An easy way for me to explain the “Doing” phase of GTD is to simply say “trust your gut/butt/intuition/hunch/heart.” There is gold in that, and ultimately that’s what it will come down to. But how do you even get to the point of trusting whatever part of you makes a trusted decision?  Here’s where the “ecosystem of GTD” starts to make more sense:

Capture everything that has your attention (Collect)

Make decisions about what it means and what you are going to do about it (Process)

Park those decisions in trusted places (Organize)

Step back to reflect on those choices from a clear, current, and creative place (Review)

So that you can make the best action choice  (Do)

So how will that help narrow down a To Do list the length of your driveway? You’ll want to pull in the  Criteria for Choosing model: [Read more →]

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David Allen calls the Weekly Review the “critical success factor” to GTD. Why? It’s the glue that keeps it all together.  It’s also one of the steps people tend to resist the most.  Here are some keys for getting the most out of the Review phase to keep your GTD system humming along.

WHAT TO REVIEW:

There are 11 steps in the GTD Weekly Review.  David Allen recommends leading yourself through this every 7-10 days to get clear, current, and creative.

Get clear – ensure all your “stuff” is processed

Collect Loose Papers and Materials
Get “IN” to Zero
Empty Your Head
[Read more →]

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Join David Allen and Senior Coach Kelly Forrister as they discuss keys for breaking through procrastination, including:

• 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.

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Dear David Allen: When you have a system and you have your list of things to do how do you deal with things that come up that just seem to be so pressing and immediate? How does one keep the composure of a GTD system with what appear to be emergencies?

DA: One of the prime reasons for a GTD system is to facilitate dealing with the unexpected and the unplanned. In those instances, you must have a complete inventory of your commitments, in order to be able to assess the relative value of the new input/circumstance, and allocate your focus appropriately. Probably 95% of my usage of my own system is to allow me to feel comfortable with a change of plans.

You want to keep your backlog of unprocessed stuff at a minimum, and an inventory of all possible actions close at hand, so you can optimally deal with surprise.

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The next Webinar on GTD Connect will be “Digging Out From Backlog”.  Two of our senior coaches will give you tips, tricks, and strategies for dealing with your piles of “stuff”.  If you feel like your backlog is holding you back from getting the most out of GTD, this Webinar is for you.  Free to all GTD Connect members (free trial members too).   Thursday, July 15 @ 11am PDT.  Register on the home page of GTD Connect.

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No matter what level or field we find ourselves on, whether it is the corporate/professional aspect or our personal/home life, we set priorities and act on what we think is important. We could call that “simplifying” our lives. And by that we do not mean lowering our standards, but rather focusing on the ones that are most important to us.

This same world view somehow seems to be plagued with jargon about priorities: how to set them, how to classify them, and how to sort them out. It claims to give us a sense that we are somehow in control. Several of my clients are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of the stuff they have to process and even more so as their resources to make the things they need to make happen get reduced, sometimes to the point of scarcity. So their question is “how do I set my priorities in any given day, so I know I am not wasting my time? So I know I am doing the right thing?”  The underlying question may well be, “How do I know that I am in control, so that what I am doing is the most relevant; the one that adds the most value?” [Read more →]

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We just finished the 3-part Road to Black Belt “boot camp” series on GTD Connect.  They have been some of our most popular and highly attended Webinars yet.  They are now available for replay on the Connect site (for free trial members too!) and through podcast (members only.)  You’ll find them all on the home page of GTDConnect.com.

The June Webinars on GTD Connect will be:

Natural Planning Model® -Thursday, June 10 @ 11am Pacific Time

Senior Coaches Wayne Pepper and Kelly Forrister will lead participants through David’s project planning model (described on p. 54 of the Getting Things Done book).  This easy to follow model helps you define your projects, from purpose to next actions.

Fundamental Processing Lab with David Allen – Wednesday, June 23 @ 11am Pacific Time

David will lead a Mind Sweep and take participant examples to walk through deciding what their “stuff” is and what they are going to do about it.

Note:  Webinars are always free for GTD Connect members and are available to free trial members who have active trials at the time of the Webinar

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Question: I listened to your Webinar on Procrastination (you can find this Webinar on GTD Connect, our online learning center) and have found that I have trouble starting to “do” anything when I know there is a lot of unprocessed stuff.  I have the type of job whereby e-mails, paper, and other things accumulate rapidly so I am often “stuck” with the inability to start on the action list if my Inbox (both paper and electronic) are filling up  with unprocessed items.  I would be interested in any comments you may have.

I replied: I would say that I am similar. It’s natural actually to want to get In to zero before feeling free and confident in the Doing.  You won’t intuitively trust that the choice you are making is the best one if there are things lurking in the inbox that might be a better choice. However, as you get better and better at GTD and collecting/processing/organizing, a trust factor comes in to know you WILL get back to it when you can. David Allen often says that the more you trust you have a process, you will be more comfortable letting it get out of control.

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Two of our senior coaches, Meg Edwards & Kelly Forrister, are doing a 3-part Webinar series for GTD Connect members. It will help those of you who are teetering from newbie to black belt–you know the basics, but are ready for a deeper cut with GTD to really make it stick (and actually get that mind like water experience!)  All Webinars are one-hour from 1oam-11am PT and the series will cover:

Part 1 covers Organize (May 7)
Part 2 covers Collect and Process (May 14)
Part 3 covers Review and Do (May 21)

We post the replays for all Webinars to the GTD Connect media library.  This series is free for all GTD Connect members.  If you’re not a member (and frankly not much of a joiner-kind-of-person!), then try the monthly plan ($48), which would qualify you to take all 3 Webinars.  Just cancel before the next month renews. Learn more…

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A GTDer asked: I am using the GTD Outlook Add-In software. Should I create subprojects?

Coach Kelly: I personally don’t use the subproject feature of software.  For me, everything is just a Project. But if you do decide to use it, it can be a nice way to sort major components of a large project. For example, let’s say you are getting married.  You could have “Get married” as the project that you track, however, there would be many, many
steps that would fall under that.  Some people would choose to create subprojects for each of the major components, such as:

Project =
Get Married

Subprojects =
Rehearsal Dinner
Ceremony
Reception
Honeymoon

I’d say it’s an optional feature in the Add-In, not required. Only use it if it helps you. Don’t use that feature if it seems confusing or more complicated than you need. [Addendum: this is my universal feedback for people on creating your system.  Use as many features as you need, but as few as you can get by with.]

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