Editors Note: This great piece has been contributed by GTD Community Member Joe Ely who was kind enough to offer to share his personal GTD system with us in the following post.

A bit about Joe: Joe Ely is the Director of Operations at Cook Biotech, Inc, a medical device manufacturing company in West Lafayette, Indiana. He writes the blog Learning About Lean, a study of Lean Manufacturing. In his spare time he enjoys distance running and the Chicago Cubs, both avocations requiring great endurance.

By Joe Ely joeely618 at gmail.com

Coach Kelly Forrister recently blogged on what makes a good GTD list manager? One of the beauties of GTD is its flexibility; as such, the “best system” will vary for each individual. Being a systems geek myself, however, I’ve been working for sometime to find what works for me. Kelly and Oliver invited me to share my decidedly low-tech system which, for me, meets all of Kelly’s criteria… [Read more →]

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Many of you probably already know the name Eric Mack. He’s a long standing and highly respected member of the GTD community and he’s been authoring multiple blogs related to productivity and Getting Things Done for some time: : EricMackOnline and NotesOnProductivity .  For the past 15 years, Eric has served David Allen in a number of roles, as his personal technologist, chief technology advisor, and director of technology

Eric has been a technologist since his early teens. He built his first computer system at age 15, and quickly branched into software development when, at 16, he designed and developed flight-planning software for a Lear Jet charter company. At 18, Eric launched his first consulting firm to help organizations deploy microcomputer technology in a pre-IBM PC era.

Over the next two decades, Eric lent his technological expertise to numerous businesses and organizations, including the U.S. Air Force, which asked him to help establish its first microcomputer system. Through his software company, Peloria Technology Corporation (founded in 1992), Eric developed wireless messaging and server-based agent technology for messaging applications. His MailScout software sold more than 500,000 licenses.

Today, through his new company, ICA.COM, Inc., Eric promotes his ICA consulting model for eProductivity. His eProductivity suite of software for Lotus Notes (launched in 2007) implements the Getting Things Done methodology espoused by Eric’s friend David Allen.

Eric and his wife, Kathy, live in a tiny resort community in the mountains of Southern California, where they home educate their four daughters. Eric holds a degree in Organizational Management and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Information and Knowledge Management.

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I read with interest Matthew Cornell’s piece on 10 GTD “holes” (and how to plug them). I was particularly interested in the section on simplified GTD, as that’s something I’ve practiced myself. I also empathized with many of the other points he made regarding implementation challenges. And I do agree that many people need to do some time use analysis, if nothing else as a personal wake-up call. [Read more →]

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ARE YOU MICRO-MANAGING YOUR MIND?
One of the greatest traps in growing a business is also a pitfall for self management: if you don’t trust your system, you can’t let go of operational details and you’ll limit your ability to create at a bigger level.

Many successful entrepreneurs I have worked with over the years could be characterized (and have been, by their employees and friends) as “highly creative control freaks.” It’s understandable because usually it takes that kind of strong, directed energy to create a business, to make something out of nothing. Much like a parent will go to superhuman lengths to protect its vulnerable offspring, someone who gives birth to an enterprise almost of-necessity must have skin as thick as an elephant’s and the aggressive/defensive capacity of a samurai warrior. It takes tremendous focus, determination, and, yes, a certain lack of sensitivity, to create something new and get it to stick around in this world. [Read more →]

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Not that this is specific to GTD, this TED Talk, delivered by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, details her very personal experience with brain trauma as she had a ringside seat to her very own stroke. This is a powerful presentation with an important message – well worth the 20 minutes to view. Enjoy.

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Lifehack.org has an interesting article on what they call “Project Space” which they say is the frame of mind required to tackle the meat of the work of any substantial creative project – writing a white paper, for example. The author contends that “Project Space” is where GTD leaves off and creative thinking begins.

I beg to differ. [Read more →]

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China Daily has a short piece on the practice of GTD in China. While it seems to me they need David to pay a visit and help them understand his methods to an even greater degree, it is nevertheless fascinating to see how the broad appeal and true value of GTD cuts across all ethnic, social and cultural boundaries and offers life improving benefits to anyone, anywhere at virtually any point in their lives.

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Randy Pausch has a unique perspective on managing his time, you see, he’s got pancreatic cancer and is aware that only a vanishingly small percentage of people survive this disease. This lecture is over one hour in length including a long introduction but given the speaker and the message I would say it is well worth the time. Watch now.

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Big news today from the David Allen Company. For the first time ever David Allen is making available the complete audio CDs of his world famous two-day intensive GTD Seminar. GTDLive!

This is a unique opportunity for anyone that has ever wanted to attend a David Allen seminar but for whatever reason hasn’t been able to make that happen. This is a complete Ten-CD Boxed Set that is an actual live recording of David delivering his life-changing training to a real audience. The product is as comprehensive a tool for getting started with GTD as you can possibly get short of actually attending a session with David for yourself, and at half the price of a single-day seminar you’re getting an incredible deal on top of the incredible learning experience.

From my perspective, this isn’t just a tool for people that haven’t attended a GTD seminar with David. As anyone that has been to one of his sessions knows, there is so much information for you to absorb in a limited time that something like a live audio recording of the event would be an incredible resource to help refresh the memory from time to time. Having the live CDs on hand would also allow you to clarify points that perhaps got fuzzy after two days of intense learning, and it could even be a valuable tool that you can use to share with friends and associates who themselves might be curious about GTD.

If you’re interested in this product you should click on over to the DavidCo store and grab a copy now. My understanding is that there are only a limited number of these 10-CD sets available. According to the information on the DavidCo site in addition to the 10-CD set the package will include a second multi-CD set of David Allen’s “In Conversation” interviews as well as the work-flow templates mentioned in the presentation.

Another good reason to pay a visit to the David Allen site is that there are several nice audio samples of the contents of the GTD Live CD’s that you can listen to. It’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time to hear David present GTD.

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By Ismael Ghalimi – community contributor

This article describes my attempt at implementing David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done (GTD) methods for personal organization, using a variety of Office 2.0 services. If you have not read David’s book, I respectfully suggest that you do so. If you have but need a quick refresher on the GTD’s terminology and processes, you can download a simple Workflow Diagram from the David Allen Company website.

Workflow Process

According to the GTD, the first decision point in one’s workflow process when receiving new “stuff” is to decide whether or not the item is actionable. This might be the most difficult part of any personal organization method, and there is no fancy tool to help you there, just good judgement based on experience and daily practice of the method.

If the item is not actionable, I trash it, store it as a long-term goal or attach a note to an object, both using Salesforce.com as data repository. Salesforce.com does not have any standard object for goals, therefore I created a custom one. A goal has a long-range timeframe attached to it, which can either be the current year, next year, within five years, within ten years, or within one’s lifetime. A goal with a five years timeframe could be the buying of a house for example. The decision to use a note rather than a goal is based on the fact that a note does not have a timeframe. It’s a simple piece of information that I want to make sure I will be able to retrieve when looking up the object it is attached to. Using Salesforce.com’s relational model, a note can be attached to any object, such as an account, a contact, or whatever custom object you might have built to store some specific piece of information.

If the item is actionable, three options are available:

If multiple steps are required, in a particular sequence, I use a full-blown project management extension to Salesforce.com called DreamTeam, which I featured in a past article. It gives me the ability to manage complex projects through Gantt charts, which is the best way I know to graphically depict complex multistep projects. The reason why goals are called ‘goals’ instead of ‘projects’ is that DreamTeam already uses the term ‘project’, and it is important to make a clear distinction between the two.

If multiple steps are required, but in no particular sequence, I create a goal (same as above) and attach multiple tasks to it. A goal usually has a long-range timeframe but tasks have precise deadlines, and the combination of both makes it easier to manage projects that should be completed within a certain timeframe but with no specific deadline. In other words, each step along the way has fixed deadlines in order to ensure steady progress, but the timeframe is kept open on purpose.

Finally, if only one action is required, I either do it, delegate it, or defer it. I use email to delegate tasks, but I make sure to send such emails from Salesforce.com instead of my regular email client, for two main reasons: first, it attaches a contextual trail to the object the task is related to; second, it allows me to create a follow-up task right after I click on the ‘Send’ button in order to remind me to later ping the person I delegated the task to, within a timeframe that
I can specify. This pretty much ensures that nothing falls off the cracks. When I decide to defer the task instead, I attach a task to the object it is related to, usually with a specific deadline in order to keep things moving.

Last but not least, in cases when I am not sitting in front of a computer equipped with an Internet connection and the item cannot be trashed, I defer the overall item by sending an email to myself through my BlackBerry device. That way, I ensure that nothing is forgotten and that I will process the item as soon as I get access to the Internet. One could use the mobile edition of Salesforce.com to achieve the same purpose, but it only gives access to a limited set of standard objects and no access at all to any custom objects or extensions such as DreamTeam, therefore cannot support the whole workflow process.

Buckets

Here is how I manage the seven primary types of things that the GTD helps you keep track of:

Projects List: Projects are listed in my DreamTeam projects and my goals stored in Salesforce.com. I usually have a lot more goals than projects, mainly for the reason that few projects actually require the precise sequencing of tasks.

Project Support Material: I attach a lot of documents to projects, goals and other objects they relate to such as a sales opportunity, a meeting, or a trip. For managing my traveling, I have created a ‘travel’ custom object in Salesforce.com where I store PDF copies of flight, hotel and car reservations made over the Internet and I use my personal weblog to record and publish reviews of hotels and restaurants. I also use Flickr to share pictures with friends. My ‘travel’ object in Salesforce.com includes departure and return dates, from which I automatically compute a custom link to the corresponding posts on the weblog. Also, the WordPress powered weblog integrates seamlessly with Flickr, therefore everything is connected together without any duplication of information and I can navigate from one application to the other seamlessly.

Calendared Actions and Information: I use Salesforce.com to manage all my events. No Microsoft Outlook, no PDA, just Salesforce.com. I tried to keep it synchronized with my BlackBerry device, but the inability to synchronize over Bluetooth convinced me that it was not worth the effort. When I cannot get access to Salesforce.com through a regular computer, I just connect to it through GPRS with my BlackBerry device. If I go to a place where no GPRS connection is likely to be found, I just email my appointments for the day to my Blackberry email address, so that I can carry a copy with me but no unnecessary email shows up in my regular email inbox.

Next Actions List: I use Salesforce.com’s Task List, which can display tasks within the following categories: ‘Overdue’, ‘Today’, ‘Today + Overdue’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘Next 7 Days’, ‘Next 7 Days + Overdue’, ‘This Month’ and ‘All Open’. I spend most of my day using the ‘Today + Overdue’ category and switch to ‘Tomorrow’ and ‘Next 7 Days’ toward the end of the day when most of today’s tasks have been completed. Needless to say, because documents can be attached to tasks and related to any object in Salesforce.com, I use the very same Task List as my tickler file.

Waiting For List: I use the same Task List in Salesforce.com as for my next actions.

Reference Material: For information available in digital form and contextually related to objects stored in Salesforce.com, my reference material is managed in the exact same way as my project support material. For information available in digital form but not easily related to objects, I tend to use Gmail as a file repository. I have described my use of Gmail in a previous article and find its searching abilities to be invaluable. For information not available in digital form and that cannot be easily scanned, I create references into Salesforce.com objects. For example, I have created a custom ‘book’ object in Salesforce.com where I store information about books I read and attach related PDF summaries that I get from Soundview. I also create custom links to Amazon, using the books ASIN and QID numbers, 0142000280 and 1116101749 respectively for the paperback edition of Getting Things Done. Finally, I link a book record in Salesforce.com to the review I might write about it on one of my weblogs. Same as for travels, all pieces get linked to each other without any duplication, making it very easy to manage and share relevant information through the right communication channels.

Someday/Maybe List: Goals custom object in Salesforce.com as described above.

Random Project Thinking

For random project thinking, I am starting to make extensive use of social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us or Diigo, as described in a previous article. After some practice, I actually believe that the networking thinking enabled by tags and bundles as defined by del.icio.us is more effective for brainstorming than the hierarchical thinking enabled by outlining tools such as Microsoft Word or OmniOutliner (for Mac users). Nevertheless, I really wish that a full fledged mind mapping tool such as Mindjet’s MindManager was available as a web application. I guess I will have to wait a little bit more for this.

Conclusion

My application of the Getting Things Done methodology through Office 2.0 services is only nine months old and I have a lot more to learn and experiment with. Nevertheless, I found David’s approach so effective that I really made it a way of work. That being said, for all the bells and whistles offered by web applications or other software tools, nothing will ever replace some key principles that David Allen never forget to emphasize: the power of the collection habit, the power of the next-action decision and the power of outcome focusing. So feel free to use some of my tricks and the tools that work best for you, but never lose sight of the end goal, which for me is to get more time to do all other important things in life, such as taking care of my loved ones. In fact, that’s what I’m going to do right now.

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