Trust & Productivity

One of the things that is critical in GTD is trusting your system.  You have to really believe in your collection systems, or you won't use them.  When that breaks down, the system breaks down.  You have to know something will be in the right folder, or on your calendar, because if you lose faith, you will quit using it.

I'm having a faith issue with a different collection point - my freezer.  Once again, we are out power, so far for  about 36 hours and counting.  Although I live in a fairly urban/suburban area, I also live on a tree-lined street in southern New England, and the weather can be harsh.  In the past several years we've lost all of our cold food more than once, and it's heart breaking.  I haven't gotten too far into OAMC (once-a-month cooking) and this is precisely why.  I can't trust that we will have consistent power to keep too much in the freezer!

I'm not sure how to bridge this gap, short of buying a generator.  Although I can do my best to keep things full with ice and not open the freezer when the power is off, I don't really feel like potentially exposing myself or my family to contaminated food.

Ideas on how do learn to trust my freezer?  See this from a different perspective?

In-Boxes

"First, if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside of your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through."

David Allen, "Getting Things Done and the Art of Stress-free Productivity"

One of the reasons that the GTD (Getting Things Done) system works for me is that I have a lot of ideas and information coming at me.  My brain was always full with my to-do lists and ideas, but I often was forgetting things.  I didn't have a go to place for recording things, so sometimes they'd be in my personal email, sometimes in my work email, sometimes on a scrap of paper, but often just lost in my mind.  Later I'd be frustrated trying to remember that thing I was supposed to do, or feel stressed at 10PM, hoping to remember about the thing at work the next day.

In GTD, you create collection buckets.  These are physical or electronic in-boxes that allow you to place all your Stuff.  You can (and should) have more than one collection bucket, but not so many that things get lost.  My collection buckets are:

• My personal email
• My work email
• My 43 folder/tickler system at home
• My physical inbox at work
• My Remember The Milk inbox
• A bin we keep in the dining room

I purposely mixed up home & work items because they do blend.  In theory, every idea and to-do goes in one of these, sometimes moving from one to another.  

Although I own a smart phone, I try not to be entirely dependent upon it for recording things.  At my workdesk I ensure there is scrap paper & sticky notes for me to quickly jot down information.  Throughout my house in locations I frequent are pens and sticky notes.  I also carry a small Moleskin in my purse, so when I am out & about I don't lose something.  The reality is not everything is electronic - incoming mail, receipts, broken doo-hickeys, keys, whatnots all can be put into this system.  

There is a LOT more to GTD than simply collecting everything into a few easily accessed locations, but it is a first step.  Forcing myself to collect ideas, has helped me dramatically, both as far as my stress level and productivity.