Hi Folks,

Want to know one of the easiest ways to act on your creative ideas? Stop trying to hold them in your mind. Your mind is a great place to have ideas, but a terrible place to manage them.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

ARE YOU STILL USING YOUR HEAD TO TRACK YOUR AGREEMENTS?

There is a light year of difference between a system that has merely a lot of our commitments objectified and one that has 100% of the total. And few people have ever gotten to a totally empty head, with absolutely every project, action item, and potential agreement we have made with ourselves and others out and available in an easily reviewable format.

My hat’s off to you if you’re trying to keep mental lists as reminders of things to do—but I’ll bet those lists are not anywhere close to complete. Consequently they are putting enormous and unnecessary work on your psyche. If you don’t have everything in a system that the system ought to have, there is still no full trust in that system, and minimum motivation to keep it up and keep it current.

This excerpt is from a recent issue of David’s “Productive Living” newsletter. It’s free and sent about every 4 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.

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More than half of workers surveyed by Talent Management say they will work during their summer vacation.  Maybe that’s why USA Today wonders why we don’t feel rested when the “vacation” is over.

How much do you work on vacation? Take the poll below, and your additional comments are welcome. 

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This fall David Allen will be presenting his “Making It All Work” seminar in San Francisco and London.  This is a great opportunity to enjoy David’s entertaining and inspiring approach to GTD education.

What you’ll learn:

• How to get immediate control of “current reality”
• How to keep track of the total inventory of your commitments, including examples from David’s personal system
• What decisions are critical to make, about what, and when
• Why most “personal management systems” don’t work
• How to evaluate the best tools to use to stay in control
• Why organizational issues are often personal process issues
• Why it’s so challenging to really change the simplest habits, and the secret key to make it easier
• How to use procrastination to your advantage
• How to continually self-consult to get back “on your game”
• How to install simple tricks that create profound results

You can find out more about the seminar by clicking here.

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How about this for a free email productivity hack? Breathing!

In all seriousness, there is a phenomenon called “email apnea” that afflicts 80% of us. Linda Stone describes how email and other screen-focused activities tend to compromise our breathing and reduce the quality of our attention.

The Connected Life: From Email Apnea To Conscious Computing

 

Definition: Shallow breathing or breath holding while doing email, or while working or playing in front of a screen.

While we have a greater tendency toward email apnea or screen apnea, while doing email and texting on laptops and smartphones, we are at risk for breath holding or shallow breathing in front of any screen, any time. Not only does this increase stress levels, it impacts our attitude, our sense of emotional well-being, and our ability to work effectively.

Why are we doing this? Our posture is often compromised, especially when we use laptops and smartphones. Arms forward, shoulders forward, we sit in a position where it’s impossible to get a healthy and full inhale and exhale. Further, anticipation is generally accompanied by an inhale — and email, texting, and viewing television shows generally includes a significant dose of anticipation. Meanwhile, the full exhale rarely follows.

Read the full article here.

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Too many next actions? DA weighs in…

Question: I have done a good job of getting all my commitments in Outlook tasks and out of my head, but here is my dilemma: I have written down every work and personal task I need to do, including converting emails to action items and now I have 580 work tasks, 346 personal tasks, 266 tasks for my assistant and 117 honey-dos for my husband! I have them organized by project and date, but am feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all! Any advice? Thanks so much for your work.

David Allen: Well, you have as many commitments as you have, and unless you want eternal subliminal stress, you need to get them objectively out of your head and reviewable. As you’ve discovered, your next task to get more stress-free is to determine which ones are really “someday” vs. which ones need to be on the front shelf. Essentially, everything that you’re not doing at any moment is “someday,” but the psyche feels much better when you have made some distinctions between the active ones that you really want/need to get done within a reasonable time vs. those that can wait. Ultimately you’ll have to decide what kind of overview/map you need and want to see, to feel OK about what you’re doing. So there’s no right or wrong answer about any of this—only what’s most workable for you.

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If you are a parent, teacher, or child care provider, you’ve probably wondered how you can inspire kids and teens to use the GTD methods. Maybe you have helped a kid work on a project the night before it’s due, and recognized that the Natural Planning Model would have made the whole thing easier. Or you’ve listened to a teen who’s trying to balance classwork with extracurricular activities, and known that the Horizons of Focus would clarify the situation.

How do you go about communicating the benefits of GTD to kids and teens? Here are some resources for you.

David Allen did a free podcast entitled Describing GTD to Teens that’s a great starting point.

You can also use your free trial membership in GTD Connect to view these additional webinars and listen to podcasts.

David Allen Company CEO Mike Williams and Senior Coach Meg Edwards have just started a new podcast series on GTD Connect called “GTD for Caring Adults and Young People,” that focuses on taking that GTD journey with kids. The first episode talks about family projects.  More to come!

In the Sharing GTD with Kids and Teens webinar, Mike and Meg discuss fun, creative, and practical ways to share the GTD best practices with your kids and teens.

In this audio clip, Meg talks about her experience of sharing about GTD with her daughter, and ways to make GTD fun for kids.  In addition, Meg talks about creative ways to plan for anything—and specifically for summer camp—in Planning Projects with Kids.

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GTD can be for anyone.  Here’s a blog post on Baby + You, pointing out that expectant mothers in the third trimester can benefit from the project management and delegation advice in Getting Things Done.

“Slow down. Be easy and don’t push yourself too hard,” advises Mark Moore, M.D., an anesthesiologist in Tallahassee, Fla., with a sub-specialization in obstetric and gynecologic anesthesia. His advice: Avoid rushing and overscheduling, especially in the late third trimester. “Control the nesting urges — the feeling of needing to have everything perfect before the baby comes.”

You don’t have to fight the feeling completely. Here are some safe and fun ways to indulge the pregnancy nesting urge and prepare for baby’s arrival:

Make lists and delegate. Act as project manager and have hubby or helpful family handle strenuous tasks like installing shelves, putting together furniture or painting the baby’s room.

Read the complete post here.

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Question: You claim that in most of the situations we are guilty for being stressed and frustrated. What can we do to avoid these frustrations?

Answer from David Allen: Clarify what your desired outcome is, what the next action required to move it forward is (and who’s going to do it); and evaluate those commitments consistently within your total context of commitments about work and life.

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An Opinionator piece in The New York Times called The Busy Trap has been generating a lot of discussion in the last few days. The author, Tim Kreider, challenges some popular assumptions about whether it’s good to be busy, and whether we’re busy with what matters.

“Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups.”

How about your kids, or the kids you know? Do they have enough unstructured time?

“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”

And how about you? Does your schedule reflect what is meaningful for you? If you’re not sure, have a look at David Allen’s summary of the 6 Horizons of Focus. It can help you create a schedule that aligns your next actions, projects, and higher goals.

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This is an excerpt from Todd Brown’s blog post for Next Action Associates, the only Certified International Partner for GTD in the UK.

We’ve learned enough about the brain in the last 60 or so years to know that it is powerful and dependable at some things, and limited and unreliable when it comes to others. Thinking creatively, drawing connections, brainstorming, focused thinking—all great uses for our grey matter. But counting on it to remind me of the fact that I need to buy olive oil? Allowing it to have the thought over and over “I need to email the proposal to the client”? Only half-deciding what to do with several (hundred?) emails and leaving them in the inbox to fester?

That’s brain abuse. Of course if you’re guilty of it, you are also the only one who can put an end to it. A first step would be to consider a spotter’s guide to the forms the abuse might take:

• Re-thinking things
• Leaving thinking half-finished
• Trying to fill your brain beyond capacity
• Counting on your brain to remind you when you want to be reminded

Identify your brain’s strengths and weaknesses, and stop giving it things to do that it doesn’t do very well. Remember, only you can prevent brain abuse.

You can read other blog posts and find out more about Next Action Associates here.

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