Time for clearing the cobwebs and a spring clean

In a household with kids our house is lived in. Sand and dirt collect in the hallway and stairs, then gets its way around the house. Everything settles and collects in corners or piles. “Papa where are my shoes?” “I need my Russian books, I had them last night!” Just an example of the daily questions. But over time stuff collects to a point where a big clean up is needed.

Not the daily sweep up, washing, cooking and dishes: a Spring clean. And we did that yesterday!

Now this is not only good for finding those long lost CD’s, papers or school books (under the pile of papers on your desk or in the corner next to the Lego). A spring clean means sorting out the winter clothes and everything that is too small and making space for a new look. It means a clear view.

A quick focus on what we wanted to achieve during breakfast – the big picture and goal setting for the day. A review of tasks and areas of focus – what needs to be done. Some groans, some questions. And who wants to clean the windows? “Me… me… me… me!”

Clean the windows!

I had forgotten what a difference clean windows makes. “How long has that tree been there Papa?” Clean windows means being able to take a fresh look at the world outside. A clear view.

Because its now Officially Spring Time, a chance to get back into Gardening with a passion too. Some of that gardening I will be done at the office. Trimming dead files. Dumping completed projects to the archive and making plans for an improved work space on two levels – sitting and standing.

I find the way I use GTD an active way of working. Jumping up to make a cup of coffee… then filing the project papers… helping the kids… checking the mail… making notes for an ongoing project (and putting it in the right place to continue later)… a phone call or two. Not to mention the wash, cooking, shopping and everything else.

Clear vision and a weekly review.

I will have to describe a typical week sometime soon, I sometimes I don’t realize how much I do get done with GTD during a week. Especially when my attention gets stuck on what is not working. It is hard to remember that which gets done in auto-pilot – like the phone call or conversation in the car and then the question “did you see that sign back there Papa?” No! Good habits are great to have and to learn, like a regular review of current status, which is a big help to remind me of where I am and what I want to achieve. The weekly review.

Clear vision! It’s like seeing the clear blue sky after a long period of dull weather. And then to have clean windows too, brings back the connection between the runway and my higher goals.

How do you do your Spring cleaning? What great ideas did you get this week? What stuff did you discover after thingking it forever lost? GTD gives me clear vision and the kids love helping there too!

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One of the David Allen Company senior coaches recently worked with Business Week Executive Editor Ellen Joan Pollock.  Read Ellen’s entertaining account of how she got a grip on her workweek.

The goal: 10 extra hours in my week.

The plan of attack: none.

That’s pretty much where I was when Marian Bateman, a productivity coach with the David Allen Co., walked into my office. As executive editor at BusinessWeek, I’m responsible for getting the print edition into your hands each week, and I spend a lot of hours doing it. Just how many I’d rather not see in print.

Read the full article.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one basically says it all.  What could better illustrate the value of GTD than someone like Steve Pugh, pictured below, on duty in Iraq with a copy of “Getting Things Done” at his fingertips.

Steve was just at the recent GTD Global Summit and took the time post event to write to the David Allen Company to let them know how much he enjoyed the experience and to share this image of himself at work.

The brief note that accompanied the photo is also below.

Janet,
I really enjoyed talking with you at the summit.  I can’t believe how quickly the two days went by!  I hope you guys decide it was enough of a success to do it again.

Attached is the picture we talked about at the summit.  This is me, in an old Iraqi building, at my desk.  I have my Beretta M9 on my leg and a copy of GTD on my desk.  I was stationed at Balad Air Base which is about 30 minutes north of Baghdad.  GTD really helped me keep my head cool in a totally new environment that had more intensity and stress than I ever imagined.  Enjoy.

-Steve

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With all the recent attention that GTD has been receiving, especially since the incredible GTD Global Summit that just concluded, you might find yourself being asked to explain the “How To” of GTD to a curious colleague, friend or even spouse.

Unless you are David Allen himself, you might find yourself struggling to eloquently distill the practice of GTD down to a short and memorable set of concepts and equally simple and equally memorable steps that a novice can understand and even implement in short order to take those first few steps towards a lifetime of improved productivity, reduced stress, and the confidence that you are doing what you are best served to be doing at any given time.

It figures that someone whose title is “Editor in Chief” of a company called Goose Educational Media would be the one to do such an extrordinary job at creating such a document.  Thankfully for the rest of us, Chris Taylor not only took the time to write this resource he has generously put it online where anyone can take advantage of it any time they like.

Beyond this truly excellent summary the Goose Educational Media site is a truly amazing resource.  Founded upon the idea that sharing knowledge distilled from the top books about productivity, management, decision making and other disciplines  can have a profound impact upon an individual’s effectiveness, Chris Taylor and a team he describes as a phenomenal team of dedicated individuals have created a resource that is intended to give an individual the tools and the resources to change his or her life, and thereby the power to change the world.

It is a selfless effort that can benefit each and every one of us.  I urge you to take a look at the Golden Eggs of GTD and then to dig a bit deeper.  The site has a tremendous amount to offer and such a gift should not be overlooked, especially in these difficult times where every one of us can be well served to find ways in which we can each improve ourselves.

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For many people this is the session they came to see.  After years of reading, re-reading, listening to, watching and discussing “Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity” people, especially the majority of the people at the Summit who are serious about practicing GTD – are ready for something new from David.

“Making it All Work:  Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life” is that something. And I’m not just talking about the book, either.  David has worked for years to clarify, refine, broaden, deepen and in some ways complete the work he began with his original program of GTD.

For most people I suspect that the abbreviated Making it All Work presentation that David delivered today felt both familiar yet new at the same time.  That’s because it was.

I think that David retained much of the best of his original program but has fleshed out and added more material to those areas that people have occasionally said were not clear enough in the original.

Here are some basic outline notes from David’s slides for the presentation.  They are pretty much self explanatory.  The goal is to help you see more clearly what David means by each of the subcategories that he uses to define the various aspects of GTD.

They are as follows:

“If my brain had a brain I wouldn’t need a system.” – David Allen

Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect

This leads to having control and perspective

Control is simply cooperating with reality with conscious intent
Capturing
Clarifying
Organizing
Reflecting
Engaging

Perspective
Capture: write it down
Clarifying: what does this mean to me?
Organizing: put it where it goes
Reflecting: look through the whole
Engage: Do

Purpose/ Principles – 50,000  How: how do I want to operate as a human being?
Vision – 40,000 Feet  How do I see my self and my life
Goals – 30,000 Feet  What do I want to accomplish both long term and in the next two years?
Responsibilities – 20,000 Feet  What do I have to do
Projects – 10,000 Feet
Actions – Runway

System: build, fill, use

“You are here for a purpose.  You are either on purpose or you’re not.” David Allen

“Focus on what has your attention and you’ll find out what really has your attention.” – David Allen

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This post rambles a bit as it’s a live blogging effort to cover the real key questions and associated answers that this group of accomplished entrepreneurs provided during an hour plus panel discussion about the trials and tribulations of starting your own company.

Topics included what personality characteristics should you have to thrive as an entrepreneur.  What are the most common mistakes that they see entrepreneurs making (or which they’ve made themselves).  They discussed their biggest fears and how they’ve overcome them and even why right now is actually a really good time to begin planning an entrepreneurial venture.

Panel Discussion

Peter Gallant: serial entrepreneur, Pathogen Detection Systems

Execution is the biggest risk facing start up companies.  The plan is usually not the problem. The execution is.  Knowing when to do what needs to be done.
Recommended reading “The War of Art”  it is very rare for entrepreneurs to really know what the milestones the must be achieved are. when they need to achieve those goals and how to forecast whether or not they are on track or behind or in real trouble.

He hasn’t met an entrepreneur that has a complete broad focus across all the horizons of focus

John de Souza, serial entrepreneur, founded the product that became Microsoft Messenger

Do you have the right temperment, the right skill set and is it the right timing.  Once you are an entrepreneur, it gets going, you’re excited about it and suddently…what’s next?  You need to get the company going and for this GTD can be extremely important.

How does being an entrepreneur impact your family?  What if you fail?  What if you have no money?

Buzz Bruggeman:  Active Words.  His belief is that computers should understand us.  Problem:  voice is not really a viable option.  Active Words lets people name things.  For example setting up the keystroke NT for directly navigation to New York Times.  ( also like Quicksilver)

Frode Odegard:  Founded several companies including one before he was 18.  What is the nature of a true entrepreneur:  restless by nature. potentially reckless, frequently fall into the “crazy maker” quadrant.

What’s important is that entrepreneurs tend to underestimate and possibly even feel resentful towards the needs to spend time simply thinking.

“If you don’t have a good framework to manage your commitments you will just drown”.

EDS: Entrepreneurial Dysfunction Syndrome

Buzz:  the single biggest problem for him is the weekly review.  Part of it is the issue of having the time to make an appointment with himself.

Once you’re an entrepreneur and you have built the product you are faced with two new problems:  Distribution and Adoption.
They’re talking to HP so Buzz emails every single person from HP that downloaded their application and he asks them for help

If you can’t handle rejection you should probably just work for a big company.

If there’s anything you wished you knew earlier

Buzz:

1.  The inventor should NOT be the CEO

2.  Take Smart Money of Just Money

3.  Use GTD to maintain sufficient discipline to keep wandering to a minimum

Frode

1.  Having the right revenue model.   Understanding what works in a given economy

Frode:  My biggest fear is relationships.  Can I trust these people?  What are their intentions

Buzz: Biggest Fear:  The serious maybe…

de Souza:  Hiring the wrong senior person.  As soon as you realize there’s a problem take action.

Gallant:  making a wrong effort from a time, talent or investment perspective

Odegard:  What’s your definition of success for an experience?

Gallant:   A call to action:  imagine that you’ve lost your job.  What sort of entrepreneurial venture would you start next?  This is a great time to be planning a start-up company.  There’s sufficient cash, it is simply that the VC’s are being especially cautious.

Buzz:  If I did not have a partner with a skill set he didn’t have they would have been dead.

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For those of you that would like a voyeuristic view into the GTD Global Summit, I present for your lengthy reading pleasure all of the tweets from the legions of twitterers that are attending the summit.  (And there are many, at least half the audience is on twitter).

These are in reverse chronological order so you can take a trip back in time from present moment to last night’s cocktail party or you can start at the bottom and work your way forward in time to see the event blossom in the way that it actually has.  Either way there are some wonderful pearls here as many of the tweets are actual quotes from the speakers presenting at the conference.

Tweets are here as a PDF:  twitters_eye_view_gtdsummit

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After more than a year of planning thousands of hours of meetings and more emails, phone calls, and late night conversations than anyone cares to think about let alone remember, the GTD Global Summit has come to life in a huge way.

I’m wearing several hats here so my coverage will be as real time as I can deliver it.  I’ll also try to get some coverage over on Qik if bandwidth allows.

Keynote:

David’s powerful initial remarks to put this event and GTD in context.  If you have never seen David speak you simply cannot imagine the incredible authenticity and integrity of this man.  I have attended literally hundreds of conferences and heard perhaps thousands of speakers yet he is by far the most genuine, transparent and honest speaker that I have ever had the good fortune to hear.

His opening remarks were testimony to this as one of the first things he mentioned was the fact that just before we did this conference he had to cut 40% of his workforce.  … He said that for this conference he wanted to look for the silver lining in this current crisis. To find that silver lining and learn how self improvement is even more essential in times of crisis…that’s the overarching theme for the summit.

Keynote Interview with Guy Kawasaki to Follow

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A Community Contribution by Erik Hanberg

January’s Wired magazine carried an article by freelancer Chris Hardwick testing out different systems for helping him structure his work and life better.

He sums up:

Now, I know that David Allen is the head vampire of productivity, but if you only have the fortitude to read a single book, I’m gonna throw my lithe frame behind The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss lays out a series of nimble yet perfectly legal cons to help you break out of the corporate Bastille — and work from the actual Bastille, if you want. That sly creativity best fits the rogue nature of the freelancer.

David Allen is head vampire? I’ll have to check for fang marks from my book to see if he got me.

As it happens, I am also a freelancer and I have read Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. So I feel like I can respond to Hardwick appropriately. He is right about some things–like the idea that the books can supplement each other–but I think his recommendation is way off target.

For those who haven’t read it, The 4-Hour Workweek is essentially based upon two big ideas:

Idea One covers strategies for separating your work from a physical location–the office–so that you can work from home, work from Europe, or wherever it is you want to be.

Idea Two argues that for very little capital, a single person can get an Internet business going that will provide them enough money to live on with a barest minimum of work (hence the title of the book).

I believe his ideas are sound. In fact, I’m testing out an Internet business right now with Google ads to see if I can start a side business for some extra income.

But what Hardwick misses about the GTD system is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a corporate CEO working 80 hours a week or whether you’re living off the wealth of your Internet business and only work 80 hours every year. You still have to get things done. You still have to pay taxes and bills, enrich your relationships with family and friends, plan your vacation, and maybe–as in the case of Ferriss–learn to tango (Ferriss holds a world record in tango).

For me, GTD has helped me get out from under the feeling of always being behind, helped me stop thinking about work when I shouldn’t, and introduced a system that means I can remember to buy batteries at the store when I’m actually at the store.

Only with that in place could I really seriously consider the suggestions of Ferriss. Now, one of my projects is creating the website for my Internet business. If things are successful, I’ll add new projects like setting up marketing and shipping.

But I just can’t see tackling those things successfully without having Getting Things Done under my belt.

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Editor’s Note:  This is a piece by a new GTD Times Contributor, David Pierce.  David is a unique contributor to GTDtimes due to the fact that he’s about half of the age of the typical reader of this site.  We love his fresh perspective and the fact that he represents the first generation to have grown up with the web being an always present part of his life.  Beyond this  David Pierce is a college student, freelance writer, and lover of all things Web-based. He blogs about the digital world at The 2.0 Life, and can frequently be found on Twitter.

In the few years since I became a GTD fan and follower, I’ve tried altogether too many different systems. I’ve tried Web-based and desktop-based, computer-based and paper-based. I’ve tweaked and changed, and constantly found myself picking up and dropping systems.

Recently, I sat down and thought hard about it: what do I need in a system? What are the features that are going to keep me working, on the wagon, and functionally using a given GTD tool? I came up with three, and they’ve changed how I evaluate GTD and productivity systems.

Portable

An increasing number of people don’t spend their time sitting at a desk. We’re on the run, on the move, and in a number of different places. Some people don’t even have an office, instead choosing to work from a combination of coffee shops and home offices. Anyone in this situation needs a system that’s portable, and is accessible from anywhere. One of the most critical parts of GTD, and the one I’ve always had the most trouble with, is the “Collect” phase – getting everything out of my head, and into my trusted system. Any system I create needs to be available to me, wherever I am and whatever I’m doing. It has to be easy to see, to manage and to add to from a variety of inputs. For some people, who spent much of their time at a computer, availability elsewhere isn’t as important, but for an ever-growing number of people like myself, systems must be portable.

Powerful

I need a system that does what I need it to do. At its basest, I need a way to make and keep lists; most applications, paper- or digitally-based, do this well. To truly make it a GTD-friendly application, though, I need a few other features- due dates, contexts, project definition, and easy review. Some features can be created with work-arounds, but any system worth using has to be feature-rich, or at least feature-upper middle class. Easy collection is a plus, as is a way to easily search through my tasks and sort them in any number of ways. Applications or systems that I use don’t need to be overly powerful, but they need to pack enough punch to do what I need them to do in order to function with GTD.

Pliable

No two people, even the strictest GTD followers, use exactly the same system. Everyone’s got their own workflow, own quirks, and own way of getting their own things done. If I’m going to use a pre-made application, I need to be able to meld it to my own needs. Creating my own contexts, making for simple reviews, and coming up with multiple ways to figure out exactly what I need to be doing at any given moment are all critical to my actually getting anything done. Some applications try and meld you to what they believe is “the GTD method,” where in reality everyone’s system looks a little bit different. Functional GTD systems need to bend to our needs, not the other way around.

After considering those three things in every application I tried, I’ve moved almost my entire GTD system online. I use a couple of different applications to make GTD work, but the Web has revolutionized how I get things done.

These Web applications are portable – they’re accessible from anywhere with an Internet Connection (which seems to be everywhere now), and can be used even with my cell phone. They’re powerful – search and tagging are becoming popular, you can sort and manage your tasks however you want, and new features and uses are always being rolled out. They’re pliable- good Web-based applications let you view, edit, and add to your system in a huge number of ways, as well as make it as complex or simple as you want. Using other applications like Greasemonkey, you can even change the look and feel of the application; nothing’s set in stone with the Web, and things are changing for the better all the time.

My system uses a combination of Evernote and Remember the Milk, but those aren’t the only two options for a good Web-based GTD system. There are endless options, and different systems will work for different people.

If you’re not a Web-based GTDer, give it another shot. Whatever system you use, though, make sure you’re creating one that’s portable, powerful, and pliable. That will ensure your system will continue to work for you, and you’ll be able to do (or create a way to do) anything you might ever need in order to get things done.

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