New GTD Coordinators complete with blank forms and 2010 calendar:

Letter-size GTD Coordinators – Item#791001-05:  In stock in the DavidCo store. You will also be able to find these in Staples stores in the “dated products” organizers section.  Junior-size GTD Coordinators – Item#791002-05: Sold out in the DavidCo store.  Sorry!  However, there are over 1,500 Staples stores throughout the U.S. that stocked these. They are not available in the Staples online catalog (employees will not be able to locate this item in any catalog search.)  They are only available in the stores.  Specifically, they tell us they are in the “dated products aisle” organizers section –3rd shelf down from the top.   If you don’t find it in your local Staples store, try another Staples nearby.

Refills for existing GTD Coordinators:

Calendar Refills: Day Runner offers the following items which will fit your Coordinator:  Item #’s 061-785, 068-785, 481-185, 481-785.  These items are available on www.ataglance.com as well as www.dayrunner.com websites.  Mead has elected not to stock a customDavid Allen 2010 calendar refill-only product;  please customize your coordinator with the 2010 calendar of your choice.
Blank Forms Refill Paper: In stock in the DavidCo store for both Junior size and Letter size.  Includes blank forms for action lists and more.  Staples stores also carry these as item #36367 (Junior) and #806744 (Letter).

If you have any questions, please contact our customer service team.  Thanks!

If you setup Outlook like our GTD & Outlook Setup Guide describes, you should be able to have that carry over to Tasks on the BlackBerry.  The trick for seeing your Task categories is to “Filter” them.

Several of our staff use BlackBerry devices, including presenter + coach Wayne Pepper.  Listen to Wayne’s podcast on how he uses a BlackBerry for GTD (16 min). He also wrote about an app he uses on his BlackBerry for quick capture.

Whether you’re a proficient OneNote user or just started using it after reading my GTD and OneNote article posted on GTD Times it doesn’t take long to populate the software with a tonne of pages and a tonne of information (yes, I am Canadian).

First, some definitions:

MS Office OneNote 2007 is a digital notebook that provides people one place to gather their notes and information, powerful search to find what they are looking for quickly, and easy-to-use shared notebooks so that they can manage information overload and work together more effectively.

ActiveWords is a Windows application that relates words and actions, giving you instant access to what you want, making you more productive, and improving the quality of your work.  (Editors note: ActiveWords was also featured in a podcast by David Allen.)

For quick access to all your stuff, OneNote allows you to organize things really well into Books, Sections, Pages, and Sub-pages and they provide a nifty search box and tagging capabilities.  But those are like driving a Honda Civic – good, reliable, and gets you from A-B – but what I really want is a Ferrari – fast, exciting, and the envy of all my colleagues (OK, that last one is a bit of a stretch).

Enter ActiveWords (I’ll wait while you head back up to the ActiveWords definition).  OK. Still don’t really understand what ActiveWords does?  Maybe this will help…

ActiveWords allows me to do Ferrari like things.  (Keep in mind that ActiveWords works on top of windows so I can do any of the following while working in any program):

• Open software such as Google Earth by typing “Earth” F8,
• Open the GTD Times website by typing “GTDT” F8,
• Ditto for “Gmail” F8 (yes, ActiveWords has replaced marking favourites for websites)
• “Cal” F8 to open up Outlook Calendar
• “T” F8 to create a new outlook task (even if Outlook isn’t open!)
• “Projects” F8 to open up my projects folder buried deep in windows explorer
• “CFS” F8 to open up an excel file buried even deeper in windows explorer

In a nutshell, it moves me away from my mouse and using menu’s and allows me to use shortcuts on the keyboard with words that are intuitive rather than having to memorize things like “ctrl-shift-y” (No, I don’t know what that shortcut does – if anything)

So here’s how you can use ActiveWords to transform OneNote from a Honda Civic to a Ferrari.

Let’s say you’ve got a OneNote page that you access quite frequently.  In my case, and in this example, it’s my GTD Weekly Review page:

My goal is to access this page in less than 2 seconds no matter where I may be working in Windows (aka I want to be Ferrari fast).  To achieve this, we’ll need to create an ActiveWord.  So buckle up and we’ll get started.

1. Go to the page in OneNote where you want lighting speed access – “My GTD Weekly Review”, in this example.
2. Right-click on the page and select “Copy Hyperlink to this Page” (see screen capture below) – Note that hyperlinks can be created in OneNote for books, sections, pages, sub-pages and even text or objects on a page.
3. Move your cursor to somewhere (anywhere) on the OneNote page. Right-click and select “paste”.
4. Right-click on this newly created hyperlink and select “copy hyperlink” (see screen capture below)
5. Type “Add” then F8 to start the ActiveWords “Add” wizard, select “Open a Document”, and then click “Next”. (See screen capture below)
6. Right-click and paste the hyperlink into the top dialogue box.  Good habit to get into is to add a quick description while you’ve got the chance – e.g. “Open – My GTD Weekly Review OneNote page”.  It helps you search for the ActiveWord if you ever forget it.  Then click “Next”. (See screen capture below)
7. Now determine your ActiveWord for this task – could be “GTDWR”, or “Weekly Review”, or something simple like “WR”.  Then select “Finish”. (see screen capture below)
8. Now whenever you want to get to that Weekly Review page in OneNote, just type “WR” F8 and you will be there in less than 2 seconds – even if OneNote isn’t open (but why wouldn’t it be??)

Use ActiveWords in all your “often accessed” OneNote info and become — Ferrari Fast.

This is Ryan Oakley’s second Community Contributor post to GTD Times.  His first article on GTD & OneNote was so popular, he asked if he could contribute another.  Look for more from Ryan in the coming months on his personal use of OneNote.

It is a great thing to have this as the standard and comfort zone.  I would say in the last six months, I’ve consistently been here. What’s cool about GTD, is when you get here, it’s the starting point not the destination.  Can’t believe I’ve been using these tools since 1988.

As soon as I got myself in front of the steps leading down to my basement, I could see the black smoke billowing up to the first floor. I rushed into the basement to see where the fire was. There were no visible flames, but from the black smoke erupting from the party wall separating us from the twin house next door, it was quite clear that my neighbor’s house was ablaze.

My pregnant wife rushed outside to see what was going on. With my wife and unborn child headed out the door, that classic question came into my head.

What do I save?Here is how quickly your priorities can be clarified. That party wall has probably a two hour fire rating, so I feel comfortable that I have at least 30 seconds in this house before that party wall lets any fire through or the smoke gets very dangerous (my estimate, not the fire marshal’s). I have 30 seconds to do whatever it is I should be doing at this moment.

What is my next action? Put on shoes? Grab laptop? Throw iPhone in pocket? Find grade school spelling bee trophy? Process my inbox?

I quickly decided that above all else, my next action was to make sure my neighbor was safe. I even pictured in my mind how I would heroically bust down her door. “Done” looked like me jumping out their window with the neighbor in my arms.

So I didn’t put on shoes or process my inbox. I got my butt out the front door. Luckily the neighbor was out safe. And we were standing outside @Waiting For the fire truck.

Many teachers, bosses, and coaches over the years have tried to, as they were so fond of saying, “light a fire under my butt.” What they really should have done is help me clarify what was important in my life, identify my desired outcome and determine what my next actions were.

When there was literally a fire under my butt, those were the things I did, thanks in large part to a getting things done mindset I’ve instilled in myself over the last several years. But it doesn’t have to be a fire that is the catalyst which helps a person clarify what is important in their life, identify their desired outcomes, and determine what their next actions are. It can be a teacher, a boss, a coach, a parent, a friend, or even a book.

Matt Handal is a marketing professional who offers actionable advice on marketing, business development, and productivity at www.HelpEverybodyEveryday.com. He is an avid GTD’er and can be reached by email. Read more from Matt.

A Community Contribution from Chip Joyce

After retiring from being the most successful professional cyclist in history, Lance returned to the sport in his late 30s to compete, for the eighth time, in one of the most challenging athletic competitions: the Tour de France. During training, however, he crashed and broke his collarbone, was in a lot of pain, and faced surgery and physical therapy. It was the first major crash of his career.

In an article on VeloNews.com, Lance recounted, “Sitting on the side of the road in Spain, headed to an anonymous hospital… I wanted to never come back,” to the sport. His long-time team manager and mentor, Johan Bruyneel, said, “I could feel he was really down. I had a feeling he was ready to walk away.”Bruyneel, who says he and Lance have “a very special relationship,” shared several bottles of wine at Bruyneel’s home in Madrid, during which he reminded Lance of the importance of his Tour comeback to revitalize his Livestrong campaign and also remind him of one of Lance’s most famous phrases: “Pain is temporary, but quitting lasts forever.” Bruyneel recalls, “I said (quitting) is not what you stand for… I understand at a certain moment, you’re disappointed, you’re reconsidering. ‘Do I need to do this?’ No, you don’t need to do this. But at a certain moment when you go, when you make decision [sic], you have to go until the end.”

Lance’s ultimate response was, “I just spoke with Johan, and he said I have no choice, so I guess we’ll go forward.” Bruyneel said that, “from then on he started to feel better, we got into the Tour of Gila, it felt good, then he got to the start of the Giro, and he felt good, and everything started to roll again. But if I think about that moment in Paris [at the completion of the Tour de France], when he was standing on the podium, and think back to that conversation in the beginning of April, it was two different worlds.”

Lance’s renewed fidelity to his values, including his commitment to professional cycling and to the Livestrong Foundation, occurred amidst the drama of injury and a heart-to-heart talk with his mentor. In GTD terms, Lance realigned with his Horizons of Focus, and once he put into perspective his decision whether to quit or not, the decision was obvious to him.

If you invest the time and energy toward developing your Horizons of Focus, in trying times, you can persevere by drawing strength from these commitments, and remembering that “pain is temporary, but quitting lasts forever.”

Dear Coaches at GTD Connect,

I am struggling with how to incorporate the GTD methodology into a specific, but important, part of my job.

Surely I am not the first GTD Connect member with this challenge.  I am a Portfolio Manager and Investment Analyst for a wealth and investment management firm.  Daily, I receive about 100 emails containing research reports from various Wall Street and independent research firms.  In addition, there are a few investment-related research websites that I should check on a daily basis to read what reports and analyses have recently been published by those firms. Technically, no one would ever know if I did not get all of this reading done every single day—however, I would not be as informed about the financial markets or as productive in terms of generating new investment ideas.  It would also mean being behind my colleagues in terms of digesting research reading materials (although I recognize that they do not get around to reading everything they want to either).  I might also miss an important piece of news that would otherwise affect how I manage and analyze client portfolios.  Or, I may not be up to speed when a client calls with questions about a particular stock holding. Additionally, truth be told on a fundamental basis, I really like reading all this stuff!  I love the analytical part of my job, reading lots of research reports and using all those disparate pieces of information to draw conclusions and make judgments regarding how to manage client portfolios.

My challenge is simply the fire hose of research reading that gets thrown at me every day and the research websites that contain other pieces that I think I should be familiar with.  I guess the conclusion I’m slowly coming to is that there is no way that I can read everything that hits my email inbox.  Fair enough.  But then I struggle with how to organize this material into a next action or something that I am not repelled by.  For example, I empty my email inbox regularly during the day by filing everything into @Actions (to then be further distributed to my Actions/Task list or delegated) and @Research.  That research file currently has 909 unread research pieces in it.  If I glanced at the summary of a particular report, I could probably tell quickly how directly related it is to my current investments.  On the other hand, research that might not look important on the surface may actually contain very worthwhile nuggets of information—but I won’t know that until I read, or at a minimum, scan the whole report.

In conclusion, I feel like I have hit a road block in my quest to improve my GTD system.  Please, what advice or suggestions do you have?

Senior Coach Michael Dolan offered these tips:

Since information is often the key to competitive advantage, filtering and targeting the RIGHT information tends to be the key.  I guess the silver lining here is that you actually DO like all of this reading.  This is more about getting a higher level of control and perspective about that reading.  Here are some strategies to consider:

Target the inflow

Are you sure that all of the email reports, newsletters, and other reading sources that are currently landing in your inbox really should still be coming to you?  Be rigorous with eliminating any of this inflow that really doesn’t belong and you’ll be better able to sort through what does.

Use the two-minute rule

You may already be doing this, but it’s worth mentioning.  I’ve seen many clients with a heavy load of reading that have developed a bad habit of reflexively dumping new things into the “pile” of reading materials without at least spending a minimal amount of time to assess if it really needs to go there, and just how important or interesting it really is.

If you consistently give yourself about two minutes to scan and assess every new piece of reading material you get, you might be surprised with a) how much you can actually “get” in two minutes, and b) how easy it is to toss a great deal of reading once you’re clearer that you don’t really need it.  This time will also enable you to do a bit of triage of the reading you choose to defer till later.

Organize your reading by level of urgency / potential usefulness

Many of our clients find that they really need up to three different ways to organize the various reading materials they want to read:

Critical Reading

These reading materials would go right to your task list, potentially with a due date indicated. The thought would be that these reading tasks would be just as important as the other critical next actions in your system.  If the reading is in paper form, the task would still go on your main task list, and right in the subject line of the task you could give yourself a note to indicate where the pages are being kept until you can read them.  Some use a general “Action Support” folder for this purpose.

Read/Review

This category would be for reading that is not necessarily critical, but that you’d like to get to relatively soon.  Some GTD’ers will just use a folder (either email or physical) called something like “Read & Review” for this.  The idea is that you’d probably focus on the critical reading first, before opening this folder.

Read FYI

I wonder how much of those 909 research pieces you mention would actually have even made it into this category of reading.  Your agreement read FYI would literally be, if I get to it, great.  If not, that’s fine too.  Think about it like a someday/maybe list for your reading.  Many GTD’ers will use a paper tray labeled “Read FYI” or something like that for the paper reading.  And an email folder will do on the digital side.

As with all things GTD, it will always help if you keep these reading lists / folders up-to-date and current.  The weekly review should be a regular time for you to cull certain folders / areas to keep the lists or piles to an appropriate level so that you keep trusting those places.  Remember that renegotiating your agreements is an important element of practicing GTD.  In your case, what that means when it comes to your reading materials, is that you might want to regularly let yourself off the hook for reading things that you once thought were important, but now are out-of-date or less interesting.

I hope these ideas help add some control and perspective to your reading agreements.

Michael Dolan is a senior coach with the David Allen Company.

Try GTD Connect for free.  Already a member? Login now.

David Allen was on a roll this month with his having space to think and create.  He talks about it in this video on GTD & Cloud Computing and in his latest column on Wired UK.  Read more…

50,000 – Life Purpose
40,000 – 3-5 year Visions and Strategy
30,000 – 1-2 year Goals and Direction
20,000 – Areas of Focus and Responsibilities
10,000 – Current Projects
Runway – Current Actions

The best way I know of to work with these 6 levels is to go with where my attention is. I don’t find it often works to assign myself to go map those out perfectly, especially 30-50,000 levels. They will get subtler the higher you go up in your focus, but they will all help in choosing what to do.

Will knowing your 50,000 tell you exactly which email to read or meeting to go to? Probably not. But it will probably bring to the surface if you’re in the job you want. Play around with them. See where your attention goes. David’s latest book Making It All Work goes into lots more detail on Horizons of Focus and seems to have cleared up some of the mystery around that for people who read and implemented GTD.

Kelly Forrister is a senior coach and presenter with the David Allen Company.

GTD Connect is a great way to get practical & tactical coaching advice on implementing GTD.   Webinars are held about twice a month on a wide range of topics for GTD’ers.  If you’re not a GTD Connect member, check out the free trial (which will also allow you to take a Webinar class during your trial membership.)  If you decide to join beyond your trial, it’s only $48 a month and you can cancel anytime.  The free trial is a great way to see if GTD Connect is for you.  Trial members can access to the full site except for podcasts and downloads.

I’m a retired teacher who now has a tiny gem or a business called ‘Life in the Flow Lane.’  I read Getting Things Done a couple of years ago and implemented some things.  I am a GTD Connect newbie.  The Webinars are simply invaluable.  You have given me a much greater understanding of the whole GTD process.  For example, I really get that I need to have a list that attracts rather than repels me!  It seems obvious, but you show how to make that happen.  All the resources on Connect work well together.  I think the mix you have put together is simply outstanding. – Sharry Teague

I am writing to you to tell you how brilliant I think it is to use Microsoft Office OneNote in my GTD system.  I’m from Norway and am employed in the public sector as a project manager for various ICT projects.

I read David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” two years ago. Since then I have spent much time trying to find a good solution to the lists and project lists that fit my needs. I feel now I’ve got this to work, providing very much in terms of both time and money.  The ultimate solution for me has been using Outlook with Microsoft OneNote.  In Outlook, I have action lists that are categorized by place of execution, in good GTD tradition. Here I use the standard task list in Outlook 2007. Of course, calendar and e-mail is here too.

In Microsoft OneNote, I have all my project lists. This tool provides full flexibility and it has integrations with Outlook that fits perfectly GTD.

In OneNote, I have a complete overview of all levels of mine. Everything from the 50 000 level to 20 000 And it’s the latter I use OneNote to most. Here, I have project lists the 10,000-level in the upper part of the paper’s goals and the bottom, I have an action list. As I progresses in the project, right-click my action point in the project list and send it over to Outlook. In Outlook, action points floats between categories such as office, telephone, waiting, etc.

I have connections in my system from the 50,000 level right down to the next actions.

My Windows mobile device is synchronized with Outlook and OneNote that I have with me my system when I travel.

Thank you for helping me to keep track and be productive in my work with the GTD system!

Regards,
Ivar Berg
Norway

• Are there any tools already in place that you plan/need to still use? Like a corporate calendar?
• Where is your email?  Not required, but certainly helps to have your email and lists near each other.
• Who else needs to see your data?   Does it need to be on a shared server or would local be fine if you go digital?
• What do you tend to be drawn to–paper or digital?
• Is security a concern?
• How would you back it up, if needed?
• What are you willing to carry around?
• What tools are you already familiar with?
• Would you trust putting almost anything into it?
• Is it scale-able?
• Can you easily learn how to use it?
• What are you willing to pay for it?
• What does it need to sync to?

Is there a perfect GTD system out there? Sure, it’s the one you trust and use so your mind is free.

Like this podcast? Subscribe to our free podcast series.  We also do frequent podcasts with David and the Coaches on GTD Connect®, our online learning center (over 108 podcasts available to Connect members more added all the time…)

Near the beginning of a new year, we often take stock of the big things in life. Am I happy at my job? Do I need to lose weight? It’s such a good time to take stock of — and clean up — major sources of stress and a fresh place to start large, complex projects. All of that is great, but this year I’d like to encourage you to think small steps, too.

In my GTD office tour, I made note of a small change I made to my system in 2009 which had a big impact on my overall mood and productivity: my tickler file. Yeah, I know. Really? But, yes…really. My old system (folders on a riser) was fine, but it was clunky. Keeping all the folders orderly meant constantly shuffling groups of 10 folders up and down the riser to keep the current folder at the front. It certainly wasn’t killing me to do it, but it was a small irritant. Barely noticeable, really. In fact, I had almost no idea how irritating the old system was until I switched to my new system:  folders within hanging folders on a portable file holder on my desk. Now, I grab the current file, check it, and pop it to the back of the holder. Oh, how smoothly those files glide back and forth! Oh, now nice and tidy they all stay so matter how often I go in and out of them in a day or a week! (I know, I’m a neat nerd, leave me alone!). Once I experienced the smooth new system, I noticed how much more regular I was about checking my tickler. Why? Because it was so easy it bordered on being fun.

You don’t notice how much a sticky door bothers you until you oil it. Next time you close the door, and it doesn’t stick, you feel a little thrill. Or, at the very least, you feel the absence of irritation. Thinking this way strikes me as being part of reducing drag on my system. Just as fixing leaks in my system frees up my brain to think more creatively, tweaking imperfections in that system makes me feel better.

So, in addition to tackling all those fabulously huge and glamorous goals you’ve set up for this year, oil the sticky doors, too. Check GTD Times and the discussions on GTD Connect for ideas (I found that sweet tickler file setup right here on GTD Times!)

You might be surprised at the big impact those small changes can make.

Meghan Wilker is a regular community contributor to GTD Times. She’s also been featured in David Allen’s In Conversation series on GTD Connect, spotlighting some of the most fascinating people in our network of GTD’ers around the world.

I know that David Allen is interested in seeing how people in different sorts of professions use GTD, so I offered to share my experiences applying the methodology in a world that’s generally regarded as a different one: academia.  I have found that GTD is highly applicable to the academic profession.

I was actually managing adequately before I discovered GTD, but my productivity, while pretty good by institutional standards, was sub-optimal with respect to my own expectations.  I wasn’t well-organized, I often had “near misses” with deadlines, and I had a good deal of stress-producing clutter.  I literally had 6000+ messages in my Outlook inbox.  As the cover of the book hinted, I wanted not only to increase productivity, but to reduce stress.  GTD has indeed helped in both aspects: productivity is up, stress is down. Some of the most useful parts have been among the simpler ones, chiefly “capture everything rather than try to keep it in your head” and “don’t confuse your calendar with your to-do list.”  I used to drive myself crazy repeatedly by playing this game: I’d realize I hadn’t worked much lately on a particular essay I needed to write, so I’d put “work on that essay” on my calendar for Tuesday morning, then I’d spend Tuesday morning prepping for a class or putting out a fire, and then I’d feel anxious because I didn’t write the essay.  If nothing else, I have learned to distinguish calendar from to-do list, and projects from next-actions.  That’s as vital for academics as it is for any business executive.A college professor’s job has at least three distinct components, each of which in its own way can benefit from a GTD approach.  First of all, there is teaching classes. This involves the actual instruction time, as well as time beforehand to prepare and time afterwards for grading.  The class time, along with office hours, are “hard landscape” calendar items which need to be done at a particular time, but the prep time and grading have a little more flexibility.  There are still deadlines, though: mid-term assignments must be graded in a timely fashion, and final grades must be submitted by a deadline also.  And the prep for any particular class must obviously be done before that class.  So these can be seen as non-calendar “next actions,” although for some people it works better to schedule time blocks devoted to these tasks.  The class itself can be seen as a project with a successful outcome: the students complete the course and have learned a lot; I’ve turned in final grades.

Second, there is research and other scholarship activities. At a bare minimum, we are expected to stay current in our fields, which requires reading time.  Is it at the library?  At home?  At the office?  In print, or on-line?  These can be context-sensitive next-actions.  But beyond that, there is the expectation of productivity.  “Productivity” in the academic sense can be a paper for publication, a conference presentation, participation in a symposium, editing a collection, refereeing for a peer-reviewed journal, data collection, experimentation, and so on.  Each of these can easily be seen as a “project” in the GTD sense – and that means that one can avoid being overwhelmed by them by breaking them down into next actions.  Before I encountered GTD, I used to have to-do lists with entries like “write book.”  Turns out that’s not very helpful!  David Allen’s observation that one can’t actually “do” a project is certainly applicable here: the only way to write a book is to break it down into bits, and then write and organize the bits.  It’s much more effective to think about what discrete steps are required to organize the book and formulate each section.   Next-action thinking therefore translates very well to scholarly writing.  Also, there are many other tasks involved in getting research done (and published) – paperwork as well as logistical – each of which needs to be identified and clarified.

Third, there is generally a service expectation: advising students, serving on departmental or college-wide committees, participating in various events. There are meetings, which need to be calendared, and the other work can easily been seen as projects (e.g., produce report) with next actions (e.g., call the dean’s office to request that file).   If one becomes department chair, as I am, then there are many more administrative responsibilities one acquires: working with a budget, producing the schedule for the year, hiring support staff and adjunct faculty, meetings with administrators and other chairs.  It’s easy to see why younger faculty can be overwhelmed and why senior faculty can suffer burn-out.  Many people outside academia don’t realize the amount of juggling that goes on, assuming that a “12-hour load” means a 12-hour work week.  It’s more like 50, believe me.  I don’t say that as a complaint; I love the job – but if it were really only 12 hours worth of work, I wouldn’t need GTD!

One thing that really resonated with me as I read the book was just how applicable it was to a non-business context.   Every example, even the business-specific, was one I could transfer to my world: identify goal, clarify successful outcome, figure out the next action.  I keep my inbox at or close to empty – both paper and email.  I mentioned that I used to be one of those people with 6000+ messages in my Outlook inbox.  Now it’s rarely got more than a dozen.  All emails fit into one of the workflow categories – some are trash, some are reference info to be filed, some are waiting-for trackers, and some are actionable.  So I have reduced stress and improved efficiency simply by learning to keep my email under control.   On a more mundane level, it’s also helped to get a label maker for file folders!  I am no longer the absent-minded professor of stereotype who can’t find anything in the messy office.  The fictional professors who live that way manage to produce ground-breaking scholarship, but in reality, living like that is an impediment to scholarly productivity or efficiency in teaching.  If you wouldn’t expect an executive to be productive under those conditions, there’s no reason to expect a scholar to be either.  Sadly, these caricatures are present even among academics.  I have been trying to “get the word out” to a number of my colleagues here and elsewhere.  As David noted in the book, if others become more efficient and productive, it helps everyone.  I have used GTD to make committee work go more smoothly, even if the other members of the committee don’t always realize that’s what is happening, but I also talk to colleagues about it, recommend the book (in some cases, I buy copies for people), explain the virtues of the methodology.  After attending one of David’s “Roadmap” seminars, I gave a presentation to my fellow chairs at a workshop, and I received a lot of positive feedback.  Just as David has expressed hopes that GTD would become “standard stuff” in the corporate world, I would love to see GTD more widely adopted in academia.  Our students would benefit, and we’d get a lot more research accomplished with less burn-out.

If anyone reading this is an academic and wants to hear more specifically about how I have brought GTD to bear on my teaching, scholarship, service, and chairmanship, please feel free to get in touch. And of course I’d be happy to discuss these matters with non-academics as well.  You can message me via GTD Connect, or the GTD LinkedIn network, or drop me an email.

My dear husband thinks you keep your Inbox to zero by not posting your email address on the internet and/or by having assistants respond to your email.  I disagree. What say you?

David responded:

You keep your Inbox to zero by dealing with whatever shows up in there as rigorously as you do your answering machine at home.  The access you give the world to create input is up to you.  You have to decide what you want to invite/allow into your world, and match that with a behavior to process it at the same speed.

Eric Mack recently interviewed David Allen on his use of Lotus Notes, eProductivity and cloud computing.  Hear what David thinks of working in the cloud and where he’d love to see things go…

For more of these videos, stay tuned to the Notes on Productivity blog.  We’ll also post some of them here too.

Here is the email I sent to this participant regarding her project:

Dear Sara,

I wanted to share with you what I did to help my son with his efforts to get into college. Like your daughter, my son was looking at schools. The deadlines for college applications had been approaching, and he had not completed any applications. In response, I took him through the Natural Planning Model. Specifically, here’s what I did with him:

1) Purpose
I asked him to tell me why he wanted to go to college. At first he started with reasons that seemed to belong to others, but I encouraged him to get real with it – why did he really want to go to college? Was it to learn a trade? Develop strong friendships? Have an adventure? Meet new people? Enhance his education by broadening it or giving it more depth?

2) Guiding Principles
I asked my son what was important to him as we went through this process. He said that he wanted the process to be easy and fluid, and it was also important to him that we do it in a spirit of cooperation.

3) Vision
Once we got his Purpose and Guiding Principles clear (and I had him write all this down by the way), I asked him what his ideal scene was for college as best as he could describe it in that moment. I used the following cues to stimulate his thinking:

- Large or small school?
- Metropolitan or rural setting?
- East coast? West coast? In between? Or abroad?
- Large classes or small intimate learning settings?
- Male/Female ratio?
- Living on/off campus?
- What is his major?
- What will he know at the end of four years?
- What types of courses will he take?
- Athletics?
- Drama?
- Other extra-curriculars? – he came up with wanting to be close to ski areas (!)
- Political/ideological/religious leaning of the school?

4) Brainstorm
We skipped this phase because he already had plenty of schools he was interested in. For kids who haven’t yet identified schools of interest, I’d encourage them to take a very broad look at every school that holds any appeal to them, using tools like Barron’s, etc.

5) Organize
I then had my son rank each of the schools on his preliminary list on a scale from 1 to 10, based upon the criteria he himself had established in the Vision section. When we looked at the schools ranked 6 and above, we realized we had too many. When we only looked at schools ranked 7 and above, we came up with 10, which seemed more manageable. I’d also recommend that students apply the idea that most college counselors encourage – to include a few “fall-back” schools, as well as at least one that would be a stretch for them in terms of the average GPA and SAT scores.

6) Next Actions
There were a few schools for which my son lacked sufficient information to be able to rank them, so that became a next action for him – to take “virtual tours” and see what number he would assign based on that information. There were only a few, however, so the next actions we identified were to determine the application requirements for each school in his top ten and set them into a grid so that we could see which applications were due when, and what needed to be completed.

This process worked very well. Not only did it get my son moving toward getting his applications done, but it also shifted the energy that we all had around it from drudgery to joy and anticipation of the adventure ahead.

Wayne Pepper is a senior coach and presenter with the David Allen Company.

When we put on our GTD glasses we can see one relatively simple approach to this problem: clearly define the very next action. Like all forms of procrastination, pleasure procrastination can result when we are not sure what to do next. Faced with an ill-defined task, we find it easier to ignore the item than to figure out how to do it. It takes shockingly little to derail us into full-on procrastination. Consider what happens if I put “use Target gift card” on my Next Action list. Though I am excited to use the gift card – I need new storage containers for my closet, and the extra money is much appreciated – months pass with no trip to Target. Each week, “use Target gift card” reappears on my Next Action list. What’s going on here?

When I finally address this question during a Weekly Review, I realize that “use Target gift card” is actually not a task, but a project with multiple steps. Since I intend to use my gift card to purchase storage containers to fit in my closet, I need to measure my closet first. I want to check out a newly opened Target I’ve never been to before, so I need to map out how to get there. And since I can only go after work on a weeknight, I need to find out how late the store is open before I make the trip.

If not properly identified, any one of these simple pre-shopping tasks is enough of a roadblock to cause me to procrastinate indefinitely. Once I clarify that my next action is actually “measure the closet,” my trip to Target can really get rolling.

While clarifying the next action isn’t the key to averting pleasure procrastination in every situation (I think refocusing our attention on the present is a big part of it too), one thing is certain: even our best intentions can be derailed when we are not sure what to do next.

What’s your perspective? Are there other components of the GTD system that can be helpful in addressing pleasure procrastination?

Sarah From is a regular community contributor to GTD Times. She is committed to helping social change leaders and organizations become more powerful and effective.  She is a master’s student in Organizational Change Management at The New School in New York City.  Sarah blogs at studentofchange.com

If you have a story to share with the GTD community, please send it along!

For me, GTD has always worked extremely well for those small(er) tasks and projects.  You know – those little things that used to fall through the cracks but, with the help of GTD, are now easily tracked and moved on until completed.

These smaller projects don’t need much in the way of “project support material” (PSM) — maybe just 4 or 5 lines of information to keep close at hand to help finish the project.  For me, I have mostly used the “notes” section of a project task item in outlook for a good and easy place to put this type of PSM.

But…what about those larger projects?  Like a 2 week vacation to Europe (travel books, emails, reservations, tickets, list of things you want to do and see, things to pack, addresses of family to visit, etc.) or maybe that multi-million dollar project at work that has 8 months worth of project plans and 5 milestones, 247 emails, 156 page reports, bi-weekly meetings, and 7 team members (complete with collaboration).  Ahh!

My GTD system breaks down with that kind of complexity.  Of course I have places to put all that stuff (physical files ala Mr. Allen, email .pst folders/files, digital folders/files, network drives, SharePoint sites) – but it was always just too overwhelming.  Unless I had just filed away an important piece of PSM, I would quickly forget where it was or force the info back into my brain.  And that had very negative consequences on me and my work.

• I had an aversion to create, process, and organize PSM for larger projects.
• When I did get around to organizing PSM, I had an aversion to go hunting for it when I needed it.
• I had an aversion to include “review project support material” as part of my weekly review – because it was just too much.  One project could take an entire morning!

As a result I found myself primarily adding to and working on completing the smaller projects – that did not create as much stress but which also didn’t produce the results I wanted in my life at the 30k to 50k levels.

Sound familiar?  Well, I’ve got good news.  As of 4 months ago all that has changed.  Let me (quickly) introduce you to my new “tool that I can’t live without” – Microsoft® OneNote® 2007.

I now:

• Create a OneNote (ON) “book” for each major active project (and little one pagers for the smaller projects)
• Bring in all my PSM into ON (ideas, emails, files, project plans, meeting minutes, photos, screen captures, internet research, voicemails, conversations, and even A/V files!)
• Brainstorm my projects in ON
• Use hyperlinks in ON to access project material like folders, files, websites and even other sections in ON.
• Work through my projects using ON as my project cockpit.
• Create my next actions in ON – and they are automatically synched with Outlook Tasks.
• Share my project ON book with my project team members so we can collaborate and move our project forward together.
• Link my meeting minutes from my outlook calendar appointment to ON where they are easily tasks, shared, and organized.
• Use ON for my weekly review and have no problems with reviewing and working with really big hairy projects.
• Use the ON live search to find random bits of information as needed.

Screenshots examples:  OneNote and Outlook Tasks

With ON I’ve been able to create a workspace that allows me to be free-form and creative (brain dump, mind map, scribbles), and easily build in structure to organize it all really quickly and intuitively.

I’m back on the GTD (band)wagon baby!

Although this post has been focused on using ON to solve the “project support material” problem, it has many more wonderful uses like:

• Managing contact information
• Managing copious amounts of reference material (and not limited to just text)
• Keeping a daily work journal
• Allows me to print way less paper
• Serves as a necessary “digital inbox”
• Allows me to carry my entire filing cabinet to all my meetings
• Access important information faster than anyone else in my office

Maybe I’ll be invited to make a ON series for GTD Times.  I’m ok with more work – I’ve got a system now that handles it.

Ryan Oakley is a man of many 20,000 ft roles and responsibilities.  He is a traffic engineer, a wedding and portrait photographer, an active member of Toastmasters, a volunteer electric tram motorman, a husband and  father of 2 young children.

What I’ve learned from having a virtual assistant:

• How to be very explicit with my instructions
• I’ve grown in my judgment of what should be outsourced and what is faster for me to do (hint: it’s almost always faster for me if it’s a one-time thing. But if it’s a repetitive task, it’s probably worth teaching her.)
• I get a heckuva lot more done–she not only removes time, she removes annoyance–that mental friction that comes from having to do tasks that I downright hate (like scheduling meetings.)
• She not only takes care of things for me, she does them better and faster than I ever could. Face it–just as you’re uniquely talented at some things, you’re uniquely flawed in others.
• How to teach my employees to teach themselves–it’s rewarding when my VA says she’s learned a ton from working with me!

Read more on Jeff’s blog…

Today marks the four-year anniversary of the day that I watched a taping of your Mastering Workflow seminar.  It’s the day that I started a journey from chaos and overwhelm to order and sanity.  Some thought that my GTD journey was just a phase, that it would be my “flavor of the month”.  They were wrong, and now they are wishing that they had the same level of relaxed control in their lives as I do now.

My excitement for GTD has never tapered off; in fact it grows over time as I frequent the forums and the articles at GTD Times contributing to and learning from other people’s GTD journeys.  GTD has enriched my life like no self-improvement program has ever been able to do.  On this, my fourth anniversary of living the GTD lifestyle, I offer you my most heartfelt thanks and appreciation for everything that you’ve done for me and others around the world.

F. Luke Funfar
Vice President of Communications
Savannah Green Homeowners Association

I was in the middle of reading and applying your book when I came home  one day and found it like this.

Yep my dog ate it on a day when he was bored because I was so busy I didn’t get him out for a walk. Did I mention that I was in the middle of applying your recommendations?  Well, I am keeping the book because I can still read most of it and it  is a reminder that I must complete the process I started so I will not lose any more books.

Thanks, Joy

~~

Joy,

If your dog starts getting more bones buried, odors smelled, and books eaten, let me know. (Most people haven’t absorbed as much GTD as he obviously had!)

Thanks for sharing!

David

Completing and remembering 2009

What was your biggest triumph in 2009?
What was the smartest decision you made in 2009?
What one word best sums up and describes your 2009 experience?
What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2009?
What was the most loving service you performed in 2009?

Creating the new year

What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2010?
What advice would you like to give yourself in 2010?
What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results in 2010?
What would you be most happy about completing in 2010?
What major indulgence are you willing to experience in 2010?
What would you most like to change about yourself in 2010?

Get more questions…

What do you do to complete the year?

A key principle within GTD is creating a system external to your mind–if you want the system to be seamless.  In fact, there’s a good chance if you’re trying to hold more than about 7 things in your mind at once, you’re dropping things all the time.  And guess what?  Your brain doesn’t care if what you dropped was important or not important, urgent or not urgent, about buying bread on the way home from work or solving world hunger.   If you’re trying to balance more than 7 things in there at any given time, something’s gonna drop.

Now, wait before you get riled up–this is not challenging how smart you are or how good you are at memorizing. This is working memory.  And for most of us, there are about 7 parking spaces in working memory, plus or minus 2, at any given time.  This phenomenon was also explored in the Science behind GTD article.

NPR’s Radiolab did an interesting podcast on this topic of working memory as well.  In fact, they cover something I hadn’t heard before, which is that when the brain is stressed at holding 7 it will make an emotional decision, not necessarily a rational one.  You’ll choose cake over a piece of fruit under stress. Fascinating stuff, especially if you look at how this applies to what you choose to Do. [Podcast is about 20 minutes.)

A computer programmer implementing GTD asked David Allen about projects:

I’m confused about (and I’m sure you are extremely bored with this question, but from the books I couldn’t work out the answer) – how do you size projects?  I’m continually having problems working out what is or isn’t a project – and getting lost in the confusion.

I’m a computer programmer.   I have to design systems and then build them.   A typical “task” of mine will last 6 months – and involve maybe 800 real hours of my own work.   There will be all sorts of things inside that that can be done simultaneously, things that I have to wait for and so on.  Is the whole thing a project?  Or do I break it into individual projects of do the first screen, do the second screen, do the back end?  

I even have trouble with the concept of next actions – because more often than not nowadays everything is done for you – my task of “build a content management system” – actually becomes “find a content management system” – sitting on Google looking at products, downloading them, trying them etc.    This task could take me anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 days – and I don’t have any idea before hand how long it might take – most of what I do is investigative.  For instance, “fix the credit card processing” -  that’s my task – but at first I don’t know what’s wrong with it – I have to try things until I do find out – and it could easily take me the next 8 hours solid work just to identify a problem, or I might find it right away.

GTD seems to work brilliantly if I have lots of tiny jobs to do and keep track of (such as in my personal life) – but in my professional life I can’t figure out at all how to integrate the concepts of projects being composed of many sub-projects and more importantly of tasks of which the duration is completely unknown and unpredictable.

Any suggestions you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

David’s reply:

Good questions, and my answers are likely going to be simpler than you think.

First, anything you can finish in a few months needs to be reviewed at least once a week – that’s why I call them “projects”, so they sit on that list and get looked at with rigor during the Weekly Review. If they’re as complicated with sub-projects as many of yours likely are, then you just need to drill down another level in the Weekly Review on each one, identifying the “moving parts” – i.e. the ones that are not dependent right now – and ensure that you have next actions on each one, as appropriate.

“Next action” doesn’t mean short – it just means that you know exactly where the action happens and what it looks like. So it could be a 20-hour action – you’re just clear that it’s at your computer it moves forward instead of the hardware store.