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.

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Question: What’s a Project?
Answer from David Allen: Any outcome that’s going to require more than one action item, in some sequence of events in order to be able to get to that outcome, that’s a project. And boy, there are a lot of people that just miss that. Invariably I see that most people’s “project lists” are very, very incomplete. One of the more subtle ones that comes to mind is: What issues are on your mind right now, or situations or circumstances? Not necessarily negative things, but oftentimes there’s kind of a health thing, there’s kind of a family thing, there’s a relationship thing, there’s a—who knows? There’s all kinds of subtle stuff that show up out there that are either problems or opportunities and they don’t march up to the door with a pretty pink bow and say, “Hi, I am now a project!” Get those clarified in a way that you know what done looks like (the project outcome), and what doing looks like (the next action).

Taken from the GTD Mastery: Closing the Gaps webinar David did for GTD Connect members, Dec. 2012.

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What’s the common denominator among people who are doing GTD? Find out in this two-minute podcast. It’s available for download now on the David Allen Company podcast page.

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Question: At what point did answering email become my job?

David Allen’s answer: Well, at what point did answering anything—your mail, having conversations in your hallway—become your job? It’s all your job. You just have to decide what your work is. As the late, great Peter Drucker said, that’s your biggest job, to define what your work is.

So how do you define what your work is, and therefore should you be doing that? The good news about this overwhelm is that it’s forcing people to make executive decisions that they never felt like they had to make before. “I need to do everything that comes my way.” No, you can’t anymore, sorry. You are going to have to do triage. That means you are going to have to have a conversation with your boss. You are going to have to show up with a list of everything he or she has given you and have a conversation. “Gee, thanks for these new things, can we talk? Because I am not going to be able to do them all.” It’s forcing those kinds of conversations.

That’s why people have this attraction/repulsion to GTD. It ain’t lightweight stuff. If you are really going to work this, that’s what’s going to start to show up.

Excerpted from David’s interview with Xconomy.com.

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The Power of Moms has a very useful post on how to methodically get your house organized. There’s even a handy PDF download.

A Seven-Step Plan to Organize the House

by April Perry on Jan 8, 2013

I want my home to be a simple, functional, happy environment that enables every family member to thrive.

But if I want it to get there–and stay there, I have to have a plan.

Over the past 12 years, with 9 moves, 4 children, and a bustling schedule (like yours, I’m sure) I’ve refined my home-simplification process down to seven steps that work every single time.

Many aspects of this process are based on David Allen’s best-setter, Getting Things Done (a wonderful book you must read).  Corporate executives worldwide live and breathe this kind of training, and now we’re going to have a great time applying it to our homes.

Read the full post here.

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Forbes has picked up Senior GTD Coach and Presenter Kelly Forrister’s article on how to tackle a crazy to-do list, originally posted on The Daily Muse.

Crazy To-Do List? Here’s What to Tackle First

Many people try to tackle their mountain of personal tasks by sorting them by priority, and starting at the top. Seems logical—but they’ve actually got it backward. In reality, before you think about priorities, there are three factors you need to consider, because they each actually limit your choices about what you should (and even can) do next.

Limitation #1: Context
If you’re not in the right place, don’t have the right tool, or are not in front of the right person required to take an action, you can’t take that action.

Limitation #2: Time Available
The second factor that comes into play is how much time you have. If you’ve got a big project to work on, but you need to bounce to your next meeting or pick up your kids in 10 minutes, it’s probably not a good use of your effort to start it.

Limitation #3: Resources
The third factor to consider is what your energy is like. I don’t know about you, but Friday afternoon after a long, busy workweek is not the time to dive into anything that will take a lot of mental bandwidth. Instead, I make choices that match what my mental and physical energy is like. Not to say there aren’t times I need to just “buck up” and get in there anyway, but I like to be conscious about what I’m choosing and match that to when I think I’ll bring my best self, whenever I can.

Read the full post here on The Daily Muse, or here on Forbes.

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For those of you who like to customize your workspace so that it’s an integral part of your GTD system, you’ll enjoy seeing Lifehacker’s most popular featured workspaces of 2012. Alas, the one that’s missing is David Allen’s workspace.

Most Popular Featured Workspaces of 2012

Seeing how others have organized and set up their workspaces can be great inspiration for creating your own perfect workspace. This year, we had lots of inspiration. Whether your taste leans towards a minimalist approach or more eclectic style, here are the most popular featured workspaces of 2012 to get your ideas flowing.

You can see the full post here.

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CBS Moneywatch asked David Allen about New Year’s resolutions. His advice? Nix ‘em!

3 reasons to nix those New Year’s resolutions

January 1 always offers a tantalizing gift: the chance to start over again. We think that the right resolutions will make us more productive, healthy and successful. But productivity guru David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done” (and the creator of the widely-adopted GTD system) says that he doesn’t make New Year’s resolutions. Here’s why—and why you should reconsider the practice, too:

1. Review your life more frequently.  Allen and GTD enthusiasts schedule regular reviews (usually weekly) to study any open loops and look at where things are going.

2. Focus on the positive. “People don’t pat themselves on the back like they ought to do,” says Allen. Instead of New Year’s resolutions—which focus on what you haven’t managed to do in your life—he recommends trying New Year’s “recollections.” Allen and his wife sit down and reminisce about, “basically, what did we accomplish, what did we experience that was cool and interesting?”

3. Finish old business—and gain inspiration. “People would be much farther ahead just cleaning up at the end of the year, as opposed to moving things forward,” says Allen. “If you try to set goals—to recalibrate or refocus—and you’ve got old business hanging around your neck like an albatross, good luck,” says Allen. After all, most New Year’s resolutions fail. But tackling a few things on your to-do list? That you can do, and success breeds success.

Do you make New Year’s resolutions?

You can read the full article here.

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Hi Folks,

Is there anything in your world you need to declare “done” but haven’t yet?

I’ll take a deeper look at completing the past to prepare for the future in a public webinar I’m doing in January on Creating Wild Success in 2013. We’d love to have you join us online for that.

Until then, my essay this month should give you some good direction about going back to those things you need to unhook from and how to be complete with that.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO STOP DOING?

We’ve got to learn to declare things DONE. Especially when they’re not. Not completed, that is, to the level of perfection or result that we initially visualized or committed to.

The world changes, and our creative focus along with it. So do our standards. We will always maintain some inventory or backlog of projects to complete, of things to do. But if we’re not careful and take responsibility for unhooking from those that have outlived their seat on our active list, they can easily constipate our creative process. [Read more →]

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GOOD RIDDANCE

It’s time to purge.

The end of a year and start of the new is a great metaphorical event to use to enhance a critical aspect of your constructive creativity—get rid of everything that you can.

Your psyche has a certain quota of open loops and incompletions that it can tolerate, and it will unconsciously block the engagement with new material if it has reached its limit. Release some memory.

Want more business? Get rid of all the old energy in the business you’ve done. Are there any open loops left with any of your clients? Any agreements or disagreements that have not been completed or resolved? Any agendas and communications that need to be expressed? Clean the slate.

Want more clothes? Go through your closets and storage areas and cart to your local donation center everything that you haven’t worn in the last 24 months. And anything that doesn’t feel or look just right when you wear it.

Want to be freer to go where you want to, when you want to, with new transportation? Clean out your glove compartments and trunks of your cars. And for heaven’s sake, get those little things fixed that have been bugging you.

Do you want more wealth? Unhook from the investments and resources that have been nagging at you to change. (And give more than usual do to someone or something that inspires you to do so.)

Do you want to feel more useful? Hand off anything that you are under-utilizing to someone who can employ it better.

Want some new visions for your life and work? Clean up and organize your boxes of old photographs. Want to know what to do with your life when you grow up? Start by cleaning the center drawer of your desk.

You will have to do all this anyway, sometime. Right now don’t worry about the new. It’s coming toward you at lightning speed, no matter what. Just get the decks clear so you’re really ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

—David Allen

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