It’s weeks like this, where you have to manage multiple things at a high stress and time pressure, that easily break your daily routine and to-do system. Normally at this point I’d have scrapped my system in favour of trusting no one with any delegated tasks and therefore working 48 hour days to get everything done. The house becomes messy, the office a tip, and I obsessively cut out everything else in order to check off every last task.

Not this year. Thanks do an integrated GTD system, and more specifically, Remember The Milk.

A big part of GTD is context. The idea is to create lists based on context – office, home, phone calls. Now because I list every project with a hastag and then the task, i.e. ‘#Touch – Print off posters’, I have set up a smart list that searches every task with ‘#Touch’. The result is I have a list dedicated to every task for this project, rather than sifting through my ‘Next’ or ‘Waiting For’ lists. I can see everything I have tagged as ‘delegated’, who I’ve delegated it to, as well as ‘video’, ‘dtp’, etc, so I get a great 20,000 to 30,000 foot view on the project.

Along with Evernote as my external mind, I have found my system (I’ll share more details with you later) has stayed solid and helped me delegate and manage far better. Did I tell you I’m also writing a viral campaign proposal this week?

When started working at church at 19 I had no office experience. And although in my melancholic, creative nature there is an obsessive and meticulous organiser within me, unfortunately I have historically had a nasty habit of never implementing a system because I could never get it ‘perfect’ enough.

From 19 through to 25, despite the public successes I had, the lack of organisation, mental clarity, and ability to lead and to delegate was killing me.

Let me paint the picture for you. I could start a massive youth initiative, but I couldn’t keep it organised. I could start a great TV programme, but I couldn’t continue running it after the start-up energy drained. I could sit and share great ideas, but couldn’t implement them. I could start many, many things, but I could never finish them.

It is a curse and a form of mental torment to have potential, be a thinking person, see beyond the normal things, but be hindered from getting what is in the nebulous of your potential within you, out of you.

After I got thrust into business it was by need and by chance that I discovered this article on Getting Things Done. I cannot begin to explain how after just one read it transformed my thinking. Years of struggling with organisation, leading myself and others, etc etc, I would estimate were cut down by two thirds in my life through reading the book by David Allen. How?

1. Order. You no longer have bits of paper or to do lists in your mind. Everything goes into a system and you work according to its order. New tasks go in the inbox. Your next tasks go in the ‘Next Actions’ list, and so on. This gives you:
2. Trust. Because the system has an order you can relax your mind because you trust the order to work. I now know that if you email me a task, it will get done. I no longer accept tasks that are given to me audibly – only written, because then I trust my system will handle it. What this does require, though, is:
3. Immersion. You need to fully do the system and find ways to work it into all the tiny little areas of your life. Otherwise, you slip back by leaving emails in your inbox, or letters on the sideboard. But, if you do immerse yourself, then you get:
4. Mental freedom. Your mind is RAM, not hard drive space. You store your tasks in your system, not your memory. So all the mental power you were using to remember (and often forgetting) what you need to do is now freed up to actually process what you need to do. This gives you:
5. Authority. Because you have a system for delegation, for reporting, for getting things done, you have new found authority in every area of your life, which gives your more mental stamina and power to delegate with confidence.

I’ll be posting my thoughts and experiences about GTD, and my setup in particular, in the coming months. As for now I want to emphasise the need for a system to every reader, and especially every Christian who wants to be in ministry. God is a God of order  (1 Cor 14:40), and Jesus counsels us that no one should build what they cannot finish (Luke 14:28-30). Running your to-do list, diary and filing is a foundational part – and something I teach to everyone who works with me or wants to learn from me.

And by-the-by, if you’d like to attend a GTD workshop in Exeter (and the surrounding area), then let me know!

Updates

1. David Allen (aka GTD Guy Himself!) retweeted this post, which is very special for me considering how much he has impacted my life this year. Props also to @mickmel  @pastorhudson   @creativescott  @singfiel  @chadbrannon  all for retweeting that retweet.
2. There is now a hashtag on Twitter for an Exeter and surrounding area tweetup – #GeeTeeDeeUp – although as of writing this update, it’s just me going on about it