Cindy recently participated in a GTD class at her company.  She sent along an email to her facilitator, Danny Bader, about her experience. With her permission, we’re sharing her letter with our GTD Times readers.

Dear Danny,

First of all, thanks for a great class!  I really enjoyed it.  You are an awesome instructor – very engaging and really good at demonstrating practical applications of the GTD concept.

I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the GTD concept as I have taken time management courses before and was never able to make the concepts work in the fast paced/put out 100 fires every day work of IT training development/delivery and IT technical support.  I wondered how constructed the  responses from people having implemented GTD saying “GTD changed my life!” were.  …more

Tags: Community Contributions, Danny Bader - Staff Contributor, David Allen Company, GTD stories, Implementation, Implementing GTD, Mastering Workflow
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David Allen will be leading a “GTD Success Strategies” Webinar for our GTD Connect members next Friday, August 27th @ 10am PDT.  He’ll share the keys for what makes GTD stick, including:

• The habits and rituals to create
• What to do when you fall “off” GTD
• Creating a trusted home base for yourself
• Creating a supportive environment around you

We’re giving away 5 seats to attend this Webinar to the first 5 people who reply with a comment (directly on GTD Times–not other feed sites) letting us know one thing you’ve implemented with GTD that has worked well for you.

Tags: David Allen, GTD Best Practices, GTD Connect, webinars
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A contribution from Michael Dolan, a senior coach with the David Allen Company

Q: I’m in sales and have a customer relationship management system (CRM) whereby we add reminders to call people back and or manage projects as they relate to people there. I use Microsoft Outlook as well to keep all of my projects and contexts in one place. My question is how would you blend these two together?

A: I can very much appreciate this question since we seem to be hearing about this overlap more and more. Sales management systems, sometimes referred to as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, have come a long way in the past 10-15 years. They not only can help an individual or team track progress, agreements and forecasting in one, interwoven place, but they can also help automate some of the workflow that happens between team members in a company. They tend to be fairly contact / company centric in that records and reference about certain conversations and emails sent in the sales cycle are kept in relationship to specific contacts or sales initiatives. For example, …more

Tags: GTD for salespeople, Implementation, Implementing GTD, sales, Tips and Tricks
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We just released an A4* size of our new GTD & BlackBerry Guide. For those of you who will print the Guide and prefer this size instead of the standard U.S. letter size, you will now find it in our David Allen Company online store.

This 45 page Guide, created by David Allen and the senior coaches, will show you how to:

• Manage your email effectively on the BlackBerry–including how to get email to zero
• Use BlackBerry Tasks for your Projects and Actions–including descriptions and examples of what goes on different lists
• Use the Calendar as a critical foundation for actions–with shortcuts for switching between different views
• Create useful reference lists in MemoPad–for managing the “non-action” part of your life as well
• Move faster with speed keys and shortcuts–referenced throughout the Guide and on handy quick reference sheet
• Navigate around the BlackBerry easily–with tips on customizing some settings to match the way you work

*210 MM wide and 297 MM tall (about 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inch), used in Europe, and rest of the world, except the US and some neighboring countries where ‘letter-size’ paper (8 1/2 x 11 inch) is used.

Tags: Blackberry, David Allen Company, Getting Things Done, GTD, Implementation, Implementing GTD, Tips and Tricks
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A Community Contribution from Nuno Donato on how he used the GTD Horizons of Focus model to gain clarity about a life change

About one and a half year ago I moved from a busy big city “A”: to a smaller one in the country side “B” to develop a project with an organization I volunteer with. My life changed in many ways due to this, and I enjoyed it a lot. Recently, lots of things on the personal and professional level changed and I felt that it might be good to go back to A.  Lots of things were involved in this, as some people and projects depend on where I am. I spent the last 3 months with the question of where should I be, on my mind. I tried getting all possible arguments, opinions, made a list of pros and cons, but nothing could really assure me that I was making a good decision. It was like my gut feeling was telling me not to trust anything. Sometimes my mind would give me some arguments in favor of A, my heart would ask me to stay in B…. and after a week they would switch places .  So it was getting very confusing and difficult to me.

Finally I thought, why not to use GTD to solve this problem? …more

Tags: Community Contributions, horizons of focus, Perspective
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Countless questions have been e-mailed to me asking for the best ways and tools to organize project thinking, or how to relate project pieces to each other and to all the other projects and their pieces.   Ninety-nine percent of the time, my answer is: “Do the Weekly Review. If you do, it all works. If you don’t, nothing will work. – David Allen

Tags: David Allen, Getting Things Done, GTD, GTD Best Practices, Implementation, Implementing GTD, Next Actions, project planning, projects, Tasks, trusted system, Weekly Review
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Q: I write down everything but I always seem to end up having problems controlling all the pieces of paper and lists; what are your suggestions?

Coach Janet Riley: Writing everything down is a great first step.  All those “notes” where you’ve captured and collected what’s in your head, need to be put into an “IN” box and then within a day or two they need to be “processed” so that you make decisions about what the work is to be done (an email to send, a call to make, etc.).  Once you process them, put reminders of the work to be done in your Next Action lists or on your calendar.  If you travel, your “IN” box can be a folder, for example. On a regular basis, stop to gather up any notes, business cards, loose papers, etc. that you might have left in a pocket, briefcase, wallet, or which are still on a notepad (tear them off) and put all those in the “IN” box or tray to be processed.  You can read more about Collection and Processing best practices in David’s first book Getting Things Done and we have loads of Webinars and educational resources on GTD Connect about this.

Listen to David’s podcast on the Mind Sweep process for clearing your head. Check out the GTD System Folders or create your own.

Tags: coaching, David Allen Company, Getting Things Done, GTD, GTD Best Practices, Implementation, Implementing GTD, Tips and Tricks, trusted system
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A contribution from Eric Mack with ICA, developers of the “GTD Enabled” application eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes

Does your employer block productivity apps on your BlackBerry, iPhone, or Android Smartphone?

With the recent discussions about Apps and how consumers want the freedom to find, evaluate, and purchase Apps for their Smartphones, I wonder how many users are able download and use a productivity application and how many have policies that prevent them from doing so.

If you found a productivity application for your mobile device that was proven to increase your performance, would you: a) be allowed to install it? b) encounter resistance (or refusal) from IT to allow you to install it? c) make a business case to management for why this App should be allowed?

Please take a moment to take the quick poll then scroll down to share your comments.

…more

Tags: Blackberry, Empty Inbox, eProductivity, Eric Mack, Lotus Notes, smartphone
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