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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David Allen shares his perspective on the antidote to the curse of the eternally urgent in his latest educational newsletter.

Keep reading David’s article

Subscribe to Productive Living.  It’s free and sent about every 3 weeks. Chock full of lots of great GTD tips, tricks and strategies.

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David Allen was a speaker at the Do Lectures this summer in Wales.  The Do lectures are all about getting a handful of speakers together in one place, in the hope that they may inspire you to go Do something. To give you the tools and the desire to change the things you care about.

Click this link to watch David’s presentation now.

Or click this link to download or play an MP3 of the audio only.

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GTD is an approach that is not tool-specific.  So while it’s important to land on gear (paper or digital) that will stand up to the complexity of your work and personal life, it’s more important that it clearly serves the purpose of reflecting the reminders and information in the most appropriate way for you. The tool won’t decide what something means—you have to do that, and the GTD process is the key.

If anyone is telling you a specific piece of software is required for GTD–good chance they don’t understand GTD.

We do have a few key tools that we personally use and recommend that have gone through David Allen’s extensive vetting process. You can find a link to those in our online store.  If you don’t see your software listed here, it means we do not have a recommendation at this time, but a search on GTD Times and our public Forums should give you quite a few helpful suggestions about what other GTDers are using.

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The next Webinar on GTD Connect, the online learning center for the David Allen Company, will be “Maintaining Control & Perspective in the Daily Grind.” It will be held on Friday, October 15th from 10am-11am Pacific Time.

If you feel like your productivity gets hindered by latest and loudest or you don’t feel in control or have as much perspective as you’d like, this one is for you.  Open to all GTD Connect subscribers (annual, monthly or guest pass).  This is part of the advanced “Black Belt” series running through October, for those who have the basics of GTD down and are ready for more of the sophisticated spins on GTD.

If you can’t make the live event, our webinars are always recorded for replay on the GTD Connect website.  Learn more…

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Studio Edrisa, an East African multimedia team who produces a weekly radio show called Planet Edirisa, interviewed David Allen about his work and bestselling book Getting Things Done. Here’s an excerpt of the interview:

Did your philosophy come together before you actually wrote the book “Getting Things Done”?
The book was really written after 20 to 25 years of developing and researching the model which was the core of my consulting and training business. I didn’t really know what I figured out concerning methodology and how unique it was for about 10 or 15 years. And finally, when I was able to test it in some of the best, busiest and smartest environments and people in the world, I found out that it really did work universally, and I was ready to put it down into a book form. I actually wrote it as a manual – in case I got run over by a bus I wanted to make sure the knowledge I discovered, uncovered and formulated would be available to everyone.

Read more of the interview…

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Coming in October to GTD Connect:  the continuation of our popular “boot camp” style webinars.  Two of our senior coaches lead fast-paced webinars geared toward more advanced GTDers.

Oct 1  - Creating a Fantastic Workspace
Oct 15  - Maintaining Control & Perspective in the Daily Grind
Oct 29  - What Really Has Your Attention?

Register on GTDConnect.com.  These webinars are free for all GTD Connect members.  If you want to take these webinar classes, but don’t want a long-term membership in Connect, try the $48 monthly membership.  It’s easy to cancel–we promise!

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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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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.

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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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