Two Key Priority Questions
One of the first things to do to trust your priority decisions is to make sure you’ve got a current inventory of everything you’ve said “yes” to. Turn over every rock. Look everywhere you’ve allowed input in—especially your head—and make decisions about what each one of those things means and what you want to do about it. If you’re like most people, that will leave you with a pretty healthy (and long) list of things to do. When it comes time to choose what to do, you will first be limited by your context, time available, and current resources. Good chance though, that will still leave you wondering, “Which one should I choose?” This is where priority comes in.

There are two key questions I have found to be enormously helpful with priorities. Ask yourself:

• What’s the value in getting this done?
• What’s the risk if I don’t?

Try asking yourself those questions next time you’re staring at your list and deciding how to best invest your time and attention.
—Kelly

Kelly Forrister is a Senior Coach & Presenter with the David Allen Company.

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Join David Allen and Senior Coach Meg Edwards for a GTD Connect webinar about “Customizing Your GTD System.” They’ll talk about what you can customize without affecting the integrity of the GTD methodology, signs you’ve over- or under-customized, and creative ways to make your GTD system more your own. No matter where you are in your journey with GTD—just getting a system off the ground or looking for fine-tuning to optimize your workflow—this webinar will give you helpful coaching about ways you can customize your system to work better for you, including your tools, contexts, projects, and the Weekly Review.

Open to all monthly and annual GTD Connect members. Tuesday, May 14, 10am—11am PT.

Not a member? Join for $48 and get this webinar and the wealth of content on GTD Connect for 30 days.

(Please note: live webinars like this one with David, podcasts, and public seminar special rates are not available for free guest pass members.)

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Watch this informal and insightful interview with David Allen, inventor of the Getting Things Done methodology. It was recorded at the SANG Conference in 2012. Hear David candidly talk about why people need GTD, simple steps to get started, why we procrastinate, and more.

(This video is streaming from YouTube, so it may take a few seconds to load.)

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Question: I understand that the premise of getting things done is to make decisions on things when they show up, rather then when they blow up. Using this methodology allows you to make decisions and get things done far earlier than waiting to make a decision. But isn’t there some benefit in waiting for the last minute? Suppose I identified that I needed new tires. If I used the GTD method, there is no doubt that I would get my tires earlier, but how would I know that if I had waited, I wouldn’t have, for example, found a coupon and gotten a better deal? If I make decisions when things show up, how can I be confident that those decisions wouldn’t be better had I waited for a few days or weeks?

Answer from Coach James Stevenson: I agree that there are times when acting quickly might not be the best course of action. Your example of buying tires now instead of waiting for the Sunday paper or looking online for sales and coupons could cause me to spend more money than necessary (NOT the optimum outcome!). In reality there are many times in life when acting quickly would not serve us well.

Having said that, the Processing step within the GTD methodology is about deciding what needs to be done as opposed to actually doing it (unless it falls in the “2-minute rule”). It is the difference between Defining versus Doing. (See the article that I wrote for GTD Connect on that subject.) In keeping with the example of needing new tires, your Next Action may very well be “research great deals on new tires for my car.” For me, that Next Action would land on my @Computer list since I would be searching online for those deals. In other words, my true Next Action is not buying new tires, but finding the best deal on a new set of tires. Interestingly, once I found a great deal on new tires, my new next action would still not be “buy new tires,” but it would be scheduling time on my calendar to take my car to the shop for new tires…but that’s just me!

I hope you see that GTD encourages you to do the executive thinking up front and get clear on the very next thing you would actually do. And, as you point out, it isn’t always to jump in to action.
Bottom line is that your thinking is right on target.

James Stevenson presents GTD seminars and does one-on-one coaching for the David Allen Company.

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For those of you still trying to figure out how to make GTD work in Outlook, Senior Coach Meg Edwards will be leading the popular GTD & Outlook webinar this Thursday, May 9. Meg will lead you through a deep dive into using Tasks for projects & next actions, getting email to zero, and what belongs on your calendar. This event will sell out, so register soon if you’d like to attend.  Click here for more details and to register.

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Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. Those are the five phases of your GTD workflow. You’ll learn the best practices for each of those phases in the Keys to Getting Things Done webinar, this Thursday, May 2, at 10:00AM Pacific time.

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Question: Any advice on how to “make myself” (or entice myself to) sit down and do the things that are less easy to do given my bias toward creation v. completion?

David Allen’s answer: Read Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, about habit change. Build in the simple but potentially keystone habit of doing the hardest/most-resisted thing first, especially early in the day when you still have decision-making muscle. Look forward to the easier and more fun and interesting stuff you’ll do the rest of the day as reward.

Review your higher-level commitments to yourself, and ask yourself if you’re on track with them. If you are, then who cares whether you’re creating or completing.

Build a simple habit of finishing something (anything, little or big) before you do your “create” thing.

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Hi Folks,

It’s natural to want to create a system for priority coding (like “A, B, C” or the flagging feature that’s showing up in a lot of software programs) to tell you the most important things to do. But it’s a short-term insurance policy that won’t give you the trust you need when the time comes to take action.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

LEAPING FROM HOPE TO TRUST

Every decision we make about what action to take at any point in time is an intuitive risk. I have twenty minutes before my next meeting—should I call Bob, work on chapter eight, or go get Susan’s opinion on the new software?

The over-simplicity of “A, B, C” or “high, medium, low” priorities or daily to-do lists can never really answer that question sufficiently for any of us. No matter how organized we get, how squeaky-clean our systems and our processes are, or how current our strategic and tactical planning is, we have to ultimately trust our hunches about the best thing for us to do at 10:43am or 3:22pm today. It’s true that we can utilize those prioritizing frameworks to good advantage, from time to time, to help us focus constructively. But to the degree they potentially limit our options unnecessarily and constrict spontaneous, creative thinking that is dynamic to the moment, they do us a disservice.

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

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How did your weekly review go last week? Could you use some support to get that practice onto cruise control?

The Guided GTD Weekly Review webinar is just what you need. It’s a 75-minute “working webinar” where you will be led step-by-step through what David Allen calls the “critical success factor” for GTD. Get a taste of Getting Clear (processing inboxes to zero), Getting Current (reviewing Project, Next Action, and Waiting For lists), and Getting Creative (being creative & courageous).

The webinar is this Thursday, April 25, from 10:00-11:15am Pacific time. Click here for more information and to register. At $49, it’s a great investment in your current and future productivity. Imagine how great next weekend will be after you’ve done a full weekly review this week.

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If you have been frustrated by mobile access to your cloud-based GTD lists, have a look at this thought-provoking blog post by John Pavley, CTO of HuffPo, called ‘The Mobile’ Is Reliably Unreliable. Pavley says: “A mobile phone is either online or offline and at random times. A mobile connection has a variable speed and it’s not easy for a web designer to predict in what order the elements of a mobile web page will load. A mobile connection has variable quality. You can have five bars and still not have a connection to a mobile web site.”

The comments about the post are perhaps even more interesting than the post itself.

Have you committed all your GTD lists to the cloud? If so, how reliable is your access when you are out and about?

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