Here’s a great review of one GTD’ers Year in Review.  Enjoy!

My Year in Review, by Sarah From

This time last December, I was working in an office crammed with stuff.  Conference programs, old speeches, copies of travel receipts, notebooks brimming with ideas from half a decade ago, and drafts of reports long-ago published were filed and piled around me.  I wasn’t a hoarder – I just considered stacking things to be a valid organizing system.

Since I was generally able to find what I needed when I needed it, I didn’t consider myself disorganized.  Psychologically, my stacks served as a symbol of the important work that I was doing – work so important that it kept piling up and didn’t wait for me to get around to filing it.

At the same time, I knew my stacks weren’t really doing me any favors.  [Read more →]

3 Comments »

I’ve recently had the opportunity to play with an integrated software/capture service called MyCaption.  I want to use this post as a way to introduce BlackBerry® owners to the benefits of the software in your GTD® practice.

Before we get started, I should identify the basic function of the software.  MyCaption allows the user to create and annotate Tasks, Appointments, Memos, Email, SMS messages, at the touch of a button.  The process is such that after the software captures the user’s vocal recording, that data is sent to the company’s servers, where it is delivered to the BlackBerry device as one of the above formats.

So how can it work for GTD? [Read more →]

2 Comments »

There are lots of creative mapping tools out there, and PersonalBrain is one that David Allen uses to capture an autobiographical brain of his life.  Shelley, an evangelist for TheBrain put together a cool demo of how to look at the corners of your mind…

TheBrain also just launched a new hosting service for PersonalBrain users called WebBrain, with a great example about GTD.

No Comments »

We received this unsolicited letter from an active GTD Connect member (“Barb” on the Forums) who was so enthusiastic about the value she gets from her membership, she wanted to share it on GTD Times.

I’ve been a GTD Connect member for just a little under two years.  I’m a Dallas-based Consultant and I DO NOT make a living from writing enthusiastic reviews on GTD or have any affiliation whatsoever to David Allen Co.  But big changes have happened at the GTD Connect site and I’m writing today because of one simple fact:  The more the merrier! [Read more →]

3 Comments »

Years ago, David Allen worked with software design firm Netcentrics to create a GTD solution for Outlook users.  In fact, it’s one of the few applications (Eric Mack’s eProductivity product is another) that has David’s fingerprints on the look, feel and functionality.  Although you can customize Outlook to be more useful via the GTD & Outlook whitepaper, the Netcentrics GTD Outlook Add-In automated many of the customizations we suggest in that paper and adds a few key things that only the Add-In will do:

Link Projects to Actions (solving the timeless question and request from GTD’ers, “How do you know which project a next action relates to?”)

Process input more easily (gives a GTD toolbar for one-stop processing, linking and organizing) [Read more →]

2 Comments »

Making It All Work, David Allen’s latest book, ties together what many people were hungry for after reading Getting Things Done:  control + perspective.  In MIAW, control (5 phases of mastering your workflow) gets married to perspective (your horizons of focus)  to give an overview of the whole game.

Chris Taylor, editor for Goose Educational Media, wrote up a detailed book review of Making It All Work that we thought you may find helpful. He wrote:

We broke the review into two parts, as I felt Making it all Work really lent itself to that format.

Part 1, focusing on control
Part 2, focusing on perspective

You can also read their review of GTD. Enjoy!

No Comments »

By far, one of the most popular implementations of GTD on a Mac, is with OmniFocus. It does an elegant job of GTD project and action management on the Mac and iPhone.  There’s a great write up from the “Mac Samurai”about his journey with GTD & OmniFocus. We thought you might find this useful.

(Yes, we know many of you like “Things” by Cultured Code too!)

5 Comments »

A Community Contribution by Erik Hanberg

January’s Wired magazine carried an article by freelancer Chris Hardwick testing out different systems for helping him structure his work and life better.

He sums up:

Now, I know that David Allen is the head vampire of productivity, but if you only have the fortitude to read a single book, I’m gonna throw my lithe frame behind The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss lays out a series of nimble yet perfectly legal cons to help you break out of the corporate Bastille — and work from the actual Bastille, if you want. That sly creativity best fits the rogue nature of the freelancer.

David Allen is head vampire? I’ll have to check for fang marks from my book to see if he got me.

As it happens, I am also a freelancer and I have read Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. So I feel like I can respond to Hardwick appropriately. He is right about some things–like the idea that the books can supplement each other–but I think his recommendation is way off target.

For those who haven’t read it, The 4-Hour Workweek is essentially based upon two big ideas:

Idea One covers strategies for separating your work from a physical location–the office–so that you can work from home, work from Europe, or wherever it is you want to be.

Idea Two argues that for very little capital, a single person can get an Internet business going that will provide them enough money to live on with a barest minimum of work (hence the title of the book).

I believe his ideas are sound. In fact, I’m testing out an Internet business right now with Google ads to see if I can start a side business for some extra income.

But what Hardwick misses about the GTD system is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a corporate CEO working 80 hours a week or whether you’re living off the wealth of your Internet business and only work 80 hours every year. You still have to get things done. You still have to pay taxes and bills, enrich your relationships with family and friends, plan your vacation, and maybe–as in the case of Ferriss–learn to tango (Ferriss holds a world record in tango).

For me, GTD has helped me get out from under the feeling of always being behind, helped me stop thinking about work when I shouldn’t, and introduced a system that means I can remember to buy batteries at the store when I’m actually at the store.

Only with that in place could I really seriously consider the suggestions of Ferriss. Now, one of my projects is creating the website for my Internet business. If things are successful, I’ll add new projects like setting up marketing and shipping.

But I just can’t see tackling those things successfully without having Getting Things Done under my belt.

2 Comments »