[Tfug] Organizational Systems?

[Zack Williams]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Ian McEwen<mcewen.ian at gmail.com> wrote:
> As a recent project, I've been working on getting myself
> better-organized; as points of reference I've been using David Allen's
> excellent book "Getting Things Done" and various sources across the
> Internet, but I'm curious what TFUGers use to organize themselves,
> whether it be digital (more in line with the group) or not (more off
> topic, but still interesting). I'm especially interested in exactly what
> tools people use digitally for organization; I've been considering some
> combination of vim(+folding+maybe some sort of plugin like Vim Outliner)
> and git, but there's a whole range of options and I'd like to see some
> example "working systems," as it were.

IMHO, the best parts of that book are the "View from 10,000 feet" goal
setting exercise, and the "get it out of your head and into a system"
philosophies.   The other implementation details never worked for me,
which seems to be a familiar thread in most GTD

The GTD philosophy is pretty much:

1. Get everything you want to do out of your head and written down.
2. Decide what's important.
3. Figure out a system to organize items from #1
4. Work through stuff
5. Repeat as necessary.

You're asking about #3, and for that, I've found that pushing task
lists into text files works well, and keeping a calendar of things on
a schedule (I'm a Mac guy, so it's iCal, although you could use any
other program).  I also keep paper notes that I input and shred as
quickly as I can, so I don't end up with a paper mess.

- Zack