One of the base principles of Getting Things Done is to obtain a “Mind like water”. Your mind is good for having ideas, not for holding them. That’s why you need to capture everything out of your head, and into a trusted system.

But please pay attention. Its takes about 20 days before you really can trust your trusted system. You need to be able to change and to adapt these changes in your way of work.
Before you continue reading this article, please take a look at this one.

Hereunder you can find a way to perform your Mindsweep. It is based on a Mindsweep Twitter session @GTDCoachKelly  executed via @GTDSpecialEvent
Take pen and paper or some a new document on your computer. Get ready to capture what’s on your mind.

  • This is a capture only. Don’t analyze , process or organize.. Just capture!
  • The primary question you have to ask yourself is: What has my attention?
  • Now start writing down
  • Are there upcoming meetings, projects, ..
  • Anything you have attention to regarding your spouse, partner, kids, family
  • Don’t worry on what you are going to do about it. Just capture. The processing will be done later.
  • Do you have concerns regarding your health, sport?
  • Are there things you noted somewhere else (tasks, projects) write is down. You still have some attention on it
  • Anything with your laptop, equipment, car you have attention on?
  • Look around (real life or virtual) you. Anything you would like to see different in your environment? What’s not exactly how you want it?
  • Write down as much as possible. Don’t be afraid of the possible workload this mindsweep might create. You can always park things
  • What about your E-mail Inbox? Or the Sent Items? Any open issues there?
  • Scan your calendar, some weeks in the past and some weeks in the future.
  • Are there upcoming birthday presents to buy, or Christmas presents?
  • It might be enough to write some keyword just to remind you, like “SharePoint Conference” . You should process it later
  • Some longer term stuff might also have your attention, like your career, family , …
  • Maybe some things you want to do like a parachute or bungee jump, learn a foreign language, …
  • Go for a long, complete list, your mind will be grateful!
  • Oh yeah, this list doesn’t have to be executed tomorrow

So now you have captured what’s on you mind. This is phase 1 of a 5 phased process. The next steps are processing and organizing the Mindsweep.
Good luck with it!

 

 

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