GTDtimes is pleased to be the first site anywhere in the world to announce news of a major event in the world of GTD…

For the first time anywhere  five hundred of the most intelligent, inspired and productive people on the planet will gather in San Francisco, California to learn, share, explore, inspire and most importantly to Get Things Done…

The Getting Things Done Global Summit!

Headlined by the inimitable David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress Free Productivity” this first GTD Global Summit, taking place on March 11th to the 13th, 2009,  promises to be a truly once-in-a-lifetime event.

Not only will attendees get the chance to  learn the latest on GTD by the man that created the strategy, David will also be sharing new material from his forthcoming book “Making it All Work: Winning at the Game of Business and Business of Life“.

Complimenting David will be a cadre of some of the most accomplished and effective people in the world:

• CEOs that have have had the insight and vision to implement a GTD culture throughout their organizations yielding extraordinary results

• Coaches who will share how implementing a GTD strategy has had profound benefits for their clients from world class athletes to struggling students

• David’s Senior GTD Facilitators who will lead hands on sessions to share their real-world techniques to help you implement GTD for yourself and your organization and maximize the success you will achieve as a result.

• Surprise guests that will inspire, awe and excite you with their stories of how they managed to achieve success, in some cases against unimagineable adversity and odds that would have been dramatically improved had they only been one in a million.

If  other conferences are about ideas and inspiration, the GTD Global Summit is about action and implementation.  No other event will have this level of practical, how to information to help you further refine your personal GTD strategy, troubleshoot your own implementation, or introduce you to new tools and techniques to take even the most advanced GTD Blackbelt to a whole new level.

In addition, demonstration areas will be reserved for attendees to check out the latest in high tech gadgetry- a veritable “geek’s paradise” of software, hardware, and accessories will be available for you to discover, test, and compare; from tried and true products you may have seen to the latest whiz-bang prototypes that you may not have even heard of, let alone seen or touched.

Of course one of the greatest benefits to attending the GTD Global Summit will be the opportunity to meet and network with five-hundred other GTD practitioners all in one place.  If you’re a GTD’er you already know that people that use GTD to help them stay on top of things are consistently among the most intelligent, informed and productive people on the planet.  Here’s your chance to make new friends, develop new professional relationships and capitalize on the energy and collective intelligence that only a group such as this can generate.   If you’ve attended special events in the past, you know that half the value lies in the people you meet and the friendships you establish.  Now take that prior experience and multiply it by 500 and imagine the possibilities.

The GTD Global Summit is scheduled to take place from the 11th to the 13th of March, 2009 at the unparalleled new Hotel Intercontinental in San Francisco, California.  Only five-hundred fortunate individuals will have the chance to attend this life-changing event.  Reservations can be made at the official GTD Global Summit Website.

Further news about the GTD Global Summit will be made available here as soon as we receive it.  The link to the conference website above is now live so be sure to make your reservation before it’s too late!

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Editor’s Note: We’ve had an incredible response to the request for contributor’s with a cognitive sciences background. Several notable individuals have very kinds offered to author posts that deal with questions of the brain that I believe are of great importance with respect to helping us understand why we do what we do, why GTD works where other systems fail, and how to get the most out of our own curious intellectual circuitry.

One such contributor, Jennifer George has authored the post below and will begin her contributions to GTDtimes with a series of posts based upon the ground-breaking book, Kluge, authored by Gary Marcus.

Jennifer George is a productivity geek and Web addict who writes the blog Lifemuncher. In the real world, she is a fundraiser for UCLA and a graduate student in clinical psychology at Capella University.
by Jennifer George – Community Contributor

Gary Marcus’s book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, examines the strange collection of more or less ancient systems that makes up the modern human brain. As he explains in chapter one:

“Measured nucleotide by nucleotide, the human genome is 98.5 percent identical to that of the chimpanzee. This suggests that the vast majority of our genetic material evolved in the context of creatures who didn’t have language, didn’t have culture, and didn’t reason deliberately. This means that the characteristics we hold most dear, the features that most distinctly define us as human beings — language, culture, explicit thought, must have been built on a genetic bedrock originally adapted from very different purposes.”

The word Kluge is an engineering term, and means an inelegant solution that works, but not in the best way possible because of historical and/or environmental constraints. Since our brains evolved over millions of years, building on existing systems rather than scrapping them and starting fresh, we find ourselves with a brain that’s like a marvelous Rube Goldberg device, held together with duct tape and chewing gum. It’s great at things that helped us survive and reproduce on the African savannah, and not quite as good at things related to language and abstract thought, which evolved much more recently.

According to Marcus, the human brain is primarily interested in helping you survive – noticing predators and food sources and finding potential mates. Figuring out the next step on that computer program you’re writing? Evaluating whom to vote for for president? Not so much.

The book is a fascinating and humbling overview of the evolutionary forces that built the modern brain and the resulting strengths and weaknesses that constrain and influence the way we live. Much of what Marcus describes is directly relevant to GTD and productivity, and could give us insights on better ways to do things. In a series of posts, I will be examining his findings on and trying to apply them to the life of a modern office drone. Look for the first one, on memory, later this week.

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