“Yes, but not the way most people seem to understand goal setting. In my experience, the real value of defining desired futures is not so much in the world they describe, but the change in perception the process of setting goals fosters.”

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

THE VALUE OF GOALS

What we focus on changes what we notice. Our brain filters information, seeing one thing in a situation instead of something else, based on what we identify with, what we have our attention on, what we’re looking for—more or less consciously.

The reason for long-term goals is the permission they give us to identify with the greatest value we can so it changes our filtered perceptions. The future never shows up (have you noticed?—it’s always today!). But playing with it as a working blueprint can be a remarkably useful tool to see things (and how to do and have them) that you never saw before.

Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 4 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.

In this Dorm Room Tycoon interview on huffduffer, David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, explains how entrepreneurs can be in control, and why planning and having an overall purpose are keys to success.

David Allen: Getting Things Done Interview – Getting your Startup Under Control: Business

GTD Times reader Jenna contributed her ideas on how to adapt GTD to writing.

A Writer’s GTD Journey

About a year ago I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with my list of unfinished projects. I’m a writer and had about a dozen scripts, stories, and article ideas backlogged on my computer. Not only I was not completing any of the projects, I was adding new ideas every day. Each new idea, rather than filling me with excitement at the prospect of undertaking a new creative project, instead filled me with dread and anxiety because I felt like I was looking at corpses—great concepts that would never be brought to fruition. It was obvious I was falling apart. I needed structure, an actionable plan for organizing my projects. I stumbled across Getting Things Done and this is what I embarked upon:

Collect. Address the items that are concerning you. I made a list of all my unfinished projects. It was like an endless scroll.

Process. Make decisions about the value of these items and what you will add or subtract to them. I looked at each project and decided whether or not this was something I actually had a desire to work on or whether it was something that at some point I had decided would just look good in a portfolio. I trimmed a list of about 20 projects down to five.

Organize. Put your value decisions in places you are likely to return to repeatedly. I made printouts of my notes on the ‘chosen’ projects and pinned them up in sequential order in my office. The ‘dismissed’ projects were filed in a binder that would be taken up in the future, but would not be thought of until then. These projects were essentially on hold. New project ideas were added to this binder, but not elaborated upon in any fashion.

Review. Reevaluate the judgments you’ve made from a new perspective. Now that my to-do list was manageable I was able to look at each project in a new light. Instead of each project anxiously reminding me of an unfinished aspect of another project, I looked at each one as its own island of productivity.

Do. Now get to work! What I used to consider the hard part—actually writing the stories and articles—turned into an enjoyable luxury because I no longer felt weighed down by scattered notions. Each new completed project made room for a dismissed project from the binder to join the wall. It was still an endless cycle, but it had a sustainable structure now.

GTD seems to me a very intuitive way of managing your psychology so that it does not disrupt workflow. In fact, the GTD system seems to help one minimize the emotional and psychological distractions that arise from the stress of living.

My essay this month talks about the wisdom of “the way out is through.” I hope it gives you some good direction on dealing with what may be dragging on your psyche and systems. Defining what you are not doing is as important as knowing what you are doing for stress-free productivity. Having things you’ve told yourself to do (implicit agreements with yourself), still undone, can be deadly to your confidence and energy if they are not appropriately managed by constant renegotiation with yourself.

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH

Most of you reading this don’t even have time to finish to perfection your current set of projects, even if you stopped the world from giving you anything new, and you had several months or even years within which to do them.

It’s strange, but I work with people to define the work they are not doing.

There’s an old Gestalt theorem — the way out is through. Defining what we could do, and what we are doing right now instead — managing the triage strategically with ourselves and others, is a key component of managing ourselves and our workflow these days. You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not doing.

There is no catching up. There is only catching on.

Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 4 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.

David answered this way . . .

It’s hard to get it any simpler than this:

• Keep meaningful stuff out of your head
• Make action and outcome decisions about the stuff sooner than later
• Organize reminders of those items in easy to view places
• Review it all and keep it current

Any one of those elements without the others won’t really produce that much value.

This webinar is free for GTD Connect members.  You can sign up for a free trial membership, and when you log in, you’ll find the webinar information on the home page of GTD Connect.  You’ll also see an extensive list of previous webinars you can access in the archives. (Partial listing shown here.)

The free trial membership is easy to begin—just first name and email address—with no cost or commitment.

You can participate in special GTD® webinars featuring two of the most popular and requested topics:  Keys to Mastering Workflow and Implementing GTD with Microsoft Outlook.  These webinars are presented a la carte for $49 each.

GTD Webinar: Keys to Mastering Workflow

Offered live only on Tuesday, November 29^th or Tuesday, December 13^th from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm PT

This fast-paced and inspirational webinar is based on the best practices of GTD’s five phases of mastering workflow. From capturing everything that has your attention to making trusted choices – this webinar will elevate your productivity levels and prepare you to get the right things done.

GTD Webinar: Implementing GTD with Outlook®

Offered live only on Thursday, December, 1^st or Thursday, December 15^th from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm PT

Join this structured and practical webinar to learn to effectively track projects and next actions, set up your email folders, and create a system for reference storage on Outlook. Get your life in control by managing your bigger vision while tracking the small details. 

Note: These webinars will be held live only and will not be available for replay. Don’t miss your opportunity to learn from an expert coach through these live events.

Register now for these live 90-minute interactive webinars. To increase learning and interaction, implementation questions via chat will be encouraged and answered throughout the webinars.

WHAT TO ORGANIZE:

Organizing identifies the various placeholders or “buckets” where actions and support material are stored that you’ve processed. David Allen has also described organizing as simply “things are stored based on what they mean to you.”  The four primary action lists are:

• Projects
• Next Actions (with optional subcategories by context such as Calls, Computer, Office, Home, Errands, Agendas (people and meetings) and Anywhere)
• Waiting For
• Calendar (for time-specific actions, day-specific actions, and day-specific information only)

Organizing also includes setting up your workspace, a reference system for non-actionable information, and incubation systems (Someday Maybe and Tickler Systems) for possible later actions.

SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN CHOOSING YOUR TOOLS:

• 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? Are you okay with your information being in the cloud?
• 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 scalable?
• Can you easily learn how to use it?
• What are you willing to pay for it?
• What does it need to sync to?

 ORGANIZING SUCCESS FACTORS:

• A good rule of thumb when choosing tools (especially your Calendar, Waiting For and Next Action lists which will get the heaviest traffic) is “can I maintain this easily if I am sick in bed with the flu?” That will tell you whether you’ve overbuilt it or not.  Don’t build your system at the height of your creativity and complex thinking.  It’s too risky that you won’t be there all the time and won’t be able to easily work your system when you need to.
• Settle on something as a list manager.  Yup. This isn’t marriage. It’s just a list manager. Let go of the idea that the perfect list manager is out there, if it’s holding you back from picking something that will be good enough at least to try. You can always change it later if you really need to.
• If you’re still on a learning curve with GTD, you may not want to add to that learning curve by picking tools you’re not familiar with. Instead, start with something you already know, like a paper planner.

Now, I know I haven’t mentioned specific tools.  There are a rare few that David Allen has personally vetted for GTD. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of tools that will be a fantastic support for you though. And there are loads of suggestions from your fellow GTDers on this blog and in our Forums. Bottom line? Pick tools you’ll be more attracted to than repelled by.  Trust your lists for holding your reminders more than holding them in your mind, or your mind will fire you and take the job back.

Just joining this series? Read part one on Collect and part two on Process or part four on Review.

Kelly Forrister is a senior coach & seminar presenter with the David Allen Company

• Why bright people procrastinate the most
• Dumbing down your brain
• Typical causes and cures
• The bottom line of why we procrastinate

This webinar is free for GTD Connect members.  You can sign up for a free trial membership, and when you log in, you’ll find the webinar information on the home page of GTD Connect.

And coming up in January, GTD Connect members will have another opportunity to participate in the hugely popular 14-day GTD Challenge.  Members who did the recent 14-day GTD Challenge had this to say:

“Great webinar by Meg and Kelly as usual. I liked your advice on picking ‘Wins’ for the 14 days, instead of trying to climb the entire mountain at once.”

“Coaching from the webinar has gotten me more relaxed and re-energized about GTD.”

“The Webinar really motivated me to get back on track. Though I’ve been really busy, I’ve made time to get clear and current again.”

The free trial membership is easy to begin—just first name and email address—with no cost or commitment.

WHAT TO PROCESS:

Processing is the core fundamental thinking that defines the meaning of each item collected. Outcomes and next actions are determined for actionable items, and the non-actionable items are identified as trash, something potentially actionable in the future, or reference material. This decision process transforms unclear stuff into defined work.

Download a free version of the GTD Workflow Map illustrating Collect, Process, and Organize or view the classic version on page 32 of the Getting Things Done book.

KEY PROCESSING QUESTIONS:

1. What is it?
2. Is it actionable?
3. What’s the desired outcome? If it is multi-step, write it on your Projects/Outcomes list.
4. What’s the next (physical/visible) action? Write it on the appropriate Next Actions list.

PROCESSING SUCCESS FACTORS:

Give yourself enough processing time*.  Most people need an hour to an hour and a half per day of total processing time to process new inputs.  You can estimate how much time you need by factoring 30 seconds to process each input. For example, if you get 60 emails a day, you’ll need 1/2 hour of total time to process your email inbox to zero. By total time, we don’t necessarily mean in one block of uninterrupted time. It can also mean total time throughout the day.

Processing is not doing, it’s deciding. The only “doing” time recommended during processing are those items that will take less than 2 minutes to complete.

*processing is considered “defining work” time in GTD’s Threefold Nature of Work model described on page 50 of the Getting Things Done book.

Just joining this series? Read part one on Collect or part three on Organize.

Kelly Forrister is a senior coach & seminar presenter with the David Allen Company

GTD has made a significant impact on my life, and I’m glad to share a specific technique that has worked for me.

I format my Action Items list in a spreadsheet. It’s really convenient to add items as they come in chronologically or during the processing of  ”in.” Then the items can be sorted according to context. This is easily done by just having three columns in the spreadsheet:

1) Context (errands, @computer,  etc.)
2) The item itself
3) Notes such as phone numbers, reference data, referral name, etc.

You can process “in” without wasting time inserting rows in order to put like items together. Just add more items at the bottom of the list. It is a simple procedure to sort the data by context, and BAM – action items are grouped according to context. 

It has worked best for me to keep this spreadsheet on my desktop. This way I don’t have to open my spreadsheet program, open a folder, find the document, then open the document. A quick double-click on the desktop opens the application and the document, and I’m ready to scribe.

Editor’s note:  You can also add a keyword for projects and actions, and then sort by the Item column to see the Projects with their next actions.

From long To Do lists to overcommitted schedules, we tend to take on too much.  When is the last time you said no to someone when they asked you for something?  It can be hard to do.

Most of us want to help others when they need it.  There are times, however, when we need to say no.  I know I don’t like to say no.  I like to help people.  It feels good when someone wants you to do something for them.

It may help to start weighing that commitment against what you’re trying to accomplish in other facets of your life.

Here are three questions to ask yourself when faced with saying yes or no:

1. Do you have the capacity to say yes? If you have the capacity, great, go for it.  Say yes.  Make sure you can commit 100% though.  Committing and not delivering is much worse than not committing at all.  You’ll know if you have capacity because with GTD, you already have an inventory of your projects and actions, the things you’re already commited to.

2. If you say no, do you know how to do it eloquently? Saying no could seem harsh on the surface, so sometimes you need to explain why.  An example is simply saying, “I have a lot on my plate and I don’t think I can give you 100% of my attention right now.  I’d love to help in the future if you need me.”  There’s not a lot someone can say to that.  You’re being honest.  Most people will respect that.

3. Are you the right person for the job? Just because someone asks you for help doesn’t mean you have the ability to help them.  If you have no idea how to fix your mom’s dishwasher would you commit to fixing it?  I don’t know the first thing about fixing dishwashers. (My expertise pretty much stops at changing light bulbs.)  Telling my mom that I can help would be doing her a disservice.

Same goes for work.  Your boss asks you to compile some information on an upcoming project.  He tells you he needs it by tomorrow morning.  You’ve got three other projects you’re working on that are equally important.  Do you have the courage to tell your boss no?  Again, explaining how you can’t give 100% to it and offering a different solution will help.

Knowing when to say yes or no is a big part of stress-free productivity.

Help manage overwhelm and uncertainty by providing affordable, convenient, and accessible GTD training to those critical workers who are responsible for taking your organization to the next level.

This certification program is perfect for training and empowering staff, managers and front-line workers for the constant change and complexities facing your organization today.

You can be certified to lead the engaging and fast paced 4 ½-hour GTD Essentials Workshop, based on the five phases of Mastering Workflow.  With in-house training, your staff will be ready to get the right things done. 

The certification program includes, but is not limited to, a three-day training workshop, in-house practice sessions and a tailored virtual workflow coaching session to review your personal GTD system.  The certification also offers a Master Trainer’s ongoing support and an annual maintenance program.  Educational and marketing support materials are also available.

To apply for our Certification Program, please contact us directly at 805-646-8432 or gtdessentials@davidco.com with any questions. We are taking applications for our next Program Workshop in San Diego, October 4-6, 2011.

Click here to find out more about GTD Essentials Certification Program.

If you have trouble downloading or accessing our podcast RSS page, you can also listen or download the interview directly from KQED: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201107291000

I am a big fan of David Allen’s GTD system. He has written what I feel is the greatest productivity book in the history of the world.  If you have not read it and you are an overwhelmed momma then please borrow from the library or buy yourself one.  It is what keeps me sane.  It allows me to find time in the crazy busy momma world. The best part of the system is the physical inbox, what I call my big fat inbox.

The book is called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. It simply rocks.

His system in a very tiny nutshell for me is something like this.

1. Collect all the Stuff and Write all the Stuff –anything that comes into mommy land goes into my physical inbox.  Mail, school papers, work papers, catalogues.  Any awesome mommy idea that comes to my head gets written down and put into my physical inbox.  This includes recipe ideas, family outing ideas, article ideas, coupon inserts, field trip forms etc.  It can really get full.
2. Process the stuff into projects, tasks, or file it away for a rainy day, just in case, or a momma memory file. And clear out the box every single day all the way to the bottom. Projects can be planning family outing, planning purchases, meal planning or putting brochures in a file for my dream vacation.
3. Review, plan, do.  This really just means planning, scheduling for how and when all the things that need getting done will get done.
   
   

I cannot tell you how easy it is to get things done, when all of it can be found either in the inbox or filed away in a nice, crispy, new labeled folder.

This system is perfect for the mom who has ever:

• Forgotten or lost a field trip form or misplaced a report card to sign in and turn into the teacher.
• Had a great coupon for 10 dollars off at the favorite family restaurant and thrown it away by accident.
• Lost the best recipe for no-roll piecrust.
• Misplaced the electric bill.
• Misplaced the baby’s shot record.
• Forgot to charge the camera battery for the big birthday bash.

Is this you?  I know it was me a time or two before I purchased and started using my big fat inbox every single day. If you don’t have one, then give it a try. You can use anything you have on hand that is big enough to hold what you process in one day.

The essentials for this system are as follows:

1. Big Fat Inbox
2. File Folders
3. Hanging File Folders — it is just easier to pull out the plain folder and leave the hanging one in place.
4. Filing system
5. Label Maker or Black Permanent Marker – I simply cannot live
   without my label maker.

*Note: when I process my inbox I place all my bills in a magnetic box on my bulletin board.  The key is to keep them all in one place where you will not forget them.

Have a super productive day!

Momma

If you already have a physical inbox:

Simple Daily Challenge for the day is to clear it out!

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

TIME MANAGEMENT IS NOT THE ISSUE

Most everyone these days admits they could use better “time management.” But the reason it has not really been addressed to any universal satisfaction is because time management isn’t about managing time. If it were, just buying and using a calendar (and a good watch) would handle it.

Keep reading David’s article.

Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 3 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.

I have been practicing GTD for about 8 years. I use the word practicing deliberately, because it takes time, effort and patience to improve my skills.  Early last year, I made the bold decision to go from a paper-based system to using tasks in a computerized system.  I had observed how much of my work was generated on the computer.  It seemed that I ended up never fully capturing the totality of my work in my paper system because of this. I thought switching to a computer-based system would be the perfect way for me to finally get on top of all my work, get clear on my projects and their outcomes, etc.

I was so very, very wrong.

I have spent the last year in agony, enslaved to an elegantly designed system, which had me sucked in at such a minute level that the whole thing revolted me. I almost never did a weekly review. Looking at my lists happened sporadically. I dreaded trying to locate something in the system. I was miserable.

Then about 2 months ago I chucked it. I went back to paper, and a sense of calmness has enveloped me ever since. Am I perfect in my weekly reviews? Hardly. But happier? You bet. Here is what I learned through all this:

• GTD takes hits as being overly complex/proscriptive. I say this is solely “user error.” I did this exact thing for the last year. I captured way too much in the system, then couldn’t handle all the details and thus got stuck.  Don’t allow this to happen to you! It masks GTD’s beauty.
• My experiment finally drove home for me the importance of the project list, which I now supplement with a weekly priority list. If this is all I learned from my run amuck with technology, then it was worth it.  
• I need to do my work where I do my work. I don’t have my laptop with me everywhere. I don’t have an iPad. But I carry my notebook with me always.  So having to transfer information from my paper notes into the computer was painful and virtually never happened. Now, I easily flip a few pages, find the right list, and off I go. Ironically, I find that I have gotten that much better at listing “to-do’s” generated in email onto my paper list, more simply. Imagine that.
• I need to slow down. There is something about pen on paper that soothes me, brings clarity. It makes me more intentional when I have to take a few minutes to write something.  With software-based tasks, three clicks and I created another something to do, which just added to the never-ending pile of things I kept meaning to look at but never did.
• Being 100% complete is just too much for me. I do much better at 90%. Have I captured everything I need to do? Not really. There are several small things that if I thought about it are missing. But you know what? I am okay with that. I just don’t think about them, they don’t take up psychic RAM, and I don’t get overwhelmed with my ginormous work plan.

I invite you to listen to the voice in your head as you journey with GTD. Do what feels right, not what is the coolest.  This system/process/approach should be in service to YOU and what works for YOU. There is enough in our lives we have to do—processes that are forced upon us, unreasonable timelines, and more. GTD shouldn’t be one of those. It should make you feel good.

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.

A principle of Getting Things Done is to habitually write down everything that has your attention. Writing things down can be done with pen on paper, or typing into a computer, or any method that externalizes the thought. The key is to get it out of your head.

Then you need to assess whether you are going to commit to doing something about what you’ve written down. If so, what is the desired outcome? What does done look like? And what is the next action to get to that point? Alternately, you might decide not to do anything about it right now — it is something you will park on a someday/maybe list to reconsider in the future. Sometimes such a decision is difficult. Sometimes it is the first time you’ve really faced the issue with clarity, instead of merely having a nagging feeling about something you dread. There is a tendency, therefore, to not write down everything, to write down everything except those really tough issues.

Writing down everything is fundamentally different than writing down most things. The standing order to yourself to “write down everything” is not at all the same as “write down everything except that which I feel too bad about.” According to GTD, writing down everything is supposed to be an exercise that is free of value judgments. You are not supposed to think about, analyze, measure, assess, assign importance to, weigh against other things, etc. You are supposed to capture everything that has your attention as a discrete phase. If you are being selective in what you capture, you are cheating yourself. No matter how pristine and functional your trusted system appears to be, you will know it is incomplete. Most likely, especially during a review, you will keep remembering everything you did not want to capture. Your lists will become repellent to you as they will remind you, ironically, of what is conspicuously not on them.

If you had written down the things you dread, and made an up-front decision about them, they would be on a list somewhere. Perhaps as a project, a new area of focus, or a someday/maybe. By doing that, you have accepted the situation. By avoiding it, you have avoided acceptance. Putting something on a list in a GTD way, is really about acceptance.

The next time you review your GTD system, strive for acceptance of everything in your life, everything in your head, and write down what you have avoided so far. Be as honest with yourself as you can, and strive for being free.

Perhaps a good exercise is to ask yourself if those who know you best looked at your lists, what would they know was missing from them. It might not be easy to capture everything, and it might take months. It might be emotionally exhausting and you might find you have to pace yourself. Nothing is wrong with that.

Lastly, do not think everything you are holding back from your lists is negative stuff. What hopes and dreams do you have that you are not writing down? What are you avoiding writing down because you feel embarrassed or silly or irresponsible, or childish, or unrealistic, by having those thoughts? Learn to accept those and write them down too, for in them may be the beginning to your life’s fulfillment and greatest joys.

Mike: Let me ask you this. How important is it to follow this system exactly as you’ve outlined? I read the book a few years ago. I’ve implemented the system. I’m probably not using it to its fullest. What’s your perspective on that?

 

 David: Well, you either want nothing on your mind or you want to keep stuff on your mind. If you want nothing on your mind, you absolutely must rigorously download everything that is potentially meaningful, decide the outcome and action steps embedded in those, and park those in some place you trust you’re going to look at, at the right time.

(The video is streaming from YouTube, so you may need to give it a moment to load.)

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Getting GTD onto cruise control

If you’re like most people who’ve begun the implementation of the GTD^® methods, you’ve had some starts and stops in your journey. While my approach is really nothing more than advanced common sense, doing these practices consistently requires some re-grooving of your behavioral patterns. And some of those, though not optimally productive, are likely deeply rooted. How does “doing GTD” become second nature—something you live by but rarely even think about?

Keep reading David’s article.

Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 3 weeks.  You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.

An obvious but rarely noticed tool may be my key to ultimate productivity.

At David Allen Company, we consider many things when setting up a workspace. I recently reconstructed my workspace in a way that has stepped up my energy and focus to a whole new level. I made this improvement by switching to a stand-up desk. This is an amazing tool that has helped me to be more productive and ergonomically correct; a win for my company and for me.

The benefits of a stand up desk have really surprised me.

I didn’t realize that the reason it felt so hard to sit at my desk during the day was because I am naturally inclined to move a lot. I have energy coursing through my body every minute of the day and found it increasingly difficult to stay focused for a long amount of time without getting up to move. I was blaming my lack of focus on a need for social interaction, because I’d get up to mingle or grab a cup of tea. But it was actually something much simpler.

Many people are comfortable when they are sedentary, or prefer a comfortable chair while working. However, we can’t assume that this works for everyone. It took someone else in our office – OK, the someone is my sister – requesting a stand up desk, on a suggestion from her GTD coach, for me to see the light on this issue. When I saw her working on her feet I realized that she was embodying a free physical space, which allowed her to move easily from her inbox, to her files, to her shelves and back to her computer. When I started using a stand-up desk, not only did it inspire a more efficient movement in workflow, but it was a huge relief to know that there was a way for me to feel energized while doing my work, and not locked into one position all day.

Since I have gotten my stand-up desk, I have noticed the following benefits:
• I am much more inclined to work through a solid block of time without needing an interruption for my energy to explode.
• When I do need to sit, I can do so in smaller increments and stretch my legs out which eliminates the need for me to interrupt my work to stretch or take walks (although I still love taking walks on my break).
• I no longer feel the tightness in my legs when I walk out of the office at the end of the day, nor do I dread sitting down again for my commute home.
• I feel the release of a “constricted” mindset, which inspires creativity and freedom in my work.
• I have quicker access to my surrounding workspace.

For those of you who have become fans of yoga, Pilates or stretch classes on your lunch breaks, please consider that movement can exist throughout your entire day. And for those who don’t participate in those classes, it might make sense for you to take a look at how you can keep your energy fluid and vibrant. Do not be discouraged if you work in an office that has not offered this option; you might be surprised at the reaction you get when you explain what effects it might have on your efficiency. Remember that your mind is constantly processing data, but your body is also taking in a constant flow of information and energy. Make sure you are taking care of both.

Kari McGee is an enthusiastic team member at David Allen Company. She works on the administrative team for our GTD Essentials program and GTD Interactive course. We hope you enjoy her story!

If you’d rather use Outlook just as it is out of the box, you’ll get value from our downloadable GTD and Outlook Setup Guides, written by David Allen and the Coaches. There are guides for Outlook 2003 and 2007. A guide for Outlook 2010 is on the way this year. GTD Times readers will be among the first to know when the release date is announced.

The purpose of having the granular next action on a list is to define what “doing” looks like and where it happens, so you can finish your thinking about what to do about the commitment (outcome, project, etc.)  That said, another reason for the granularity on the action lists is to subvert the procrastination that potentially shows up because of a pre-conscious insecurity about success.  As in, “I don’t want to step into something I don’t think I can control.”  If the enormity of the next action causes you to falter, then it’s advantageous to define a smaller, doable chunk.  For example, “draft plot ideas” instead of “draft great American novel.”

 For more on this topic, see this excellent article in The New Yorker that mentioned David’s book Getting Things Done, and the value of the GTD approach.

90+ % of the to do lists I’ve seen are incomplete inventories of still-unclear things.  The Next Action definition (if you’re really getting down to having no ambiguity about the next visible physical activity required to move something forward), actually finishes the thinking you’ve implicitly agreed with yourself that you’ll do.  “Mom” is an unclarified to do item.  But when “Mom” is translated into “Celebrate Mom’s birthday with a party” as a project outcome, then “Call Sis about what we should do for Mom’s birthday” is a clear next action.  Because “Mom” is vague, it still triggers stress when you look at it on a list.  “Call Sis . . . ” triggers action and positive engagement.

Tackling a 5th-Grade Science Project

My 11-year-old daughter came home with a huge packet of science project information a few weeks ago, and the entire family started feeling the stress.  Before the world of computers and fancy tri-fold poster board, science projects were a cinch.  I remember hunkering down at my dining room table with construction paper, some magic markers, and a simple sheet of white poster board.  But today’s children have a lot more pressure.  They need charts and graphs, digital photographs, and well-written hypotheses.  It’s enough to overwhelm the children and the parents.

Instead of letting the stress get to me, I decided to apply the principles I learned from Getting Things Done and show my daughter that projects don’t have to give us headaches.  Here’s what we did:

Step 1: We read through the packet of information and made a list of tasks based on context. 

My daughter got out a little sticky-note pad, and she divided her tasks into the following categories:

• On My Own
• With Mom @ Home, and
• Errands

Step 2: Each day we started checking things off the list, depending on our energy level, schedule, etc.  When we were out at the mall one evening, my daughter said, “Since we’re running errands, can we pick up the poster board and notebook I need from the art store?”  Fifteen minutes later, it was done.

When I was helping the other children with their homework after school, my daughter did the typing and research she’d already determined she could do on her own.  Even though she was a little timid at first, it turned out great.

On the days we didn’t have anything planned, we looked at the list of things we needed to do together.  Her project was to see what would happen to a loaf of bread when one of four ingredients was left out.  So one day, I stayed in my pajamas until noon while we mixed up five different little loaves of bread, including the “control” loaf.  Then we ate the tasty ones for lunch.

The greatest part was that whenever my daughter would say, “Mom, I don’t want to do the Science Fair,” I would say, “Don’t think about the whole project.  Just think about your next action.  What is the next, specific thing you need to do?”  Since she’d already taken the time to identify each task, it only took a second for her to figure out the next action.  She became much more calm and confident as the project progressed.

Step 3: We set a date on the calendar for when we would put the entire project together.  Prepping each component of the project wasn’t too difficult, but we knew we needed an entire evening to print and assemble everything onto the poster board.  Our little three-year-old LIVES for projects like this, and we were sure that involving him would spell “catastrophe.”

When my other daughter and husband bought tickets to attend the Daddy-Daughter Dance at school one Friday night, we decided that would be the perfect time to have our own party, science-fair style. We put it on the calendar and didn’t worry about the details one bit.  We tucked the three-year-old in bed and had such a fun time cutting our print-outs, chatting, gluing, and enjoying our work together.  We even learned to make photo collages together using Picasa, and she was so excited to make the background purple.

Tackling the Science Fair together strengthened our relationship, gave me a chance to teach my daughter about project planning, and even provided a tasty lunch along the way.  The smile on her face when we finished that project was priceless, and now we’re already brainstorming for next year.

April Perry is the mother of four children and the Co-Director of The Power of Moms.

Here’s how Community Contributor Meghan Wilker uses them:

In the workplace, one of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by being effective. And, in this era of constant — and I mean CONSTANT — interruption, one of the best ways to be effective is to be strategic about how you communicate with others.

Humanity has been stricken with several email-related diseases over the past few years. Two in particular are insidious contributors to the interruptive environment.

 The first is what I call “Forward-itis.” This affliction causes people to forward every email they receive without pulling out the important points, or thinking about who should really get them. These emails are often accompanied by the dreaded label, “FYI. Read below.”

A related, and often concurrent, condition called “High Priority Hyperbole” causes one to believe that every email they send deserves a few extra exclamation points.

These bad habits, combined with instant messages, texts, tweets, and meetings mean that we can get trapped in a near-constant state of reactivity. I mean, gosh, look at those exclamation points on that email! We really ought to respond quickly right?! Not always. It’s just not effective for us, or those around us.

Enter the Agenda

The agenda is one of the unsung power tools of GTD. With agendas, one captures everything they need to talk to a particular person (or group) about so that when we are in the presence of that person, we can remember all the things we need to say.

Why is this so powerful? In this age of ever-present interruptions, an agenda allows you to thoughtfully gather everything you need to say, which can greatly reduce the stress you place on yourself, and on the person you need to talk to.  It’s really just a specialized form of a list — and we all know how great a good list can be.

Agendas at Work

Throughout the day, issues come up that I need to ask my boss about. Instead of bugging her about each one (in person or over email/instant messenger), I collect those items onto an agenda and — at least once a day — check in with her, run through my list, and move on. What’s important is that I don’t forget to talk to her about things because they’re all collected on an agenda. If our time gets cut short and I can’t get to something, it stays on the agenda until we have time to talk about it.

 If something comes up that doesn’t require us to speak face-to-face, I can still use the idea of an agenda and gather topics into one email (instead of peppering her with 50 emails a day).

Another way I’ve implemented this agenda/list approach is by gathering all of a client’s “high-priority” emails and sending a single reply at the end of the day. This doesn’t always stop the tidal wave of exclamation point-riddled emails, but it can curb them a bit (and my client appreciates my organized approach to their barrage of emails). More importantly, it helped save my time, and my sanity.

On the flip side, as a manager I deeply appreciate the people who report to me who do the same.  I feel like they respect my time, because they aren’t coming in my office every 5 minutes with a new question. What they are telling me is that they can proactively manage both their time, and mine.

Dropping by someone’s office every two minutes (or forwarding them an email at the same frequency) indicates an inability to manage oneself effectively. And a huge part of being an effective and noticeable employee is the ability to manage oneself.

So, agendas. Give ‘em a try. You may be surprised at the huge impact you’ll see with such a seemingly simple tool.

Aside from the fact that the volume of what people need to organize is often light-years beyond what they imagine, there is much more to getting a grip on your “work” than most realize. Managing the flow of work can be approached from many altitudes, as there are many different levels of defining what your “work” really is. Whereas we may have some lower levels in control, there are often incomplete and unclear issues at higher levels that can and need to be addressed, to really get it all under control. And often there are issues about the nature and volume of work that cannot be resolved viewing it from an inappropriate level. We have roughly categorized “work” into six levels, or horizons of focus.

This is admittedly a somewhat arbitrary delineation, but it has proven valuable for many clients to frame their conversations, questions, and issues within this context. We use an airplane model:

Runway:
This is the ground floor – the huge volume of actions and information you currently have to do and to organize, including emails, calls, memos, errands, stuff to read, stuff to file, things to talk to staff about, etc. If you got no further input in your life, this would likely take you 300-500 hours to finish. Just getting a complete and current inventory of the next actions required at this level is quite a feat.

10,000 level:
This is the inventory of your projects – all the things that you have commitments to finish, that take more than one action step to complete.  These “open loops” are what create most of your actions. These projects include anything from “look into having a birthday party for Susan” to “buy Acme Brick Co.” Most people have between 30 and 100 of these. If you were to fully and accurately define this list, it would undoubtedly generate many more and different actions than you currently have identified.

20,000 level:
What’s your job? Driving the creation of a lot of your projects are the four to seven major areas of responsibility that you at least implicitly are going to be held accountable to have done well, at the end of some time period, by yourself if not by someone else (e.g. boss.) With a clear and current evaluation of what those areas or responsibility are, and what you are (and are not) doing about them, there are likely new projects to be created, and old ones to be eliminated.

30,000 level:
Where is your job going? What will the role you’re in right now be looking like 12-18 months from now, based on your goals and on the directions of the changes at that level? We’ve met very few people who are doing only what they were hired to do.  These days, job descriptions are moving targets. You may be personally changing what you’re doing, given personal goals; and the job itself may need to look different, given the shifting nature of the work at the departmental or divisional level. Getting this level clear always creates some new projects and actions.

40,000 level:
The goals and direction of the larger entity within which you operate heavily influence your job and your professional direction. Where is your company going to be, one to three years from now? How will that be affecting the scope and scale of your job, your department, and your division? What external factors (like technology) are influencing the changes? How is the definition and relationship with your customers going to be changing, etc.? Thinking at this level invariably surfaces some projects that need to be defined, and new action steps to move them forward.

50,000 level:
What is the work you are here to do on the planet, with your life? This is the ultimate bigger picture discussion. Is this the job you want? Is this the lifestyle you want? Are you operating within the context of your real values, etc.? From an organizational perspective, this is the Purpose and Vision discussion. Why does it exist? No matter how organized you may get, if you are not spending enough time with your family, your health, your spiritual life, etc., you will still have “incompletes” to deal with, make decisions about, and have projects and actions about, to get completely clear.