This part was really tough for me. I have a bad habit of keeping notes on my desk and I didn't want to lose them. Even though I knew they would be going into a single place put me off collecting everything for a while.

Seeing the pile grow made things even worse. Each new item made it look like an insurmountable mountain of work that would never be processed.

Here are a few things I collected during this stage:

• Sealed bills that I paid online and never opened
• Letters
• Receipts I saved for when I file taxes
• Greetings cards
• Notebooks
• Paper folders (some empty, some not)
• USB sticks
• Tickets and programs from events
• Notes for whatever I was working on at the time. Some were from projects I finished months ago. Most of what I collected fell into this category, and ranged from full sheets of paper to post-it notes.
• Stuff that could go straight in the trash (empty envelopes, grocery store receipts from 2016 etc.)

I didn't count everything so it's hard to say just how much there was, but it ended up being a pretty large pile. I'd estimate there were over 1,000 individual items (pieces of paper, notecards etc) to process. Some of those items also have multiple items written on them.

That's not even including my email inbox, which currently sits at around 3,000 emails.

Performing a "mind sweep" is also part of the collection phase. The idea is to get your thoughts out of your mind and onto paper so that they can be processed. The GTD website has a list of things to read through to see if they spark any ideas.

Due to the amount of stuff I'd already collected, I decided to perform a mind sweep after the initial processing stage. Sitting down for an hour to think about everything I have to do didn't sound too appealing when there was already a huge stack of things to go through.

With collection done, it's onto step 2: processing!

GTD centers around three important things:

1. A well-defined process for handling incoming tasks
2. A trusted system for organizing them
3. A regular review for maintaining things

Sounds reasonable when it's written down, but what does it actually mean in the real world?

During a regular day I usually end up with one or more of the following:

• Support tickets from clients. Some urgent, some not-so-urgent.
• Chat messages asking for more immediate issues. Or just to ask questions.
• Meeting requests.
• Regular mail (usually bills).
• Emails asking questions, requesting estimates, giving feedback or any other number of things.
• Social messages (think "any plans for the weekend?")

And this list doesn't even include those random "oh yeah, I need to get X done" or "I really should fix that" thoughts that crop up during the day.

GTD calls these open loops.

If I let all of these pull me as soon as they come in, nothing gets done. But I also can't remember everything. A big source of stress for me is having to remind myself of what I should be doing and what important things I can't forget.

This is where the well-defined process and trusted system come in.

Without a process to sort things into the correct buckets, everything ends up going straight on the "must do now" pile. Without a system of organization that I know I'll use, I'll constantly worry about forgetting to do things.

GTD breaks down into three stages:

1. Capturing – getting things out of the brain and into a system.
2. Processing – deciding on what to do with every single open loop.
3. Reviewing – looking over everything tracked in the system and making sure nothing is left out.

The initial round can be extremely time consuming (and a little intimidating). Capturing every single open loop, processing them and storing them in the appropriate places takes time and patience.

It gets easier with experience.

I'm under no illusions that GTD is a perfect system or that it will solve every problem. I will probably never reach inbox zero or a mind like water, but even a limited implementation cuts down on some of the background noise in my mind.

This week I'm starting on the first step - capturing everything.