Community Contribution from Eric Mack, partner of the David Allen Company

As many of you know, David Allen has used Lotus Notes for his personal GTD system for many years.  As such, David and I will be co-hosting two upcoming webinars on GTD & Lotus Notes.

Exclusively for IBM employees:
On April 8th from 10am – 11:30am PST, we’ll be doing a webinar exclusively for IBM employees on applying GTD to Lotus Notes. Many IBMers are fans of GTD already, and this will give more insight into David’s master tips, tricks & strategies. We’ll also look at eProductivity – the only software tool for Lotus Notes that’s earned the distinctive “GTD Enabled” certification.

If you’re an IBM employee, sign up now.

Open to the public;
David and I will be doing another webinar on GTD & Lotus Notes on April 28th that is open to the public.  Sign-up now. Space is limited.

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Question: How did you organize your tasks?  Am I suppose to have a main Projects category and corresponding action tasks categorized @home, @work, etc?

David Allen: Yes, for me “Projects” is a category, just like the action lists of “Calls”,  “At Computer” etc. They are  simply flat lists, tied together with your review of the whole system.

Question: If there are 5 (or likely more for me) separate sections in a folder to track everything, how do you pull everything in a project back together rather than having it all scattered?   [Read more →]

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“You’ll automatically feel better about what you’re doing if the inventory of defined next actions available to you is as complete as possible.” -David Allen (p.211 of Making It All Work)

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Here are the upcoming Webinars on GTD Connect, our online learning center:

• Project Planning, with Coaches Wayne Pepper & Kelly Forrister – April 8, 11am PDT.  The Coaches will go over common questions, like:  How do you plan out a project? Where do project plans go? How far out should you plan a project when you first get it? What project steps go on the action lists? and more.

• Q&A with the GTD Coaches – April 22, 11am PDT.  Two of our senior coaches will take your GTD questions. No question too big or small. Ask away!
• Coming in May – a 3-week Webinar series that will be like a “gentle GTD boot camp”

Watch now in the Archives: [Read more →]

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Thanks to all who participated in the Guided GTD “Tweekly Review” I did this morning.  If you want a refresher, or missed it and want to follow along yourself, here’s the path.

Some of the other great resources for the GTD Weekly Review:

• The Book. It’s all in there. Really!
• GTD System Guides (which has the 11 steps on a laminated card)
• Weekly Review Set on CD or MP3
• Audio, Video, Articles and Webinars on GTD Connect
• Blog articles on GTD Times
• Free Podcast on the Best Practices of Review

Cheers!   Kelly

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Hey, not a bad place to read a book!  Thanks to Susan from Rhode Island for sharing this from her recent vacation in the Caribbean.

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We just posted a short excerpt from an interview where David talks about how he explained GTD to some teens.  Many of you have asked how to get your kids involved in GTD and this may give you some interesting language to engage them.  Listen Now>>

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One of the most common tools we get asked about is the iPhone–specifically, our recommendations for syncing Tasks to an iPhone.  Here’s some helpful information around that:

What does the David Allen Company recommend for implementing GTD® Task lists on the iPhone?

The iPhone was not built with a Tasks application, so you will need to find an App that will support the GTD best practices for a list manager (e.g. sort by category/context, allow but not force due dates, allows related notes to be attached to the Task, etc.)  What you choose for the iPhone would depend primarily on what do you need to sync it to.  The corresponding application you want to sync it to (Mac, PC or Web) would narrow down the best application for you to install on the iPhone for Tasks. The end result is that you would have a Tasks application on the iPhone–>syncing through a service–>that then shares that information with a corresponding application on the web or desktop. [Read more →]

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Dear David and Co.,

About three years ago, on a long plane ride, I was able to fully deploy GTD into a paper-based system.  I had read the book. And the book suggested writing down all active Projects, Tasks, and Waiting Fors.

After writing down all my projects, I looked at the list. It was easy to see I had too many irons in the fire.  Looking at the Projects list, I knew what I had to to next.  More importantly, I knew what I had NOT to do.

Within several hours of getting off the plane I was able to gracefully unplug for three major initiatives which a) were soaking up a lot of time, b) did not mesh well with a heavy travel schedule.

This was a revelation. It was the first time I felt that I could control my work world. Up to that point, my work, and my interests had been controlling me.

With a functioning GTD system, I now end up launching far fewer new projects. Paradoxically, this enable me to get much more done.

Thanks for your hard work in bringing such a useful system to the world.

Steedman Bass
Cambridge, MA

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I’ll be doing another free guided GTD Weekly Review on Twitter this coming Friday, March 26th at 10am California time.  These events are fun, easy to follow and a great way to get a taste of a GTD best practice.

What: It will be a working Twitter class.  Over an hour, I’ll guide people through the 11-steps of the GTD Weekly Review through a series of Tweets. You’ll want to be in front of your system (at least calendar, lists, email, inboxes etc.) to take action based on the Tweets.  While the purpose isn’t to bring you to completion with all of it, you’ll get to experience a bit of each step, and capture what’s next for you.  Remember, the Weekly Review is the critical success factor for GTD!  The better you know it, the better your system will be.

When: Friday, March 26th at 10am PDT/California time. Find your local time.

How: Follow @GTDSpecialEvent on Twitter or just launch this web page during the event to follow the Tweets. You’ll want to Refresh your Twitter page often to make sure you’re getting the latest Tweets.  They’ll come every few minutes.

Who: Probably good to have at some basic understanding of processing & organizing with GTD (also chapter 2 of the GTD book is great) and at least a basic structure of GTD setup for yourself already.

Read what others had to say about the last one.

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