The time management skills are an important factor in success. David Allen's “Getting Things Done“ methodology has been helping people around the world succeed in this for 20 years. If you are also struggling with task management and time management, try to apply the principles of GTD in a CRM software and be as effective as possible at work.

If you weren't born with organizational skills, all you have to do is learn those skills. It requires discipline and to learn certain habits, but the GTD methodology really simplifies the whole process. Thanks to those processes you will know exactly what to do, and in a month you will stop drowning in tasks and deadlines.

You can start organizing work according to GTD right away as long as you choose the right tool. It can easily be a pencil and paper, but the real simplification for unorganized personalities is only brought on by professional software. It brings a set of rules and recommendations that can be followed at work.

It is possible to set GTD rules for work organization in time management systems. However, complex CRM systems are often equally equipped with necessary features for time management. One such system is eWay-CRM. What are its key features for GTD in practice?

TIP: Haven't heard of GTD yet? Read the article on Getting Things Done, in which we present the methodology in more detail.

Tasks

If you are interested in the GTD methodology and have already learned more about it, you have probably already thought about where you will manage your tasks. In eWay-CRM, you have all your tasks in one place, well organized and always quickly accessible. You can access the Tasks module in your Outlook, web browser, and mobile application. You can schedule tasks anytime and anywhere. It doesn't matter if you are sitting in the office, at a meeting with a client, or in a car.

Outlook Inbox

There should be only one place where you manage your tasks. But requests can come from anywhere. Via text message, from a colleague standing in the doorway of your office, or in Outlook. It is email that a large part of the requests come from, if not the largest. And that is one of the biggest advantages of eWay-CRM for Outlook. All you have to do is organize your inbox in accordance with GTD so that you only see unprocessed requests. Incoming emails with requests that you will not be able to process immediately, can quickly be converted to a task and work with it directly in Outlook.

Categories

Another of the key ideas of Getting Things Done is the context that we attach to the individual tasks. Context determines when it is ideal to process the task. When processing tasks, we do not focus on due dates primarily, but what will be most effective at the moment. Although due dates are also important for tasks. We should first look at today's tasks and then choose a specific task according to the context.

For example, context can be set as follows:

1. Has to be today
2. Phone
3. Email
4. Office
5. Read / Think
6. Control

When working in eWay-CRM, you can add context to tasks using categories. When looking at the list of tasks, you can always decide according to the category which task you will process. It depends on whether you are in the office, where you have peace of mind and on the contrary, you would eventually disturb your colleagues by phone calling, or you are on the way by car, train or tram, and handling emails and calls is the only thing you can take care of efficiently at that moment.

Projects and subtasks

Imagine that in a supermarket they would have all the products together in one huge box. That would be a terrible experience. It makes perfect sense that individual cans, bottles, and other goods are sorted into smaller boxes, which are then possibly packed into larger boxes and then again on whole pallets.

Tasks also need to be sorted into larger units. In eWay-CRM, in addition to individual tasks, you can also create entire projects or, conversely, subtasks. Whenever you open a project or task, you will see what subtasks need to be processed step by step to finish the whole project.