David Allen’s interview with Dose of Leadership is now available as a free podcast.

Highlights from this Podcast:

• David gives an overview of the Getting Things Done (GTD) Process and how you can get started today.
• GTD is less about organization and more about “Freeing space in the mind”.
• Leaders at every level need to free up bandwidth to maximize their leadership potential.
• David discusses his famous “Mind Like Water” concept.

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Question: Any advice on how to “make myself” (or entice myself to) sit down and do the things that are less easy to do given my bias toward creation v. completion?

David Allen’s answer: Read Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, about habit change. Build in the simple but potentially keystone habit of doing the hardest/most-resisted thing first, especially early in the day when you still have decision-making muscle. Look forward to the easier and more fun and interesting stuff you’ll do the rest of the day as reward.

Review your higher-level commitments to yourself, and ask yourself if you’re on track with them. If you are, then who cares whether you’re creating or completing.

Build a simple habit of finishing something (anything, little or big) before you do your “create” thing.

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Hi Folks,

It’s natural to want to create a system for priority coding (like “A, B, C” or the flagging feature that’s showing up in a lot of software programs) to tell you the most important things to do. But it’s a short-term insurance policy that won’t give you the trust you need when the time comes to take action.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

LEAPING FROM HOPE TO TRUST

Every decision we make about what action to take at any point in time is an intuitive risk. I have twenty minutes before my next meeting—should I call Bob, work on chapter eight, or go get Susan’s opinion on the new software?

The over-simplicity of “A, B, C” or “high, medium, low” priorities or daily to-do lists can never really answer that question sufficiently for any of us. No matter how organized we get, how squeaky-clean our systems and our processes are, or how current our strategic and tactical planning is, we have to ultimately trust our hunches about the best thing for us to do at 10:43am or 3:22pm today. It’s true that we can utilize those prioritizing frameworks to good advantage, from time to time, to help us focus constructively. But to the degree they potentially limit our options unnecessarily and constrict spontaneous, creative thinking that is dynamic to the moment, they do us a disservice.

This excerpt is from the most 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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How did your weekly review go last week? Could you use some support to get that practice onto cruise control?

The Guided GTD Weekly Review webinar is just what you need. It’s a 75-minute “working webinar” where you will be led step-by-step through what David Allen calls the “critical success factor” for GTD. Get a taste of Getting Clear (processing inboxes to zero), Getting Current (reviewing Project, Next Action, and Waiting For lists), and Getting Creative (being creative & courageous).

The webinar is this Thursday, April 25, from 10:00-11:15am Pacific time. Click here for more information and to register. At $49, it’s a great investment in your current and future productivity. Imagine how great next weekend will be after you’ve done a full weekly review this week.

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If you have been frustrated by mobile access to your cloud-based GTD lists, have a look at this thought-provoking blog post by John Pavley, CTO of HuffPo, called ‘The Mobile’ Is Reliably Unreliable. Pavley says: “A mobile phone is either online or offline and at random times. A mobile connection has a variable speed and it’s not easy for a web designer to predict in what order the elements of a mobile web page will load. A mobile connection has variable quality. You can have five bars and still not have a connection to a mobile web site.”

The comments about the post are perhaps even more interesting than the post itself.

Have you committed all your GTD lists to the cloud? If so, how reliable is your access when you are out and about?

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Procrastination. I hear about it all the time. My clients confide in me, “I am procrastinating on sending in the contract/mailing the gift/fixing the appliance/etc.” You name it, I’ve heard it. And just between us, I used to think I was the ultimate procrastinator.

Then I heard David Allen say that creative, bright and sensitive people procrastinate the most. I perked up and thought to myself, “Hey, that’s me, smart and imaginative! How did he know? And how very kind of him to describe us (people who procrastinate) that way.”

The GTD methodology resolves procrastination. An example happened to me many years ago. The engine light flashed on in my car. My first thought was, “This is going to cost me thousands of dollars and that’s not in my budget.” I didn’t want to think past the doom and gloom of how much it was going to cost. Also, the idea of getting my car fixed meant figuring out so many other logistics: Do I take it to the Subaru dealer or my own mechanic? How do I coordinate carpooling for my family and myself? The general inconvenience and the unknown overwhelmed me. Every time I got in the car the engine light went on and triggered all those thoughts in my head. For a couple of seconds I would feel the anxiety, but then I distracted myself with something else and forgot about it.

Three months later, after seeing the engine light go on yet again, I thought to myself, “OK, this is ridiculous. I need to practice what I preach.” I took out some paper and asked myself [Read more →]

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David Allen talks about your GTD tools, and how important they are.

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

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Have you heard others talk about inbox zero but thought it was out of your reach?

Most people are not getting their email inboxes to zero on a regular basis, for one or more of these three reasons.
1. They don’t know how to process their email.
2. They don’t know where to put processed email, i.e. how to organize it.
3. They don’t create the time to process their email to zero.

The GTD Managing Email webinar on April 18 addresses all three of these reasons. This webinar will share the best practices of managing email and getting your inbox to zero on a regular basis. The focus will include strategies for dealing with backlog email, structuring email to support action management, the GTD models for processing and organizing email, and storing reference information.

Yes, you can achieve inbox zero!

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Chip Joyce, an Account Executive with the David Allen Company, took this photo of his home office. His comment about the photo was, “I’m violating a GTD best practice: something’s on my desk that’s not reference, equipment, decoration, or supplies.”

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

Hi Folks,

Is it possible to still be productive when you feel like you are drowning in a culture of interruptions? You bet. But, the strategies won’t come from traditional time-management approaches. My Food For Thought this month shares my approach to interruptions and how to effectively manage them versus how to just tolerate them.

All the best,

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Curing Interruptitis

I often get this question/pushback as I’m teaching: “All this personal productivity methodology sounds fine and good, but what about all those interruptions that plague me during my day?”

There are plenty of traditional “time-management” suggestions about dealing with “time wasters.” But I’d rather not waste time dealing with time wasters. For most of the people I interact with, the standard tips are either self-evident and in play, or impossible.

So I don’t spend a lot of time on time management tips. Not that they don’t have value—many of them do. But there are a billion exceptions to the rules. I have a more radical suggestion. Two actually.

1. Keep the inventory of everything you have to do current, complete, effectively organized, regularly reviewed, and instantly retrievable at a moment’s notice, while maintaining regular thinking about the projects and bigger things that you really want to accomplish. Then you can much more confidently and maturely differentiate between inappropriate disturbances and unexpected opportunities or useful interactions as they show up.

2. Get your act together about how easily and quickly you can take in any input, store it safely, and effortlessly glide back to whatever you were or now need to be doing, without having to process or complete it in that moment, knowing it will get handled at a better time.

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