If you’re not doing a Weekly Review, then you’re always trying to do a Weekly Review, but never really doing it. The real reason to do it is so that 6.9 days of the week you don’t have to.  -David Allen

Looking for motivation and coaching on the GTD Weekly Review?  Get the CD set. Includes Coach Meg Edwards walking you through a Guided Weekly Review.

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David Allen refers to your day-to-day Calendar and Action choices as the “Runway.”  In the Horizons of Focus model, covered in Getting Things Done and more extensively in Making It All Work, it’s the ground floor:

• 50,000 – Purpose
• 40,000 – Vision
• 30,000 – Goals
• 20,000 – Responsibilities
• 10,000 – Projects
• Runway – Calendar & Actions

We got a letter from Mike who has been reading the Getting Things Done book and shared his experience with us of what David’s means by “keeping the runway clear.” [Read more →]

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Dear David Allen: Where do you find the time to go through the hardest parts of your Inbox (I seem to have a lower layer that never gets finished — notes from meetings that need follow up that are important but not urgent etc.)?

DA: You’re trying to use your Inbox as your organizer, and that won’t work. You have to make the decision about the action step for each one of those, and organize the reminder of the action (if it’s longer than 2 minutes and can’t be delegated) in your system. That doesn’t take long.  Sounds like you’re avoiding the decision about what to do, or you don’t feel like you have any system better than your Inbox to sustain it.

One of the upcoming Webinars with David Allen on GTD Connect will be all about processing these kinds of things that seem to get stuck in the Inbox.  Thursday, March 11th @ 11am.  Free for GTD Connect members.

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For those of you who haven’t seen this, it’s one of the best descriptions out there for distilling the essence of Getting Things Done®.  It’s also a good reminder that GTD® is not just about inbox zero, or picking a cool list manager, or doing a Weekly Review. It’s a whole workflow ecosystem that David has laid out here. As he says, “it’s more than meets the eye…”

Sophisticated without being confining, the subtle effectiveness of GTD lies in its radically common sense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments, organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. GTD embodies an easy, step-by-step and highly efficient method for achieving this relaxed, productive state. It includes: [Read more →]

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You can never get enough of what you don’t really need. And you can never work hard enough, long enough, or fast enough, to eliminate the stress or discomfort that drives those behaviors. Your Weekly Review brings a much-needed break in the pace.  -David Allen

Grab the free article on the GTD Weekly Review

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Do YOU know the best practices of GTD?

Although they’ve been recorded for our GTD Connect online learning center, we have been posting the GTD Best Practices series to our free public podcast as well, for all to benefit from.  These informal podcasts are a great way to learn the essentials of GTD.  Here is the series:

Best Practices of Collect

Best Practices of Processing

Best Practices of Organize

Best Practices of Review

Best Practices of Doing

If you like these podcasts, GTD Connect has over 110 recordings like these, with more added every week, that you can play on the Connect site or  sync to iTunes.  It’s a great way to learn coaching tips from David and the staff, listen to interesting interviews with GTD’ers (Evan Taubenfeld being one of the recent ones), watch the “Slice of GTD Life” videos and more.  Good stuff.  Check out the free trial of GTD Connect.

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GTD Connect member & GTD Times contributor Meghan Wilker is hosting a Tweetup for GTD’ers in Minneapolis, on March 3rd @ 6:30pm.

GTD® Tweetup at CoCo Collaborative

Are you a fan of GTD? Do you have questions about what it’s all about? Come join us for the first GTD Tweetup in the Twin Cities. No matter if you have achieved mind like water or feel like you have water on the brain, all are welcome. Meet others in the area that are fans of GTD or just come hang out with us. It’s all going down at Honey Lounge, one of the hippest new venues in one of the coolest areas of Minneapolis.

Learn more…

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Here’s a great Q&A between David and a new GTD’er.  To appreciate David’s response, it helps to understand the GTD definitions for projects and next actions:

Projects = Your outcomes that require more than one action step.

Next Actions = Your next physical, visible action steps. Some are project-related, some are not.

Question:

If a project requires, by your definition, at least two steps, I am not clear about how many of the needed steps to put into my action list.  For example, say I have a project with 20 steps.  I may be able to do the step 1, but if I had also put down 2  or 3 steps of that project, I might have done more on the project.   Presently I have about 57 projects, but some are monster projects I’ll be working on for months.  Others I can list two steps and it’s done very quickly.  A few projects are so trivial–but important enough to be listed–that some days I don’t do the one item I listed as the next step for that project.  I could put it into the “Someday” list, but I know I’ll do it sooner than that, so it stays around not being done.  I’d rather do step 2 and then 3 and then 4 of a more important project (I might be on a roll!) than complete one whole project that is easier to do but less important.  So I’m a bit unclear about how much of one project to put in my action list.  I find myself doing the “Weekly Review” every day, so I can add more steps from more important projects.  Could you share any thoughts about how to solve this concern?    [Read more →]

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A GTD’er asked:

I am part of a team with five teammates who are not using GTD.  How do I handle the frustration within the lines of communication and organization/productivity?

David replied:

The more anyone around you is out of control, the more you need the GTD method! You can only be responsible for what YOU need to track about what THEY are supposed to be doing, and following up with them accordingly.  Waiting For and Agenda lists are great for this (chapter 7 of the Getting Things Done book describes both of these in detail.)  Of course, the more they get onto this method, the more they’ll be doing their part… but you’re going to have to manage yourself, no matter what.

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The problem is not information overload, by David Allen

E-mail overload has gotten a lot of press lately – the quantity, the distraction it creates, and our inability to do much about it. There was even a recent debate in a global newspaper between readers voting for keeping e-mail at zero vs. those who use the digital in-basket as a giant library keeping useful information at hand with no concern for the volume. The issue is tied closely with the popular concern about our always-on culture – that we seem to never unhook from the incessant demands of being in touch, put upon us by our clients, our bosses and ourselves.

What’s the problem? There is one, but not the one that’s been popularized. “Information overload” has been the commonly identified culprit, coupled with universal access. That gives the picture of a mounting pile of stuff under which we are constantly and increasingly buried. And if incessant information bombardment is what we are trying to deal with, then help shows up as attempts to filter, sort and organize it faster and faster so we can feel in control of it.

But information overload isn’t the problem. If it was, you’d walk into a library and die. The first time you connected to the Web, you’d blow up, and merely browsing a newspaper would make you a nervous wreck. [Read more →]

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