A Community Contribution from April Perry

The first day of school started out great.  My three oldest children dressed in their new clothes, laced up their new shoes, ate a healthy breakfast, and then headed off to school with homemade sack lunches and brightly-colored, fully-stocked pencil cases.  I felt like a wonderful mom.

They returned home seven hours later, happy but tired, toting folders overflowing with paperwork, and that’s when MY work started (I mean…continued).  As I shuffled through more than 50 sheets of fliers, forms, and date-specific notices, I started to feel a little dizzy.  The pile on my counter harbored a LOT of information, most of which needed my attention right that minute.  I was tempted to break into tears or bury my head in a carton of Rocky Road, but then I thought, “Wait a minute.  I’ve been trained in GTD.  I was MADE for situations like this.”   [Read more →]

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

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.  [Read more →]

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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? [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from Jon, who posted this on his blog. We thought other GTDers would resonate with this and Jon’s advice of, “You don’t have to be perfect.”

I refuse to use the word “busy” because in this day and age we are all in the same boat. This year has been an enlightening one for me so far. Truthfully, I decided a couple months ago to take a step back from the constant search to improve. I found myself constantly reading books on getting better at work and life. Also, consistently reading GTD material and listening to podcasts, etc. While this worked for a long time and I tangibly saw the benefits of my learning, I found that it became a vicious pursuit of perfection. The pursuit of perfection is what most of us are after. It’s a noble pursuit. However, it can be an addicting one as well. [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from Carolyn J. Sullivan about her experience with the GTD Weekly Review. We would love to hear your experience with the Weekly Review in the comments.

I’ve been using GTD principles since I was first introduced to them in 1994-95. I was part of a consulting group at Polaroid responsible for supporting cross-functional new product development teams in the areas of effectiveness, organizational learning, and functional expertise. After some research, a colleague found the Time/Design system, and before long we had arranged for David Allen to come in and deliver what was then called the “MAP Seminar.” I don’t exaggerate when I say it changed my life, and I have applied the questions “What’s the desired outcome?” and “What’s the next action?” to every conceivable personal and professional issue since.

The thing that astounds me most about GTD is the fact that, 25 years later, I discover nuances and have epiphanies on a regular basis – this is truly an organic approach that grows with the user. My latest epiphany came a few weeks ago and concerns the dreaded Weekly Review. I thought: “If I feel stress in any given week, it’s because I’m trying to think about several ‘big pictures’ while simultaneously reigning in the chaos that threatens to run away with my sanity!” [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from April Perry

Just about every mother I know has a refrigerator that is completely covered with party invitations, handouts for school assignments, reminders for community events, coupons, and about 50 other things calling out, “Me! Me! Me!”  We’re so afraid of the “out of mind, out of sight” rule, that we want to keep everything that needs our attention smack dab in the middle of the kitchen.

Although this tactic might help us feel slightly organized, the drawbacks greatly outnumber the benefits.  For example, how are moms supposed to calmly make it through the dinner hour when every time they turn around, they’re reminded of all the things they’re not doing?  How are they going to remember which items have associated computer work or which ones require a run to the grocery store?  What happens if an important notice gets buried under alphabet magnets–or stolen by a toddler looking for something to color?  It just doesn’t work. [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from Jim Lindenthal

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A Community Contribution from Jan Cherlet

Hi fellow GTD’ers,

April 9, 2009 was the morning that changed my life. For the 4th time that week, I woke up at 4 am and couldn’t close another eye because of all the things I had to do (recognise this?). But this time I got up and surfed the web for a solution. Pretty fast I ended up with GTD and David Allen. One year later I’m the biggest GTD-fan in Europe (well, in Belgium anyway). The approach David and his team developed, helped me control and overview all the different responsibilities I’m handling. Being a musician in a lot of totally different kinds of music projects, music teacher, project coordinator, husband and father of two wonderful girls (you know, this takes time). A house, a beautiful garden, 3 chickens and a rabbit to maintain. I want to keep in shape–don’t we all–but I love drinking our famous Belgian beers, so this demands some balancing… [Read more →]

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Michael, a GTDer in the community, shared with us about how he used GTD in his job search:

For the longest time, I procrastinated filling out applications. The task just seemed so daunting and hard to manage. By breaking “find a new job” into mini-project, job applications, my whole outlook changed dramatically. All of the sudden, each application I complete is like a personal victory. I move it from @ Apply to @ Waiting For – Jobs, and there is this tremendous sense of accomplishment at seeing how many I’ve completed. At the same time, the master list of jobs has been really helpful, especially during the Weekly Review. Sometimes I review my jobs list and remember that I need to check the status of one of the applications online or need to call to follow-up to see what the status is. There’s this great feeling that nothing is slipping through the cracks.

It really amazed me how well, with a few modifications, the GTD system could handle the job search.

We’ve also heard from people using GTD on their resumes.  Have you?  What would you say about your GTD skills that would stand out to prospective employers?  Leaps long lists in a single bound… Inbox to zero on a regular basis… Will actually capture what you ask me to do…. ?

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On our LinkedIn GTD Group, there’s an interesting discussion going on about how to get started with GTD.  Here’s what member Rosemarie had to say:

I have found that GTD is one of those things where you just need to jump in and try something. I find that my system is just altering a little bit here and there all the time anyway. It’s like gardening, you don’t “finish” as such because there’s always new tips and tricks to try out. But eventually you settle to a basic system that is the basis for your GTD stuff and you work from there.

I would say (and I’m no expert believe me, but this worked for me) just sit down and write out everything you need to do. Make a great big ‘to do’ list (the ‘capture’ part of the system) and then you can start sorting that into things that are actually projects, one-off items, etc. And you probably won’t get everything at that point anyway. But once you have your list and have started organising it and categorising it a bit, you will add things as you go along and you’re away.

Have fun!

Read the whole discussion thread on LinkedIn

You’ll also find great resources on GTD Connect (the 16-part GTD Getting Started series), the GTD System Starter Kit, and the GTD Implementation Guide.  And, as Rosemarie said so well, “jump in and try something!”

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