A Community Contribution by Meghan Wilker

Near the beginning of a new year, we often take stock of the big things in life. Am I happy at my job? Do I need to lose weight? It’s such a good time to take stock of — and clean up — major sources of stress and a fresh place to start large, complex projects. All of that is great, but this year I’d like to encourage you to think small steps, too.

In my GTD office tour, I made note of a small change I made to my system in 2009 which had a big impact on my overall mood and productivity: my tickler file. Yeah, I know. Really? But, yes…really. My old system (folders on a riser) was fine, but it was clunky. Keeping all the folders orderly meant constantly shuffling groups of 10 folders up and down the riser to keep the current folder at the front. It certainly wasn’t killing me to do it, but it was a small irritant. Barely noticeable, really. [Read more →]

3 Comments »

A Community Contribution by Aeon J. Skoble, PhD. He’s a Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State College.

I know that David Allen is interested in seeing how people in different sorts of professions use GTD, so I offered to share my experiences applying the methodology in a world that’s generally regarded as a different one: academia.  I have found that GTD is highly applicable to the academic profession.

I was actually managing adequately before I discovered GTD, but my productivity, while pretty good by institutional standards, was sub-optimal with respect to my own expectations.  I wasn’t well-organized, I often had “near misses” with deadlines, and I had a good deal of stress-producing clutter.  I literally had 6000+ messages in my Outlook inbox.  As the cover of the book hinted, I wanted not only to increase productivity, but to reduce stress.  GTD has indeed helped in both aspects: productivity is up, stress is down. Some of the most useful parts have been among the simpler ones, chiefly “capture everything rather than try to keep it in your head” and “don’t confuse your calendar with your to-do list.”  I used to drive myself crazy repeatedly by playing this game: I’d realize I hadn’t worked much lately on a particular essay I needed to write, so I’d put “work on that essay” on my calendar for Tuesday morning, then I’d spend Tuesday morning prepping for a class or putting out a fire, and then I’d feel anxious because I didn’t write the essay.  If nothing else, I have learned to distinguish calendar from to-do list, and projects from next-actions.  That’s as vital for academics as it is for any business executive. [Read more →]

13 Comments »

A new GTD’er wrote to David Allen and asked:

My dear husband thinks you keep your Inbox to zero by not posting your email address on the internet and/or by having assistants respond to your email.  I disagree. What say you?

David responded:

You keep your Inbox to zero by dealing with whatever shows up in there as rigorously as you do your answering machine at home.  The access you give the world to create input is up to you.  You have to decide what you want to invite/allow into your world, and match that with a behavior to process it at the same speed.

2 Comments »

Whenever I’m on a plane and we fly through a cloud, I can’t help but think “Oh man, I hope this isn’t the one that has all my data in it…” Tony_D on Twitter.

Eric Mack recently interviewed David Allen on his use of Lotus Notes, eProductivity and cloud computing.  Hear what David thinks of working in the cloud and where he’d love to see things go…

For more of these videos, stay tuned to the Notes on Productivity blog.  We’ll also post some of them here too.

7 Comments »

I recently presented a seminar where a participant brought up the project of getting her daughter into college.  Since that had been a project for me as well, I wrote to her about how I applied the “Natural Planning Model” to this project. For those of you unfamiliar with the Natural Planning Model, it is David Allen’s approach to getting projects creatively under control. The specific details of this five-phase approach can be found starting on page 54 of David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done.

Here is the email I sent to this participant regarding her project:

Dear Sara,

I wanted to share with you what I did to help my son with his efforts to get into college. [Read more →]

2 Comments »

A Community Contribution from Sarah From

A recent article in the New York Times highlights new research on a fascinating phenomenon: the procrastination of pleasure. Not only do we avoid the tasks we dread, we also put off activities we enjoy. Redeeming gift cards, using frequent flier miles, and visiting hometown landmarks all belong to the category of activities we express the desire and intention to do, but chronically put off to another day.

When we put on our GTD glasses we can see one relatively simple approach to this problem: clearly define the very next action. Like all forms of procrastination, pleasure procrastination can result when we are not sure what to do next. Faced with an ill-defined task, we find it easier to ignore the item than to figure out how to do it. It takes shockingly little to derail us into full-on procrastination. [Read more →]

5 Comments »

This is a community contribution by Ryan Oakley.

For me, GTD has always worked extremely well for those small(er) tasks and projects.  You know – those little things that used to fall through the cracks but, with the help of GTD, are now easily tracked and moved on until completed.

These smaller projects don’t need much in the way of “project support material” (PSM) — maybe just 4 or 5 lines of information to keep close at hand to help finish the project.  For me, I have mostly used the “notes” section of a project task item in outlook for a good and easy place to put this type of PSM.

But…what about those larger projects?  Like a 2 week vacation to Europe (travel books, emails, reservations, tickets, list of things you want to do and see, things to pack, addresses of family to visit, etc.) or maybe that multi-million dollar project at work that has 8 months worth of project plans and 5 milestones, 247 emails, 156 page reports, bi-weekly meetings, and 7 team members (complete with collaboration).  Ahh!

My GTD system breaks down with that kind of complexity.  [Read more →]

40 Comments »

Jeff Widman, a man of many talents (including helping us create our GTD Facebook Fan page) has a fantastic article about using a virtual assistant. It’s a great read, with many useful tips & templates for a building and maintaining a successful virtual team.  Here’s an excerpt:

What I’ve learned from having a virtual assistant:

• How to be very explicit with my instructions
• I’ve grown in my judgment of what should be outsourced and what is faster for me to do (hint: it’s almost always faster for me if it’s a one-time thing. But if it’s a repetitive task, it’s probably worth teaching her.)
• I get a heckuva lot more done–she not only removes time, she removes annoyance–that mental friction that comes from having to do tasks that I downright hate (like scheduling meetings.)
• She not only takes care of things for me, she does them better and faster than I ever could. Face it–just as you’re uniquely talented at some things, you’re uniquely flawed in others.
• How to teach my employees to teach themselves–it’s rewarding when my VA says she’s learned a ton from working with me!

Read more on Jeff’s blog…

14 Comments »

Dear David Allen,

Today marks the four-year anniversary of the day that I watched a taping of your Mastering Workflow seminar.  It’s the day that I started a journey from chaos and overwhelm to order and sanity.  Some thought that my GTD journey was just a phase, that it would be my “flavor of the month”.  They were wrong, and now they are wishing that they had the same level of relaxed control in their lives as I do now.

My excitement for GTD has never tapered off; in fact it grows over time as I frequent the forums and the articles at GTD Times contributing to and learning from other people’s GTD journeys.  GTD has enriched my life like no self-improvement program has ever been able to do.  On this, my fourth anniversary of living the GTD lifestyle, I offer you my most heartfelt thanks and appreciation for everything that you’ve done for me and others around the world.

F. Luke Funfar
Vice President of Communications
Savannah Green Homeowners Association

2 Comments »

Hello David,

I was in the middle of reading and applying your book when I came home  one day and found it like this.

Yep my dog ate it on a day when he was bored because I was so busy I didn’t get him out for a walk. Did I mention that I was in the middle of applying your recommendations?  Well, I am keeping the book because I can still read most of it and it  is a reminder that I must complete the process I started so I will not lose any more books.

Thanks, Joy

~~

Joy,

If your dog starts getting more bones buried, odors smelled, and books eaten, let me know. (Most people haven’t absorbed as much GTD as he obviously had!)

Thanks for sharing!

David

11 Comments »