GTD Step 1 - Physical Collection

If you are familiar with the GTD methodology, you know the first step is to collect everything physical around your office, house, car, EVERYWHERE that you may have tried to use as a reminder to do something and put it all in one In Tray.

Since I knew I had a lot of stuff laying around my office, car and house, I decided to improvise my first In Tray and use a pretty large and deep cardboard box for the initial collection.  I will use the more standard plastic In Tray once I get through the initial collection and processing of physical things, but for now this seems to work best.


After about an hour of initial collection, I needed to add a second, much larger box and ended up finding a number of very interesting things.

1) I found about 300 pages of blank computer paper that I had piled up in different piles.
2) 2 iPods that were dead / needed new music.
3) 18 flash drives that I wanted to see what was on the.
4) about 150 CD/DVD that had collected around my office.
5) Cables, lots and lots of cables.

Next step is doing a mind dump of everything (and again I mean everything) that is on my mind and that I am trying to remember to do (like post this blog).  I am going to use the suggested method of utilizing pen and paper for this and try to write down every current and future test or project that is currently weighing on my mind (examples, this project, upcoming vacation, unresolved issues at a client) and then during the processing phase convert these pages to Tasks & Projects in Outlook .  I am hoping / planning to do this in the afternoon so, with any luck I will have another update on my process later this evening or tomorrow.

Side Note:  This is my dog Lily and she was NOT helpful at all in the collection process.
I suggest if you have a dog (puppy in my case) you keep it out of your collection area.  I had to keep her out of my office after the 3rd time she pulled something out of the pile and ran away with it.
Cute, but not productive!