While I recommend going fully digital with your planning, some folks might still prefer to be paper-based.
For those of you who work best that way, the first ever paper planner structured for GTD implementation has now been released from the David Allen Company.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
Introducing the first paper planner embedded with GTD intelligence. The GTD Coordinator. Inside you’ll find tabs and pages categorized to fit the GTD methodology, education on the principles and best practices of GTD, calendar pages, and how-to sample pages to assist you in creating the most effective and usable planner to meet your individaul style and needs.
It looks like it has these sections, based on the website description:
- Notes/In
- Calendar
- Action Lists
- Agendas
- Projects/Goals
- Project Plans/Notes
- Reference/Misc.
- Contacts
That organization should be helpful. However, here are a few things I would change. First, I would not have a section with “miscellaneous” in the title. I don’t believe miscellaneous is a helpful category (just like I don’t believe in junk drawers — there are no junk drawers in our house). The concept of “reference” is fully accurate in itself for the name of this tab.
Second, I would have “projects” and “goals” be different tabs, because projects and goals are different.
Third, I would not have a separate section for project plans. Instead, project plans should be integrated right in with the projects list. In other words, you should put your project plan sheets right after the project list in the “projects” tab. Goal plans should be handled this way as well in the “goals” section.
Fourth, I would consider not having an “agendas” tab, because agendas are really a type of action list, which already has a tab. However, I do see value in having agendas out separately (there is a whole lot more that could be said here), so I don’t lean too strongly in that direction.
Back when I used a paper planner, these are the tabs I created:
- Calendar
- In/Notes
- Actions
- Projects
- Goals
- Mission
- Operations
- Reference
- Contacts
The website points out that the GTD Coordinator is still in beta, so if you do purchase it your feedback would probably be appreciated as they create the final version of the product. It looks like it has the potential to be a very useful productivity tool for those that are paper-based.