A participant from a recent GTD public seminar shared what’s different in their life now.

I was the guy on the back row when you asked ‘How do these unfinished things make you feel?’ replied with ‘a failure’.

I’ve been using the concepts learned in class to process my work and personal email. (I use Exchange for work – GMail for personal.)  I have a shared Google calendar my wife and personal friends can see.  This lets them know when I am available and when I am taking personal time.

All I can say is wow. [Read more →]

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We often get asked, “What software should I use to view my GTD task lists on the iPhone?

For those of you on Mac, our recommendation is OmniFocus. For those of you on PC or using Web-based apps, we have not vetted an iPhone application yet.  Rest assured, we’re working hard on this and will be sure to make an announcement when we find something that passes our rigorous vetting process.  Here are the only software applications that have earned David Allen’s recommendation.  And of those, just the Netcentrics GTD® Outlook® Add-In and eProductivity™ for Lotus Notes® have earned the coveted “GTD-Enabled” distinction.

In the meantime, tap into the wisdom and personal experience of your fellow GTDers by reading the many discussions about this :

• on GTD Times
• on our Getting Things Done Forums
• on our GTD Facebook Fan Page
• on our LinkedIn GTD Enthusiasts group

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Cindy recently participated in a GTD class at her company.  She sent along an email to her facilitator, Danny Bader, about her experience. With her permission, we’re sharing her letter with our GTD Times readers.

Dear Danny,

First of all, thanks for a great class!  I really enjoyed it.  You are an awesome instructor – very engaging and really good at demonstrating practical applications of the GTD concept.

I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the GTD concept as I have taken time management courses before and was never able to make the concepts work in the fast paced/put out 100 fires every day work of IT training development/delivery and IT technical support.  I wondered how constructed the  responses from people having implemented GTD saying “GTD changed my life!” were.  [Read more →]

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A contribution from Michael Dolan, a senior coach with the David Allen Company

Q: I’m in sales and have a customer relationship management system (CRM) whereby we add reminders to call people back and or manage projects as they relate to people there. I use Microsoft Outlook as well to keep all of my projects and contexts in one place. My question is how would you blend these two together?

A: I can very much appreciate this question since we seem to be hearing about this overlap more and more. Sales management systems, sometimes referred to as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, have come a long way in the past 10-15 years. They not only can help an individual or team track progress, agreements and forecasting in one, interwoven place, but they can also help automate some of the workflow that happens between team members in a company. They tend to be fairly contact / company centric in that records and reference about certain conversations and emails sent in the sales cycle are kept in relationship to specific contacts or sales initiatives. For example, [Read more →]

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We just released an A4* size of our new GTD & BlackBerry Guide. For those of you who will print the Guide and prefer this size instead of the standard U.S. letter size, you will now find it in our David Allen Company online store.

This 45 page Guide, created by David Allen and the senior coaches, will show you how to:

• Manage your email effectively on the BlackBerry–including how to get email to zero
• Use BlackBerry Tasks for your Projects and Actions–including descriptions and examples of what goes on different lists
• Use the Calendar as a critical foundation for actions–with shortcuts for switching between different views
• Create useful reference lists in MemoPad–for managing the “non-action” part of your life as well
• Move faster with speed keys and shortcuts–referenced throughout the Guide and on handy quick reference sheet
• Navigate around the BlackBerry easily–with tips on customizing some settings to match the way you work

*210 MM wide and 297 MM tall (about 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inch), used in Europe, and rest of the world, except the US and some neighboring countries where ‘letter-size’ paper (8 1/2 x 11 inch) is used.

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Countless questions have been e-mailed to me asking for the best ways and tools to organize project thinking, or how to relate project pieces to each other and to all the other projects and their pieces.   Ninety-nine percent of the time, my answer is: “Do the Weekly Review. If you do, it all works. If you don’t, nothing will work. – David Allen

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Q: I write down everything but I always seem to end up having problems controlling all the pieces of paper and lists; what are your suggestions?

Coach Janet Riley: Writing everything down is a great first step.  All those “notes” where you’ve captured and collected what’s in your head, need to be put into an “IN” box and then within a day or two they need to be “processed” so that you make decisions about what the work is to be done (an email to send, a call to make, etc.).  Once you process them, put reminders of the work to be done in your Next Action lists or on your calendar.  If you travel, your “IN” box can be a folder, for example. On a regular basis, stop to gather up any notes, business cards, loose papers, etc. that you might have left in a pocket, briefcase, wallet, or which are still on a notepad (tear them off) and put all those in the “IN” box or tray to be processed.  You can read more about Collection and Processing best practices in David’s first book Getting Things Done and we have loads of Webinars and educational resources on GTD Connect about this.

Listen to David’s podcast on the Mind Sweep process for clearing your head. Check out the GTD System Folders or create your own.

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A GTDer asked: Can I use project management software for my GTD lists?

Coach Wayne Pepper: From our perspective, project management tools are good for Project Support, not necessarily Next Action lists though.  In other words, if I have a project that is so complex and intertwined that it needs to be broken down into several sub-projects–many of which are contingent upon one another–then that kind of tool is a really good tool for supporting that project by capturing all those moving parts and pieces, and identifying how they relate to one another.  Those tools are not as good however, for capturing  and contextually categorizing all the discrete, granular next actions which support all those moving parts and pieces.  A simple list manager is often a better central hub for organizing ALL of your Next Action–related and not related to your projects.

Watch the Webinar Wayne did for our GTD Connect members on Organizing Project Plans.

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