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Life is busy. It is easy to get caught up in its busy-ness. In-so-doing, we can also lose sight of ourselves. The demands of the busyness and business of life can mean we lose touch with our creative spirit, our ideas and intuition. Productivity expert David Allen has a methodology that could help you reclaim your vision and focus.

Simply put, the Allen’s approach is called Getting Things Done or GTD. It has five steps.

1. Capture – collect what has your attention.
   Do a brain dump of everything that is going on in your head, demanding your attention. Make a list on pen and paper, type it on your computer, white board it, chart it, record it. Get it out of your head and recorded in some way. Big things, small, important and trivial – everything that captures your brain’s attention.
2. Clarify – process what it means.
   Consider your captured list and make decisions about it.
   Is it actionable?
   Depending on your answer: do it, dump it, delegate it or decide when to do it.
3. Organise – put it where it belongs.
   Put reminders in place for lists. Create lists for categories like calls to make, tasks to do, emails to send, etc.
4. Reflect – review frequently.
   Consider your lists as much as you need to. This may be hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. This satisfies your need to know things are on track and you have a good sense of the status of things. As long as things are listed, you free up your brain for more creative thinking.
5. Engage – simply do.
   Work through the things on your lists.

Try the GTD methodology for yourself. It is simple but it works!

Source: David Allen – gettingthingsdone.com