve probably heard that term thrown around. In the coming days, I’ll be sharing with you how I use Gtd using my Nokia S60 phone.

Intro to GTD

The ideas and concepts espoused by Gtd have revolutionized the corporate world, the mobile technological savvy and even soccer moms, along with inspiring a plethora of web and mobile applications. What’s the best way to have a Gtd system integrated with our beloved smartphones? The answer is, anyway you want, and thanks to the reliability and stability of the S60 operating system all things are possible.

The main tenets of Gtd

1. Collecting or capturing anything that has your attention personal or work.
2. Defining actionable things into outcomes and specific next actions, in other words, processing on the front end and not in the back end when things blow up.
3. Organizing reminders and information in the most efficient way in appropriate place holders ie. categories based on how and when you need to access them and folks this is really the key to the whole process

 
Key Terms to know

1. Next Actions – anything you have to do personal or work. For example, Pickup dry cleaning at Joe’s Cleaners, this would be placed in a category called @errands, the “@” sign symbolizes the word action meaning ‘action errands’
2. Projects – any outcome you want to complete that will literally take more than two action steps.

David Allen has written extensively about Project Management in all his books and in an email exchange I had with him about 4 years ago he clarified a lot of my questions. D.A. basically said “how are you going to remember all the things you want to do if you can’t keep accurate track of them.” Projects are like stake holders in the ground, they are just meant to serve as place holders of a multi-action outcome and as you know we all have a bunch of those.

Let us say you have a project called ‘Car Tune Up’ unless you walk outside with a wrench in hand and are ready to get your hands greasy then ‘Car Tune Up’ is a multi-action outcome. 1st Next Action – Call the garage to see if they can take the car, this would go in your @phone or @calls category but wait, do we have the phone number to the garage hmm, I don’t, so I guess I need to get the phone number of the garage first (this would be a BFO as David Allen says a “blind flash of obvious). Upon further review, you remember that Mary your neighbor recommended this garage to you last week as you both watered the front lawn, so I guess you have to ask Mary for the phone number, so this next action would be placed in your @home or @calls or @agenda (this category is great because you can populate it with the names of people you come across with all the time and you have actions that involve them in some way, shape, or form).

And the thought process continues and eventually you think about the several actions that need to happen to get this project off and rolling but remember if “Life” happens to come at you at 100 mph and you have to divert your focus to other things, its ok, because you already have defined on the front end what needs to be done to continue your projects when your ready to go back to them and that’s the beauty of Gtd, having your trusty and reliable system that without fail you can always refer back to and get back on the wagon.

Nokia Implementation

Well enough said, if you have not read Getting Things Done, then I encourage you to read it. it’s a great book. Now let’s move onto the actual operation of this system. What software or applications are you going to need to setup a Gtd system on the Nokia S60 platform? Simple, any Nokia S60. I use the Nokia E71 just because I like firing off next actions at the speed of light on a qwerty keyboard but really any Nokia will suffice. Eventually you get so good at this that it becomes intuitive and really the tool just becomes an extension of yourself, so even a non-qwerty device like any Nseries phone will do just fine as well.

Applications I’ve Used for a Gtd system

• Projekt
• The regular PIM functions of any Nokia in combination with Ovi on the web
• SBSH Papyrus
• Handy Calendar
• Google Calendar in combination with GooSync 
• Twibble (I love Twitter)

Applications I hope to use soon

• Gravity, a native S60 twittering client that’s about to be released this month that supports ‘direct messaging’

Some web based systems that work great on the mobile side are Vitalist and Remember the Milk. Again the choices are endless and only limited by your imagination and your software but as you can see there are many shoes in this store and one is going to fit your style.

Current Setup

In the coming days I’ll be sharing with you my current setup which uses the following applications:

• SBSH Papyrus
• GooSync
• Google Calendar
• Google Sync
• SWIM and Ovi Sync

I look forward to contributing and enlightening your productivity with getting things done.