Check out this free podcast from David Allen. In just over two minutes, he gives practical tips for getting started with GTD. It’s available for download now on the David Allen Company podcast page.
I assert that it’s actually less effort to maintain your email inbox at zero than to maintain it at 300 or 3,000. Will it take effort? Of course. But there is gold to be mined there with a trusted practice that will have ripple effects across your workflow and motivation.
At a certain point, you will clean up your email. For some people twenty is too many. And for some, it’s five thousand. Different standards for “stuff.”
These standards are very powerful unconscious drivers of your behavior and permitted experience. You may consciously think you’d like to keep a neater house, or process your email more regularly, but if you don’t change the set point of the real standards you have about the amount of out-of-control-ness you actually will tolerate, they will slide back in spite of your best intentions. Pit your willpower against your unconscious cruise controls, and guess where I’ll place my bets.
If the good fairy visited everyone you know and work with right now and magically dissolved every email sitting in IN, within days the number would be back up to the comfort zone of the individual. Some people would have twenty, some three hundred, and some two thousand. Even people doing the same jobs, at the same level, with the same amount of input.
For email, it’s actually less effort to maintain it at zero than to maintain it at three hundred. The decision about the next action is still unmade for much of what lies in IN (hence it is still “stuff,” i.e. something in your world for which the action is still unclear). Every time you even slightly notice that email again and do not dispatch it, it wastes energy. As soon as you allow indecision on the front end with any of your input, you have broken the code and it will mount up all around you.
This excerpt is from a 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.
Hi Folks,
The real power in GTD is not really in the hand writing or typing we do onto lists—it’s in the executive and creative thinking triggered as we engage with them. This month I explore the one list that can easily be the most powerful in terms of maintaining ongoing control and focus in work and life—the Projects list. Here’s a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks they can get along without it.
All the best,
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
IS A PROJECTS LIST NECESSARY?
People started keeping calendars a century ago. Why? Because life’s time-based commitments got more complex than they could trust their mind to manage. If you think that a Projects list is unnecessary, then throw away your calendar and trust life will just let you know what you should be doing, in the moment. [Read more →]
When you define the successful outcome of a goal or project clearly, your brain starts finding ways to achieve that outcome. Or, as David Allen crisply phrases it in chapter 13 of Getting Things Done:
A recent article entitled Your Brain on Fiction summarizes new research to support this idea. “The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Reading fiction is like having your brain run a computer simulation program.
You might have heard David say in his seminars that the human nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a well-imagined thought and reality. Once you have identified an outcome, your brain’s reticular activating system will start organizing incoming information in ways that help you get the outcome you’ve defined. So go ahead and let your imagination savor the experience while you read your lists of successful outcomes—your projects and goals—as your brain helps you convert what you read into your reality.
Reticular formation of the brain, from Gray's Anatomy
David Allen says that he “created GTD out of a personal desire to be freer with more space and energy in my life and let go of whatever was holding me back from…whatever. I would bet that for some of you, your resistance to fully embracing GTD is not about GTD or your ability to implement it, but comes from your resistance to letting go of your familiar structures, even if they are constricting you. So, what would it take for you to be free to feel free?”
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
ARE YOU FREE TO FEEL FREE?
If you want to have the feeling of freedom regularly, you’ve got to get used to it. Literally.
What’s the greatest obstacle to living in the relaxed state of mind that is possible with the methods I coach? People simply aren’t used to it. And anything your nervous system experiences as unique or unusual will likely be “rejected” unconsciously in short order, because it is not in the comfort zone.
This excerpt is from a 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.
This blog post by Bill Meade describes a fascinating metaphor for GTD – the bulbous bow on large ships. This bow shape modifies the way the water flows around the hull, to reduce drag and increase speed and efficiency.
I saw this great article on bulbous bowed ships a month or so ago. The key illustration in the article is of the natural bow wave of displacement hulls (green below), the bow wave of the submerged bulbous bow (blue line) and the resultant combined wave (red line).
Bulbous bows reduce the drag on ships. The energy savings can be huge, like 500%. Since reading the article, I haven’t been able to stop reflecting on how GTD reduces drag … like a bulbous bow. Wait, stay with me now! And, I’ve been exploring analogies between how GTD works and how bulbous bows work.
Click here to read more.
Have you wondered whether goal setting works? The February issue of Productive Living has David Allen’s answer to that question.
“Yes, but not the way most people seem to understand goal setting. In my experience, the real value of defining desired futures is not so much in the world they describe, but the change in perception the process of setting goals fosters.”
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
THE VALUE OF GOALS
What we focus on changes what we notice. Our brain filters information, seeing one thing in a situation instead of something else, based on what we identify with, what we have our attention on, what we’re looking for—more or less consciously.
The reason for long-term goals is the permission they give us to identify with the greatest value we can so it changes our filtered perceptions. The future never shows up (have you noticed?—it’s always today!). But playing with it as a working blueprint can be a remarkably useful tool to see things (and how to do and have them) that you never saw before.
Subscribe to Productive Living. 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.
In a recent issue of Productive Living, David Allen says:
My essay this month talks about the wisdom of “the way out is through.” I hope it gives you some good direction on dealing with what may be dragging on your psyche and systems. Defining what you are not doing is as important as knowing what you are doing for stress-free productivity. Having things you’ve told yourself to do (implicit agreements with yourself), still undone, can be deadly to your confidence and energy if they are not appropriately managed by constant renegotiation with yourself.
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH
Most of you reading this don’t even have time to finish to perfection your current set of projects, even if you stopped the world from giving you anything new, and you had several months or even years within which to do them.
It’s strange, but I work with people to define the work they are not doing.
There’s an old Gestalt theorem — the way out is through. Defining what we could do, and what we are doing right now instead — managing the triage strategically with ourselves and others, is a key component of managing ourselves and our workflow these days. You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not doing.
There is no catching up. There is only catching on.
Subscribe to Productive Living. 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.
Fast Company featured David Allen this week, in their Leadership Hall of Fame series.
Does your company plan things correctly? Or are meetings unproductive due to poor planning? We continue our Leadership Hall of Fame series . . .
How Bad Plans And “Good Ideas” Ruin Meetings
BY David AllenTue Nov 1, 2011
When the “Good Idea” Is a Bad IdeaHave you ever hear a well-intentioned manager start a meeting with the question, “OK, so who’s got a good idea about this?”
What is the assumption here? Before any evaluation of what’s a “good idea” can be trusted, the purpose must be clear, the vision must be well defined, and all the relevant data must have been collected (brainstormed) and analyzed (organized). “What’s a good idea?” is a good question, but only when you’re about 80 percent of the way through your thinking! Starting there would probably blow anyone’s creative mental fuses.
You can read the complete article here.
Frazzled mind? This recent issue of Scientific American affirms what GTDers already knew. Proactive steps such as planning and delegating are the best way to manage stress.
Fight the Frazzled Mind:
Proactive Steps Manage Stress
A new study suggests that preventive, proactive approaches are the most helpful—and that our stress management IQ is painfully low
