Hi Folks,

Why did calendars show up and become ubiquitous tools for most people in the last few decades? Pretty simple: Life’s commitments got more complex than our heads could effectively manage. Yet people resist managing everything else in the same trusted way. I’ll expand, below.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

THE ONE LIST PEOPLE TRUST

If you’re like me, with quite a number of lists of many next actions, projects, someday/maybe’s, etc., you’re likely to encounter people who question your efficiency if not your sanity. “You’ve got so many lists! That’s just too much work!” (Sound familiar?) If you ever feel like you need to defend your lists, ask your skeptical friend if they are sitting around trying to remember what appointments they have on their calendar for next month. They’re probably not biting their nails about where they need to be a week from next Thursday at 4pm. They’re probably not even thinking about it. Why? Because they have their appointments tracked in a system they trust—a calendar they trust they’ll review at the appropriate time and place.

So, why not have the same lack of distraction about all the things that you need to be reminded of?

A calendar is nothing more than [Read more →]

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One of our younger fans describes how he uses GTD to make amazing things happen.

(This video is streaming from YouTube, so it may take a few seconds to load.)

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Check out this free podcast from David Allen. In just over two minutes, he gives practical tips for getting started with GTD. It’s available for download now on the David Allen Company podcast page.

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Peter Drucker said that “most of the tasks of the executive require, for minimum effectiveness, a fairly large quantum of time.” That’s from the Know Thy Time chaper in The Effective Executive, published almost half a century ago.

Sure, every knowledge worker could benefit from having large blocks of time for doing pre-defined work. But the practical reality is that most workers have schedules that are more fragmented than what Drucker might have imagined.  When he wrote that book, the workers he was addressing didn’t have cell phones and laptops. They didn’t use air travel for mass transit they way workers do today. They didn’t have Skype meetings with overseas clients outside the 9-5 workday.

GTD to the rescue! If you’ve organized your next actions into contexts that work for you, you’ll find that you can take advantage of small chunks of time to plow through lots of tasks. By organizing with your busy schedule in mind, you’ll be able to use those few minutes here and there to get things done that you would need to get done anyway, at some time. This is not to say you can neglect to schedule those large blocks of time for doing executive tasks. Just be smart by planning for how you’ll use the small windows of time as well.

What can you do with 15 minutes, before your meeting at 11:30?

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Hi Folks,

Want to know one of the easiest ways to act on your creative ideas? Stop trying to hold them in your mind. Your mind is a great place to have ideas, but a terrible place to manage them.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

ARE YOU STILL USING YOUR HEAD TO TRACK YOUR AGREEMENTS?

There is a light year of difference between a system that has merely a lot of our commitments objectified and one that has 100% of the total. And few people have ever gotten to a totally empty head, with absolutely every project, action item, and potential agreement we have made with ourselves and others out and available in an easily reviewable format.

My hat’s off to you if you’re trying to keep mental lists as reminders of things to do—but I’ll bet those lists are not anywhere close to complete. Consequently they are putting enormous and unnecessary work on your psyche. If you don’t have everything in a system that the system ought to have, there is still no full trust in that system, and minimum motivation to keep it up and keep it current.

This excerpt is from a recent issue of David’s “Productive Living” newsletter. 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.

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Too many next actions? DA weighs in…

Question: I have done a good job of getting all my commitments in Outlook tasks and out of my head, but here is my dilemma: I have written down every work and personal task I need to do, including converting emails to action items and now I have 580 work tasks, 346 personal tasks, 266 tasks for my assistant and 117 honey-dos for my husband! I have them organized by project and date, but am feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all! Any advice? Thanks so much for your work.

David Allen: Well, you have as many commitments as you have, and unless you want eternal subliminal stress, you need to get them objectively out of your head and reviewable. As you’ve discovered, your next task to get more stress-free is to determine which ones are really “someday” vs. which ones need to be on the front shelf. Essentially, everything that you’re not doing at any moment is “someday,” but the psyche feels much better when you have made some distinctions between the active ones that you really want/need to get done within a reasonable time vs. those that can wait. Ultimately you’ll have to decide what kind of overview/map you need and want to see, to feel OK about what you’re doing. So there’s no right or wrong answer about any of this—only what’s most workable for you.

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GTD can be for anyone.  Here’s a blog post on Baby + You, pointing out that expectant mothers in the third trimester can benefit from the project management and delegation advice in Getting Things Done.

“Slow down. Be easy and don’t push yourself too hard,” advises Mark Moore, M.D., an anesthesiologist in Tallahassee, Fla., with a sub-specialization in obstetric and gynecologic anesthesia. His advice: Avoid rushing and overscheduling, especially in the late third trimester. “Control the nesting urges — the feeling of needing to have everything perfect before the baby comes.”

You don’t have to fight the feeling completely. Here are some safe and fun ways to indulge the pregnancy nesting urge and prepare for baby’s arrival:

Make lists and delegate. Act as project manager and have hubby or helpful family handle strenuous tasks like installing shelves, putting together furniture or painting the baby’s room.

Read the complete post here.

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Question: You claim that in most of the situations we are guilty for being stressed and frustrated. What can we do to avoid these frustrations?

Answer from David Allen: Clarify what your desired outcome is, what the next action required to move it forward is (and who’s going to do it); and evaluate those commitments consistently within your total context of commitments about work and life.

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I assert that it’s actually less effort to maintain your email inbox at zero than to maintain it at 300 or 3,000. Will it take effort? Of course. But there is gold to be mined there with a trusted practice that will have ripple effects across your workflow and motivation.

At a certain point, you will clean up your email. For some people twenty is too many. And for some, it’s five thousand. Different standards for “stuff.”

These standards are very powerful unconscious drivers of your behavior and permitted experience. You may consciously think you’d like to keep a neater house, or process your email more regularly, but if you don’t change the set point of the real standards you have about the amount of out-of-control-ness you actually will tolerate, they will slide back in spite of your best intentions. Pit your willpower against your unconscious cruise controls, and guess where I’ll place my bets.

If the good fairy visited everyone you know and work with right now and magically dissolved every email sitting in IN, within days the number would be back up to the comfort zone of the individual. Some people would have twenty, some three hundred, and some two thousand. Even people doing the same jobs, at the same level, with the same amount of input.

For email, it’s actually less effort to maintain it at zero than to maintain it at three hundred. The decision about the next action is still unmade for much of what lies in IN (hence it is still “stuff,” i.e. something in your world for which the action is still unclear). Every time you even slightly notice that email again and do not dispatch it, it wastes energy. As soon as you allow indecision on the front end with any of your input, you have broken the code and it will mount up all around you.

This excerpt is from a recent issue of David’s Productive Living newsletter. 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.

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Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
—Faith Baldwin

Change is on the way. Time will bring alterations. Your GTD system, with a current and complete inventory or your commitments, helps you manage yourself effectively regardless of time’s alterations.

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