It started as a book: Getting Things Done was published in 2001 by David Allen , a former magician and karate teacher turned “productivity guru”. It’s a simple-sounding guide to organising your life into folders, categories and to-do lists, which was seized upon by busy geeks and has developed a fanatical online following. Suddenly, instead of working, you could be hanging out at Rymans, discussing GTD online, coming up with elaborate filing systems and posting pictures of your GTD stuff on Flickr.

The Lists: The GTD method involves collecting all your junk into one place, then writing a lot of to-do lists – only ever listing the “next physical action ” (eg, “buy nails”), rather than idle dreams such as “mend shed” or “sort out money”.

The Stationery: The most fun part of GTD is buying stationery. Enthusiasts quickly become fetishists, scouring catalogues to find just the right kind of square-cut Manila folder , 3x5 index card or filing cabinet.

The Label Printer: The sublime stationery moment comes halfway through the book, when David tells his followers to buy a label printer , to make all those files look super-neat. Obviously, discussion of the correct type of printer is lively.

The Hipster PDA: Many GTDers are strictly low-tech. The “Hipster PDA” is an alternative to BlackBerrys and Palm Pilots: a stack of index cards held together with a bulldog clip. It was invented by Merlin Mann , who writes the top GTD blog 43 Folders.

The cult: David Allen doesn’t actually wear flowing robes, but some followers treat his words like scripture. His official website forum has 43 references to the “spiritual”, with concerned Christians worried about all the references to Zen and abandoning oneself to the system. God, perhaps, prefers his followers disorganised.

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