Here’s a simple calendar guideline from Senior Coach & Presenter Kelly Forrister: If something needs to be done ON a day, it belongs on your calendar. If it can be done ANY day, or BY a day, it goes on a Next Actions list.
DAVID ALLEN
Bestselling author and inventor of
Getting Things Done
Click on the link below to find free articles and diagrams on getting email under control, reference filling, organizing your workspace, time management, and more. You can select from individual articles, or select a zip file to download all at once.
Free GTD articles and handouts.
“People often remark to me that “GTD does take a lot of discipline!” Actually, it doesn’t, any more than taking showers and brushing your teeth require discipline, once the initial unfamiliarity has been overcome. How long does it take to get there? As long as it takes. You’ll be another day older tomorrow, no matter what. So just keep returning, when you stray. Write things down. Decide outcomes and actions. Organize and review them. And you’ll feel more and more uncomfortable when you don’t.”
–David Allen
Our friends in Australia and Eastern Asia have been asking for a webinar that fits their schedule. And here it is!
The Keys to Getting Things Done® webinar is being offered at a special time to support our customers in that part of the world. This live webinar will give a fast and fun overview of the keys to Getting Things Done. You’ll learn about the best practices for managing the five phases of your workflow: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. Walk through the decision-making model for moving your “stuff” to clear outcomes and actions. This is a great overview if you’ve been wanting a better understanding of the big picture of managing your workflow with GTD.
This webinar is being offered at a special time to support our customers in the Australia and Eastern Asia time zones—7am in Singapore, 8am in Tokyo, 10am in Sydney, and 12pm in Auckland, on December 14. Check your time zone.
For more information and to register, click here.
Ever feel like your email processing would be better if your coworkers just sent better emails? David Allen Company is offering a 30-minute Express webinar on this very topic. You’ll hear advice from one of their senior GTD coaches about the best practices for email communications with others—including when to use email, using To vs: Cc, writing effective subject lines, creating agreements about response times, and more. Get tips you can bring back to your teams for more productive email communication.
Tuesday, November 27th from 10am-10:30am. Open to all GTD Connect members. Not a member? Try a free, two-week guest pass, which makes you eligible to sign up for this webinar. Look for the registration link on the home page after after logging in.
There are five phases of your GTD workflow: Collect, Process, Organize, Review & Do. For each phase, there are keys that help you get the right things done with less effort.
If you’re new to GTD, try a live webinar on the Keys to Getting Things Done. And if your GTD implementation is already well established, you can refine your system even more.
The overview is here, or you can get details and register by clicking on the date below that works for you.
Thursday, November 15, 10am Pacific Time
Friday, December 7, 10am Pacific Time
One of our GTD fans on Facebook recently posted about dramatically reducing her email backlog. Good job! How much email backlog do you still have? How would you tackle that as a project? Post a comment about how you would phrase the successful outcome (what does done look like with backlog?), and what your next action is.
The GTD Natural Planning Model is a great way to plan any project. A key step in the model, after deciding on the purpose and sucessful outcome, is to do some brainstorming. Here’s a key for successful brainstorming: Have lots of ideas! How? By encouraging everyone to present their ideas without censoring. Sometimes the apparently bad ideas need to get expressed to clear the way for the obviously good ideas. In the brainstorming phase, do your best to encourage complete expression, be open, non-judgmental, and resist critical analysis. Don’t worry—an idea that really doesn’t fit will get sorted out in the organizing and next action phases. And who knows? The idea that doesn’t fit for this project may be just what is needed for another project.
You can get practical, targeted GTD training with webinars scheduled in September and October. Choose from these topics: Keys to Getting Things Done®, GTD® & Outlook®, and Guided GTD Weekly Review®.
Whether you are setting up your GTD system for the first time, or want to get better at working what you already have, these webinars are the way to go. You’ll get tips for improving your productivity right away in these lively, interactive, bite-sized chunks of GTD learning.
The overview is here, or you can learn more by clicking on the date below that works for you.
Keys to Getting Things Done
Friday, September 14, from 10:00am-11:00am Pacific Time
Thursday, October 18, from 10:00am-11:00am Pacific Time
GTD & Outlook
Friday, October 26, from 10:00am-11:00am Pacific Time
Guided GTD Weekly Review
Friday, September 28, from 10:00am-11:00am Pacific Time
Here’s concise advice from David Allen, on asking yourself two questions that can calm the waters of your mind.
Everything that is outstanding in your world and mind, that hasn’t been somehow put onto “cruise control,” will be holding some part of your psyche hostage.
So, simply ask yourself, “What has my attention now?” And then ask, “What do I need to decide, do, handle, and organize, to be able to have my mind let that go?”
