You are disorganized if you need something somewhere that you don’t have or have something somewhere that you don’t need. — David Allen
PC World asked David Allen to name five tips for productivity. The focus is on productivity within the Windows environment, but several tips apply to Mac as well.
A Community Contribution from Erik Hanberg
For me, one of the easiest and yet most difficult concepts of David Allen’s Getting Things Done was thinking of everything as work.
After all, who wants to work all the time? But I quickly learned there was strength in the idea.
As I was implementing GTD for the first time, I understood the concept as a way to make sure that I didn’t lose track of the fun things in life. [Read more →]
There are four GTD Managing Projects and Priorities seminars coming up in November and December. They will be held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston. If you’re ready to refine the GTD skills you use on your own projects, the Managing Projects and Priorities seminar is the place for you. You’ll get plenty of specialized focus on how to manage projects to completion, from natural planning through next actions. There will be opportunities to work with your projects in depth, so you can develop greater trust in your moment-to-moment decisions about priorities.
GTD Times readers who register by October 31 can use the code TIMES100 to get a $100 discount off the tuition for any upcoming Managing Projects and Priorities seminar. (The coupon cannot be applied retroactively or in combination with other special rates.)
You can click here for all the details.
David Allen shares his perspective on the antidote to the curse of the eternally urgent in his latest educational newsletter.
Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 3 weeks. Chock full of lots of great GTD tips, tricks and strategies.
David Allen was a speaker at the Do Lectures this summer in Wales. The Do lectures are all about getting a handful of speakers together in one place, in the hope that they may inspire you to go Do something. To give you the tools and the desire to change the things you care about.
Click this link to watch David’s presentation now.
Or click this link to download or play an MP3 of the audio only.
If you take a pen and blank paper, and just spend the next five minutes capturing ideas on the most important project right now for you to make some progress on, you will likely come up with at least one, if not several, “Oh yeah, I could…” items. – David Allen
What is a Project?
A project is any outcome that will take more than one action step to complete. As a list, the Projects list will represent an index of the current outcomes on your plate.
What is Someday Maybe?
Someday/Maybe means you are not currently committed to complete it, but you are committed to track it as an item to periodically review for future action.
What is a Next Action?
A Next Action is your physical, visible next step. Some of these are project related, some are not. The recommendation is to sort these by context.
What goes on a Waiting For list?
Waiting For holds those items that you are waiting on from someone or something else. For example, call backs, responses to an email you sent, orders placed, etc.
GTD is an approach that is not tool-specific. So while it’s important to land on gear (paper or digital) that will stand up to the complexity of your work and personal life, it’s more important that it clearly serves the purpose of reflecting the reminders and information in the most appropriate way for you. The tool won’t decide what something means—you have to do that, and the GTD process is the key.
If anyone is telling you a specific piece of software is required for GTD–good chance they don’t understand GTD.
We do have a few key tools that we personally use and recommend that have gone through David Allen’s extensive vetting process. You can find a link to those in our online store. If you don’t see your software listed here, it means we do not have a recommendation at this time, but a search on GTD Times and our public Forums should give you quite a few helpful suggestions about what other GTDers are using.
David, a college student, asked: I know David Allen says that it’s acceptable to place “pending” projects onto a Someday Maybe list. I have several outcomes that are “one-shot deals.” However, I can’t move on then right now. Can I place them on my Someday Maybe list?
Coach Kelly Forrister: My Someday Maybe is mixed with possible actions and possible projects. Anything from writing to an old friend to hiking Machu Pichu. So feel free to put anything on Someday Maybe as a place to capture it. Just be sure to review it in your Weekly Reviews (or regularly) to trust you’re seeing what’s in there.
