I've been using GTD probably since May now. I really like the system and recommend anyone who has to manage multiple projects at a time (as I'm increasingly doing) take a look at it.

The first two weeks of GTD I felt ultra-productive: I must have done a 100 things I'd been putting off, or didn't know I had to do, or whatever. Ultra Productive. I would read a few pages in Getting Things Done, think of 5 things I needed to do, and rush off and write them down.

It didn't hurt that my favorite organizational tool (right now), Mori, that I moved to shortly after my "Yojimbo vs StickyBrain: Fight" entry, has a GTD plugin.

After the first two weeks the feeling of ultra-productivity lessened, but I'm in control of my tasks now. The write-everything-down mentality helps, and the call to review your task list every week helps too. I'm pretty bad at remembering to do that review, but Mori's GTD plugin (mGTD) has this recurring event feature that I'm learning to use to remind me to do that.

Mori's also really cool in that it keeps track of little things ("Go grocery shopping") and the big things (I'm using it as an editor for this blog entry, to keep the entry's text together with the TODO item).

Lately I've gotten away from the "throwing everything into Mori" and instead, 9 times out of 10, I get one of the cut in half index cards that are in a pile on my desk. I Write my todo item on that, throw it at my (physical) inbox. Then, when comes time to do them - or when I'm ready to assign tasks for the day or the day to come - they go on to the desk. When they are complete they get crumpled up. Today I decided to leave these crumpled up pieces of paper on my desk until the end of the day, as a physical reminder of what all I did during the day.

This plan is not without issues: with a physical inbox and one in Mori it means I have two inboxes (bad!). Half of me wants to get this down to one inbox, but nothing beats the ease of grabbing a pen, writing something down, and tossing it into the bucket - [OE]cause very often I'm on the other computer (the computer that doesn't hold my GTD information).

GTD is all about simplicity, but (of course) there's a little complexity in my system. Along with the two inboxes, projects often have their own TODO list (OmniOutliner generated, or via TextMate's TODO bundle, or assignments via a bug reporter). But, with project level TODO lists then everybody else on the project knows what needs to be done on the project (and not that Ryan needs to do laundry).

Maybe my next step along the GTD path is to find a way to integrate all these inboxes together. Or maybe not. I find that, while I have an OK time collecting tasks, things can sit in my GTD forever... and become stale.

On the other hand, these multiple inboxes might not be that bad. I give up the centralized list, but I can open the TODO list for the context I'm working on (a Good Thing in GTD)... maybe it's not too bad. I'm not sure yet.

Anyway, ending the day with 7-10 things marked Completed is a really nice ego boost.

What I like about GTD is that it pushes me more into a "can I get it done now and off my table in two minutes?" mentality. It's the killer question for me: keeping small tasks from piling up in my inbox, but also keeping me from wasting huge amounts of time with whatever random and huge task that happens to come to my attention.

In summary: For me, I think GTD has some great features: foundational or otherwise

• Write Everything Down
• If you can do it in 2 minutes, do it now
• List how you're going to do something (what the next action is), and not just that you need to do it. If you just list that you need to do then the next time you look at it you'll wonder "I wonder how I am to do this..." and it's a barrier to getting it done. If there's uncertainty it's more likely to go to the bottom of the pile
• While not foundational GTD, I've found that having a list of tasks I've completed over the day is a nice ego boost