Personally, I do not do "mind sweeps" when collecting.

My total inbox consists of email inboxes, sms, voicemail, paper mail, intrays, handwritten notes etc etc. Any "undocumented" new ideas that come up during phone conversations or in my head I usually write straight into the todo app with tags and everything (completely processed straight away) or into the todo app's inbox or onto a slip of paper.

I do a mind sweep of sorts as a part of the weekly review, though. I have 10 Areas of Responsibility that I go through every week to check if they are all "complete", i.e. if I can think of anything further that would need to be done or achieved in each area to accomplish my goals there or keep me on track and in a good position overall for that area. But I do not use a general checklist for this.

Personally I don't really understand the question really.

:)

@Mauriac When you start to get everything out of you mind and into Doit.im, there must be something that you need to focus on. Something may be work-related, like meeting. Could you please let us know those things that you will consider adding to Doit.im?

In David Allen's GTD book there are a couple of pages of "triggers" to look over and think about - I used that and certainly found it useful. Most of my project threads that need tidied up and bundled into Doit.im are either on pieces of paper (bills, receipts, notes) or emails or finally in notebooks (both physical and odds and ends in Evernote). Anyway, the rules for a Mind Sweep are the same: Gather them all together and go through everything so your email inbox ends up zero and every scrap of paper is filed, binned or actionable items are in Doit.im. After an initial Big mind sweep, I need to remember to stay disciplined and keep adding new items straight in as they come in or occur to you so that your mind stays largely swept!

Here's the trigger list, http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Trigger_List via http://www.43folders.com/2006/07/24/b2gtd-mind-sweep

@michelle1987

Maybe one possible explanation for why some of us have such difficulty answering this question is the fact that it was such a long time ago that we started to write things down, and keep things in order, that we can no longer recall how it happened initially.

Once you have got it all down on paper (or computer) and have made a habit of keeping it all up to date, the only "mind sweeping" you do takes place during your regular list reviews. These are the main occasions when I consider "What could be missing on my lists?", "Is there any way to speed things up?", "Anything that is even more important?" etc.

But I fully support the concepts of "mind sweeps" and "inbox zero" and all that - whatever it takes for a given person to get into a more "organized" and orderly routine. And it is good that Doit tries to facilitate this process for everybody.

@vty
Really usefull! Thank you for sharing!

I've just considered doing mind sweeps whenever I feel I've been 'disloyal' and 'errant' to the GTD mantra in an attempt to get back on track - its not pretty though as most of the times I'll sweep at a desk near a computer, so typically "computer" context tasks jump into my head.

I normally start with time concepts - whats to be done now, later today, tonight, this week / weekend etc.. then loop back and think of projects. Its quite similar to the initial collection phase, but is often in the same context.

Mind sweeps will become a very easy and natural part of your weekly reviews (and daily and quarterly reviews etc) once you have organized your tasks into distinct projects and goals etc. During a review, one of the key questions is always "What else do I need to do with this (goal/project etc) to make it move forward and succeed?" This is, in fact, almost all the mind sweeping you will normally need.

In addition to this, you may find it useful to have checklists for things that you cannot put individually on a repeating schedule, but can put as checklists with repeating schedules, for example a daily checklist to check if the laundry basket is full, if the fridge is empty etc. These checklists you can implement, for example, as repeating tasks with subtasks (and manually rewrite the subtask as a Next action if action is required - there is no "clone as a Next action" feature, which would have been useful).

Hi,

There is a request/idea below =)

My mindsweep is somewhat like DA's making it all work PDF.
I have what I call "parts of my life". They are:
* Economy
* Living
* Training and body
* Love (friends, family, partner)
* Job/career
* Development

To the request/idea, perhaps you have already thought of it.
What if I could put into Doit.im what I personally would like to review, when or how often?
You can perhaps add to that when I would like to review it. Many of us are struggling of getting the habit of doing it the same time each week. Then Doit.im might push us over the hill =)

Emil

Lime113, something you can do with Doit already, and which works well, is you can use the repeating task feature to set up reminders for all these various mindsweeps. Some can repeat every day, some every week etc.

You can use the task notes (description) or the subtask feature to list a few "parts of your life" (or specific possible tasks) that you know you will want to consider on those occasions (use subtasks if you want to be able to check them off as you go).

Or you can use a Someday project or external document to list these things (use an external web document such as Evernote or Dropbox if you prefer one-click access)

For example, I use daily repeating tasks (checklists) for a daily review (daily scan) and for a daily wrap-up, and a weekly repeating task for my weekly review and a task repeating every four months for a very thorough review. I have a long checklist in each of these (both in the task description and as subtasks to check off). And I have other similar checklists.

The items you list in each such repeating task obviously can be of whatever degree of concreteness you choose. You could have very vague general entries, such as "hygiene", suitable for mindsweeps, or very specific checklists like "replace toothbrush?", "clean behind refrigerator? etc., suitable for walking around and checking. For everything that you find that you need to do, you will either do it straight away or write a task for it. The latter (writing a task) is quite common for me, and this is why I would like to have a convenient one-click feature for "clone this item as a task for today".

Mainly work tasks.

It depends on how you use doit.im. But I will give you my advice after using this for several years now.

While David Allen does recommend mind sweeps, especially when setting up for the first time, this is actually counter productive in practical terms. If you are like me, or any other human being on the planet you are overwhelmed and have too much time and too little time to do it all in. Doing mind sweeps will generate way too many tasks and actually you will never be able to complete them all if you are truly honest with yourself. These will clutter your doit.im and your mind, and make you feel stressed.

My practical advise is this - only put in Doit.im items
a) that you COMMIT TO actually doing and finishing
b) that are concrete tasks (by this I mean tasks that are CLEAR can be COMPLETED). Read more about SMART goals.

Do not put in ideas, or lofty goals. Store these somewhere else. Like a notebook for ideas, strategies and so forth.
Keep Doit to a small manageable list. I find if there is more than 7 items per day, this blocks you from reading them and actually completing the items.

Hope this helps somebody!! ;)