Kelly Forrister is a Senior Coach & Presenter. She also runs and regularly contributes to GTD Connect, the online learning center for the David Allen Company. She’s worked with David Allen for nearly 20 years and is a fluent geek with GTD and technology.
One of the most common tools we get asked about is the iPhone–specifically, our recommendations for syncing Tasks to an iPhone. Here’s some helpful information around that:
What does the David Allen Company recommend for implementing GTD® Task lists on the iPhone?
The iPhone was not built with a Tasks application, so you will need to find an App that will support the GTD best practices for a list manager (e.g. sort by category/context, allow but not force due dates, allows related notes to be attached to the Task, etc.) What you choose for the iPhone would depend primarily on what do you need to sync it to. The corresponding application you want to sync it to (Mac, PC or Web) would narrow down the best application for you to install on the iPhone for Tasks. The end result is that you would have a Tasks application on the iPhone–>syncing through a service–>that then shares that information with a corresponding application on the web or desktop. [Read more →]
I’ll be doing another free guided GTD Weekly Review on Twitter this coming Friday, March 26th at 10am California time. These events are fun, easy to follow and a great way to get a taste of a GTD best practice.
What: It will be a working Twitter class. Over an hour, I’ll guide people through the 11-steps of the GTD Weekly Review through a series of Tweets. You’ll want to be in front of your system (at least calendar, lists, email, inboxes etc.) to take action based on the Tweets. While the purpose isn’t to bring you to completion with all of it, you’ll get to experience a bit of each step, and capture what’s next for you. Remember, the Weekly Review is the critical success factor for GTD! The better you know it, the better your system will be.
When: Friday, March 26th at 10am PDT/California time. Find your local time.
How: Follow @GTDSpecialEvent on Twitter or just launch this web page during the event to follow the Tweets. You’ll want to Refresh your Twitter page often to make sure you’re getting the latest Tweets. They’ll come every few minutes.
Who: Probably good to have at some basic understanding of processing & organizing with GTD (also chapter 2 of the GTD book is great) and at least a basic structure of GTD setup for yourself already.
Read what others had to say about the last one.
I want to share this wonderful email I received from Gerald today. Not only because he shares about GTD Connect (which of course we think is terrific!)–but he shares a common experience I think some people have in trying to implement GTD. Some people try GTD, put it (kick it) aside, then come back to give it another go and it just pops for them. If that’s you, give it another go. You may find you have fresh eyes and a deeper understanding to make it work for you. And if it’s not for you, that’s OK too (although I doubt you’re even reading GTD Times if that’s the case.)
I want you know that since I have returned to GTD (over 2 months now), I have joined GTD Connect and listened to 38 podcasts out of the 145 from Connect [Read more →]
One of the most common questions we get is how to get started with GTD. New people, especially, will ask this after coming to us dazed and confused by what GTD is really about. And, lots of people seem to be hoping a piece of software will teach them GTD. Sorry, but that’s kind of like buying a car and then learning how to drive. You’ll make your way down the road, but it won’t be pretty.
As a GTD Coach, and also intimately involved in the education and offerings from David Allen, I would suggest one of the following products:
The GTD System – This is, in my opinion, one of the best educational products we offer. You get a ton of resources to learn GTD at your own pace. You get the GTD book, coaching CDs with David Allen, GTD Connect and more. Good stuff. [Read more →]
Let’s talk about the Horizons of Focus. In my experience, this is one of the parts of the GTD approach that can take a little time for people to get their arms around. This is where priorities and perspective live. Whereas traditional time management approaches attempted to give people an ABC type coding system for defining their priorities, David Allen’s GTD approach has always been that priority codes are too simple for the complexity of most people’s changing lives, as the only measure of what to do. For example, assigning an “A” priority to something (or flagging is the popular method in email programs these days) could change with the next new piece of input you get. Plus, in my experience, people tend to get lazy with that code or flag without really deciding the next action. A flag, or #1, or lighting the email on fire still doesn’t tell you what your next action is. So is David saying to never use those? Of course not. Just be sure that what you are marking as high priority has a a clearly defined next action and be willing to change that priority the moment your world changes–which it will. [Read more →]
The mistake I see many new GTD’ers make is expecting to find a tool to “do” GTD. A tool doesn’t do the thinking for you, it stores the thinking for you. So, then does it even matter what tools you use when it comes to organizing your projects & actions? Sure. Here are some questions to ask yourself when choosing what your GTD system will be:
Is there a perfect GTD system out there? Sure, it’s the one you trust and use so your mind is free.
Your brain is a great place to have ideas, but a terrible place to manage them. -David Allen
A key principle within GTD is creating a system external to your mind–if you want the system to be seamless. In fact, there’s a good chance if you’re trying to hold more than about 7 things in your mind at once, you’re dropping things all the time. And guess what? Your brain doesn’t care if what you dropped was important or not important, urgent or not urgent, about buying bread on the way home from work or solving world hunger. If you’re trying to balance more than 7 things in there at any given time, something’s gonna drop. [Read more →]
Michael (who calls himself a GTDer for two years and counting), wrote to us with this question:
Curious if anyone has any tips/symbols or shortcuts for notetaking. I tend to write circles next to actionable items when I’m taking meeting notes and starring important items, but always looking for a better system.
Here is the tip I shared:
One tip I find useful is to create a separate page at the start of the meeting called “mindsweep” where I collect open items and next actions I create during the meeting. I often have things on that too that have nothing to do with the meeting. Then, when I leave the meeting, processing the meeting notes is a separate item to handle from the mindsweep page.
Got a tip to share? We’d love to hear what works for you. Leave a comment or email us at editor@gtdtimes.com.
One of the key buckets in your GTD system is Waiting For. So what’s the biggest creator of Waiting For? Sent emails. Sure, you could slog through your Sent folder for which ones you actually need to make sure to track, but that’s like searching for a contact lens on the beach. Good luck having that be a trusted and efficient system. Another way to track Waiting For items is to create a simple rule or filter in your email program. Here are those rules for two popular mail programs: Gmail & Outlook. If you’re on a different mail program, it’s usually pretty simple to set something like this up if it’s got a filter or rule function. [Read more →]
Often, your project support will include documents on your computer like Word or Excel files. You can attach the actual document, but what happens if you update the original? How can you be sure you have the latest attached? We got this very question from a GTD’er and thought it would be useful to pass along:
I am struggling with how to file electronic documents. Some of the documents live in email, some live in folder and some in the tasks in Outlook. I end up checking all three places to find the most recent copy of a document. Do you have any suggestions on the best way to handle this?
A great way to do this in Outlook is to insert a hyperlink of the file, not the actual file attachment. From within a Task note field, select to attach a file. Then choose “Insert as Hyperlink.”
