Getting Things Done

At FSC, we focus on the fundamentals of our work at the core to improve our day to day performance. Much like a soccer player practices passing, we ensure we place the right focus on things like managing your time and communication, as these influence everything else we do.

Below is one way that we manage our time using the Getting Things Done method coupled with Trello. We hope you find it helpful.

Basic Tenets

We often find ourselves trying to remember things on our to do list at odd times of the day. Perhaps we try to make a “mental note” of the milk that we need to pick up, but immediately another to-do springs into mind: You never emailed back your colleague. You may try to hold both in your head, but in the end either the milk or the email, or potentially both will fall away, leading only to creating further stress and anxiety.

This raises an important question.

Are our information overloaded lives essentially using up too much mental space? Do you often focus too much on the major tasks of the day that we forget the minor tasks for the day?

GTD is a popular and effective method for work and time management. Through creating a categorised and organised system for your tasks to be prioritised and executed you will perform a productive yet manageable day.

Breaking down your tasks into timelines allows you to focus only on what you need to complete today effectively alleviating pressure.

GTD to Trello
Creating labels to organise “to-do’s”

Assigning each of your tasks into the above labels helps to categorise your lists into organised sections. The colour coding will also help to quickly familiarise you with what the task at hand relates to. The above listed labels are purely an example, you can create as many or as little as you need to suit your needs.

Where to find labels. The labels section can be found by clicking “Show Menu”→ “More”→ “Labels”.

Creating Baskets

Baskets will essentially organise your timeline. This will help separate your prioritised tasks with more long term based tasks. The following is an example of how I have organised my baskets however again this is completely customisable to suit your needs.

Each task may have sub tasks that need to be completed to finish the task, these can be added as sub tasks in Trello (see below). You will get a feel once you start using it, you will get in a rhythm of what classifies as its own task and what counts as a sub task.

Roll out the plans

Unveil all your tasks into in each aforementioned categories giving each of them a due date.

When a new task comes up during the day, ask yourself the following questions;

• Can the task be completed in under 5 minutes?
  • If yes→ Do the task in the moment if you can.
  • If no→ Just add it to the “0. Inbox”(see below).
  • Then ask – do I need to do this today?
    • If yes→ Add a label, due date and move it to the “1. To Do Today” box.
    • If no→ Do nothing further.

Day-to-Day Operations

• Each morning, you will do three things;
  • Add labels and due dates to items in your “0.Inbox”. Then move them into the relevant basket depending on when they are due.
  • Move items from “2. To do This Week” to “1. To do Today” as required.
  • Order the tasks Chronologically in the “1. To do Today” basket.
• This will take approx. 15 minutes. Now you have your to do list for the day and you know that is all you need to focus on.
• At the start of this week, you will pull items from “3. To Do this Month” to “2. To Do this Week”

Collecting Information In The “0.Inbox”

The first thing to do is create a label called “0.Inbox”. The purpose of this label is to capture all the ideas and things to do that come to you during the day. It might be for example:

• Organise meeting with Chris
• Buy Dad a birthday present
• Email a client as you see it can be anything from personal to business and minor to major. All of the tasks in this list will go through Process and Organise at a later stage.
• Downloading the Trello mobile app is the easiest way to update your “0.Inbox” as it only takes a few minutes to flick onto your board and readjust as necessary.