GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

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5. Collection: Corralling Your 'Stuff'

IN CHAPTER 2 I described the basic procedures for collecting your work. This chapter will lead you in more detail through the process of getting all your incompletes, all your 'stuff,' into one place—into 'in.' That's the critical first step in getting to the state of 'mind like water.' Just gathering a few more things than you currently have will probably create a positive feeling for you. But if you can hang in there and really do the whole collection process, 100 percent, it will change your experience dramatically and give you an important new reference point for being on top of your work.

When I coach a client through this process, the collection phase usually takes between one and six hours, though it did take all of twenty hours with one person (finally I told him, 'You get the idea'). It can take longer than you think if you are committed to a full-blown capture that will include everything at work and everywhere else. That means going through every storage area and every nook and cranny in every location, including cars, boats, and other homes, if you have them.

Be assured that if you give yourself at least a couple of hours to tackle this part, you can grab the major portion of things out-standing. And you can even capture the rest by creating relevant placeholding notes—for example, 'Purge and process boat storage shed' and 'Deal with hall closet.'

In the real world, you probably won't be able to keep your stuff 100 percent collected all of the time. If you're like most people, you'll move too fast and be engaged in too many things during the course of a week to get all your ideas and commitments captured outside your head. But it should become an ideal standard that keeps you motivated to consistently 'clean house' of all the things about your work and life that have your attention.

Ready, Set. . .

There are very practical reasons to gather everything before you start processing it:

1. it's helpful to have a sense of the volume of stuff you have to deal with;

2. it lets you know where the 'end of the tunnel' is; and

3. when you're processing and organizing, you don't want to be distracted psychologically by an amorphous mass of stuff that might still be 'somewhere.' Once you have all the things that require your attention gathered in one place, you'll automatically be operating from a state of enhanced focus and control.

It can be daunting to capture into one location, at one time, all the things that don't belong where they are. It may even seem a little counterintuitive, because for the most part, most of that stuff was not, and is not, 'that important'; that's why it's still lying around. It wasn't an urgent thing when it first showed up, and probably nothing's blown up yet because it hasn't been dealt with. It's the business card you put in your wallet of somebody you thought you might want to contact sometime. It's the little piece of techno-gear in the bottom desk drawer that you're missing a part for. It's the printer that you keep telling yourself you're going to move to a better location in your office. These are the kinds of things that nag at you but that you haven't decided either to deal with or to drop entirely from your list of open loops. But because you think there still could be something important in there, that 'stuff' is controlling you and taking up more psychic energy than it deserves. Keep in mind, you can feel good about what you're not doing, only when you know what you're not doing.

So it's time to begin. Grab your in-basket and a half-inch stack of plain paper for your notes, and let's . . .

... Go!

Physical Gathering

The first activity is to search your physical environment for anything that doesn't belong where it is, the way it is, permanently, and put it into your in-basket. You'll be gathering things that are incomplete, things that have some decision about potential action tied to them. They all go into 'in,' so they'll be available for later processing.

Train yourself to notice and collect anything that doesn't belong where it is forever

What Stays Where It Is

The best way to create a clean decision about whether something should go into the in-basket is to understand clearly what shouldn't go in. Here are the four categories of things that can remain where they are, the way they are, with no action tied to them:

• Supplies

• Reference material

• Decoration

• Equipment

Supplies . . . include anything you need to keep because you use it regularly. Stationery, business cards, stamps, staples, Post-it pads, legal pads, paper clips, ballpoint refills, batteries, forms you need to fill out from time to time, rubber bands—all of these qualify. Many people also have a 'personal supplies' drawer at work containing dental floss, Kleenex, breath mints, and so on. 

Reference Material ... is anything you simply keep for information as needed, such as manuals for your software, the local take-out deli menu, or your kid's soccer schedule. This category includes your telephone and address information, any material relevant to projects, themes, and topics, and sources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and almanacs.

Decoration . . . means pictures of family, artwork, and fun and inspiring things pinned to your bulletin board. You also might have plaques, mementos, and/or plants.

Equipment ... is obviously the telephone, computer, fax, printer,wastebasket, furniture, and/or VCR.

You no doubt have a lot of things that fall into these four categories—basically all your tools and your gear, which have no actions tied to them. Everything else goes into 'in.' But many of the things you might initially interpret as supplies, reference, decoration, or equipment could also have action associated with them because they still aren't exactly the way they need to be.

For instance, most people have, in their desk drawers and on their credenzas and bulletin boards, a lot of reference materials that either are out of date or need to be organized somewhere else. Those should go into 'in.' Likewise, if your supplies drawer is out of control, full of lots of dead or unorganized stuff, that's an incomplete that needs to be captured. Are the photos of your kids current ones? Is the artwork what you want on the wall? Are the mementos really something you still want to keep? Is the furniture precisely the way it should be? Is the computer set up the way you want it? Are the plants in your office alive? In other words, supplies, reference materials, decoration, and equipment may need to be tossed into the in-basket if they're not just where they should be, the way they should be. 

Issues About Collecting

As you engage in the collecting phase, you may run into one or more of the following:

• you've got a lot more than will fit into one in-basket;

• you're likely to get derailed into purging and organizing;

• you may have some form of stuff already collected and organized; and/or

• you're likely to run across some critical things that you want to keep in front of you.

 What If an Item Is Too Big to Go in the In-Basket? If you can't physically put something in the in-basket, then write a note on a piece of letter-size plain paper to represent it. For instance, if you have a poster or other piece of artwork behind the door to your office, just write 'Artwork behind door' on a letter-size piece of paper and put the paper in the in-basket.