If you look at your calendar in detail over the next two weeks, I bet you will think of at least one, if not several, “Oh, that reminds me, I need to’s.”
- David Allen
Get a rare look inside David Allen’s personal GTD system in the next webinar hosted by GTD Connect. You’ll see how he’s customized his lists and examples of what he uses them for. It’s a great opportunity to see GTD in action and spark your own creative ideas for customizing your system.
March 10th from 11am-12pm Pacific Time. Login to GTD Connect and register through the link on the home page. Open to all GTD Connect members, including those on a two-week guest pass.
For many people, a mobile list manager is a requirement for implementing GTD. To support productivity on the go, the lists must be accessible in real-time, showing your projects, as well as your actions sorted by context. There are plenty of third-party task applications for mobile devices that help to some degree with list management. The BlackBerry is a very popular choice among GTDers looking for a device with a built-in task app. In fact, David Allen Company has a Setup Guide specifically written so you can dial the BlackBerry in according to GTD best practices. If you’re considering a mobile device, this review at Notes on Productivity describes the functionality of the task app in the BlackBerry Torch. How do you think the BlackBerry stacks up for managing your lists the GTD way?
This is a Community Contribution from Mike Vardy
Some people need silence to be productive. Some people need music. Some people need an extreme amount of light. Some people don’t need anything specific. Some people don’t need anything at all.
To anyone who falls into one “some” category, they are not likely to fall into another. There’s a subjective nature to working environments. The same goes for distractions.
We’d love to know how many of you are using or plan to use Outlook for Mac. Please vote:
This is helpful for us in our long-term planning for GTD Setup Guides.
Thanks!
David Allen Company Education Team
David Allen describes the difference between what you’ll find on a next action list and a to do list:
90+ % of the to do lists I’ve seen are incomplete inventories of still-unclear things. The Next Action definition (if you’re really getting down to having no ambiguity about the next visible physical activity required to move something forward), actually finishes the thinking you’ve implicitly agreed with yourself that you’ll do. “Mom” is an unclarified to do item. But when “Mom” is translated into “Celebrate Mom’s birthday with a party” as a project outcome, then “Call Sis about what we should do for Mom’s birthday” is a clear next action. Because “Mom” is vague, it still triggers stress when you look at it on a list. “Call Sis . . . ” triggers action and positive engagement.
For anyone who has tackled a science project, or any kind of project, here is a Community Contribution from April Perry
Tackling a 5th-Grade Science Project
My 11-year-old daughter came home with a huge packet of science project information a few weeks ago, and the entire family started feeling the stress. Before the world of computers and fancy tri-fold poster board, science projects were a cinch. I remember hunkering down at my dining room table with construction paper, some magic markers, and a simple sheet of white poster board. But today’s children have a lot more pressure. They need charts and graphs, digital photographs, and well-written hypotheses. It’s enough to overwhelm the children and the parents.
Instead of letting the stress get to me, I decided to apply the principles I learned from Getting Things Done and show my daughter that projects don’t have to give us headaches. Here’s what we did:
Step 1: We read through the packet of information and made a list of tasks based on context.
By popular request, here is a list of all of the FREE GTD resources offered by David Allen Company:
You will experience unnecessary mental fatigue and numbness in your environments and organizational systems by simply mixing up things that represent different agreements with yourself. – David Allen
