This article is going to be about the second core princple is "Process". I've writen about the first principle already, and after the "Process" principle we still have three more to do:

• Collect
• Process
• Organize
• Review
• Do

The "Process" principle is all about processing the things you collected in while practicing the "Collect" principle. David Allen, the founder of Getting Things Done, suggests the following process workflow:

• Start at the top.
• Deal with one item at a time.
• Never put anything back into your "collection".
• If an item requires action:
  • do it (if it takes less than two minutes),
  • delegate it, or
  • defer it.
• If not,
  • file it for reference,
  • throw it away, or
  • incubate it for possible action later.

When reading this workflow, I must say, this is only possible for managers. Specially this two-minute-rule. I'm sure about managers in this world who have to delegate lot's of their tasks, but I'm not a manager, I'm a worker. So this rule doesn't apply to me. Also I'm not sure about never put anything back into my "collection". What does defering and incubating mean? For me it means putting it back in my collection for later. I think this workflow item is confusing, so I also remove the "Never put anything back.." item. So I changed this workflow to fit my needs:

• Start at the top.
• Deal with one item at a time.
• If an item requires action:
  • do it, or
  • defer it.
• If not,
  • file it for reference,
  • throw it away, or
  • incubate it for possible action later.