Have you wanted to get your kids or teens to use GTD tools? Then this webinar is for you. Join David Allen Company CEO and GTD expert Mike Williams and Senior Coach Meg Edwards as they discuss some fun and engaging ways to share GTD with kids and teens.  The live webinar is on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST. 

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.  You’ll also see an extensive list of previous webinars you can access in the archives. (Partial listing shown here.)

The free trial membership is easy to begin—just first name and email address—with no cost or commitment.

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Sometimes Christmas feels like an all-consuming project that sends us racing through malls, jumping from party to party, and being busy-busy-busy as we fill our time with lots of Christmas fluff.

I want something more than that, though.

I don’t want to have to “recover” from Christmas. I don’t want to start the new year eight pounds heavier. I don’t want my children focused only on the electronic gadgets they hope Santa brings. But everything I don’t want will probably become my reality–unless I take the initiative to implement what I do want.

David Allen’s Natural Planning Model seriously saves my sanity on everything from birthday party planning to creating new programs for my website, so this year, I decided to use the five steps of the Natural Planning Model to create a Christmas experience that is both magical and meaningful.

Step One: Defining Purpose and Principles

For this part, I sat down with my children and gave them the following prompts:

• What’s the purpose of this season?
• What do you want this Christmas to feel like for our family?
• Please finish this sentence: “I would be happy with any Christmas celebration, as long as . . .”

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This article is from Momma Can …, a blog created and run by Pam List. Momma Can … is devoted to making life “less of a drudge of more of a joyful journey.”  Pam is a busy mother of two who says she would not have had time for the blog without GTD.

I am a big fan of David Allen’s GTD system. He has written what I feel is the greatest productivity book in the history of the world.  If you have not read it and you are an overwhelmed momma then please borrow from the library or buy yourself one.  It is what keeps me sane.  It allows me to find time in the crazy busy momma world. The best part of the system is the physical inbox, what I call my big fat inbox.

The book is called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. It simply rocks.

His system in a very tiny nutshell for me is something like this.

1. Collect all the Stuff and Write all the Stuff –anything that comes into mommy land goes into my physical inbox.  Mail, school papers, work papers, catalogues.  Any awesome mommy idea that comes to my head gets written down and put into my physical inbox.  This includes recipe ideas, family outing ideas, article ideas, coupon inserts, field trip forms etc.  It can really get full.
2. Process the stuff into projects, tasks, or file it away for a rainy day, just in case, or a momma memory file. And clear out the box every single day all the way to the bottom. Projects can be planning family outing, planning purchases, meal planning or putting brochures in a file for my dream vacation.
3. Review, plan, do.  This really just means planning, scheduling for how and when all the things that need getting done will get done.
   
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This is a Community Contribution from Meghan Wilker.

In an earlier GTD Times post, I talked about some of the basic ways I use the principles of GTD with my kids. That post focused on Capturing, Clarifying, Organizing and Reflecting at a high level.

This week, I spent the better part of an evening on a Clarifying mission with my kids, and it struck me that the act of processing an inbox with kids is vastly different from how we do it as adults.

If you are a parent who works outside the home, your kids probably generate a lot of artwork during the day. And by “a lot” I mean levels that will wake you up at night with hoarders’ nightmares of having to dig tunnels through the piles of coloring sheets and construction paper stacked floor-to-ceiling in your house. Or maybe that’s just me.

At any rate, Capturing & Clarifying can be particularly helpful in dealing with kids’ art projects. Here’s how I handle it.

[Read more →]

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For anyone who has tackled a science project, or any kind of project, here is a Community Contribution from April Perry

Tackling a 5th-Grade Science Project

My 11-year-old daughter came home with a huge packet of science project information a few weeks ago, and the entire family started feeling the stress.  Before the world of computers and fancy tri-fold poster board, science projects were a cinch.  I remember hunkering down at my dining room table with construction paper, some magic markers, and a simple sheet of white poster board.  But today’s children have a lot more pressure.  They need charts and graphs, digital photographs, and well-written hypotheses.  It’s enough to overwhelm the children and the parents.

Instead of letting the stress get to me, I decided to apply the principles I learned from Getting Things Done and show my daughter that projects don’t have to give us headaches.  Here’s what we did:

Step 1: We read through the packet of information and made a list of tasks based on context. 

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A friend of mine came to visit when my first child was three months old.  Noticing I was still actively using my day planner, she joked, “What do you write on your task list, ‘Cook and Clean?’”

She wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings, but her question reflected an assumption that many people have about those who spend the majority of their waking hours taking care of little ones…that they’re not actually “doing” anything.

I’ve spent 10 years as a full-time mom, and let me assure you that taking care of a family is a huge responsibility.  It’s a party some days, a train wreck other days, but it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done.  I’ve created a Mom-and-Dad-friendly “Trigger List” to help parents see what types of things they can organize with GTD. 

[Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from April Perry

The first day of school started out great.  My three oldest children dressed in their new clothes, laced up their new shoes, ate a healthy breakfast, and then headed off to school with homemade sack lunches and brightly-colored, fully-stocked pencil cases.  I felt like a wonderful mom.

They returned home seven hours later, happy but tired, toting folders overflowing with paperwork, and that’s when MY work started (I mean…continued).  As I shuffled through more than 50 sheets of fliers, forms, and date-specific notices, I started to feel a little dizzy.  The pile on my counter harbored a LOT of information, most of which needed my attention right that minute.  I was tempted to break into tears or bury my head in a carton of Rocky Road, but then I thought, “Wait a minute.  I’ve been trained in GTD.  I was MADE for situations like this.”   [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution from April Perry

Just about every mother I know has a refrigerator that is completely covered with party invitations, handouts for school assignments, reminders for community events, coupons, and about 50 other things calling out, “Me! Me! Me!”  We’re so afraid of the “out of mind, out of sight” rule, that we want to keep everything that needs our attention smack dab in the middle of the kitchen.

Although this tactic might help us feel slightly organized, the drawbacks greatly outnumber the benefits.  For example, how are moms supposed to calmly make it through the dinner hour when every time they turn around, they’re reminded of all the things they’re not doing?  How are they going to remember which items have associated computer work or which ones require a run to the grocery store?  What happens if an important notice gets buried under alphabet magnets–or stolen by a toddler looking for something to color?  It just doesn’t work. [Read more →]

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Community Contribution from April Perry

Mothers need Getting Things Done as much as (or more than!) any other group.  Why?  Let me show you a glimpse into my life “pre-GTD.”

My 7-year-old son, Ethan: Mom, want to see this cool toy lizard I got as a prize today?

Me: Yep.  Ooh.  That’s neat.  (Then in my head)  I need to buy paper towels, we have ants in the bathroom, it’s my niece’s birthday Friday, there’s a permission slip form somewhere around here I need to sign…

Ethan:  Mom, you’re not even looking!

Me:  Sorry.  Okay.  Yes, I really do like that lizard.  What’s his name?  I didn’t even exercise today.  I’ll remember tomorrow.  Don’t I need a sitter for Friday night?  How’s the laundry doing?  If I could just get that laundry room organized, I would feel so much better.  Where’s that book I was reading?  I need to remember to get some chocolate chips at the store.  The carpet needs to be vacuumed.  Where’s the baby? [Read more →]

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We just posted a short excerpt from an interview where David talks about how he explained GTD to some teens.  Many of you have asked how to get your kids involved in GTD and this may give you some interesting language to engage them.  Listen Now>>

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