Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. Those are the five phases of your GTD workflow. You’ll learn the best practices for each of those phases in the Keys to Getting Things Done webinar, this Thursday, May 2, at 10:00AM Pacific time.
The GTD Mastering Workflow seminar is coming to New Orleans on March 14th! Learn the foundations of GTD in this wonderful destination city. If you’re just getting started with GTD, this is a perfect opportunity to get your system off the ground. If you’re experienced with GTD, it’s a great time to identify any gaps in your systems for greater productivity. This one-day presentation is packed with practical recommendations and suggestions about how to put the proven GTD principles to work for you—at work, at home and in everything you do.
Sign up now to get the early registration discount.
I assert that it’s actually less effort to maintain your email inbox at zero than to maintain it at 300 or 3,000. Will it take effort? Of course. But there is gold to be mined there with a trusted practice that will have ripple effects across your workflow and motivation.
At a certain point, you will clean up your email. For some people twenty is too many. And for some, it’s five thousand. Different standards for “stuff.”
These standards are very powerful unconscious drivers of your behavior and permitted experience. You may consciously think you’d like to keep a neater house, or process your email more regularly, but if you don’t change the set point of the real standards you have about the amount of out-of-control-ness you actually will tolerate, they will slide back in spite of your best intentions. Pit your willpower against your unconscious cruise controls, and guess where I’ll place my bets.
If the good fairy visited everyone you know and work with right now and magically dissolved every email sitting in IN, within days the number would be back up to the comfort zone of the individual. Some people would have twenty, some three hundred, and some two thousand. Even people doing the same jobs, at the same level, with the same amount of input.
For email, it’s actually less effort to maintain it at zero than to maintain it at three hundred. The decision about the next action is still unmade for much of what lies in IN (hence it is still “stuff,” i.e. something in your world for which the action is still unclear). Every time you even slightly notice that email again and do not dispatch it, it wastes energy. As soon as you allow indecision on the front end with any of your input, you have broken the code and it will mount up all around you.
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.
If you need to get on top of your Microsoft Outlook® email, calendar, and tasks by implementing GTD, this is the webinar for you. You’ll learn the best recommendations for building a GTD system in Outlook to seamlessly handle your work and personal commitments. It’s only 90 minutes, and it’s packed with tips and tricks that will start saving you time right away.
Wednesday, June 27, from 10am-11:30am Pacific Time
You can find more information about GTD Public Webinars by clicking here.
GTD® & Outlook® Webinar – June 27, 2012
Question: In your book you say being organized means that “where things are suits what they mean to you.” So if you’re disorganized in life, whether your desk is a total mess or you can’t keep track of your appointments … what should your first step be to becoming organized? Where do you begin if you’re feeling overwhelmed?
Answer from David Allen: First step is to capture into a simple ‘bucket” all of those things that are not on cruise control—anything that has your attention. Write it all down. Then decide what the next steps are to each of those items, and customize a way to park those reminders in some place that you can find and deal with, as needed. And install the habit of looking at them, as often as you think you should, to stay abreast of the whole spectrum.
Get clear, get current, get creative. Sound good to you? That’s what you get from a weekly review. David Allen calls it ”the critical success factor” in GTD. Lifehacker has two recent posts on this topic. The first is their link to our video of David talking about the value of the weekly review, and why it provides the leverage you need to be more productive. The second is a how-to that includes practical tips for getting into the groove of doing a weekly review.
Your time is valuable. The time you put into a weekly review is a guaranteed investment in yourself.
What’s your level of GTD expertise? No matter what it is, these interactive and concise 90-minute webinars will deepen your mastery of the GTD best practices. David Allen Company offers these on an “a la carte” basis, giving you the flexibility and affordability to choose just the ones that work for you.
Keys to Getting Things Done®
This live Webinar will give a fast & fun overview on the keys for Getting Things Done, led by a Senior Coach. Learn about the best practices and tools for managing the five phases of your workflow: Collect, Process, Organize, Review & Do. Experience a “mind sweep” and walk through the decision making model for moving your input from “stuff” to clear outcomes and actions. Get tips for setting up a seamless system. A great overview if you’ve been wanting a better understanding of the “big picture” of managing your workflow with GTD.
GTD® & Outlook®
This live Webinar will give a detailed overview of the best practices for implementing GTD in Outlook. You’ll learn tips for setting up and managing Outlook Email, Calendar, Tasks, and Notes to support a seamless GTD system. See a demonstration of processing email (No, “inbox zero” isn’t an urban legend!) See examples of Task “contexts” and suggestions about how to structure your project and action lists.
Includes complimentary copy of our GTD & Outlook Setup Guide to assist you in your implementation of the recommended steps.
All webinars are held from 11am-12:30pm Pacific Time (California). Each webinar is $49. If you are planning on taking both, Keys to Getting Things Done is recommended before GTD & Outlook to build the foundation of best practices before the practical application.
Questions? Contact us at webinars@davidco.com.
You can participate in special GTD® webinars featuring two of the most popular and requested topics: Keys to Mastering Workflow and Implementing GTD with Microsoft Outlook. These webinars are presented a la carte for $49 each.
GTD Webinar: Keys to Mastering Workflow
Offered live only on Tuesday, November 29th or Tuesday, December 13th from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm PT
This fast-paced and inspirational webinar is based on the best practices of GTD’s five phases of mastering workflow. From capturing everything that has your attention to making trusted choices – this webinar will elevate your productivity levels and prepare you to get the right things done.
GTD Webinar: Implementing GTD with Outlook®
Offered live only on Thursday, December, 1st or Thursday, December 15th from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm PT
Join this structured and practical webinar to learn to effectively track projects and next actions, set up your email folders, and create a system for reference storage on Outlook. Get your life in control by managing your bigger vision while tracking the small details.
Note: These webinars will be held live only and will not be available for replay. Don’t miss your opportunity to learn from an expert coach through these live events.
Register now for these live 90-minute interactive webinars. To increase learning and interaction, implementation questions via chat will be encouraged and answered throughout the webinars.
David Allen notes that, “if you’re like most people, you’ve experienced a positive shift in your energy and enthusiasm simply by identifying what you want to do about a project, situation, or opportunity…” His essay in the latest Productive Living newsletter explores getting free by naming what has your attention.
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
GETTING FREE
One of the reasons the GTD approach can be so empowering comes down to a simple, primal dynamic: When something is named, it is known; and when it is known, its hold on us is released. When things we have allowed into our inner or outer world are appropriately and accurately identified, we feel curiously freed from them. It’s all about clarifying what things mean to us and sorting them in our world appropriately.
Do you have any projects that you haven’t identified as projects yet? Got anything you’ve been thinking that needs clarification, resolution, or looking into, that you don’t have on a Projects list yet, that you look at regularly to keep actions moving toward?
Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 3 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.
In the most recent Productive Living, David Allen asks why so many knowlege workers don’t consider processing their inbox to be part of their work. It’s as if they consider processing their inbox to zero to be a luxury reserved for those who don’t get much input or don’t have anything better to do.
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Processing your work is part of your work
I’m struggling with my impatience. I’m not as neutral as I’d like to be yet about how many professionals regard their inbox processing time as “extra” work that they can’t find time to do.
The stress many people feel can be directly attributed to the avoidance of daily and weekly catching up—with the flood of emails, voice mails, meetings, projects, and other informational and actionable items.
Most people behave as if this stuff is relatively unimportant. I argue that it’s where much of their primary value lies. Knowledge workers are paid to bring their intelligence to bear on input, and improve things by doing that. The decision about what to do with an email and its contents, what it means in terms of the work and standards at hand, is knowledge work.
Subscribe to Productive Living. It’s free and sent about every 3 weeks. You’ll find essays from David Allen, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.
