This is a guest post by Simon Dodds who is a regular at the GTD Virtual Study Group. A little backstory: one of our members wrote to the group asking for advice on digging out from the backlog accumulated after an unusually long absence. Simon’s response was such dynamite that I asked if I could post it here and he said yes. Thanks, Simon! You can follow him on Twitter at @DoddsSimon

When faced with a backlog, the image that regularly comes to  my mind is that of a mother bird feeding a big worm to her young: she  does this by eating the worm herself and the regurgitating it. (Not a  pleasant image, I know – but backlogs are no fun, either.) It takes a  bit of extra effort, but you know that in the end all the baby birds are well fed. (Hmm, maybe I should leave the metaphor alone now.)  

According to GTD, it is considered poor form to process something more  than once. But in exceptional cases (such as a backlog caused by a long absence, not just by laziness) and where you don't really have unlimited  time to get through it all, I believe that this is the better cause of  action.  

I do this:  Set up some preprocessing buckets: real folders, email folders, boxes, new written lists, etc. Group all similar things together: bills to pay, emails that you need to respond to, stuff that just needs to be filed, etc. Throw away as much as possible.

Of course, respond to any urgent stuff as quickly as possible, but don't let your definition of "urgent" change while getting through this backlog. Be strict. Avoid the temptation to do any "fun" things that come up: at this point, this is just a distraction. Keep moving. Do it quickly. You've already thrown away a lot and taken care of any emergencies as you go. Everything else you are going to look at a second time anyway.  

Then, after you have gone through everything, your preprocessing is  complete. Now all you need to to is to knock out each individual pile when you can. Since each pile has been presorted and should be somewhat  homogeneous, this gives you a greater level of focus that what you had before: similar to knocking out your "Calls" list one-by-one, I guess.  

By only roughly processing everything first and then going over it all again in finer and focused detail later, you know that you haven't yet done everything after the first run, but then you also know that you haven't missed anything. And this does wonders to get rid of that  nagging and overwhelming feeling about the presence of your backlog. And  after a long absence where you are trying to get back into the swing of  things, getting rid of these negative feelings is all the more important.

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Hey! It's Word of Mouth Wednesday! This is when I gently suggest (nag some might say) that you spread the word about The Productivity Maven. You might:

• Forward this post to someone who's digging out from backlog (or needs some encouragement)
• Link to one of these posts on Twitter (and while you're at it, follow me @TaraRodden)
• Become a fan on my Facebook page 

Thanks for your support! Word of mouth is just the best.