As a GTD evangelist myself, last March I was fortunate to attend the GTD Summit in San Francisco. This was a first-ever event hosted by David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, and his company, David Allen Company. It was a networking event which brought together all of the best and brightest GTD practicers from literally around the world. It was at the GTD Summit that I met Ken Case – the President of the Omni Group.  Being a Technology Director at a school district in Maine and a GTD evangelist, I encouraged him to consider donating OmniFocus to the MLTI program as a first step in exposing the educational community within Maine to the benefits of the GTD system.  Read more–>

Some people got a sneak preview of it at the GTD Summit in March, and a few bootleg copies of it are floating around the Internet.  We’re getting dozens of emails a day now from GTD’ers hungry for this new piece of the GTD story.  We are pleased to announce that the new GTD Workflow Map will be officially available in the DavidCo store next month.  This new $49 product will include:

• A full-color 20″x30″ (51×76cm) poster
• A full-color 11″x17″ (28×43cm) poster
• An in-depth DVD of David Allen giving a guided tour of the Map

We will announce its release on GTD Times and in our free Productive Living newsletter (formerly known as Productivity Principles and GTD Tips & Special Offers.)  Sign up for Productive Living and you will also receive the fascinating case study being completed by xplane on the production of the map.

I am always running experiments with my kids (queue the evil scientist laugh!).  I would love to share these experiments or test new things (experiments, gear) to help start the GTD thinking at an earlier age.

Here is a recent post I wrote on one of my experiments.  It resonated with several GTD moms and dads at the GTD Summit.

I am also experimenting with home design, backpack gear, homework routines, school routines and home routines to build systems that enable the GTD systemic approach.

Read more about Mike’s experiment>>

Dear David,

Not your intent, I know, but again your excellent principles are  helping an elderly housewife cope with  an elderly house and even with old age itself.

I’m nearing 80 and can’t tell you what a help your maxims have been — FAR more cogent than tips from AARP and senior-health mags.   The 2 best gems, for me,  in this latest rich e-mail from you:    Eliminate residue, distraction & excess;  and,  It’s time to get clear, current and courageous.  Such post-its on fridge-front are worth a dozen crayoned tributes to Granny and cat-bedecked injunctions to Hang In There.  Online advice to oldies is to do sudoku & crosswords & jigsaw puzzles.   Not bad, but far more productive is to methodically map out practical procedures by which to implement your really excellent guiding principles.

Many thanks & best regards,

Anita

If you want regular doses of inspiration from David Allen, you can sign up for our free Productivity Principles newsletter.

Steve was just at the recent GTD Global Summit and took the time post event to write to the David Allen Company to let them know how much he enjoyed the experience and to share this image of himself at work.

The brief note that accompanied the photo is also below.

Janet,
I really enjoyed talking with you at the summit.  I can’t believe how quickly the two days went by!  I hope you guys decide it was enough of a success to do it again.

Attached is the picture we talked about at the summit.  This is me, in an old Iraqi building, at my desk.  I have my Beretta M9 on my leg and a copy of GTD on my desk.  I was stationed at Balad Air Base which is about 30 minutes north of Baghdad.  GTD really helped me keep my head cool in a totally new environment that had more intensity and stress than I ever imagined.  Enjoy.

-Steve

Unless you are David Allen himself, you might find yourself struggling to eloquently distill the practice of GTD down to a short and memorable set of concepts and equally simple and equally memorable steps that a novice can understand and even implement in short order to take those first few steps towards a lifetime of improved productivity, reduced stress, and the confidence that you are doing what you are best served to be doing at any given time.

It figures that someone whose title is “Editor in Chief” of a company called Goose Educational Media would be the one to do such an extrordinary job at creating such a document.  Thankfully for the rest of us, Chris Taylor not only took the time to write this resource he has generously put it online where anyone can take advantage of it any time they like.

Beyond this truly excellent summary the Goose Educational Media site is a truly amazing resource.  Founded upon the idea that sharing knowledge distilled from the top books about productivity, management, decision making and other disciplines  can have a profound impact upon an individual’s effectiveness, Chris Taylor and a team he describes as a phenomenal team of dedicated individuals have created a resource that is intended to give an individual the tools and the resources to change his or her life, and thereby the power to change the world.

It is a selfless effort that can benefit each and every one of us.  I urge you to take a look at the Golden Eggs of GTD and then to dig a bit deeper.  The site has a tremendous amount to offer and such a gift should not be overlooked, especially in these difficult times where every one of us can be well served to find ways in which we can each improve ourselves.

“Making it All Work:  Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life” is that something. And I’m not just talking about the book, either.  David has worked for years to clarify, refine, broaden, deepen and in some ways complete the work he began with his original program of GTD.

For most people I suspect that the abbreviated Making it All Work presentation that David delivered today felt both familiar yet new at the same time.  That’s because it was.

I think that David retained much of the best of his original program but has fleshed out and added more material to those areas that people have occasionally said were not clear enough in the original.

Here are some basic outline notes from David’s slides for the presentation.  They are pretty much self explanatory.  The goal is to help you see more clearly what David means by each of the subcategories that he uses to define the various aspects of GTD.

They are as follows:

“If my brain had a brain I wouldn’t need a system.” – David Allen

Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect

This leads to having control and perspective

Control is simply cooperating with reality with conscious intent
Capturing
Clarifying
Organizing
Reflecting
Engaging

Perspective
Capture: write it down
Clarifying: what does this mean to me?
Organizing: put it where it goes
Reflecting: look through the whole
Engage: Do

Purpose/ Principles – 50,000  How: how do I want to operate as a human being?
Vision – 40,000 Feet  How do I see my self and my life
Goals – 30,000 Feet  What do I want to accomplish both long term and in the next two years?
Responsibilities – 20,000 Feet  What do I have to do
Projects – 10,000 Feet
Actions – Runway

System: build, fill, use

“You are here for a purpose.  You are either on purpose or you’re not.” David Allen

“Focus on what has your attention and you’ll find out what really has your attention.” – David Allen

This post rambles a bit as it’s a live blogging effort to cover the real key questions and associated answers that this group of accomplished entrepreneurs provided during an hour plus panel discussion about the trials and tribulations of starting your own company.

Topics included what personality characteristics should you have to thrive as an entrepreneur.  What are the most common mistakes that they see entrepreneurs making (or which they’ve made themselves).  They discussed their biggest fears and how they’ve overcome them and even why right now is actually a really good time to begin planning an entrepreneurial venture.

Panel Discussion

Peter Gallant: serial entrepreneur, Pathogen Detection Systems

Execution is the biggest risk facing start up companies.  The plan is usually not the problem. The execution is.  Knowing when to do what needs to be done.
Recommended reading “The War of Art”  it is very rare for entrepreneurs to really know what the milestones the must be achieved are. when they need to achieve those goals and how to forecast whether or not they are on track or behind or in real trouble.

He hasn’t met an entrepreneur that has a complete broad focus across all the horizons of focus

John de Souza, serial entrepreneur, founded the product that became Microsoft Messenger

Do you have the right temperment, the right skill set and is it the right timing.  Once you are an entrepreneur, it gets going, you’re excited about it and suddently…what’s next?  You need to get the company going and for this GTD can be extremely important.

How does being an entrepreneur impact your family?  What if you fail?  What if you have no money?

Buzz Bruggeman:  Active Words.  His belief is that computers should understand us.  Problem:  voice is not really a viable option.  Active Words lets people name things.  For example setting up the keystroke NT for directly navigation to New York Times.  ( also like Quicksilver)

Frode Odegard:  Founded several companies including one before he was 18.  What is the nature of a true entrepreneur:  restless by nature. potentially reckless, frequently fall into the “crazy maker” quadrant.

What’s important is that entrepreneurs tend to underestimate and possibly even feel resentful towards the needs to spend time simply thinking.

“If you don’t have a good framework to manage your commitments you will just drown”.

EDS: Entrepreneurial Dysfunction Syndrome

Buzz:  the single biggest problem for him is the weekly review.  Part of it is the issue of having the time to make an appointment with himself.

Once you’re an entrepreneur and you have built the product you are faced with two new problems:  Distribution and Adoption.
They’re talking to HP so Buzz emails every single person from HP that downloaded their application and he asks them for help

If you can’t handle rejection you should probably just work for a big company.

If there’s anything you wished you knew earlier

Buzz:

1.  The inventor should NOT be the CEO

2.  Take Smart Money of Just Money

3.  Use GTD to maintain sufficient discipline to keep wandering to a minimum

Frode

1.  Having the right revenue model.   Understanding what works in a given economy

Frode:  My biggest fear is relationships.  Can I trust these people?  What are their intentions

Buzz: Biggest Fear:  The serious maybe…

de Souza:  Hiring the wrong senior person.  As soon as you realize there’s a problem take action.

Gallant:  making a wrong effort from a time, talent or investment perspective

Odegard:  What’s your definition of success for an experience?

Gallant:   A call to action:  imagine that you’ve lost your job.  What sort of entrepreneurial venture would you start next?  This is a great time to be planning a start-up company.  There’s sufficient cash, it is simply that the VC’s are being especially cautious.

Buzz:  If I did not have a partner with a skill set he didn’t have they would have been dead.

These are in reverse chronological order so you can take a trip back in time from present moment to last night’s cocktail party or you can start at the bottom and work your way forward in time to see the event blossom in the way that it actually has.  Either way there are some wonderful pearls here as many of the tweets are actual quotes from the speakers presenting at the conference.

Tweets are here as a PDF:  twitters_eye_view_gtdsummit

I’m wearing several hats here so my coverage will be as real time as I can deliver it.  I’ll also try to get some coverage over on Qik if bandwidth allows.

Keynote:

David’s powerful initial remarks to put this event and GTD in context.  If you have never seen David speak you simply cannot imagine the incredible authenticity and integrity of this man.  I have attended literally hundreds of conferences and heard perhaps thousands of speakers yet he is by far the most genuine, transparent and honest speaker that I have ever had the good fortune to hear.

His opening remarks were testimony to this as one of the first things he mentioned was the fact that just before we did this conference he had to cut 40% of his workforce.  … He said that for this conference he wanted to look for the silver lining in this current crisis. To find that silver lining and learn how self improvement is even more essential in times of crisis…that’s the overarching theme for the summit.

Keynote Interview with Guy Kawasaki to Follow

Legibility, Other-Meaningfulness and a GTD Definition of Neatness

In the classic GTD paradigm, you cannot objectively state whether this desk is organized or not. It depends on what the arrangement of stuff in this workspace means to the the owner, Blue Head guy. It is definitely not neat, but this could count as perfectly organized, if Blue Head routinely dumps his receipts under the table after a trip, and uses the floor when he needs extra workspace. If he gets his expense reports done on time, and never loses stuff on the floor, who are you and I to judge? When I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I saw a fine example of this. My thesis adviser was  a neat and organized guy. Nothing was ever out of place. Things got processed, and his desk surface was always immaculate. Across the hall at the time was another professor, for whom I was a teaching assistant one term. His office looked like a huge mess. Piles of journals and papers were everywhere. If you dropped by, there would be nowhere to sit. Yet, he could find what he needed in seconds. Both were equally effective and productive as academics.  I realized that the second professor was very self-aware and actually understood his system at a philosophical level when I found a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s article “The Social Life of Paper” clipped to his door (a very smart exploration of how people really use paper to organize).

But to understand what “neatness” is, consider what someone else makes of an organized-but-not-neat situation, like our friend Green Head in the picture above. Why does he come to the different set of conclusions about what the four groups of “stuff” mean?

The deep reason for this is the association of neatness with low entropy. In the non-living world, symmetry, straight lines, right angles and such are only created by humans (or by atomic forces at microscopic crystalline levels). The result is that if you don’t know anything else, you can always safely assume that these attributes represent meaning to somebody. So even without knowing what the pile A means to Blue Head, Green Head can guess that it probably manifests some meaning.

Now, let’s mix in Scott’s notion of “legibility.” Scott argues that organizations tend to take complex realities created by organic human societies and reconstruct them in “neater” ways simply to make them easier to see and control organizationally. This process by which governance systems try to make the governed more “legible,” he goes on to show, often backfires by getting rid of a lot of critical subtleties in meaning, simply because they are not easily made legible. This reductive view of a rich reality is then imposed by the governance system onto the reality itself, as a Procrustean bed. The result is a mess; a case of an attempt at organization breaking what didn’t need fixing. A beautiful example he discusses is how the imposition of the more legible and “standardized” metric system in Napoleanic France actually made land measurements for the purpose of taxation less accurate in some cases.

That notion of legibility gives us a definition of neatness that is a companion to David’s definition of organization.

Neatness is that property of stuff that makes it legible to people other than the owner of that stuff.

Neatness, in this sense depends only on the stuff itself, not on the relationship between Blue Head and Green Head, or the extent to which they share a sense of meaning. Green Head could be an alien for all we care. That’s what legibility means: stuff in another language can be judged for legibility whether or not you can parse its meaning. You don’t need to know Chinese to tell random doodles made by a Chinese kid from written language, or good calligraphy from bad. The same goes for each of our private “languages” of organization.

But if, in addition (or instead), Blue Head and Green Head have shared meaning — shared mental models of some commonly experienced part of the universe — the desk will be more than legible to Green Head. it will be other-meaningful. It can even be illegible and still be other-meaningful to specific “others.” Here are a few examples, ranging from the “naturally self-documenting and legible” and “legible and consciously documented” to “meaningful but illegible” and the stupidest variety: other-meaningful and legible but not meaningful to the owner.

Examples of Meaning, Other-Meaning and Legibility

1. I once saw a short-order cook taking omelet orders. His system was transparent, meaningful, legible and other-meaningful. If someone ordered an onion, tomato and swiss cheese omelet, he’d queue up a plate on the counter with a small piece of tomato, a small piece of onion, and a slice of swiss cheese. It was instantly obvious to anybody looking how his kitchen was organized.
2. A pair of unlabeled paper trays on a desk is legible but not other-meaningful.  “In” and “out” labels make them “other-meaningful.”
3. A hook by the front door is legible and has a clear meaning and other-meaning: hang your keys there
4. Sherlock Holmes stored his tobacco in a Persian slipper which he hung by the fireplace. Legible and other-meaningful. Nobody can accidentally  create that weird configuration of stuff. It conveys: “smoker, eccentric, this is where he keeps his tobacco” as its other-meaning.
5. The crumpled receipts and sheets of paper under the desk in the picture are not legible. A zealous janitor could be forgiven for trashing pile C and shredding pile D. If he’s been told to leave the desk area alone, it will acquire some coarse other-meaning for him (“not trash even if it looks like it”).
6. Couples frequently get into fights over legibility and other-meaningfulness. My wife used to keep some clothes draped over the edge of the laundry hamper, and occasionally, annoyed by the entropy, I’d dump it in fully. Until I realized “draped over edge” meant “to dry clean” to her, and I was destroying her meaning by making things neater and other-meaningful to me.
7. Moving time is a great example of various forms of meaning and legibility. There are piles of stuff are everywhere, but you and your spouse know exactly what it all means, even if the neighbors don’t. On the other hand, to a trained observer, such as a mover, who has seen lots of moves, things can be more legible and other-meaningful than the owners expect. Perhaps a psychologist or GTD coach would read more other-meaning into the moving piles than the couple themselves can!
8. A contrived example of individual humans “seeing like a state.” Imagine a well-meaning but terminally stupid new admin assistant taking a look at an executive’s illegible but meaningful workspace. In particular, this executive has an elaborate system of post-it notes pasted in groups around his desk and monitor. The notes are different colored, but the executive isn’t using the color to code anything. Our overzealous admin imposes a moronic new other-meaning onto the executive’s workspace by neatly rearranging all post-it notes by color, in neat rectangular arrays. You can imagine what would happen when the executive returns to his office.

Personally, I am pretty much always organized, but my neatness swings between illegible and highly-legible. When legible, my systems are not very other-meaningful beyond “this isn’t trash, so don’t mess with it.” I don’t document much.

Creating Shared Meaning

This suggests a rather depressing thought: one of the reasons you and I are attracted to GTD is that it is not just tolerant of personal idiosyncracies, it actually encourages hacking and customization and apparent creative anarchy, so long as the “meaning” criterion is respected. But what happens when you must collaborate and coordinate with others? Is neatness and objective legibility the only path to other-meaningfulness? Is “seeing like a state” an unavoidable pathology?

Fortunately, no. You can create collaborate beautifully without getting into neatness. The key is to get to agreement on what stuff means, rather than how it should look. Crazy-creative startups have such deep levels of shared meaning that they can be phenomenally well-organized but completely illegible to visitors from big corporations. In the other direction, we instantly recognize “petty bureaucracy”: big-organization stuff that is neat and legible, but meaningless and other-meaningless because the process was designed under conditions that no longer exist, for and by employees who are no longer around to explain.

And here’s where the third piece of the puzzle comes in: organizational metaphor. Since the degree to which you need to share meaning is the degree to which others’ systems need to be legible and other-meaningful to you, smaller groups can create shared meaning in more fluid ways than bigger groups. But even the biggest organizations can create shared meaning that goes a really long way without degenerating into “Seeing Like a State” disorganized neatness.

This level of shared meaning is created by your fundamental metaphor for your organization. Morgan analyzes several major ones in his book. I have listed them here.

1. Organizations as machines
2. Organizations as organisms
3. Organizations as brains
4. Organizations as cultures
5. Organizations as political systems
6. Organizations as psychic prisons
7. Organizations as flux and transformation
8. Organizations as instruments of domination

Not all these metaphors impact visible systems and processes equally, but if you can read the dominant metaphor, the entire organization will become a lot more legible and/or other-meaningful to you. A simple example: if everyone seems to dress casually, and there are always cookies and fun posters around, you can probably assume that the ‘culture’ metaphor is important, and that it reads ‘fun and relaxed.’ You can use that to deduce that an illegible desk, that might mean “disorganized and ineffective” in a true “machine” organization, probably means the opposite here. If you know that an organization has a lot of the “brain” metaphor going on, where people get things done by acting like neurons — communicating intensely and informally at the watercooler — then you can read that behavior as “effective” instead of “disorganized slacking off.”

There isn’t room here to go into this in detail, but this view of organization, neatness, legibility and meaning is a very powerful way to look at effectiveness in decision-making. If you’d like to explore this theme more, the two books are well worth checking out. I must warn you though, they are heavy-lift books. Don’t expect to knock either off on a single plane ride. And of course, my own in-progress book, Tempo, a book about decision-making, will have a whole chapter devoted to the theory and concepts behind this approach to analysis. Do visit that link and sign up for the release announcement if this subject interests you!

p.s. I will be participating in two of the panels at the GTD Summit, where I’ll share some more ideas from my book, as they relate to GTD! Do drop by if you plan on being there.

Venkatesh G. Rao writes a blog on business and innovation at www.ribbonfarm.com, and is a Web technology researcher at Xerox. The views expressed in this blog are his personal ones and do not represent the views of his employer.

If you want to get eProductivity at the best price ever and you want to go to the GTD Global Summit without having to pay the regular admission, you’d better move fast.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Eric has already given out all ten passes by the middle of the day today.

The GTD Summit is only three weeks away, can you really afford NOT to attend?  If you or your team are one of the many people that are suddenly being asked to do more with less, attending the GTD Global Summit might actually be one of the most important investments you could make.

The knowledge you can acquire from the world-class line up of experts on not only GTD, but also entrepreneurship, creativity, productivity in general, life hacking, military strategy, leadership, ethics and more will be far more enduring than any other use of funds we can imagine.

Nevertheless, we understand that for some people it simply isn’t possible to take two days off from your job, school, or family, while for others, the full price of the summit might simply be out of reach at this time.

Regardless of your reasons, the team at the David Allen Company is sensitive to your situation.  It should go without saying that David’s commitment to helping people achieve more, learn more and get more out of life goes far beyond any financial element and this attitude permeates the entire company.  It is for this reason that the team decided that unlike many conferences that are an all-or-nothing sort of affair, the GTD Global Summit will be different and will offer people the ability to attend just a single day of their choice if that is what someone wants to do.

Day passes are now available for each of the two days.  Pick one day or two.

Each day pass includes:
Autographed copy of David’s new book.
Exhibitor Expo
Coach’s Corner – your chance to sit down with a GTD coach one on one
Coach’s Theater – “how to” presentations from senior GTD facilitators
Breakout sessions with high impact presenters and moderators
All meals and beverages

The Best Part?

You will see and hear from some of the world’s leading minds on productivity, making change and adapting to our changing world. Intelligent conversations.  Compelling speakers. And more.

HOW TO REGISTER:
Pick the day pass that best suits your schedule.

Thursday, March 12th

Friday, March 13th

DAY ONE PASS – MARCH 12th

David Allen & Guy Kawasaki: Welcome & Keynote
James Fallows, Marshall Goldsmith and General Randy Fullhart
Breakout Session One
Self Management as Strategy: GTD and Leadership
Good Things Getting Done: GTD Serving Service
GTD at Home: From the Boardroom to the Living Room
Breakout Session Two
A GTD Workforce – Is There a New Industry Standard?
Innovation – Getting New Stuff Done.
GTD as Super Charger and Safety Net: Life Transitions and Transformations.
Breakout Session Three
Entrepreneurs and GTD – Making it up and Making it Happen
GTD and Education: Reading, Writing. Arithmetic and GTD
The Virtual Workplace – Does it Work?
Book Signing – David and other authors
Exhibitor Expo Wine and Cheese Reception.

Register here for your Thursday, March 12th Day Pass

DAY TWO PASS – MARCH 13th

David Allen presents “GTD Making It All Work”
Plenary Session – How the world works, and should we care?
Dave Logan
Ron Kaufman
Sanjiv Mirchandani
Michael Winston
David Allen
Breakout Session Four
Best Practices to Good Habits: Can I Make GTD Stick?
Your Brain on GTD: Why it Works
Productivity Tech: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Breakout Session Five
Critical Behaviors in the Crunch – GTD and Organizational Change
GTD and Sales. Customers and Relationships
Creativity and Clear Space – Inseparable, or Mutually Exclusive?
David Allen Final Remarks
Book Signing – David and other authors
Exhibitor Expo Wine and Cheese Reception.
Register here for your Friday, March 13th Day Pass

HOW TO REGISTER:

Pick the day that works best for you and register now. A limited number of day passes are available. See you there!

Day Pass for Thursday, March 12th

Day Pass for Friday, March 13th

Maj. Gen. Randal D. “Randy” Fullhart is Director, Global Reach Programs, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C. As the capability director, General Fullhart is responsible to the Air Force acquisition executive for airlift, air refueling, training and special operations programs.  You can read more of Major General Fullhart’s biography here.

Meeting Details:  Wednesday, Feb 18 from 1:30pm – 2:30pm in his office in Roslyn.

Upon arriving and going through security, I was escorted upstairs to his waiting area. The General walked out into the waiting area to greet me (as opposed to having his assistant usher me into his office…like a lot of high ranking officers and others in business, government, and academia do….this was a big deal to me..very cool and classy on his part)

As I entered his office, he was working at his conference table and had 50+ copies of GTD stacked on it. I loved it! He did too. He was excited for me to see them all. I took his picture with them all (see below) He was getting ready to teach a Leadership course. We had a instantaneous “connection”.

He opened by asking me how I got involved with DAC. I told him the story. We were right across from the Marriott Key Bridge where I first met David and Kathryn on Sept 30.  I shared with him the new outside sales initiative. He asked me about my target audience. I told him of the “three-legged stool”:  Government, Private Sector, and Associations. He loved it and concurred, and added, “I’m surprised you didn’t mention Colleges & Universities.” To which I told him of our pilot under way at Champlain and some of the discussions with Graduate Schools in Business. I told him David has it for now on his “Someday/Maybe” list. General Fullhart is very interested in this sector, and likely will want to talk with David about it in San Francisco.

He is really enthused about speaking at the Summit. He shared with me his outline for his eight minute address. Said he thinks now David has him leading off. “NO pressure”, he remarked laughingly. He said he is most anxious to meet Kathryn.

We then discussed our shared interest in Civil War history and Leadership development. We went back and forth on similar stories of Joshua Chamberlain, Robert E. Lee, and many others. He asked me to send him my “Leadership Lessons from the Civil War” podcasts and a copy of my powerpoint slides on Gettysburg.
He told me about his very close association with Frances Hezzelblein and her work on Leadership. He also likes The Goal   (by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt) and The Effective Executive (by Peter Drucker) both mentioned in his “In Conversation” CD.

He also recommended  Leading in a World That’s Round  (by Robert Greenleaf) He spent 20 minutes drawing out his concept on paper and discussing his views on the new organization charts and communication in leading-edge organizations.

He has a giant ornamental sword on his desk. It must be 4-5 feet long and it is inscribed and engraved with scenes and sayings from Don Quixote. He is very proud of it. It is from his time at the National Security Agency. He offered to speak at some prospect organizations. I have followed up with him and he has already written me.

I am also attaching a Video of a recent interview he did on our local Defense Industry television channel three weeks ago.

Sincerely,

Philip

was visiting the Making it all Work seminar featuring David Allen in Amsterdam yesterday. The seminar was organized by the David Allen Company and Life Architect. It was my third time that I visited one of David Allen’s seminars. I also listen regularly to the audio version of the seminar. It was as usual a very good seminar, relaxed, focused and entertaining. It looks like it doesn’t cost him any energy. Because I know what it is to have to present in a different time zone, it is amazing how he does it. With humor but with great persuasion he tells his story about productivity. You can read elsewhere on Internet about the content of the seminar.

There are two things I want to write about in this post regarding the seminar. First, David demoed his own system with Lotus Notes with the eProductivity add-on from Eric Mack. He also showed his extensive use of MindManager. By doing this he showed first hand how it works in his own personal and professional life. I must say this was quite powerful. It resembled much of how I have set up my own system in Evernote.

If you haven’t been to a seminar that is personally lead by David Allen you are missing an experience that at a minimum is an exceptional learning opportunity and for many people is literally transformational.  Of course for a truly transformational experience you should consider attending the GTD Global Summit which is taking place in San Francisco March 11th-13th of this year.

In addition to David Allen, Guy Kawasaki will be delivering a keynote and there will be presentations by other notable GTD’ers, entrepreneurs, and experts on everything from technology to entrepreneurship.  You’ll also have the chance to meet and mingle with a couple hundred other like minded people from companies both big and small.  Already, the summit has registrations for individuals from companies like Meade, Xerox, UPS, Federal Express (those last two probably know a few things about how to get things done, eh?) and many more.

Latest word is that for people registering in groups of 2 or more there’s a sliding scale of discounts that can be quite significant, especially for groups of 5 plus.  If you’ve got a couple of friends that you think could benefit from a few days of intensive GTD therapy, this is a great chance to get them on board and at a serious reduction from the standard price for the event.

David Allen has long been aware of this association and it has been an underlying premise of all of his work even that which predates his first book; “Getting Things Done: the art of stress free productivity”.

As the economic crises becomes deeper and as it cuts across an even broader swath of the global community, corporate leaders are becoming more and more acutely aware of the fact that people simply have to do more with fewer resources, at the same time they understand that putting more pressure on already pressured people might make things worse, not better.

Some of the savviest managers realize that the only way around this inherent conflict of getting people to do more with less while at the same time not applying pressure is to do what less savvy individuals find unthinkable in a recession.  Invest in training.  They have learned – and studies such as the one below bear this out – that investments in training can make the difference between getting more out of a calm, controlled and productive employee and one that is going crazy and making those around him crazy as a result.

One event where you can get training of this sort for your employees and for yourself is the upcoming GTD Global Summit the 11th-13th of March at the Hotel Intercontinental in San Francisco.     You can find more details by clicking the link above.

Relief for Government Workers: Easing Information Overload Will Uncover
Cost Savings, Relieve Stress

NORWALK, Conn., Feb., 19, 2009 – More efficient management of the
increasing influx of information may be an untapped opportunity for
government and education cost savings, according to a new survey of the
U.S. public sector conducted jointly by Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX)
and Harris Interactive.

Findings indicated that 58 percent of surveyed U.S. government and
education workers said they spend nearly half of their average workday
filing, deleting or sorting paper or digital information.  According to
Basex, a knowledge economy research firm, this amounts to at least $31
billion spent managing information each year by local, state and federal
governments.

“Government agencies are being asked to maintain the same level of
service to constituents while staring at severely slashed budgets,” said
Jonathan Spira, chief analyst of Basex.  “Tackling the information
overload problem is a good place to start recapturing some of those
costs.”

Other responses from the survey suggest taking steps to ease information
overload will help speed up work processes, reduce employee stress and
ultimately save time and money for government and education agencies.
Of the workers surveyed:

*                 57 percent say not finding the right information for their jobs
is more frustrating than being stuck in a traffic jam
*                 38 percent said they have had to redo reports or other work
*                 24 percent said they have used the wrong information
*                 23 percent missed deadlines as a result of inefficient
management
*                 37 percent strongly to somewhat agree that their organizations
are drowning in paper
*                 50 percent strongly to somewhat agree that their organization’s
business processes are paper-based
*                 45 percent felt increased stress and anxiety about their work

“Information overload is creating huge challenges for knowledge workers
in both the public and private sectors,” said Greg Jones, senior vice
president of Public Service Operations, Xerox Corporation.  “With the
current economic pressures, it is critical for businesses to address the
gaps in their work processes and implement smarter strategies that
deliver results.”

Businesses in both the public and private sector have uncovered
significant cost savings by working with Xerox to streamline information
management.

*                 The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission boosted productivity
by up to 35 percent after implementing a paperless claims process using
Xerox DocuShare(r), a web-based content management software solution.
Instead of manually storing and retrieving employment, insurance and tax
data, workers now instantly access a database of more than two million
files.
*                 Penn State’s Multimedia and Print Center, inundated with
requests to print, duplicate and distribute volumes of paperwork, used
Xerox digital presses and production printers, and a Web portal
storefront, to streamline its operations – improving the bottom line by
50 percent.
*                 The Wilkes Barre School District in Pennsylvania simplified the
student registration process with Xerox DocuShare, reducing time spent
from two weeks per child to just 30 minutes.

Moving into the digital age
The survey, which polled government and education workers across the
U.S., revealed that workers see paper as a facilitator of information
overload and are looking to technology to help manage it.  When
considering a technology investment to bring them into the digital age,
almost half (42 percent) ranked improved efficiency as the number one
priority for doing so.  For those surveyed that have started the digital
migration, 63 percent somewhat to strongly disagree that their
organization is completely digital, leaving room for improvement down
the line.

After launching the “sharing” era with the first xerographic copier 70
years ago, Xerox now helps customers navigate the flood of information.
The company has kept pace with innovations that help clear the path
between paper and digital content, cut through the clutter and make
information relevant again.  For more on information overload, visit:
http://www.infooverload.com; for information about Xerox, visit:

http://www.xerox.com.

Survey Methodology
This Information Overload Survey was conducted online within the U.S. by
Harris Interactive on behalf of Xerox between October 13 and October 30,
2008 among 316 full time employees working in education or government
industries.  All respondents are employed full time with 25 percent
holding C-level titles and 85 percent sharing in the decisions for
document management technology at their organization.  Results are not
weighted.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability
sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often
not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage
error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question
wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.
Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words “margin of error” as they
are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible
sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted,
random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical
because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have
agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. Because the sample
is based on those who agreed to be invited to participate in the Harris
Interactive online research panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling
error can be calculated.

About Harris Interactive
Harris Interactive is a global leader in custom market research. With a
long and rich history in multimodal research, powered by our science and
technology, we assist clients in achieving business results. Harris
Interactive serves clients globally through our North American, European
and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms.
For more information, please visit http://www.harrisinteractive.com/.

-XXX-

Media Contacts:
Michael Moeller, Xerox Corporation, +1-203-849-2469,
Michael.Moeller@Xerox.com

Elissa Nesbitt, Xerox Corporation, +1-585-423-3591,
Elissa.Nesbitt@Xerox.com

Note: For more information on Xerox, visit
http://www.xerox.com/innovation  or http://www.infooverload.com.   For
open commentary and industry perspectives, visit
http://www.xerox.com/blogs or http://www.xerox.com/podcasts.

Xerox(r), DocuShare(r), the Xerox wordmark and the spherical connection
symbol are trademarks of Xerox Corporation in the United States and/or
other countries.

From Nathaniel:

“Life Architect is about helping people get more done. Achieving more with less stress. More time for fun! And the things we love to do in life. With this in mind we (started the company) invited David Allen to Holland and Germany to present his GTD Roadmap seminars on 17th and 19th February 2009. We are jointly organising these events with the David Allen Company. Its about getting your blueprint to a new life. Getting things done is the foundation on which Life Architect intends to continue building.”

This is less than a month before the GTD Global Summit in San Francisco so a lucky group of people might have the chance to use the Roadmap in Europe as a tune-up and then could follow David back across the Atlantic to join us for the grand-daddy of all GTD events on March 11th through the 13th of 2009.

Anyway, Greg wrote to let us know about this and to ask us to help get the word out too (which of course it is our pleasure to do, hence this post).  To see if there’s a GTD meetup near you, go to Meetup.com, and search “Getting Things Done”.  If there’s not a meetup near you, why not consider starting one of your own?  You can find Greg’s Orange County meetup here..

Another thought; if you’re attending one of these meetups, write up a report of what you did there and how you felt it helped you in your personal implmentation of GTD – we’ll gladly post accounts of the various meetups so that people considering attending one can get an idea of the value inherent in getting together with fellow GTD’ers to share ideas, help one another solve problems and generally just chill with like minded folks.

Finally, if the meetups prove useful and interesting, just imagine what the GTD Global Summit - which is essentially going to be a mega–meetup on a triple dose of steroids – is going to be like?!?

If you’re one of the people that wouldn’t miss the GTD Global Summit for anything than you probably aren’t too concerned with hearing about the recent updates to the GTD Global Summit website.  However, if this is something that you haven’t yet reached a conclusion on one way or another you might want to click on over to the site once more to take a look at the schedule and the different educational tracks that are going  to be included.   I have to say it looks like it is going to be an amazing event and I can’t wait to participate as well as blog it for those of you that can’t be there.

In addition to information about the schedule, there is also material that has been posted regarding exhibiting, sponsorship opportunities and more.  If you want to go but haven’t yet made up your mind be careful about waiting too long.  The number of spaces is a fairly limited and you don’t want to wait too long only to discover that you’ve missed your chance and are now on a waiting list instead of happily registered.

I don’t think the days of GTD courses as part of college curriculums or continuing business education are that far off.  I can also see how being trained in GTD could become a prerequisite for certain jobs or at least an advantage when applying for one.  I know that I consider it a real advantage that I’ve been able to get the first hand training and continuing coaching to help me implement GTD successfully.

Speaking of successful implementations of GTD I wanted to toss this out there:  what do you think of having a worst to best contest to showcase some of the community’s biggest GTD transformations?  I was thinking that having people send in pictures of their offices or even just stories about how GTD has changed their lives for the better would be a lot of fun.  The best stories would be showcased here on GTD times and I’m sure that I can find some cool prizes for the folks that get their stories posted to the site.  What do you think?  Anyone game?

If you’re planning on attending you might want to register today as it’s the last day to take advantage of the early bird registration rate which is $100 off the standard price.  You might also wish to make your hotel reservations.  The St Regis – which is one of the most beautiful conference venues in the city – is not a cheap place to stay and Ismael has managed to secure some pretty amazing discounts for attendees.  This hotel tends to fill up quickly, however, so I suggest that you book a room now or risk having the either pay a great deal more or stay somewhere less convenient if you wait too long.

I’ve attended the previous two Office 2.0 conferences (and even moderated panels at both) and I have to tell you that in addition to being one of the most innovative conferences around, it is also one of the most interesting, thought provoking and enjoyable.  Hope to see you there!

Also, don’t forget that David and the rest of the David Allen Company team are hard at work putting together their own event, the GTD Global Summit which is scheduled for 11-13th of March of 2009.  Registration is also open for this event – and it’s one for which you might want to register well in advance as it is sure to fill up with a rather limited number of slots available for attendees.

Since I’ve been involved in various aspects of the Summit for a while now I wanted to mention a few things and also ask some questions of GTDtimes readers.  Here goes:

For the Media:

First, if you are accredited press and you want to attend the GTD Global Summit as a member of the media I strongly suggest that you get your ducks lined up and get an early start on applying for a credential.  Free slots for members of the media are going to be fairly limited due to the pretty restricted number of conference particpants and also due to the size of the venue.  If you are not a legitimate media professional – and by that I mean someone that earns all or most of their living producing written materials for regularly published and highly regarded publications or whom produces video or audio material that is widely circulated via the Internet or network television then please refrain from applying for a press credential.

As a member of the working press myself I can tell you that it is becoming more and more competitive to get press credentials to the major events each year and it is a real injustice when people that write for recreation but don’t earn their living writing manage to get press passes for high demand events at the expense of someone that really needs to be at the event in order to fulfill his or her own publication’s need to cover the event.

It adds insult to injury when people attending an event on a media credential don’t even provide legitimate coverage of the event.  Not only are you taking the opportunity to attend away from someone that really needed to be there, but you are also taking advantage of the event promoter.  Keep in mind that the reason promoters give out media credentials is for the exposure that this nets. It’s this trade-off that makes the system work so as a favor to all the journalists out there that work through the night so that you’ve got interesting content to read in the morning, only apply if you’re a pro and only then if you’re really going to cover the event as a working journalist.

That said, the best way to get a media credential for the GTD Global Summit will be to monitor the site as well as to continue checking here.  As soon as the page goes up that has a questionnaire for folks that want a press pass I’ll be making an announcement here.  Filling out this questionnaire completely and doing so sooner rather than later is your surest way to get yourself in the door as press.

Be prepared to prove that you write where you claim to write.  If you’re on assignment from a publication for which you don’t typically work (and thus you don’t have prior bylines from this publication nor a business card from the company that publishes it, you’ll need a letter from the managing editor confirming that you’ve got an assignment to cover the event.  Get that to us sooner rather than later.  If you wait too long you may have waited yourself right out of a job.

If you have questions about press credentials post them here in the comments.  That way they can act as an FAQ so that others that might have similar questions won’t have to ask again.

Planning on Attending?

If you’re planning on attending the Summit, let me echo my suggestion made above to the press.  Register early.  Not only will you save a bunch of money by doing so, but you’ll assure yourself a slot. With only 500 attendees this event is certain to sell out quickly and you don’t want to go to register only to end up wait-listed.  No one likes to hear “I told you so” so please, trust me on this.  Registrations got off to a brisk start yesterday – we were actually a little surprised between how fast some people decided to attend and the fact that we’ve already had media requests from as far away as Estonia.

Now with the Questions:

As you might imagine, David and his team have been planning long and hard to make sure this event is great success and much of what is on the agenda has already been determined, however, one thing that had been expressed to me was how much value David and the other folks involved in planning the event place upon feedback from the GTD Community.  Bearing in mind the fact that we’ve been lucky to have such an awesome group of folks that are kind enough to read GTDtimes, we wanted to get some thoughts from you on what you’d like to see or do during the GTD Global Summit.

To that end, I am soliciting your ideas, suggestions, recommendations, thoughts, cautionary tales and must not forgets.  What do YOU want to see included in the Summit?  Do you want software demonstrations like they do at DEMO?  An emphasis on hands on GTD implementation?  Incredible and inspiring talks? Lots of networking time?  What sorts of things do you feel will help you get the most value out of this event?  What sort of things do you think will make the event more enjoyable?  Unforgettable? A “must attend” in the future?

Please be brave and give us your suggestions in the comments.  We truly want to know what you want and we promise to take all serious suggestions seriously.  If for some reason you are not comfortable making a suggestion in the public forum, feel free to email me directly: editor at GTDtimes dot com, and I’ll make sure your suggestion gets into the hands of the right people.

And Finally:

Last thing; as things develop and announcements about the event are made I’ll be posting updates here at GTDtimes.  So if you’re keen to keep tabs on what’s happening with the GTD Global Summit be sure to add this site to your RSS Reader so you don’t miss important announcements.

For the first time anywhere  five hundred of the most intelligent, inspired and productive people on the planet will gather in San Francisco, California to learn, share, explore, inspire and most importantly to Get Things Done…

The Getting Things Done Global Summit!

Headlined by the inimitable David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress Free Productivity” this first GTD Global Summit, taking place on March 11th to the 13th, 2009,  promises to be a truly once-in-a-lifetime event.

Not only will attendees get the chance to  learn the latest on GTD by the man that created the strategy, David will also be sharing new material from his forthcoming book “Making it All Work: Winning at the Game of Business and Business of Life“.

Complimenting David will be a cadre of some of the most accomplished and effective people in the world:

• CEOs that have have had the insight and vision to implement a GTD culture throughout their organizations yielding extraordinary results

• Coaches who will share how implementing a GTD strategy has had profound benefits for their clients from world class athletes to struggling students

• David’s Senior GTD Facilitators who will lead hands on sessions to share their real-world techniques to help you implement GTD for yourself and your organization and maximize the success you will achieve as a result.

• Surprise guests that will inspire, awe and excite you with their stories of how they managed to achieve success, in some cases against unimagineable adversity and odds that would have been dramatically improved had they only been one in a million.

If  other conferences are about ideas and inspiration, the GTD Global Summit is about action and implementation.  No other event will have this level of practical, how to information to help you further refine your personal GTD strategy, troubleshoot your own implementation, or introduce you to new tools and techniques to take even the most advanced GTD Blackbelt to a whole new level.

In addition, demonstration areas will be reserved for attendees to check out the latest in high tech gadgetry- a veritable “geek’s paradise” of software, hardware, and accessories will be available for you to discover, test, and compare; from tried and true products you may have seen to the latest whiz-bang prototypes that you may not have even heard of, let alone seen or touched.

Of course one of the greatest benefits to attending the GTD Global Summit will be the opportunity to meet and network with five-hundred other GTD practitioners all in one place.  If you’re a GTD’er you already know that people that use GTD to help them stay on top of things are consistently among the most intelligent, informed and productive people on the planet.  Here’s your chance to make new friends, develop new professional relationships and capitalize on the energy and collective intelligence that only a group such as this can generate.   If you’ve attended special events in the past, you know that half the value lies in the people you meet and the friendships you establish.  Now take that prior experience and multiply it by 500 and imagine the possibilities.

The GTD Global Summit is scheduled to take place from the 11th to the 13th of March, 2009 at the unparalleled new Hotel Intercontinental in San Francisco, California.  Only five-hundred fortunate individuals will have the chance to attend this life-changing event.  Reservations can be made at the official GTD Global Summit Website.

Further news about the GTD Global Summit will be made available here as soon as we receive it.  The link to the conference website above is now live so be sure to make your reservation before it’s too late!