When I'm doing GTD well, my physical space is immaculate. When my physical space starts getting messy, that's a red flag in my mind that I'm slacking.

My best friend has a degree in architecture and is a whiz at organization and planning (in sharp contradistinction to me). She says that your physical space has to be in order for your interior space to be in order. Which explains why my study looks like it does, and why I'm on Prozac.... I'm currently using iGTD for, well, GTD, and FlyLady's system for my physical space. Both work, when I use them. That last clause is the snag.

Just my $.02.

I think I could post two images of my desk "before/after GTD" as an example. I use to use "piles of stuff" as kind-of-next-action-reminders, things i had to read, things I had to mail, things I had to sign, projects I had to complete, my desk was like a little sand castle with towers of papers all around me, waiting to fall on the floor, constantly reminding me that I was not DONE with anything. Now I changed to a new office in a new job (and started GTD at the same time) and its a totally different world. I am not afraid things will slip into the cracks if they are out of sight as they are all in my system (hpda/ical) and voila: nothing on my desk except a little plastic thingy that holds 5 hanging folders for the supporting data for the projects I work on the most that week. I implemented an inbox and a reference material system at home and although the other user of the home office (aka the husband) does not follow that method (sigh), the room is totally different from the pre-GTD euqivalent in our old flat. However, I don't want to turn into a total neat-desk freak and something I read somewhere (maybe on this forum) made me laugh and reminded me of cutting myself some slack (and of doing a weekly review in the middle of the week!) if I start to have pile on my desk again: Eistein was quoted as saying: "if a messy desk means a messy mind, what does an empty desk say about its owner?".

My experience has been the same. Before GTD, much messier. The more i GTD, the cleaner and sleeker I get.

So, no surprise here, efficiency translates freely from one domain to the other. I guess I have some more work to do...

Thanks for the insight!

When I first got into GTD I went from terminal slob to psychoticly organised. I tend
to fall off the wagon a little now, and things are a little less tidy than I would like
them to be. However,

a) it's never nearly as bad as it was,

b) it's much easier to tidy up, because everything has its place, even if it isn't in it right now, and

c) it's not depressing, because I know I can clear-up pretty easily when I feel the need.

Anthony

As an addition/progress report: as a sessional, I don't have a (university) office during the summer, so my home office has been overloaded in the interim. I recently discovered that I have access to a storage facility as part of my rent, so half of my office is now in a dank basement and not in my face.

I feel much better about it. I have some more elbow room, and the cleaner my office gets the more I want to clean and the better I feel about doing it.

I can also remove "GTD" from my desk, as I have bought the audiobook (GTD-Fast), I'll be listening to it on my upcoming fishing trip...away from work. This will lead to another thread.

i have the same feelings as anthony. one of the big things about GTDing my life was that everything has an "away" now...so i can actually put it "away." SO MUCH of my stuff didn't even really have a place to go, so OF COURSE I couldn't put it away!

I am also a big fan of lots of desk space...i have one big desk and a drafting table. the drafting table I keep at an incline so I can't
stack stuff on it. (But I can masking tape things in place.) Great place for really big mind mapping (i.e. across many sheets of paper.)

For me it’s a bit of both. I do my weekly reviews on Saturday and part of the routine is to clean and organize my room and desk. Over the course of the week, things get slowly more disorganized and cluttered, but I don’t feel stressed out about it because I know it will all be put back in order on Saturday. (I’ve written a bit more about this mess ebb and flow here)

-Grey