Take a moment to look at your desk. Can you quickly identify all the items that require attention?

Too often we let things pile up in our workspace. This causes us to lose track of our progress and creates unnecessary stress. Yet this way of working is all too common amongst knowledge workers. Is there a better method?

Recently David Allen wrote an article on the Getting Things Done website to discuss this issue. He begins by defining the problem.

The most obvious case is where there are stacks of things that include items that have actions associated with them and things that just need to be filed or tossed. Often this is true of piles of reading material—magazines, junk mail, email printouts, copies of articles, etc. Most people do not make a clean distinction, visibly or psychologically, between what they still tell themselves they should read, and what should be stored, routed, or just thrown away.

Naturally for Allen, the GTD methodology is the best way to resolve this situation.

With a proper segmentation of the nature of our “stuff”, it is amazing to notice the immediate change for the better in clarity and energy. This is the beauty of the GTD Workflow Diagram in helping you walk through that distinction. With a little effective categorizing, you can stop having to keep thinking about having to be doing so much work!

Read the whole article on the Getting Things Done website.