Last Thursday was one of those days. Lots of stuff coming at me and some critical deadlines which had be be met before I was able to take Friday off work. Despite this I left Thursday in control knowing what had to be done was done and comfortable that what I hadn’t yet got to could wait.
Three of the core processes in Getting Things Done are Collect, Process and Organise. The first involves collecting all loose bits of paper, ideas, business cards etc into collection buckets such as a a physical in-tray on your desk. The second is the discrete step of deciding what do to with all those pieces of information and the third is organising the decisions into a trusted system for recall when required.
It was because I had been doing this that I knew everything was captured and there were no landmines waiting for me. I was then able to make practical decisions (given my time and energy available) about what to do next and what could be left.
These simple acts, when developed as habits, make life much easier.