A GTD’er asked David Allen:

I have read Getting Things Done many times and am attending the Boston seminar.  I have a question:  Why is it so hard for human beings to get organized?  Why do the techniques you recommend require so much effort and encounter such resistance from human nature?  I’m not interested in this academically, but if there is some biological/psychological/historical aspect of human nature that makes it so difficult to organize, it might help us learn how to overcome them and get where we should be…

David’s response: [Read more →]

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In this 30-minute podcast, David and his team talk about the critical “thinking” stage of GTD.  They share practical tips, personal examples and suggestions for the processing stage of mastering your workflow.  Listen now.

If you missed the previous episode in our GTD best practices series on Collect, you can catch it here.

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Still wrestling with really mastering GTD? The weekly review still a conceptual mystery? Still looking for the keys for getting started and making it stick? We just announced a new package, called the GTD System, that includes a wealth of resources for newbies to GTD experts.  It includes a comprehensive set of tools and learning resources for setting up your GTD system, knowing the critical success factors and getting it to stick–once and for all. You’ll get 6 CD’s with David and his senior coaching staff, plus the GTD book, GTD System Guides, 30-day GTD Connect membership and 25% discount on a public GTD seminar.  And, it’s an unbelievable value for what’s included. Really.  Check it out.

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During a recent marathon of Aaron Sorkin’s great short-lived series “Sports Night” (a marathon that I started by watching both seasons on DVD, which further proves my self-starting skills) I came upon an episode entitled “Moving Day.”  As the whip-smart Sorkinian dialogue washed over me throughout the rest of the marathon, it got me thinking about the meaning of the term on a variety of levels.  The deduction: every day can and should be a Moving Day.

In the context of the episode the goal was for Sports Night (the fictional show) to move up in the ratings, something they’d strived to do since their first day on the air.  In our own lives we should be doing the same, elevating our game as often as we can – every day. [Read more →]

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For years, the GTD Workflow diagram has been the ultimate “trail guide” for navigating through the collect>process>organize stages of GTD.  Over the past two years, David Allen has been working with the terrific design team at xplane to take his vision (his original sketch is pictured right  and you can click on the image to see a larger version) and expand it into a rich map that also now includes decision making, horizons of focus and more.

Some people got a sneak preview of it at the GTD Summit in March, and a few bootleg copies of it are floating around the Internet.  We’re getting dozens of emails a day now from GTD’ers hungry for this new piece of the GTD story.  We are pleased to announce [Read more →]

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A GTD’er in the U.K. wrote to David Allen recently to share his success–personally and professionally–in implementing GTD.  We thought you’d appreciate hearing what he learned in the process.

Dear David,

Just wanted to drop an email of appreciation. Guess you get these all the time.

In 2006, a freelance website designer friend recommend your book to me.  I bought it and read the first few pages before putting it down and involving myself in other books I was focusing on at that time.  In 2007, I was at a low point in my work and was feeling stressed about a lot of small things and generally not getting things done!  Its a little ironic don’t you think that I never got round to finishing the book called Getting Things Done! [Read more →]

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Years ago, David Allen worked with software design firm Netcentrics to create a GTD solution for Outlook users.  In fact, it’s one of the few applications (Eric Mack’s eProductivity product is another) that has David’s fingerprints on the look, feel and functionality.  Although you can customize Outlook to be more useful via the GTD & Outlook whitepaper, the Netcentrics GTD Outlook Add-In automated many of the customizations we suggest in that paper and adds a few key things that only the Add-In will do:

Link Projects to Actions (solving the timeless question and request from GTD’ers, “How do you know which project a next action relates to?”)

Process input more easily (gives a GTD toolbar for one-stop processing, linking and organizing) [Read more →]

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A Microsoft Outlook user recently asked one of our coaches:

After working with the GTD system for quite awhile, I find tracking next actions in Outlook to be pretty easy.  The harder part is tracking projects.  Where do you do that and how do you move from the 10,000 level (projects) to the runway (actions)?

Coach Wayne Pepper replied:

I keep my Projects list in Outlook Tasks.  I simply create a category in Tasks labeled “Projects”.  [Read more →]

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