• Why bright people procrastinate the most
• Dumbing down your brain
• Typical causes and cures
• The bottom line of why we procrastinate

This webinar is free for GTD Connect members.  You can sign up for a free trial membership, and when you log in, you’ll find the webinar information on the home page of GTD Connect.

And coming up in January, GTD Connect members will have another opportunity to participate in the hugely popular 14-day GTD Challenge.  Members who did the recent 14-day GTD Challenge had this to say:

“Great webinar by Meg and Kelly as usual. I liked your advice on picking ‘Wins’ for the 14 days, instead of trying to climb the entire mountain at once.”

“Coaching from the webinar has gotten me more relaxed and re-energized about GTD.”

“The Webinar really motivated me to get back on track. Though I’ve been really busy, I’ve made time to get clear and current again.”

The free trial membership is easy to begin—just first name and email address—with no cost or commitment.

Coach Julie Ireland weighs in:

One of the solutions I’ve found that often works for people is to divide reading material into 3 buckets. Here they are, along with a brief description of what they entail:

 1. Critical Reading – This is reading that I am responsible for as part of my work; e.g., an article that was hand-delivered to me by my boss, a brief from a client, etc. These go onto my next actions list, and I am committing to reading them.

2. Of-Interest Reading – The “I’m REALLY interested in this, and it would be good for me to read it but I’m not committing to” stuff – a bit like Someday/Maybe for reading. This goes into my “Reading – of interest” bin and periodically, when I’m taking a short break or heading off to the airport, I’ll grab something from this stack. I have a rule that if it goes onto an airplane with me and I don’t read it, it goes into the trash rather than back into the bin. Every so often, I have to bite the bullet and purge. (Am I really going to read the October 2007 issue of The Economist? I don’t think so…)

3. Purely Recreational Reading – This usually lives by my bed, unless it’s a real page turner and I manage to read during the day while my eyes are still open.

 If you’ve been overwhelmed by your reading stack in the past, I hope this will bring some much-needed relief your way. Good luck, and happy reading!

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I use the Things for Mac application and noticed that consistently about 25-30 percent of my next actions are under the tag “waiting for.” I work on deadlines and am constantly having to call or email others to remind them to get me something. Most often the responses I get is, “Oh, I forgot,” or “Was I supposed to do that?” or “Right! Thanks for the reminder.” But I’m not their secretary or their mother.

How do I remain “in the zone” when so many of my next actions end up being “Remind Joe to do this” and most of my projects I can’t move on because of other people’s lack of organization and clarity?

Coach Kelly Forrister: Hi Heather! Great question.

Here’s a screen shot of my lists as of this morning:

Notice that the majority of items are Waiting For’s and second to that are Agendas (where I’m waiting to talk to someone). I just consider it part of my job to track these. It doesn’t take me out of my zone–this is me getting work done.

Yes, sometimes my rattling their cage is the only thing that reminds them that they have action, but at least I’m clear about my open loops.

This same world view somehow seems to be plagued with jargon about priorities: how to set them, how to classify them, and how to sort them out. It claims to give us a sense that we are somehow in control. Several of my clients are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of the stuff they have to process and even more so as their resources to make the things they need to make happen get reduced, sometimes to the point of scarcity. So their question is “how do I set my priorities in any given day, so I know I am not wasting my time? So I know I am doing the right thing?”  The underlying question may well be, “How do I know that I am in control, so that what I am doing is the most relevant; the one that adds the most value?”
No one really knows what the best choice is until everything that is really “on his or her plate” can be seen accurately. Our suggestion is that you work from a complete life-list, where the inventories of everything you need to do, have agreed to do, be responsible for, would love in your life, are waiting for, etc. is listed and reviewed regularly. When that happens, you can rest assured that any decision you make regarding what you do is the best possible decision you can make.

That is because you really have got all the elements at play and the good feeling you will have about a particular choice, that excludes other actions that could also be acted upon, will come from knowing exactly what your choices are.

“You have more to do than you can possibly do. You just need to feel good about your choices.” David Allen

In the Getting Things Done seminar, we go over a model for choosing actions in the moment, based on 4 criteria: Context, Time Available, Energy Available, and Priority. Context refers to the location and setting you’re in. Are you in the location where the action can happen; do you have the tools you need: office, home, phone, computer, etc. The time available will determine what kind of work you’re willing and able to do. If you have 5 minutes or 2 hours, time will affect your choices. The third criterion is your energy level. How much energy do you have? There are times when you’re fresh and ready for clients, and other times when you’re toast and it’s best to purge the files, water the plants and/or fill your stapler… And finally, after you’ve considered your context, time and energy, now you can ask, “What’s the best thing for me to be doing?” (This info can be found in more detail in David’s book,  Getting Things Done, Chapter 9, “Doing: Making the Best Action Choices.”)

“Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice.” David Allen

David Allen has said it more than once, “You can only feel good about what you are not doing, when you know what you are not doing.” It is important then to keep collecting, processing and organizing information, so that the system you review periodically earns your trust.  Paradoxically, your outer environment will still do what it does, regardless of your efforts to make it do something “better.” Creating a system that captures the “whims” of the outer environment does and will help you do the best you can with what you’ve got. Thus it is called “controlling” your inner environment.

Ana Maria Gonzalez is responsible for comprehensive planning and management of the international expansion strategy for the David Allen Company.  Ana Maria has more than 10 years of experience as executive coach and trilingual management development trainer with The David Allen Company.

One of the things that I have seen over the years is a lot of incomplete Project Lists. And I think some of it is because we have a tendency to have a narrow view about what a project is. Years ago, David said in a seminar, “Hey folks, you don’t have problems; you have projects.” And one of the things that I see is people not necessarily bringing their “problems” into their GTD system. It just doesn’t really occur to them, and it was the same with me. When I’m coaching people now, and they start sharing about their “problems”, I’m like, “Look, it sounds like you’ve got a possible project with some actions.” And they’re like, “Wow, I’ve never thought about it that way.”

I thought that I would share a personal example that really supported me in terms of making a very difficult situation into a successful outcome. Years ago, I had a situation with a family member that was very challenging and very difficult, and it got to the point where we weren’t speaking. Needless to say, the family really was not happy about this, and neither were we. I was losing a lot of sleep over this. I was very stressed, and obviously it was on my mind. It never even occurred to me to bring it into my GTD system. And so one day I realized, “Wow, I really think that I have a project here.” And I actually decided not to make it a project at first. I actually put it on my Someday/Maybe list because I wasn’t ready to move forward on it. And every week in the weekly review, I would review it, and say, “Nope, not this week. I’m not going to do anything about this.”

After doing this for about a month and a half, I decided that I was ready to turn this into a project with a successful outcome. Not a negative outcome, but a really successful outcome to resolve this relationship. I had a next action on my Home List, which was to write a letter to this person. I was procrastinating on it, and again in the weekly review, I was reviewing it and realizing that I couldn’t even write the letter. I needed to talk to somebody first, and really get a clearer picture of what I wanted to say. So that got moved to my Agendas List, then I had a conversation with somebody, and it eventually got moved back to my Home List. I wrote the letter, sent the letter, and the letter went on my Waiting For List, because I was waiting to hear back from this family member. And all through this, I was no longer losing sleep over this. That was the power of really understanding how GTD can transform the way so many of us think in terms of problems into thinking in terms of outcomes and Actions. And so eventually I heard back from this person. And about eight months later, we resolved this relationship, and I was able to check this project off as “done.”

Ever since that time, the minute I start thinking, “Wow, I’ve got a problem here,” I am really quick to say, “Wait a minute, I don’t have a problem– What’s my outcome? What’s my next action?” And it has just transformed my life. Sometimes I look around and see people continuously thinking in terms of problems. And I just thought that I would really share this with you, because in all my coaching, when people have that concept of “I’m really trying to resolve this problem here.” I say, “Okay, let’s do a paradigm shift and look at this in terms of outcomes and actions.”

So I hope that maybe you’ll take a look at your project list and say, “Have I missed identifying any open loops that are keeping me up at night or causing me stress?” You can have emotional open loops, like I just shared with you. You can have physical open loops. I fell on the ice a couple of years ago, and had to go into some physical therapy for my shoulder, and that was a project. You can have mental open loops. You can have spiritual open loops. I hope this gives you some insight into creating a very robust personal and professional Project List.

Listen to the audio version of Meg’s post.

Learn more about Meg and her coaching work for the David Allen Company.

Check out all of the episodes in Meg’s GTD Coaching Secrets series.

]]> http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/07/01/is-that-a-problem-or-a-project/feed/ 8 http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/05/19/true-confessions-episode-3/ http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/05/19/true-confessions-episode-3/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 18:56:04 +0000 GTD Times Team http://www.gtdtimes.com/?p=1523 GTD Secrets: True Confessions of a GTD Coach – Episode 3

Have you ever been stumped by the difference between a Project and an Area of Focus?

In this great 5 minute podcast, David Allen Company senior coach Meg Edwards talks about the GTD best practices for creating a Projects list. She gives tips on:

• understanding the difference between a project vs. an area of focus
• getting to a complete projects list vs. one that is “semi-complete”
• why most people have a projects list that doesn’t really work
• when to “bump up” or “bump down” in looking at your Horizons of Focus

In the podcast, she references her own Areas of Focus, which she captured in a mindmap:

Add yourself to the David Allen Company podcast feed.

In this great 5 minute podcast, David Allen Company coach Meg Edwards shares her journey with setting up her GTD lists.  If you’ve ever wondered if you have this “list thing” down, listen to Meg’s coaching on:

- Do you need to setup the lists exactly like David does?
- How many lists do you need?
- How do you know if a list is working for you or not?

]]> http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/05/06/new-podcast-megs-journey-with-lists/feed/ 0 http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/05/01/gtd-secrets-true-confessions-of-a-gtd-coach/ http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/05/01/gtd-secrets-true-confessions-of-a-gtd-coach/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 19:57:30 +0000 GTD Times Team http://www.gtdtimes.com/?p=1414 GTD Secrets: True Confessions of a GTD Coach – Episode 1

We are thrilled to have Meg Edwards, one of the masters of GTD at the David Allen Company, providing her perspective, humor and wisdom on the world of GTD.   She will be doing a new series for GTD Times called “GTD Secrets: True Confessions of a GTD Coach”. With over a decade of working with people, helping them to implement and master GTD, many of you have likely experienced Meg through her telecoaching and individual coaching work. She also adds great content to our Coaches’ Connection feature on GTD Connect.

As a working mom, Meg is a wonderful example of getting things done–when it often feels like you have more to do than you can do–with grace, humor and balance.

Meg recorded a new podcast on “What is GTD?” How would you respond if an old friend you met on the street asked you about GTD?  Listen as Meg shares what GTD means to her as she practices it in her work and personal life.