Getting Things Done

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THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE I
PART ONE
WORKFLOW DIAGRAM—PROCESSING

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CHAPTER 2
| GETTING CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE: THE FIVE STAGES OF MASTERING WORKFLOW
organizing 
phases—is captured in the center "trunk" of the
decision-tree model shown here.
In later chapters, I'll coach you in significant detail through
each element of the process. For now, though, I suggest you select
a to-do list or a pile of papers from your in-basket and assess a few
items as we take an overview.
What Is 
It?
This is not a dumb question. We've talked about "stuff." And we've
talked about collection buckets. But we haven't discussed what
stuff 
is 
and what to do about it. For example, many of the items
that tend to leak out of our personal organizing systems are amor-
phous forms that we receive from the government or from our
company—do we actually need to 
do 
something about them? And
what about that e-mail from human resources, letting us know
that blah-blah about the blah-blah is now the policy of blah-blah?
I've unearthed piles of messages in stacks and desk drawers that
were tossed there because the client didn't take just a few seconds
to figure out what in fact the communication or document was
really about. Which is why the next decision is critical.
Is 
It 
Actionable?
There are two possible answers for this: 
YES 
and 
NO
.
No Action Required 
If the answer is 
NO
, there are three possibili-
ties:
1 | It's trash, no longer needed.
2 | No action is needed now, but something might need to be
done later (incubate).
3 | The item is potentially useful information that might be
needed for something later (reference).
These three categories can themselves be managed; we'll get
into that in a later chapter. For now, suffice it to say that you need