I had an email today from someone I know and respect a great deal.  Someone that’s both an ardent believer in GTD and a personal fan of David Allen and the David Allen Company.  She also happens to live in the bay area and yet she chose not to attend the GTD Global Summit even though she certainly could have afforded to do so had she wished to.

Her email explained why.  She said that as she looked at the roster of speakers that were listed for the event it concerned her, upset her and ultimately turned her stomach.  Strong words to be sure.  Her problem?

The paucity of women in the line up.  And the truth is she is right.  If there was one thing about the GTD Global Summit that wasn’t perfect it was the women were seriously underrepresented on stage.

Now I know David Allen and sexist is not a word that comes to mind when I think of the man.  In fact he’s as far from sexist as I can imagine.  What’s more, his wife, Kathryn, a dynamic and powerful women, plays a huge role in David’s success and that of his company and I seriously doubt that she’d tolerate any such behavior from a spouse or an employee.

So if it isn’t that women were intentionally excluded from being invited to speak, and if there wasn’t some not-so-obvious reason why women were underrepresented at the event in general, than that begs the question; what gives?

Do women not get GTD?  Is GTD somehow biased towards a male audience?  Is it that women are so busy actually getting stuff done that they can’t be bothered to read a book about it?  Is there some secret good-ol’-boys-club handshake that is taking place that keeps women from feeling like they can participate in the GTD world?

I honestly don’t know.  I do know that I have no bias against women and that I have an equally accepting policy when it comes to submissions from both men and women, yet here at GTD times, a quick look at the list of contributors shows a similar trend; far too few women.

My friend who wrote the email that drew my attention back to this specific topic (it was actually mentioned at the Summit, incidentally) says that she plans to author a post on this topic herself soon.  I hope she does and you can bet I’ll post it.  I would love her opinion as to what is happening within the GTD world that turns women off.

If anyone reading this has thoughts on the topic, please comment.  This is a serious subject and deserves some thoughtful responses from the community.

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With all the recent attention that GTD has been receiving, especially since the incredible GTD Global Summit that just concluded, you might find yourself being asked to explain the “How To” of GTD to a curious colleague, friend or even spouse.

Unless you are David Allen himself, you might find yourself struggling to eloquently distill the practice of GTD down to a short and memorable set of concepts and equally simple and equally memorable steps that a novice can understand and even implement in short order to take those first few steps towards a lifetime of improved productivity, reduced stress, and the confidence that you are doing what you are best served to be doing at any given time.

It figures that someone whose title is “Editor in Chief” of a company called Goose Educational Media would be the one to do such an extrordinary job at creating such a document.  Thankfully for the rest of us, Chris Taylor not only took the time to write this resource he has generously put it online where anyone can take advantage of it any time they like.

Beyond this truly excellent summary the Goose Educational Media site is a truly amazing resource.  Founded upon the idea that sharing knowledge distilled from the top books about productivity, management, decision making and other disciplines  can have a profound impact upon an individual’s effectiveness, Chris Taylor and a team he describes as a phenomenal team of dedicated individuals have created a resource that is intended to give an individual the tools and the resources to change his or her life, and thereby the power to change the world.

It is a selfless effort that can benefit each and every one of us.  I urge you to take a look at the Golden Eggs of GTD and then to dig a bit deeper.  The site has a tremendous amount to offer and such a gift should not be overlooked, especially in these difficult times where every one of us can be well served to find ways in which we can each improve ourselves.

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For many people this is the session they came to see.  After years of reading, re-reading, listening to, watching and discussing “Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity” people, especially the majority of the people at the Summit who are serious about practicing GTD - are ready for something new from David.

“Making it All Work:  Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life” is that something. And I’m not just talking about the book, either.  David has worked for years to clarify, refine, broaden, deepen and in some ways complete the work he began with his original program of GTD.

For most people I suspect that the abbreviated Making it All Work presentation that David delivered today felt both familiar yet new at the same time.  That’s because it was.

I think that David retained much of the best of his original program but has fleshed out and added more material to those areas that people have occasionally said were not clear enough in the original.

Here are some basic outline notes from David’s slides for the presentation.  They are pretty much self explanatory.  The goal is to help you see more clearly what David means by each of the subcategories that he uses to define the various aspects of GTD.

They are as follows:

“If my brain had a brain I wouldn’t need a system.” - David Allen

Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect

This leads to having control and perspective

Control is simply cooperating with reality with conscious intent
Capturing
Clarifying
Organizing
Reflecting
Engaging

Perspective
Capture: write it down
Clarifying: what does this mean to me?
Organizing: put it where it goes
Reflecting: look through the whole
Engage: Do

Purpose/ Principles - 50,000  How: how do I want to operate as a human being?
Vision - 40,000 Feet  How do I see my self and my life
Goals - 30,000 Feet  What do I want to accomplish both long term and in the next two years?
Responsibilities - 20,000 Feet  What do I have to do
Projects - 10,000 Feet
Actions - Runway

System: build, fill, use

“You are here for a purpose.  You are either on purpose or you’re not.” David Allen

“Focus on what has your attention and you’ll find out what really has your attention.” - David Allen

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This post rambles a bit as it’s a live blogging effort to cover the real key questions and associated answers that this group of accomplished entrepreneurs provided during an hour plus panel discussion about the trials and tribulations of starting your own company.

Topics included what personality characteristics should you have to thrive as an entrepreneur.  What are the most common mistakes that they see entrepreneurs making (or which they’ve made themselves).  They discussed their biggest fears and how they’ve overcome them and even why right now is actually a really good time to begin planning an entrepreneurial venture.

Panel Discussion

Peter Gallant: serial entrepreneur, Pathogen Detection Systems

Execution is the biggest risk facing start up companies.  The plan is usually not the problem. The execution is.  Knowing when to do what needs to be done.
Recommended reading “The War of Art”  it is very rare for entrepreneurs to really know what the milestones the must be achieved are. when they need to achieve those goals and how to forecast whether or not they are on track or behind or in real trouble.

He hasn’t met an entrepreneur that has a complete broad focus across all the horizons of focus

John de Souza, serial entrepreneur, founded the product that became Microsoft Messenger

Do you have the right temperment, the right skill set and is it the right timing.  Once you are an entrepreneur, it gets going, you’re excited about it and suddently…what’s next?  You need to get the company going and for this GTD can be extremely important.

How does being an entrepreneur impact your family?  What if you fail?  What if you have no money?

Buzz Bruggeman:  Active Words.  His belief is that computers should understand us.  Problem:  voice is not really a viable option.  Active Words lets people name things.  For example setting up the keystroke NT for directly navigation to New York Times.  ( also like Quicksilver)

Frode Odegard:  Founded several companies including one before he was 18.  What is the nature of a true entrepreneur:  restless by nature. potentially reckless, frequently fall into the “crazy maker” quadrant.

What’s important is that entrepreneurs tend to underestimate and possibly even feel resentful towards the needs to spend time simply thinking.

“If you don’t have a good framework to manage your commitments you will just drown”.

EDS: Entrepreneurial Dysfunction Syndrome

Buzz:  the single biggest problem for him is the weekly review.  Part of it is the issue of having the time to make an appointment with himself.

Once you’re an entrepreneur and you have built the product you are faced with two new problems:  Distribution and Adoption.
They’re talking to HP so Buzz emails every single person from HP that downloaded their application and he asks them for help

If you can’t handle rejection you should probably just work for a big company.

If there’s anything you wished you knew earlier

Buzz:

1.  The inventor should NOT be the CEO

2.  Take Smart Money of Just Money

3.  Use GTD to maintain sufficient discipline to keep wandering to a minimum

Frode

1.  Having the right revenue model.   Understanding what works in a given economy

Frode:  My biggest fear is relationships.  Can I trust these people?  What are their intentions

Buzz: Biggest Fear:  The serious maybe…

de Souza:  Hiring the wrong senior person.  As soon as you realize there’s a problem take action.

Gallant:  making a wrong effort from a time, talent or investment perspective

Odegard:  What’s your definition of success for an experience?

Gallant:   A call to action:  imagine that you’ve lost your job.  What sort of entrepreneurial venture would you start next?  This is a great time to be planning a start-up company.  There’s sufficient cash, it is simply that the VC’s are being especially cautious.

Buzz:  If I did not have a partner with a skill set he didn’t have they would have been dead.

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For those of you that would like a voyeuristic view into the GTD Global Summit, I present for your lengthy reading pleasure all of the tweets from the legions of twitterers that are attending the summit.  (And there are many, at least half the audience is on twitter).

These are in reverse chronological order so you can take a trip back in time from present moment to last night’s cocktail party or you can start at the bottom and work your way forward in time to see the event blossom in the way that it actually has.  Either way there are some wonderful pearls here as many of the tweets are actual quotes from the speakers presenting at the conference.

Tweets are here as a PDF:  twitters_eye_view_gtdsummit

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