GTD - My journey to Getting Things Done

I am busy, overwhelmingly busy and I need help!  I have a hard time sleeping at night (too many things on my mind) and constantly am forgetting commitments I have made to others.  If the only thing I gain from this process is a good nights sleep, it will be well worth the effort,

Like most people I am busy.

I work in sales and at this moment I have over 1,700 unread emails in my inbox (and I only keep 3 months of mail in my inbox), 9 voice mails I haven't checked, my "daily" todo list now has over 100 items on it (it has now become a weekly todo list) and my desk / home office is a complete mess.  (See Picture)

Most weeks I have 5 - 10 scheduled meetings with clients, partners and team members and I do a moderate amount of travel that induces a monthly 12+ hour round trip drive to another province and bi-monthly flights to other cities around Canada and the US.  I'm also a mobile worker which means I have a home office, a hotel style desk at our company office, work from Starbucks, client sites, my car, partner sites, basicly anyware I can sit and open my laptop or stand and view my phone I work from.

Besides my day job, I have a wife and 3 kids, coach soccer in the summer, ringette in the winter, sit on the board of directors of one of the provincial sports organizations, have a side online business, have a puppy (named Lily who is currently 12 weeks old), have fiends, somewhat of a social life, use to spend time in the gym and homebrew beer.

On my last road trip I decided to listen to the Getting Things Done audiobook to kill the time and get a good understanding of the process. Getting Things Done by David Allan promises a method to help me organize and stay on top of all the "things" I need to get done in my business and personal life. I ended up listening part #2 again on the drive home to really understand the processes that will be required, and like the author says, if you read the book again it will be a completely different experience.

Over the next couple of days / weeks I will be starting the process as outlined in the book and on http://www.gettingthingsdone.com and will be using this blog as both a personal diary to help me keep on track but also a means to share my successes, failures, lessons learned and methods I have chosen to follow to implement this process.

I unfortunately wont be able to follow the suggested process exactly, the only time I would be able to clear off 2 full days in my schedule would be weeks from now, and im hoping that putting a couple hours a day into the process will yield decent results, but I will try to stick with the suggested process as close as I can other than that.

I am looking forward to getting started soon, not looking forward to the amount of "stuff" that will require action after the collection phase, but am optimistic that this whole process will bring me closer to the "Mind like water" state that is discussed in the book.