Trust yourself to do what you really feel like doing, and what you feel like doing will change. Don’t, and it will plague you.—David Allen
David Allen shares tips for staying productive when you travel. He talks about preparing for travel, maximizing your productivity in those windows of weird time, keeping it together on the road, cool tools, and surviving reentry. This is a recording from a public event David did last year.
(This video is streaming from YouTube, so it may take a few seconds to load.)
This excerpt is from an interview that Mike Williams, President and CEO of David Allen Company, did with Inc.
OWNER’S MANUAL | Jeff Haden Mar 5, 2013
Best Way to Start, Well, Anything
The road to success starts with asking–and answering–one simple question.
To be more productive and truly engage other people, always start with that one question: What does a wildly successful outcome for this meeting, this project, this sales call, etc. look like?
Don’t start anything until you know the answer.
Read the full article here.
Learn the keys to mind like water in our next “Keys to Getting Things Done” webinar. It’s coming up this Thursday, March 7th from 10am-11am Pacific Time.
We have about 20 seats still available. Register now.
Is your productivity affected by meetings that are poorly run or you’re not sure you should really be in? The New York Times did a story recently, called “When You’ve Had One Meeting Too Many,” about the culture of meetings that so many of us deal with these days. Looking back at this week’s calendar, how much time did you spend in meetings?
In my experience, the greatest successes don’t come from grandiose scenarios of good intentions engendered by temporarily pumped-up motivation. Rather, the most lasting and significant positive effects result from small things, done consistently, in strategic places.
—David Allen, “Win the self-help game,” in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Epipheo.TV talked with David Allen about how to hack through your to-do list and free up your mind to focus on what’s most important to you. It’s a very short, very fun video.
(This video is streaming from YouTube, so it may take a few seconds to load.)
Tony Schwartz has some excellent advice about the value of relaxation for increasing productivity. Here’s an excerpt from his recent New York Times opinion piece.
Relax! You’ll Be More Productive
By TONY SCHWARTZ
Published: February 9, 2013THINK for a moment about your typical workday. Do you wake up tired? Check your e-mail before you get out of bed? Skip breakfast or grab something on the run that’s not particularly nutritious? Rarely get away from your desk for lunch? Run from meeting to meeting with no time in between? Find it nearly impossible to keep up with the volume of e-mail you receive? Leave work later than you’d like, and still feel compelled to check e-mail in the evenings?
Golden Cosmos
More and more of us find ourselves unable to juggle overwhelming demands and maintain a seemingly unsustainable pace. Paradoxically, the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less. A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health.
Read the full article here.
Do you have any pointers for perfectionists?
Just focus on doing the next action perfectly, which is a lot easier than trying to be perfect about how you approach something bigger. Be as retentive as you want. The only problem is when it stops action. Be a perfectionist about the process, which will require, of course, making decisions on the front end that might not be perfect. Think about what might go wrong if you avoid decisions and action! (If you need a negative motivator.)
—David Allen
If you’re being asked to do more work than before, with less time for your personal life, you’ll relate to this excerpt from Todd Brown’s blog post for Next Action Associates.
Want your people to be more productive in the office? Help them get more of their personal things done.
Published on January 22, 2013 by Todd Brown
Why do people have so many personal things on their minds? In my experience it’s because they are better set up to handle things at the office, because that’s where “work” happens, and productivity is expected. Personal things are allowed to take a back seat. But here’s the rub: If the personal open loops aren’t handled appropriately, they are just as likely to generate stress, relationship problems, and mental distraction, both at home and at the office.
The problem is exacerbated by the current economic reality. One of my clients, the head of HR for a firm here in London, told me last week that while staffing levels are down on last year, work levels definitely aren’t. We’re hearing similar thing from many of our clients these days.
With even more to do at the office, the pressure on home life is becoming even more intense. There are just as many open loops at home, and they’re probably getting less attention.
So if your goal is to enable your people to deal with increased demands at work, with a clear head and without distraction, support them in developing a “whole life” approach to managing their open loops that helps them get their personal life under better control.
This doesn’t mean they’ll spend a lot of time at the office doing personal things. It does mean that when open loops present themselves in their personal lives, that they’ll have the confidence that they can handle them appropriately. And at work they’ll be able to focus better, undistracted by the open loops at home.
That’s what I call a “win-win.”
You can read other blog posts and find out more about Next Action Associates, the only Certified International Partner for GTD in the UK, here.
