ktGTD – Projects/Actions with a Moleskine
It’s all well and good organising your tasks… but are they truly organised? the ktGTD aims to help you manage your tasks in a way that helps you get them done!
Happy Friday everyone!
Friday’s are always a bit difficult for me, I find motivating myself a great effort and tend to procrastinate on every little task – even making coffee!
In an effort to get myself going I leafed through my moleskine this morning and couldn’t get my head around what to do first. I have been meaning to write about the way I organise my moleskine for some time – and I will get around to it when I have some photos, honest!
Normally, the way that I organise things in my moleskine works very well but when I’m in one of my procrastination funks it’s terrible. I tend not to write any “Next Actions” down in it, it’s more of a project overview list from which I pick and choose the project that’s most relevant/appealing/urgent and then work my next actions out when I’ve decided on what I’m doing.
This is all well and good when I’m Miss Motivated but on days like today when I can’t pull my finger out even picking a project is a problem – let alone sorting the Action points out!
So, enter the ktGTD system!
Inspired by Stefanos Karagos’ mGTD system and David Seah’s Printable CEO and Emergent Task Timer, ktGTD is a easy-to-us GTD system for the Moleskine fanatics amongst us.
ktGTD (kt = Katy, geddit?) is a 3×5″ form that allows you to list actions and statuses on a per-project basis. Unlike my current system when I have no clear next actions associated with a project in my notebook (my actions are all on scraps of paper somewhere), this allows you to keep projects/actions together without having to refer to multiple pages of your notebooks (or scraps of paper which you invariably lose).
Each project will have its own sheet (or sheets) which will be stuck to a page in my Moleskine. Instead of using tape or glue to stick the forms in, I’m going to Blue-Tac them to the pages, that way projects and sheets can be easily moved/removed and I’m still left with a nice clean notebook at the end of it!
How to use the ktGTD form
Simply enter the name of your project in the area at the top of the form, write a brief overview about the project and its overall due date. You can then list your actions, individual due dates (if relevant), the progress and the status of the project
Status Icons
From left-to-right, the status icons are:
- On Hold – the project is no-longer “live” but you don’t want to bin it yet
- Cancelled – Er… the project is… um… cancelled!
- Waiting For – You’re waiting for something from someone else
- Complete – Yeay! You’ve finished!
And that’s it! Simple huh? Please bear in mind that this is the first version of the form. I’ve kept it in keeping with my other form – the Meeting Mate (which you can read about in my post “Writing good meeting minutes revisited“) but I’m open to suggestions about design and content.
You can download the ktGTD below:
I hope you find it useful and I look forward to your comments 🙂
- Follow Katy Whitton on:
“Hi Katy! Thanks for sharing the link to your post with me. I’m interested in how you use the status icons — do you fill them in or circle them? Do you use pencil so you can change a task from “”on hold”” back to active?”
“Glad you like it Corrie 🙂I generally fill the icons in. If something is on hold for me I’ll just cross out the on hold bit when it starts, it tends not to matter for me as once something is started again then it gets finished rather than being put on hold multiple times.If this is the case for people using this form I’d suggest they cross out the item and put it on a new line to re-start the statuses”
“<i>I tend not to write any “”Next Actions”” down in it</i>Surely that is the whole point of GTD 😛 (well amongst others)I know what you mean though, procrastination is a regular companion in my life. However, I have been working at synergising (sic) GTD with Covey’s 7 Habits (bottom up with top down) and so far that is helping my procrastination (as in stopping it) although still quite a few kins in the system.PS doesn’t blu tac leave a greasy residue?PPS and yes, still waiting for the moleskin organisation post 🙂PPPS oh, BTW great post :-)”