This weekend I realized that I didn't say much about the process of creativity itself. In my mind that's where the artist comes up with all his/her ideas by whatever means works and captures them onto paper or film (speaking broadly). I think that would come at the beginning, and to me it's the most important part of the process. Most of what I wrote about was really project management, moving your projects along in the natural course of development, but being aware of where they are, where they're supposed to be, and thinking critically about how to get them where they need to be if they're not there yet. (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

On a different note, a lot of this is informed by my job as a graphic designer, where it's somebody's job to manage projects. (In our case, it's my creative director, since we're a 5-person outfit--2 designers, 1 copywriter, 1 creative director, 1 business director.) I suppose it's a lot more of a struggle for artists and designers going solo, since we'd love to spend our time creating, not billing. (And wasn't Merlin Mann himself a Project Manager before he started 43Folders?)

But I think GTD gives us a good, simple framework for coming up with a strategy to handle the business. It gives you a good way to get a quick overall view of where everything is, when a lot of times we all get bogged down in the "now" and lose sight of the big picture, regardless of what kind of work we're doing.

Every Monday at 9:00, we have a Production Meeting. I like to think of the Weekly Review as sort of my own personal Production Meeting. And like the times the week and projects get hairy, it can be good to have an impromptu 15-minute meeting/review to see where everything is.