Question: I just finished the “Getting Things Done” book and I know the methods you have expressed will for sure help me! I was wondering if you can help answer one of my questions? For Actions, let’s say you have to delegate work to someone. If that person doesn’t do the work that they volunteer to, how do you act in a stress-free way which doesn’t decrease your productivity and efficiency as a person?

David’s answer: There’s no “system” that can answer your question. “Stress-free” emerges when you know you’ve made the decisions that you need to about something, and parked the results into a trusted system that will feed reminders and information back to you at the appropriate time and context. So you have to decide if there’s something that you need to do about the situation or not; and if so, what’s your next action? Then park that next action in the right place that you’ll deal with appropriately.

The main problem most people have with delegation is the lack of regular review, enough so that you will light a fire or check status early enough to be able to deal with the other person optimally. But you can’t make anyone do anything. You just have to deal with your own agreements with yourself about the situation.

Best,
David

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:

Context – What place, tool, or person will the action require? This is the first limitation for choosing–it has to be. If you’re not in the right place, don’t have the right tool, or access to the required person, you can’t take the action.

Time available – How much time do you have to take the action? If you have 20 minutes, consider actions that will take less than 20 minute choices.

Resources – What is your energy like to take the action? You’re probably doing this now more than you realize. Brain alert usually means you’ll make different choices than brain dead. Watch that. Honor that.

Priorities – What’s the most important one to choose based on your roles (20k), 1-2 year goals (30k), 3-5+ year strategy (40k) or purpose (50k+)?

How do I know what my priorities are? This is where the Horizons of Focus model comes in. Every level of that is valuable, but the Areas of Focus level in particular can be helpful for people in setting priorities.  Know what your job really is and “no” will come a little easier.

Finally, I would look at how you’re spending your time Doing.  This is where the Three-fold Nature of Work model comes in. No, this isn’t a fancy way to fold a shirt. It’s a way to look at how you spend your time:

Doing pre-defined work – Choosing from choices you’ve already made on your Calendar & Next Action lists

Doing work as it appears – New things that show up that you choose to work on (not always a bad thing by the way, even though it gets a bad rap as being the demise of productivity)

Defining work - Processing new inputs (swing back to Collect, Wash, Rinse, Repeat.)

Of those three, where do you spend more time than you think you should? And which one doesn’t get enough of your time? Would love to hear your thoughts on that in the comments.

I hope this has been a helpful series for you all!

Just joining this series? Read part one on Collect, part two on Process, or part three on Organize, or part four on Review.  There’s also a fantastic “Road to Black Belt” webinar series I did with Coach Meg Edwards on these best practices that’s available on GTD Connect.

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

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
Get current – review your system and update lists

Review Action Lists
Review Previous Calendar Data
Review Upcoming Calendar
Review Waiting For List
Review Project (and Larger Outcome) Lists
Review Any Relevant Checklists

Get creative – follow your intuitive thinking

Review Someday Maybe List
Be Creative & Courageous

REVIEW SUCCESS FACTORS:

Review your system regularly.  Sounds simple and obvious enough, but this is a challenge for many GTDers.  The downside of letting Reviews lag is that you risk your mind starting to take back what it downloaded into your system. You start thinking about things more than they deserve and can start to get leaks in your system.

Any Review is better than no Review. Don’t have the recommended 1-2 hours to do a thorough Weekly Review? Dedicate whatever time you do have and choose the step that most has your attention for that week.

Give it time to make it a habit.  Try at least 4 Reviews before you decide you just can’t do them.  It takes time to groove new habits and create a new reference point. Once you really taste what clear, current, and creative feels like, you’ll move mountains to make it happen, regardless of how busy you are.

Stay focused on reviewing not doing. It’s tempting to get in to handling some things you find in your Review. That’s fine for the quick less than two-minute ones, but be careful that your Review doesn’t turn into a catch up on backlog time.

Pick a day and time that works for you. This is one of the most common questions we get asked as coaches. Any day works, as long as it works for you. Universally, Friday morning seems to be the most common day. Choose a time when you tend to be brain sharp, not brain toast. I would also pick a time that leaves you buffer room to handle things that would not be good to find/fix if no one else is around (like end of day Friday).

Hope this helps!

Just joining this series? Read part one on Collect, part two on Process, or part three on Organize. You’ll also find a few podcasts related to the Weekly Review in our free public podcast stream.  And David Allen has a Guided Weekly Review webinar on GTD Connect.

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.

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.

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?”
No one really knows what the best choice is until everything that is really “on his or her plate” can be seen accurately. Our suggestion is that you work from a complete life-list, where the inventories of everything you need to do, have agreed to do, be responsible for, would love in your life, are waiting for, etc. is listed and reviewed regularly. When that happens, you can rest assured that any decision you make regarding what you do is the best possible decision you can make.

That is because you really have got all the elements at play and the good feeling you will have about a particular choice, that excludes other actions that could also be acted upon, will come from knowing exactly what your choices are.

“You have more to do than you can possibly do. You just need to feel good about your choices.” David Allen

In the Getting Things Done seminar, we go over a model for choosing actions in the moment, based on 4 criteria: Context, Time Available, Energy Available, and Priority. Context refers to the location and setting you’re in. Are you in the location where the action can happen; do you have the tools you need: office, home, phone, computer, etc. The time available will determine what kind of work you’re willing and able to do. If you have 5 minutes or 2 hours, time will affect your choices. The third criterion is your energy level. How much energy do you have? There are times when you’re fresh and ready for clients, and other times when you’re toast and it’s best to purge the files, water the plants and/or fill your stapler… And finally, after you’ve considered your context, time and energy, now you can ask, “What’s the best thing for me to be doing?” (This info can be found in more detail in David’s book,  Getting Things Done, Chapter 9, “Doing: Making the Best Action Choices.”)

“Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice.” David Allen

David Allen has said it more than once, “You can only feel good about what you are not doing, when you know what you are not doing.” It is important then to keep collecting, processing and organizing information, so that the system you review periodically earns your trust.  Paradoxically, your outer environment will still do what it does, regardless of your efforts to make it do something “better.” Creating a system that captures the “whims” of the outer environment does and will help you do the best you can with what you’ve got. Thus it is called “controlling” your inner environment.

Ana Maria Gonzalez is responsible for comprehensive planning and management of the international expansion strategy for the David Allen Company.  Ana Maria has more than 10 years of experience as executive coach and trilingual management development trainer with The David Allen Company.

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

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.

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…

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.]

• Project Planning, with Coaches Wayne Pepper & Kelly Forrister – April 8, 11am PDT.  The Coaches will go over common questions, like:  How do you plan out a project? Where do project plans go? How far out should you plan a project when you first get it? What project steps go on the action lists? and more.

• Q&A with the GTD Coaches – April 22, 11am PDT.  Two of our senior coaches will take your GTD questions. No question too big or small. Ask away!
• Coming in May – a 3-week Webinar series that will be like a “gentle GTD boot camp”

Watch now in the Archives:

Webinars are included for free in the GTD Connect membership and offered about every 2 weeks. Not a member? Try the 14-day trial or join for a month to check it out (it’s easy to cancel by contacting us one business day before your next billing.)

As a GTD Coach, and also intimately involved in the education and offerings from David Allen, I would suggest one of the following products:

The GTD System – This is, in my opinion, one of the best educational products we offer.  You get a ton of resources to learn GTD at your own pace.  You get the GTD book, coaching CDs with David Allen, GTD Connect and more. Good stuff.

GTD Live – If you like to learn by listening, then this is for you.  It’s David presenting the full two-day GTD seminar.  Follow along as if you are in the audience. I’d personally love to see a video version of this as well, being more visual than auditory in my own learning style. But it’s a fantastic resource to learn directly from DA.

The Getting Started Series – GTD Connect has a 16-part Getting Started series. It walks you through all of the key topics of GTD and includes audio and video of David and the coaches chatting about the best practices.  A great way to get up and running in bite -sized chunks.

…and if any of those don’t do it for you, go back to the original manual for GTD: the book.  Can’t go wrong. After all these years, I still find new pearls of wisdom in it, but then again, I love this stuff.  Of course, seminars and coaching are the crown jewels, but as far as products you can do at your own pace, the list above is where I would start.

Cheers,

Kelly

more about me…

Although they’ve been recorded for our GTD Connect online learning center, we have been posting the GTD Best Practices series to our free public podcast as well, for all to benefit from.  These informal podcasts are a great way to learn the essentials of GTD.  Here is the series:

Best Practices of Collect

Best Practices of Processing

Best Practices of Organize

Best Practices of Review

Best Practices of Doing

If you like these podcasts, GTD Connect has over 110 recordings like these, with more added every week, that you can play on the Connect site or  sync to iTunes.  It’s a great way to learn coaching tips from David and the staff, listen to interesting interviews with GTD’ers (Evan Taubenfeld being one of the recent ones), watch the “Slice of GTD Life” videos and more.  Good stuff.  Check out the free trial of GTD Connect.

50,000 – Life Purpose
40,000 – 3-5 year Visions and Strategy
30,000 – 1-2 year Goals and Direction
20,000 – Areas of Focus and Responsibilities
10,000 – Current Projects
Runway – Current Actions

The best way I know of to work with these 6 levels is to go with where my attention is. I don’t find it often works to assign myself to go map those out perfectly, especially 30-50,000 levels. They will get subtler the higher you go up in your focus, but they will all help in choosing what to do.

Will knowing your 50,000 tell you exactly which email to read or meeting to go to? Probably not. But it will probably bring to the surface if you’re in the job you want. Play around with them. See where your attention goes. David’s latest book Making It All Work goes into lots more detail on Horizons of Focus and seems to have cleared up some of the mystery around that for people who read and implemented GTD.

Kelly Forrister is a senior coach and presenter with the David Allen Company.

GTD Connect is a great way to get practical & tactical coaching advice on implementing GTD.   Webinars are held about twice a month on a wide range of topics for GTD’ers.  If you’re not a GTD Connect member, check out the free trial (which will also allow you to take a Webinar class during your trial membership.)  If you decide to join beyond your trial, it’s only $48 a month and you can cancel anytime.  The free trial is a great way to see if GTD Connect is for you.  Trial members can access to the full site except for podcasts and downloads.

I’m a retired teacher who now has a tiny gem or a business called ‘Life in the Flow Lane.’  I read Getting Things Done a couple of years ago and implemented some things.  I am a GTD Connect newbie.  The Webinars are simply invaluable.  You have given me a much greater understanding of the whole GTD process.  For example, I really get that I need to have a list that attracts rather than repels me!  It seems obvious, but you show how to make that happen.  All the resources on Connect work well together.  I think the mix you have put together is simply outstanding. – Sharry Teague

Completing and remembering 2009

What was your biggest triumph in 2009?
What was the smartest decision you made in 2009?
What one word best sums up and describes your 2009 experience?
What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2009?
What was the most loving service you performed in 2009?

Creating the new year

What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2010?
What advice would you like to give yourself in 2010?
What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results in 2010?
What would you be most happy about completing in 2010?
What major indulgence are you willing to experience in 2010?
What would you most like to change about yourself in 2010?

Get more questions…

What do you do to complete the year?

• You know your lists are not current so you dread having to clean up while you scan (Done a Weekly Review lately?)
• You know there are things on there that require more thinking (Ask yourself, “Do I have all of the information I need to do this?” If not, you don’t have the next action. Get more specific.)
• You have things on your lists that you don’t think are your job (Get clear on your Areas of Focus & Responsibilities–what’s your job and what’s not)

• The next actions you are seeing are too big (Break them down into smaller next actions. Watch where you go too big on time or energy commitment.)
• Your action listed is not the next action so some part of you doesn’t see success. (Drill down to the next physical, visible action. If you’ve got to Rewrite the report before you can Book the meeting with the team, then Rewrite report is your next action, not Book Meeting.)
• You don’t like the tool you are using (get one you like)
• You don’t know how to use the tool you are using (spend time learning the essentials–even the speed keys help a ton)
• You don’t trust the list you are using (get one you trust like your second brain)
• Your lists aren’t setup to work the way you think (renovate them so they do work for you)
• You skipped from Collect to Organize, so you really just have amorphous blobs of stuff to choose from (Refresh yourself on that critical Process step in GTD. Listen to the Best Practices of Processing podcast or read chapter 2 of the Getting Things Done book again.)

Bottom line:  You don’t have to love your list manager or love what’s on them to get stuff done, but you do need to have clear next actions to choose from.

I have been using the Getting Things Done system for about two years now and with terrific success. The ability to free my mind of all the commitments I’ve made and things I need to do has not only helped me function more effectively, but also been a tremendous relief! As a part-time MBA student with a full-time job, I’ve been able to balance many different projects at once as a result of the GTD system. Friends, family and coworkers often remark about how impressed they are with my ability to keep up with it all — GTD is my secret weapon!

Despite my success with the system so far, I’m always looking for ways to become more productive. One of things that I struggle with the most is balancing “tasks” with “priorities.” I often find myself quickly checking off the little, inconsequential “to do’s,” but not always finding time for the more important, time-demanding projects.

I realize that the premise of GTD is to only put things on your calendar that have to be done at a specific time or on a specific date, and that items without a concrete deadline go on the next action list. With work and school and family and friends, I find very little free time to get to the non-time-sensitive, but pretty time-intensive projects. I’m very tempted to block off the time it will take to complete them on my calendar, but there’s a part of me that feels like this goes against everything GTD stands for.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards,

Michael

Coach Janet Riley replied:

It is so great to hear how successfully you are using GTD to enable you to keep up with all that you have on your plate.  Good for you!

As a GTD presenter, trainer and coach, I often find that folks who’ve been faithfully implementing GTD and following best practices believe, as you do, that nothing can ever go on the calendar that isn’t a time-specific or day-specific action (meaning it has to be done at a specific time on a specific day such as a meeting with someone, a doctor’s appointment, or scheduled conference call).  It is true that we emphasize that it is not productive to create lengthy “to-do” lists you expect to accomplish on a specific day and then keep moving that list from day to day when unexpected priorities and tasks arise.

However, there are circumstances where blocking time on your calendar to focus on a significant and important larger task is appropriate and not in conflict with GTD best practices. For example, when I coach new or even experienced GTD users about doing a weekly review, I often suggest they block the time on their calendar for that review in order to find the “chunk” of time needed to get the review completed with as few interruptions as possible and with thoroughness as required. But they are choosing that time and working alone during that weekly review period.  Otherwise, people often find that they would go thorugh an entire week and never have a 1 to 1 1/2 hour block of time unexpectedly clear for doing that review.

In the same way, I often recommend that if you have a task that requires a “chunk” of significant time to complete or make progress on–such as 2 hours to write an article or report, 2  hours to draft a budget or 90 minutes to create a project plan, it can be a best practice to block the time for that work on your calendar. For many people, finding a full two-hour block of time to work on one project or task is as impossible as expecting to have a two-hour meeting with someone without you both scheduling it–that kind of open time in your calendar may be highly unlikely to show up without some planning.

The most important guide is that you honor that blocked time.  In other words, treat it as if someone was showing up for a two-hour meeting that you’ve scheduled with them.  Make that appointment with yourself equally as important as that appointment with others would be, and be sure you use it to get the work done you intend.  The caution I often suggest is not to block time to work on larger tasks and then constantly ignore those blocks or become numb to them by using them in other ways.  Be judicious and thoughtful when you follow this behavior.  In addition, be consistent about reviewing your calendar both backward and forward at least a couple of weeks when you do your GTD review.  That is key to ensuring that if you do have something on your calendar that gets overrided or cancelled by an unexpected even higher priority or emergency, you will be conscious to reschedule time for that missed work either on your calendar or ensure it’s still on your next-action list.

Janet

Dear GTD Times,

First off, let me say thanks for providing such a wonderful free GTD resource. It really means a lot to a student like me. I have a question that I was wondering if someone would answer for me or even write up a little article on. I’m not sure if GTD Times usually has a reader submitted question section or anything like that, but I figured I’d give this a whirl.

I am a full-time undergraduate college student and I dedicate a lot of my time to a handful of student activist organizations and one in particular. The organization’s mission is one that is very important to me and fits in with my visioning for myself, so I do not have any question about the time I dedicate to the group. However, I have run into a problem with managing workflow involving this organization.  Because there is no formal hierarchy in the organization, the process of delegating tasks doesn’t seem to work as easily for this situation as it would in a corporate environment. However, I am moreorless one of a few “informal” leaders of the group, meaning that I’ve been consistently dedicated for an extended period of time, so people respect my opinions and tend to listen to what I say – I have a lot of pull within the organization. When the group undertakes a large project, I find that I usually take on the role of project coordinator: envisioning what needs to be done, thinking about the goals of the project, and assigning tasks to other people within the group. I would like to not necessarily assert myself in this manner because I would like other students in the group to develop the sorts of skills that I have. But when I see things not getting done on a given project, it causes me stress and I end up dedicating a lot of time to “plugging in the holes.” So my question is, should I consider the organization’s project my own project and treat it like a project with next actions for myself and “waiting” on lists for tasks other people have taken on. Or should I take a step back and only allow myself to focus on the things that I have specifically taken on for myself, at the risk that the project might collapse or not be accomplished in what I see to be the best final outcome. (I think a big sub-question of this problem is also how to work with people who are not themselves GTDers.)

Thank you very much for your time. Keep up the great work,  Jay

One of our senior coaches, Wayne Pepper, offer Jay some suggestions:

Jay,

I wish the people around you would pull their own weight so that you wouldn’t have to either do their work, or track their progress, but alas, the world is the world, and people will do what  they do. I find it very difficult to force GTD on anyone around me, so if I suspect that certain individuals won’t complete their work in a timely fashion, then I will definitely track them on my Waiting For list. If they also have a track record of allowing things to fall through the cracks, I will also check in with them on regular intervals, in advance of their “due date” to track their progress. This allows them to know that I am paying attention, and it also provides a reminder for them if they aren’t generating reminders for themselves.  Again, ideally you wouldn’t have to do this, but that’s the way it seems to go.

So to answer your question succinctly, yes, treat these outcomes as your Projects, put them on your Projects list, or maybe even create a list called “Projects Delegated”, with the understanding that if the people responsible who you are tracking on Waiting For, don’t follow through, you may still need to jump in and do the work required.

Of course you could always allow things to fall apart, but I suspect these initiatives are far too important for you to allow that to happen…..

Best,

Wayne Pepper

P.S. I think if you poll “business” people, they will tell you that much the same dynamic exists in the business world

So, GTD’ers, what’s your experience with this issue? Do you find that workflow is different in any of the organizations you are involved with that are not in the business world?  Should the same GTD rules apply? Anybody have success getting others to do GTD?

GET CLEAR

• Collect loose papers and materials
• Get “In” to zero
• Empty your head

GET CURRENT

• Review Action Lists
• Review past calendar data
• Review upcoming calendar
• Review Waiting For list
• Review Project (and larger outcome) lists
• Review any relevant checklists

GET CREATIVE

• Review Someday/Maybe
• Be creative & courageous

You can also find these steps in the GTD Book, in the laminated GTD cards, and in the free article in our store.  Lots of people also like the GTD Weekly Review CD set and the new GTD System (which included one of our coaches doing a guided Weekly Review like I did.)

Cheers,

Kelly (@GTDCoachKelly on Twitter)

Many of you also asked, “Are the CDs new?”  Yes, 5 out of the 6 CDs are completely new content.  One of the CDs is a popular one of Coach Meg Edwards walking through a guided Weekly Review. We thought it was so good that we included it in this new set.  But all of the other CDs are new content with David and the staff.

I have read Getting Things Done many times and am attending the Boston seminar.  I have a question:  Why is it so hard for human beings to get organized?  Why do the techniques you recommend require so much effort and encounter such resistance from human nature?  I’m not interested in this academically, but if there is some biological/psychological/historical aspect of human nature that makes it so difficult to organize, it might help us learn how to overcome them and get where we should be…

David’s response:

Everyone is already organized to the degree they need to be, to have the world match up to their internal standards. And usually “having to get organized” refers only to things they don’t care that much about. In other words, oil painters have their brushes organized, fishermen their tackle boxes, golfers their clubs.

When your life as a whole and what you’re doing with it takes on the same kind of gut-level identification with an experience you have to have, you’ll probably overcome the resistance to creating and maintaining structure to keep it that way.

Have you ever been stumped by the difference between a Project and an Area of Focus?

In this great 5 minute podcast, David Allen Company senior coach Meg Edwards talks about the GTD best practices for creating a Projects list. She gives tips on:

• understanding the difference between a project vs. an area of focus
• getting to a complete projects list vs. one that is “semi-complete”
• why most people have a projects list that doesn’t really work
• when to “bump up” or “bump down” in looking at your Horizons of Focus

In the podcast, she references her own Areas of Focus, which she captured in a mindmap:

Add yourself to the David Allen Company podcast feed.

Sean writes, “I have just been recommended to use Omni [Focus] project management software to assist me in managing my ever complex working and private life.  I have looked at the software and I have found that they follow your principles.  My question is How do I start?  Do I buy the book, or buy the software or begin on some your other programs.  Please advise me.”

This is probably one of the most common questions we get at the David Allen Company.  A good way to think of GTD is that it is a systematic approach, not a system.  If you understand the approach first, then applying that to the system tools (like OmniFocus, the Outlook Add-in by Netcentrics, or any of the nearly 150+ GTD-centric software programs out there), will make more a whole lot more sense.

Here are 10 ways to learn the GTD approach:

1.  Read or listen to the Getting Things Done book. It is THE ultimate manual for GTD. Part One gives a great overview. Part Two walks you through coaching yourself through the process.

2.  Go through the Getting Started Series on GTD Connect.  If you’re not a member, try the free 2-week trial.  You can access everything as a trial-member except download content.  There is also a great video in the  Connect GTD Cafe called, “I read the book, now what?”

3.  Go to a public GTD seminar.

4.  Get coached in person or by phone.

5.  Find a friend or coworker who already does GTD and have them show you their setup and how they work it.

6.  Read the What is GTD? overview from David Allen.

7.  Listen to David do a full two-day GTD seminar on CD.

8.  Grab this free article to learn the 5 phases of Mastering Workflow. Then apply that consistently to one area of your workflow, such as your email inbox.  When that’s mastered, move on to the next area.

9.  Read the DavidCo staff blogs on getting started, like this series from Kelly.

10.  Listen to some of the free podcasts with the DavidCo coaches on the GTD best practices.

Obviously, these approaches range widely in time commitment, content and budget, but hopefully there’s something in there to kick start things for you!

I’m in Ojai today and at the moment I should be over at the Ojai Valley Inn participating in the David Allen Company’s annual retreat.  I really should be over there, but last night I had a discussion with a GTD coach that resulted in a major shift in my understanding of GTD.

I’ve been thinking about this all night and this morning while I was getting ready to head over to the conference my thoughts clarified into a post.  I’ve been writing long enough to know that when that happens I should just sit down and pound on the keyboard or I risk losing my best thoughts as other things in my world start to interfere with my focus and ultimately kludge up what I want to write.

Originally I had planned on writing an introductory post about a new contributor to GTDtimes, Meg Edwards.  Meg is a long time GTD practitioner and one of the most experienced GTD coaches working with DAC.  For a variety of reasons that I will get into when I do her formal introduction, Meg typically ends up coaching the problem cases.  Or as she puts it “the people who are stuck”.

According to Meg, what often happens is that people who get stuck have some issue or other that interfers with their ability to focus correctly on some part of the GTD process.  For example, people with ADHD or those that have difficulty dealing with sequential processing.

David Allen, Meg says, basically assumes that people reading “Getting Things Done” (or “MIAW”), have pretty much normal executive function.  However if they don’t…well, they end up getting some help from Meg if they’re lucky.

Now I don’t have too much trouble with executive function- usually.  Those of you that have read my other posts may recall that I tend to be late so I can “self-medicate” with adrenaline by driving like a bat out of hell – I don’t do this intentionally, but the brain is a tricky and manipulative creature – sometimes I wonder who’s running the show in my case – me or my brain.  Does that make sense?

Anyway, I was talking to Meg about the fact that I have started feeling sort of numb to my lists lately.  I’ve been using Things for almost a year now and I realized that I am starting to develop an aversion to even clicking on the icon to check what needs to be done each day.  Then, after several days go by I open Things and have to tick off a dozen or more items that I’ve completed (or realize in horror that I missed something important).

Obviously this is not a terribly GTD way to go about things and worse, for me it means that I have fallen back into my old habit of remembering everything (or almost everything since I’m still pretending like my trusted system is capturing everything which of course it can’t possibly be since I’m not opening it every day, right?)

Mark would be kicking my butt if he were around.  This is not the black belt approach to GTD he followed.  It isn’t even a brown belt approach.  In fact, it’s more like a grey belt approach – you know, the sort of gray color that comes when you wash something white with a new pair of blue jeans??  This is hardly the color belt that the editor of GTDtimes ought to be wearing, is it? But I digress…

At any rate, I was explaining this to Meg and she was asking me some questions about what is going on in my world and in particular she asked me what I do when I have a task that I don’t particularly care for.  Needless to say she wasn’t surprised to hear me explain that there are certain things that I detest doing so much that it practically takes an act of God (or one very pissed off female) to get me to get on with the getting done.

Shortly thereafter we started talking about another topic and didn’t really close the loop on this discussion.  When we were walking out to the parking lot however I showed her one of my lasers (I’m the biggest nerd).  This lead to my showing her video that I’ve taken of something that I believe may actually represent a somewhat significant scientific discovery that I may have made (this is a long story in and of itself, but if you want to see the footage you can find it here.
).

Meg was intrigued and after talking about this for a few minutes she asked me what my next action was.  I explained that I was waiting to hear back from one of several microbiologists that I had written to in an effort to get confirmation.

Meg then asked me what my ultimate goal was with this project.  “It’s not really a project I said; I’ve been playing around with this for years before I did GTD.”

“Do you know what your desired outcome looks like?” Meg asked me.

I told her I did and explained what my goals were.  she asked me why I didn’t have a project for this and why it wasn’t anywhere within my lists including my long-term horizons of focus.

I tried to explain again that this was just a hobby and that…

You can see where this is going right?  Of course this should be listed.  It should have concrete next actions, it should have an ultimate final step to allow me to close the loop and if I am not really working on it seriously then I should park it in “Someday, Maybe”.  What I shouldn’t do is spend thousands of hours a year on this “hobby” without stating my objective and having a systematic approach to  getting to that point.

I tried once more to tell Meg that I didn’t have this as part of my trusted system because I just worked on this stuff for fun.

This was the “ah ha!” moment.  “Fun?” she said.  “Yes”, I explained. ” I do this for fun so I don’t need to put it in my system.”

Meg said to me “is everything in your trusted system something that you don’t want to do but know you have to do?”

“Of course” I said.  That’s how I stay on top of that stuff and make sure that I can keep myself on track.  There are some things I hate doing so much that in order to make myself do them I have to promise myself little rewards in order to get them completed.

“No wonder you are going numb to your trusted system”, Meg explained.  “Anyone would if everything in there was a hateful task that you have to force yourself to do it.  Why don’t you put things you like to do in your system?

I didn’t have an answer to this last question.  I should have one.  I would have liked to have had one.  I told Meg that I needed to go back to my hotel and digest.

End result?  After digesting all night – <burp> – I have come to a conclusion.  Mind you I still  don’t have an answer to the confounding question of the night prior but I have a solution just the same.  I can avoid having to answer that particular question by making one simple change.

I need some new lists.  Lists that include things I actually want to do not only things that I have to do.  You know, I’m supposed to be pretty intelligent but sometimes I wonder what gave me (or anyone) that idea.  Has anyone else failed to incorporate things that they like doing into their GTD lists?  Or am I uniquely incompetent in this particular regard.  Well, someone has to be the “dumbest wolf”*, I guess today it’s me – but I’ll bet you didn’t have an epiphany today, did you?  You’ve got to take the bad with the good.  It’s just the way of the world.

*the “Dumbest Wolf” is a reference to a story I used to tell about contextually relevant intelligence.  Basically what it means is that if any one of us were suddenly turned into a wolf (a-la- King Arthur), in spite of the fact that our human intelligence is far greater than that of a wolf in our own domain- even this huge intellectual advantage isn’t sufficient to overcome the handicap of lacking the domain specific knowledge and expertise required to be a functional wolf.  Thus, in spite of all our brain power, in the context of being a wolf, every sing one of us would be the dumbest wolf – and most likely the first one shot, trapped, hurt, or killed by the pack for being so stupid that we were too much of a liability.

Whenever I start to think I’m so smart I take a deep breath and remind myself that but for the grace of whatever divine power exists in the cosmos I could be the dumbest wolf or something even worse.

In the prior post I wrote a little about a recent coaching call I had with DAC Certified Coach, Julie Ireland and shared how she recommended that I set up my Tickler List and how I connect those items in it to my calendar where such items have a hard landscape deadline of some sort.

A number of readers chimed in with interesting comments and additional good suggestions – be sure to read the comments from the prior post to see some other excellent ways in which people are making sure that their reminders are doing their job.

Today I wanted to talk a little bit about the other rarely mentioned folder – the Action Support folder and how Julie recommends that it should be used as well as to briefly touch upon another folder that Julie suggested I incorporate into my system the “In Progress” folder.

In Julie’s system Action Support is a highly specific and constrained folder that contains only items for actions that are going to be undertaken in the very near future.  She was careful to distinguish between items in an Action Support folder and items in a Project Folder.  The former, she says should generally contain items specific to individual actions – a shopping list for the next trip to the grocery store for example versus, say a spreadsheet with statistics that is being used as research for a white paper that you are writing.  The latter of course should be placed in a Project Folder specific to that white paper – one among the likely many resources that are being used for that particular complex project.

An estimate for an auto repair would also go in the action support folder provided that this was a one-off occurrence and not a restoration project for instance.

My problem is that I have certain things that I’m doing that require more than say a single document in support of a single task, but perhaps multiple documents in support of a single task.  Let me give you an example:

Right now I’m disputing a bill with my insurance company.  I’m reluctant to call this a project (in spite of the fact that my insurance company is determined to turn it into one!) for two reasons, first because it is just a single situation that should be possible to resolve with a single thirty minute period @phone – however it does require supporting documentation, to wit a bunch of insurance documents that I already have in my (making me) Blue (and) Cross folder.

I’ve already gone to the trouble to pull the documents that I needed out in preparation for the call.  The issue is that every time I sit down at the phone determined to get this solved I dial the number and get a message that it will be thirty minutes before someone can take my call.  I don’t have thirty minutes to sit around on hold during the day – does anyone?

So now I’ve got the paperwork out and ready to go but the call may not be happening for another day or two.  I don’t really want to put the documents back into my BlueX folder only to have to go get them again in a day but I don’t really want to leave them stacked on my desk either (which is what I had been doing anyway prior to my call with Julie).

The In Progress folder is her solution to a situation like this.  I can simply put the documents into this folder (which should never have more than a couple items in it or there’s some other problem that requires more coaching then I am capable of providing) and they’ll be ready to go when I find either that I have thirty minutes during which I suddenly crave an elevator muzak concerto or when I win the game of cell-phone roulette and actually get a real person instead of a machine when I call my delightful insurers.

Julie recommends that the In Progress Folder be located in your in box or somewhere that’s within easy reach so that you can access it at a moment’s notice when your context is appropriate for tackling some task for which you’ve already prepared thanks to this convenient strategy.  It’s a lot better than having a bunch of documents that are too active to put away but not quite ready to be in use that moment.

I’m sure that some of you have other strategies that allow you to deal with similar situations in an equally efficient manner.  Perhaps a few of you would be kind enough to share your methods with other GTDtimes readers?  Let us know in the comments.  Thanks.