We’re hosting two webinars this month on GTD Connect, our online learning center.

GTD in a Sales Role – June 17 from 10am-11am Pacific Time

Hear how two seasoned sales professionals apply GTD to managing opportunities, building relationships, and tracking tactical actions with clients.

Getting Started with GTD – June 27 from 11am-12pm Pacific Time

Get tips, tricks, and coaching strategies for getting started with GTD. Hear from two senior David Allen Company coaches about where to start (especially if you feel overwhelmed), helpful resources to access inside GTD Connect, suggested tools for your workspace, choosing a list manager, and more.

To learn more or register, visit GTDConnect.com.  Not a member but would like to attend a webinar? Try a free two-week guest pass.

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Most of us have far more reading material than we could ever possibly get to, even with the noblest of intentions. So what’s the best way to deal with this challenge, short of canceling all magazine subscriptions and running the other way when a colleague tries to give us yet another article or book to read?

Coach Julie Ireland weighs in:

One of the solutions I’ve found that often works for people is to divide reading material into 3 buckets. Here they are, along with a brief description of what they entail:

 1. Critical Reading – This is reading that I am responsible for as part of my work; e.g., an article that was hand-delivered to me by my boss, a brief from a client, etc. These go onto my next actions list, and I am committing to reading them.

2. Of-Interest Reading – The “I’m REALLY interested in this, and it would be good for me to read it but I’m not committing to” stuff – a bit like Someday/Maybe for reading. This goes into my “Reading – of interest” bin and periodically, when I’m taking a short break or heading off to the airport, I’ll grab something from this stack. I have a rule that if it goes onto an airplane with me and I don’t read it, it goes into the trash rather than back into the bin. Every so often, I have to bite the bullet and purge. (Am I really going to read the October 2007 issue of The Economist? I don’t think so…)

3. Purely Recreational Reading – This usually lives by my bed, unless it’s a real page turner and I manage to read during the day while my eyes are still open.

 If you’ve been overwhelmed by your reading stack in the past, I hope this will bring some much-needed relief your way. Good luck, and happy reading!

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Two of our senior David Allen Company coaches will be leading a webinar on doing a year end review, next Tuesday, December 7th from 10am-11am pacific time.  Free for all GTD Connect members, including those on a guest pass.   Login to GTD Connect to register through the link on the home page.  The webinar will focus on two key areas:

• Completing & remember 2010
• Creating the new year

They will lead participants through a series of insightful questions that David Allen created to inspire, challenge and acknowledge.

This will be the last webinar for 2010, finishing up a banner year of webinars for our GTD Connect members.  We did over 20 webinars this year, including 6 in our “Black Belt” series for more advanced GTDers, tactical webinars on tools such as Outlook and Lotus Notes, and hands-on “labs” with David helping people through the fundamentals of making decisions on their stuff.  As a member, you can access all of these in the media library and even take them on the go to watch offline (downloads not available for guest pass members, sorry!).We have many new exciting webinars coming in 2011, including one on OmniFocus.

We wish you all the best.

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Here’s a sneak peak at our new GTD® Managing Projects Audio Set releasing soon.  This new set includes 6 CDs chock full of a tips, tricks and education on the GTD models for seamlessly managing your projects.  You’ll hear from David Allen and two senior coaches on the best practices and common questions people implementing GTD are asking about.

Listen to a 5-minute sample track:

Stay tuned to Productive Living or GTD Times to learn when it’s available.  Soon! We promise!

11/19/2010 update: It’s now available! Visit the David Allen Company store.

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One of the things that helps me stay current with my GTD system and not have the Weekly Review feel like a major renovation, is that I review my Next Actions lists whenever I feel like it and as often as I can.  Whenever I coach people who have slipped out of regular reviews (call it daily quick scans and weekly thorough reviews) I see them start to triage all of the “important stuff” onto their Calendar, which they know they will look at.  Then the calendar becomes an fuzzy merge of the stuff that really belongs on the calendar (time-specific and day-specific) with the “stuff-I-put-on-the-calendar-so-it-doesn’t-get-lost-on-a-list.” Inevitably, they find themselves carrying things over from day to day just to keep it alive.

Do you need to review every list every day? Of course not. But use those weird windows of time that show up in your day to pop over to a list for a little visit. You might start to find it’s like meeting up with a good friend who is happy to see you.

More about Kelly…

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As many of you know, David is an enthusiastic fan of Lotus Notes with eProductivity.  Here’s a 4 minute video of the transformation of an executive David coached who implemented GTD along with eProductivity (and the amazing ripple effect that also had on his direct reports.)

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Two of our Senior Coaches, Leslie Harradine and Kelly Forrister, are doing another one-hour Webinar on Digging Out From Backlog. It was such a popular Webinar the first time around (watch the archive on GTD Connect,) that it’s being offered again with more in-depth tips, tricks and strategies.  Seems like backlog is a common challenge for many GTDers (and you thought it was just you??).

When: Thursday, September 16 @ 10am Pacific Time

How to register: It’s free for all GTD Connect members. If you are a current member,register for the Webinar on the home page of GTD Connect. If you’re not a member, but would like to attend this event, [Read more →]

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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.

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No matter what level or field we find ourselves on, whether it is the corporate/professional aspect or our personal/home life, we set priorities and act on what we think is important. We could call that “simplifying” our lives. And by that we do not mean lowering our standards, but rather focusing on the ones that are most important to us.

This same world view somehow seems to be plagued with jargon about priorities: how to set them, how to classify them, and how to sort them out. It claims to give us a sense that we are somehow in control. Several of my clients are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of the stuff they have to process and even more so as their resources to make the things they need to make happen get reduced, sometimes to the point of scarcity. So their question is “how do I set my priorities in any given day, so I know I am not wasting my time? So I know I am doing the right thing?”  The underlying question may well be, “How do I know that I am in control, so that what I am doing is the most relevant; the one that adds the most value?” [Read more →]

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Question: I listened to your Webinar on Procrastination (you can find this Webinar on GTD Connect, our online learning center) and have found that I have trouble starting to “do” anything when I know there is a lot of unprocessed stuff.  I have the type of job whereby e-mails, paper, and other things accumulate rapidly so I am often “stuck” with the inability to start on the action list if my Inbox (both paper and electronic) are filling up  with unprocessed items.  I would be interested in any comments you may have.

I replied: I would say that I am similar. It’s natural actually to want to get In to zero before feeling free and confident in the Doing.  You won’t intuitively trust that the choice you are making is the best one if there are things lurking in the inbox that might be a better choice. However, as you get better and better at GTD and collecting/processing/organizing, a trust factor comes in to know you WILL get back to it when you can. David Allen often says that the more you trust you have a process, you will be more comfortable letting it get out of control.

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