Hi Folks,

The elegance of productivity doesn’t just come from handling your “important” projects and actions, but also includes the rigor of managing the mundane and less important ones. Problem is, most people think they should consistently ignore the mundane and focus on only the important ones. There are limited times and contexts, though, in which you can do that effectively. For the most part, you have limited space or brainpower to tackle The Big Things. The trick is to know how to use the rest of your day, when your brain may be fried and your time constrained. You might find that handling the little stuff will help the other priorities along wonderfully.

All the best,

This excerpt is from a recent issue of David’s “Productive Living” newsletter. It’s free and sent about every 4 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.

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“Priorities are determined from the top down—i.e., your purpose and values will drive your vision of the purpose being fulfilled, which will create goals and objectives, which will frame areas of focus and responsibility. All of those will generate projects, which will require actions to get them done.”

—David Allen, Making It All Work, Appendix vii, Horizons of Focus

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David Allen did a live Q&A with Fast Company today.  Click here to see the questions that were submitted, along with David’s answers.  From runway to projects to goals, there are plenty of examples of how people like you are applying GTD in their lives.

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Ever feel like your email processing would be better if your coworkers just sent better emails? David Allen Company is offering a 30-minute Express webinar on this very topic. You’ll hear advice from one of their senior GTD coaches about the best practices for email communications with others—including when to use email, using To vs: Cc, writing effective subject lines, creating agreements about response times, and more.   Get tips you can bring back to your teams for more productive email communication.

Tuesday, November 27th from 10am-10:30am. Open to all GTD Connect members. Not a member? Try a free, two-week guest pass, which makes you eligible to sign up for this webinar. Look for the registration link on the home page after after logging in.

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You may have read that the latest innovation from Silicon Valley is that the employee perk is moving from the office to the home.  That article referred to work-life balance as a nonsense term, based on an archaic segmentation of work and life.

How is your GTD system set up to handle work life and home life? Is there a distinction, or have they blended?

To stimulate your thinking, you can open the larger (more readable) version of this infographic, courtesy of Compliance and Safety, that illustrates the @Work state of mind.

Featured By: C&S Blog

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This is a different spin on email overload, from David Allen’s interview with Wade Roush of Xconomy.

Punching the “Clear Your Head” Button

Xconomy: To me one of the most obvious irritants today is e-mail. The average number of emails that an office worker gets is around 125 a day and is going up at 15 percent per year. Do you feel that your system is capable of coping with that level of incoming volume?

DA: As opposed to what? Stopping getting it? Or letting it pile up and blow up on you? What are your options?

X: It just seems to me that e-mail overload presents an opportunity for innovation.

DA: Well, here’s another spin that you could put on this. [Read more →]

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There are five phases of your GTD workflow: Collect, Process, Organize, Review & Do. For each phase, there are keys that help you get the right things done with less effort.

If you’re new to GTD, try a live webinar on the Keys to Getting Things Done. And if your GTD implementation is already well established, you can refine your system even more.

The overview is here, or you can get details and register by clicking on the date below that works for you.

Thursday, November 15, 10am Pacific Time

Friday, December 7, 10am Pacific Time

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Question: What are the main reasons why people let themselves get overwhelmed at work?

David Allen’s answer: People tend to both over-commit and to be inefficient. Few people know exactly how much work they actually have, and therefore must take everything on that they think about and that others ask them to do. Their integrity forces them to agree to take things on because, not being real clear how many projects they already have on their plate, some part of them thinks they actually MIGHT be able to do it. And most people are inefficient because they don’t force themselves to decide what things mean and what they are actually going to do about them when they first show up. So, they are constantly rethinking the same things over and over and not making any progress in doing so–only adding to their stress. And when they DO finally decide what to do, it’s usually because they have allowed the situation to get into “last-minute” mode, and they now have to go deal with things as a crisis, one at a time, instead of in an orderly, timely, manner. For example, when you are talking to your boss about the urgent thing, why not also talk about the five things you need to talk to her or him about, before they are urgent? Most people are not that good at making next action decisions and organizing the results effectively. The inefficiency creates greater inefficiency, and it can get out of hand easily.

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David Allen’s recent TEDx Talk has generated quite a buzz.

“The art of stress-free productivity is a martial art.”

(This video is streaming from YouTube, so it may take a few seconds to load.)

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In this free podcast from David Allen, he gives quick tips for getting back “on” when you’ve fallen off the wagon with GTD. At a little more than 2 minutes in length, it’s a bite-sized nugget of inspiration. Available for download now on the David Allen Company podcast page.

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