Arif and Mohammed Ali Vakil are brothers and Directors at Vakil Housing, large real-estate development company based in Bangalore, India. Both Arif and Ali have been studying GTD for the past several years and have implemented GTD as a standard within their company–the first company in India to do so. Both are qualified chartered certified accountants and passionate bloggers. They are also certified graduates of the GTD Train-the-Trainer program.
A GTD Times community contribution by Arif and Ali Vakil
What made Einstein an Einstein or Newton a Newton? It was their amazing capability to look at what everybody was looking at, but see something different. The world sees an apple falling from a tree, but Newton notices there’s something greater at work here–it’s gravity. The world sees sunrise, sunset and umpteen other relationships with time and light throughout the day. Einstein looks and realizes that it’s not time that’s a constant, but it’s the speed of light. Similarly the whole world is involved getting stuff done, but David Allen sees through the clutter and comes up with best-practices, called “GTD”.
We’ve made a list of some amazing observations we feel give GTD its ‘chutzpah’. The brilliant thing about all these observations is that every one of us is coming across these at least several times every single day of our lives and any one of us could have figured it out. Be it psychologists with PhD degrees or masters in other fields, nobody captured it like David Allen. Gosh how life changing these practices have been.
The Next Action:
What a remarkable observation. That to move forward on any item, all you need is a Next Action. That’s it. One can only do a Next Action. We make calls (@Calls), complete errands (@Errands), speak to people (@Agenda) and do stuff on our computer (@Computer). All through our lives we’ve always been doing Next Actions, but perhaps never figured out to think in terms of Next Actions.
David takes his observation further. The fact that Next Actions can most be categorized in approximately 5 categories or so, is an amazing piece of insight. And, top it all off to notice also that there are so many Next Actions that don’t take longer 2 minutes, is pure genius.
(Note: David has often given the credit of the Next Action thinking to Dean Acheson.)
There is potential stress as soon as we receive something:
You can’t see it–it’s so very subtle–but it’s there. As soon as an email, voicemail or a piece of paper (even if it’s a cute little greeting card) enters my life, so does potential stress. And I never consciously noticed it. Ever. It’s when I began practicing GTD and began either completing or renegotiating my commitments that I realized oh the burden I was under. I always had it. Hey, c’mon, we all always had it. But we never noticed it. But thank God David did, and man life has been rosier since.
Writing down stuff, gives instant relief:
So how do you get rid of stress in life by the various commitments? Is it by doing them? Not necessarily. Why take all that trouble? Just write it down. That’s it. Imagine that. Just by writing down you begin to feel so much better. Once again throughout lives we have at some point or the other have written stuff down and immediately felt that instant relief, but never questioned why that happened. David did, and realized that stress comes because of our agreements we break with ourselves (another brilliant observation) and the simple act of writing it down we’re actually clarifying the agreement with ourselves and that’s the key to eliminating stress from our lives.
Priorities are at six different levels, Three-fold Nature of Work and the Limiting Criteria:
Since we were born we have been prioritizing. We all had to choose whether it’s sleep we want now or milk. Of course, our needs got more complex, but unfortunately our prioritizing system may never have been upgraded to keep pace. We simply gave one task more priority over another in a simple list kind of way. But that’s not the way the world works, that’s not how we are. Sometimes we’ve got a client screaming their head off on the phone, automatically that becomes a priority, that’s where David’s “Three-Fold nature of Work“ comes in place. Other times, although it’s priority to finish a report, you just had 3 conference calls back to back and just don’t have the energy to do so. That’s when you can use David’s Limiting Criteria model and make ‘having a Latte at a Cafe’ a priority and not feel lousy about it. But all that’s fine only when you are moving towards your long term goals while fulfilling your vision and your purpose as human spirit on the planet, i.e. you’d be using David Allen’s “Horizons of Focus model” here.
Now, anyone of us could have figured that out. Hey, it’s really not rocket science. That’s exactly how we’ve been making priority decisions anyway. But we didn’t, yet David did so, and now it’s really so much easier to decide what’s important to do right now and what’s not.
There are probably more gems in GTD that we’ve missed. Have you noticed something in GTD that is so simple and obvious that anyone could have figured out, but hasn’t yet David Allen has. Do mention it in comments below.
Arif and Mohammed Ali Vakil are brothers and Directors at Vakil Housing, large real-estate development company based in Bangalore, India. Both Arif and Ali have been studying GTD for the past several years and have implemented GTD as a standard within their company–the first company in India to do so. Both are qualified chartered certified accountants and passionate bloggers. They are also certified graduates of the GTD Train-the-Trainer program.
A Community Contribution by Arif & Ali Vakil
Practicing GTD makes choosing what to do at any given moment in time considerably easier. The three models that David Allen has framed for identifying priorities (ie Horizons of Focus, Limiting Criteria and Three-Fold Nature of Work) are brilliant. However, even after you’ve earned your GTD Blackbelt, you can still be faced with two or more choices which you can do at the same context, require an equal amount of time to complete and are of equal priority. As soon as that happens the stress levels which you worked so hard to reduce by implementing GTD come shooting right back. Whenever I find myself deluged with options here’s a little checklist that helps me get back in control of my decision making and get moving with confidence on the task that I choose to undertake first.
1. Realize and accept that there’s ALWAYS more to do than there is time to do it.
There’s ALWAYS more to do than that which can get done. The key word in the above statement is ‘always’. Even If I would like to complete all the tasks and projects currently in my to-do lists that are there now (without adding anything new), I would need the rest of my life to finish them off (that is, if I move really fast). And that’s not just me, iIt’s everybody on the planet. So the fact that I cannot complete everything on my list doesn’t really speak badly of me, it’s just the way life is.
2. Brainstorm. Is there a way you can attempt both the items in your to-do list?
It’s when our back is against the wall that we learn to innovate. Facing you is a list of multiple things that you’d like to do but it seems that you can do just one from the list. Look at the tasks again. Maybe you can do more. Brainstorm; draw a mind-map of how you can attempt two or more of the tasks simultaneously. Try out the Natural Planning Model. Picture yourself attempting and having completed all the equal priority tasks. Ask yourself if perhaps there is someone who you didn’t think of earlier to whom you can delegate one of the tasks? Review your calendar. Is there a new slot that you can block out for yourself to finish one of the tasks some other time.
3. If two or more items have equally high priority, accept that time limitations make it possible to do just one thing.
If you still don’t see a way of hitting both targets with one stone, then since all the items you are looking at are of equal priority, accept that time limitations exist and do just one thing. Any one. It doesn’t matter. Since they’re both of equally high priority. The objective is not to complete everything on my list. It’s just to keep moving forward by trying my best to intuitively select one task among all my high priority tasks.
4. What ever you do, don’t do nothing.
Taking the wrong action is still a whole lot better than inaction. After all if you select any task from your list (which by the way you have already filtered by context and know which are important), the worst case scenario would be that you may have selected the second most important task, which is not that bad a choice at all. It’s infinitely better than doing nothing.
5. Finally try your Best and to God leave the rest.
Realize and accept that you are not in charge, nor responsible for the outcome. Your only responsibility is to try your best in every situation. Because that’s all you can do, that’s all you have control over. So just try your best and to God leave the rest.
Would love to hear your thoughts on dealing with conflicting priorities.
A Community Contribution by Arif & Ali Vakil
I love GTD Connect. And within Connect, my favorite bit is the David Allen Teleseminars. In my early GTD days I would gets heaps of coaching and guidance from every single minute of the teleseminar. However recently it’s more of the stray comment that David mentions which gives me immense value and makes my entire Connect Membership totally worthwhile. One of those stray little things that David mentioned at a recent teleseminar is creating a “My World Mindmap”.
David Allen has a mindmap called DA’s World. He uses this to link everything in his life into one single overall mindmap. Using his cue, I’ve created one called Arif’s World, and below is a screenshot of that mindmap. (You can click on it to view it in full scale):
Some of the benefits I’ve received on creating and using this sort of mindmap have been:
1. One stop reference for everything in your world
As you can see I now have a one stop reference for everything to do in my world. If I want to peek into what’s my Area of Focus, I launch Arif’s World and then click on the 20,000 Ft Areas of Focus branch, which takes me to my Areas of Focus mindmap. If there’s something new that pops into my head that I’d like to do 2 years from now, I launch Arif’s World, enter into my 30,000 ft (2 to 3 year goal) mindmap and enter my new goal in there.
2. A place to park projects that have higher priority in the current week.
For me, the most useful branch of the Arif World mindmap has been the Current Projects branch. Although it involves a little double entry it’s been worthwhile for me to do so. I’ve got a minimum of 100 to 150 projects. There are times when that number can go up to 300. I find it difficult to keep focus on my key projects during the week. So a neat trick that I picked up from David is entering my high-priority projects once again in the Arif World mindmap. I do it in two instances, either when I’m doing my weekly review or during a regular day when a really hot, exciting new project pops into my life, I enter it into my project list as well as into My World mindmap.
3. A place to park “Areas of Focus” that need more attention.
Areas of Focus can broadly be divided into Work, Health, Family, Finance, Social Responsibility, Recreation & Creative Expression. You may have an Area of Focus that is not necessarily in cruise control and needs more um..focus. So, there’s a separate branch for Current Focus on the My World mindmap. To ensure that you look at it regularly enough, you may enter that particular Area of Focus in to the Current Focus branch of your world mindmap so that you look at it frequently enough to bring it up to the desired acceptable standard. For eg. your personal finances may not be at a very comfortable level. Sure, you may have a project to bring it up to the standard where you would like your finances to be, but you can also enter it in the Current Focus branch of your World mindmap to keep in view that, there is a particular standard.
4. I can create a world for any key area of my life.
I recently became a dad to a beautiful princess. David Allen says that managing each child is like managing a small little company of your own. And he’s so right. For the last month or so, I was constantly preoccupied with questions like, “Arif, you have to ensure that your baby gets her immunization shots on time, what about her education, oh you’ve also got to make your home baby safe now, blah blah”. And then it hit me, all I needed to do was create a World mindmap for my daughter. In that I can list out whatever are her long term goals, what are her current projects, etc. And of course, her World would be linked through mine. So under Arif’s World, I go to My Area of Focus mindmap. In my Area of Focus mindmap, I go to the “Family” branch, which has a sub-branch named Maryam (my daughter’s name) which then links to a completely new mindmap called “Maryam’s World”.
Similarly I’ve created a World Mindmap for my Company titled VHDC World (which you can see linked to Arif’s World above). You could create one for your job, a particular hobby that you are very passionate about, infact for any Area of Focus that you believe needs more fleshing out.
A key point to note in conclusion that, having a My World mindmap becomes really worthwhile only when it’s handy and accessible. When I want to launch Arif’s world, it’s really simple. I launch Quicksilver (Cmd+Space), I hit AW, and Arif’s World pops up open for me, no matter which program I’m running. Those who are running windows can do the same using Active Words.
Would love to hear your feedback/comments if you found this useful and/or if you have any other ideas on what else can go into a Your World mindmap.
A Community Contribution by Arif and Ali Vakil
Photo: I recently heard Steve Pavlina’s podcast “What is your Purpose”, in which he presented an excellent framework for arriving at your specific purpose. This ties in very well with GTD’s 40,000 ft horizon of focus and also a continuation of my previous post “GTD @ 50,000: How to find and fulfill your life’s purpose“.
At 50,000 ft you’re clarifying ‘what’ your set of values are and clarifying the ultimate purpose of why you exist.
At 40,000 ft you have to take your values and use them as a basis to craft a vision. Your vision manifests your purpose into real life goals of ‘how’ you want your life to be.
In this post I’ll be showing you how you can craft a comprehensive vision that covers all major aspects of your life (Body, Mind, Heart & Spirit) to make yourself a complete a human being.
The Four Questions
* Body: What are my material needs?
The answer to this question should cover the details of what kind of lifestyle you would like to live. This would include the money you like to earn per month. What sort of house would you like to live in? etc
* Mind: What am I capable of doing?
Address your core skills. Every human being is endowed with certain skills, or interests that help to develop those skills. List out the things you are best at doing.
* Heart: What do I want do do?
Where are your dreams? Where does your passion lie?
* Spirit: What should I be doing?
Based on your beliefs & values, what is your conscience telling you that you should be doing?
Score Card
The answers you get to the above questions will be ‘areas of activities’. Jot these down under the activities column and score each of them from 1 to 10, as to how much they address the needs of your Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit.
Matrix
| Activities | Body | Mind | Heart | Spirit | Total |
| XXX | |||||
| XXX | |||||
| XXX | |||||
| XXX |
Once you’ve totaled the value each activity is giving you, you’ll intuitively be able to see which activity will give you most balance in your life. This will help you to see very clearly what your 40,000 ft vision needs to be, and based on this you can derive specific measurable goals for the 30,000ft horizon.
Advantages of having a Vision
* Clear direction of where you’re heading
* Clarity whether your next actions align with your Vision
* Feel Motivated
* High Energy
* Feel inspired
* Ability to Focus
Have you crafted your vision @ the 40,000ft Horizon of Focus? Please share any tips below for GTDtimes readers.
On the 30th of August 2008, 2 unassuming looking Indians made GTD history in Bangalore by giving the first GTD Presentation in India by Indians!
It all started out when Leslie Harradine (a David Allen Company Trainer) flew down to Bangalore, India to train our people in Vakil Housing in GTD. We realized to sustain the momentum & excitement, GTD training within the company needs to be a regular activity. We therefore decided that we need to have in-house trainers who would ensure a GTD culture sets in within the organization.
A 3 day seminar conducted by Leslie took place where she trained the Directors – Arif & Ali Vakil and Managers – Ramesh (Business Development) and Suresh (Human Resoures) to be GTD Trainers.
After the training for the next 3 months we would meet every week to practice our presentations, giving each other feedback.
A couple of days before the event, we had a call with Leslie who cleared our doubts, and gave us lots of encouragement!
2 Seminars took place. Ali & Ramesh trained the first batch, Arif & Suresh trained the second batch. Here are some photographs below of the events:
What’s Next?
To make most of the GTD Training activities we have done so far, the following are our action points:
* Add GTD as part of the appraisal system
* Create GTD groups who encourage each other to implement the GTD methodology
* Train new employees in GTD as part of the induction program
* Ensure Top Management follows GTD, to set an example for others
* Introduce creative stationary to make GTD a fun process at work
This is the fifth post in our series of Rolling Out GTD at Vakil Housing. Earlier posts have been:
First Post: How we Successfully Implemented GTD across our Company thereby Increasing Productivity & Making Work Fun.
Second Post: Cool GTD Gear to motivate all in your Organization to Collect & have a mind like water.
Third Post: The remaining GTD Tools we used to build our Corporate army of GTD Champions.
Fourth Post: The Key to Implementing GTD Across our/your Company.
A Community Contribution from Arif and Ali Vakil
Have you ever found yourself in the situation where you’re completely overwhelmed with all the work that surrounds you? At those times do you then you catch yourself complaining about the outside world “I wish my job wasn’t so demanding”, “I wish there wasn’t so much competition”, “I wish my team would just listen to me” etc. What can you do to get out of this mental trap?
Here’s the secret: getting things working for you doesn’t start by changing the outside world at all, but by changing ourselves and how we perceive our work from within. To change the world or the people around us, we must change ourselves first and then the world around us will change too. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, if you have some faith you might be pleasantly surprised.
The next time you find yourself paralyzed by the amount of work on your plate and you catch yourself complaining about it, try out the GTD Mind Sweep exercise, followed by processing each item
Step 1: The Mind Sweep
The first step in the GTD Mastering Workflow cycle is Collect. Take 5 mins out, and capture everything that has your attention. Here are some guidelines:
* Go for quantity not quality
* Don’t analyze or organize
* Write everything
* Write fast
Step 2: Processing
Once you’ve an objective look of all the items in front of you. Process each item by asking:
1. What is the successful outcome?
2. What is the next physical action?
This is what the result might look like:
| Item Collected | Successful Outcome | Next Action |
| Need to go to doctor for checkup | Receive a report of my regular health checkup in my hand | Call Doc to setup an appointment |
| Make a life plan | Have a clear document outlining my life’s goals and how they can be acheived | Draw a mindmap to brainstorm on ideas |
| Fix Printer | Have a working Printer | Email IT department |
Taking these two steps will give you an immediate sense of relief & a feeling of lightness.
What changed?
Nothing from the outside changed, neither the boss, the competition or the clients. All that changed was the way we are now looking at our work and defining what we want and the next steps to take.
Before performing the 2 steps each item that had our attention was an agreement to complete something that we made with ourselves. Since these agreements were not being managed it was a cause of stress to us.
By collecting what has our attention and defining what needs to be done with it, we begin the process of managing these agreements. By identifying and clarifying each of the agreements that had our attention, we’ve taken them from being overwhelming and distracting agreements in our head, and instead we’ve taken an objective look at them & decided what next action each required.
Change from within
One of the beautiful aspects of GTD is that it doesn’t look to solve the problem from the outside, but rather focuses on change from within and how we perceive our work.
We agree that there is just one world in which we live and die. Yet this one world is different for each one of us because of how we perceive it. Internally our pictures of the world are different even though externally it is just one world. Thus if we change the way we perceive our work, the world outside changes for us.
A Community Contribution by Arif and Ali Vakil
Have you ever had the feeling of being lost & left wondering “Why am I doing what I’m doing?”, “Why am I in this Job?”, “What does all this mean?”, “Who am I, and what is my purpose?”. In spite of all the achievements there is a feeling of emptiness. This feeling usually comes when our actions are not aligned with our Life’s purpose.
Using the Horizons of Focus model, GTD helped me align my day to day actions to my life’s purpose, and in this post I’d like to talk about how you can do the same.
What is GTD at 50,000 ft?
The Horizons of Focus Model is basically the agreements that one has with his or herself at different Horizons. Each Horizon represents a different time-level & impact. It’s a tool to know what your work is so that your priorities are clear.
In David’s book 50,000 ft is defined as “This is the ‘big picture’ view. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? The primary purpose for anything provides the core definition of what its ‘word’ really is. It is the ultimate job description.”
In other words, your agreements at 50,000 ft. are the description of your life’s purpose.
How to Find Your Life’s Purpose?
Sometimes I wish we were born with an instruction manual outlining our purpose, life would be so much easier, but then again life wouldn’t be so interesting if we had all the answers! I like to define Life’s purpose in a two-fold manner. The first is one’s Inner Purpose, and the second is one’s Outer-Purpose.
