I had an 'aha' moment while listening to the podcasts about 'leaks in the system' today.

I'd thought, until now, of GTD in terms of organizing my online work - the emails and jobs I need to do for my website - and then realized that I could incorporate my writing work and personal administration things - home finance and suchlike. After looking at a mom's organizer with a 'what's for dinner' section on it, I realized that I could include menu planning - it's part of my job, after all!

Some people might find it stupid (too 'granular?) to plan something as mundane as dinner, but when you hate cooking and it's your job to feed the family....

Anyway, when Merlin and David Allen were talking about the 'higher levels' I realized that this system really can encompass EVERYTHING. Mad ideas for inventions I'll never do, crazy theories about 'stuff'...all those little notes and ideas about art theory, story ideas..... the dozen notebooks I have lying about with half-finished things - THEY have to be part of the capture system too.

I hadn't realized how much mental noise all those notes and papers were creating.

As a student, the Visual Diary was effectively a capture system - everything went in there. There are some pros to that: you have a sequential record of the generation of ideas, and they are all in one place. But then you can't take things out and put them together with related larger pieces... they are locked in place... this is something I'll have to think about, how the visual ideas fit into the capture system.

I wonder if many other 43folders readers fit 'unconventional' things into their GTD system?

Helen