A participant in our last “Keys to Getting Things Done” webinar said: “This was a GREAT use of my time and money…very excited to begin implementing GTD in my life.”
Get excited about your GTD implementation in our upcoming Keys webinars on February 7th or 27th.
Click here to learn more or register now.
Comment from a new GTDer: I feel like I’ll spend all my time maintaining these lists recommended in the book!
David Allen’s reply: If by “maintaining” the lists you mean, “write action reminders down in a retrievable place that you’ll look at when you need to,” then it’s not going to take you nearly as much time, effort, and stress as filing it in your head, constantly feeling pressured about what’s in there, and having the thought occur again (and again, and again) in your mind because it doesn’t trust your system.
If you’re being asked to do more work than before, with less time for your personal life, you’ll relate to this excerpt from Todd Brown’s blog post for Next Action Associates.
Want your people to be more productive in the office? Help them get more of their personal things done.
Published on January 22, 2013 by Todd Brown
Why do people have so many personal things on their minds? In my experience it’s because they are better set up to handle things at the office, because that’s where “work” happens, and productivity is expected. Personal things are allowed to take a back seat. But here’s the rub: If the personal open loops aren’t handled appropriately, they are just as likely to generate stress, relationship problems, and mental distraction, both at home and at the office.
The problem is exacerbated by the current economic reality. One of my clients, the head of HR for a firm here in London, told me last week that while staffing levels are down on last year, work levels definitely aren’t. We’re hearing similar thing from many of our clients these days.
With even more to do at the office, the pressure on home life is becoming even more intense. There are just as many open loops at home, and they’re probably getting less attention.
So if your goal is to enable your people to deal with increased demands at work, with a clear head and without distraction, support them in developing a “whole life” approach to managing their open loops that helps them get their personal life under better control.
This doesn’t mean they’ll spend a lot of time at the office doing personal things. It does mean that when open loops present themselves in their personal lives, that they’ll have the confidence that they can handle them appropriately. And at work they’ll be able to focus better, undistracted by the open loops at home.
That’s what I call a “win-win.”
You can read other blog posts and find out more about Next Action Associates, the only Certified International Partner for GTD in the UK, here.
Question: What’s a Project?
Answer from David Allen: Any outcome that’s going to require more than one action item, in some sequence of events in order to be able to get to that outcome, that’s a project. And boy, there are a lot of people that just miss that. Invariably I see that most people’s “project lists” are very, very incomplete. One of the more subtle ones that comes to mind is: What issues are on your mind right now, or situations or circumstances? Not necessarily negative things, but oftentimes there’s kind of a health thing, there’s kind of a family thing, there’s a relationship thing, there’s a—who knows? There’s all kinds of subtle stuff that show up out there that are either problems or opportunities and they don’t march up to the door with a pretty pink bow and say, “Hi, I am now a project!” Get those clarified in a way that you know what done looks like (the project outcome), and what doing looks like (the next action).
Taken from the GTD Mastery: Closing the Gaps webinar David did for GTD Connect members, Dec. 2012.
Question: At what point did answering email become my job?
David Allen’s answer: Well, at what point did answering anything—your mail, having conversations in your hallway—become your job? It’s all your job. You just have to decide what your work is. As the late, great Peter Drucker said, that’s your biggest job, to define what your work is.
So how do you define what your work is, and therefore should you be doing that? The good news about this overwhelm is that it’s forcing people to make executive decisions that they never felt like they had to make before. “I need to do everything that comes my way.” No, you can’t anymore, sorry. You are going to have to do triage. That means you are going to have to have a conversation with your boss. You are going to have to show up with a list of everything he or she has given you and have a conversation. “Gee, thanks for these new things, can we talk? Because I am not going to be able to do them all.” It’s forcing those kinds of conversations.
That’s why people have this attraction/repulsion to GTD. It ain’t lightweight stuff. If you are really going to work this, that’s what’s going to start to show up.
Excerpted from David’s interview with Xconomy.com.
The Power of Moms has a very useful post on how to methodically get your house organized. There’s even a handy PDF download.
A Seven-Step Plan to Organize the House
by April Perry on Jan 8, 2013
I want my home to be a simple, functional, happy environment that enables every family member to thrive.
But if I want it to get there–and stay there, I have to have a plan.
Over the past 12 years, with 9 moves, 4 children, and a bustling schedule (like yours, I’m sure) I’ve refined my home-simplification process down to seven steps that work every single time.
Many aspects of this process are based on David Allen’s best-setter, Getting Things Done (a wonderful book you must read). Corporate executives worldwide live and breathe this kind of training, and now we’re going to have a great time applying it to our homes.
Read the full post here.
The second part of this article is too good to pass up. This is a follow-up to the previous post about Forbes picking up Senior GTD Coach and Presenter Kelly Forrister’s article on how to tackle a crazy to-do list, originally posted on The Daily Muse.
Crazy To-Do List?
Pulling in Priorities
While context, time availability, and resources will limit your choices about which to-dos you should tackle next, they still aren’t usually enough to help you decide which will bring you the most value. This is where priority shines—it becomes your strategy.
First, capture into lists everything you’ve made an agreement, would, could, or should about, personally and professionally, so that you trust you’re making a decision against the full inventory of what you’ve committed to. Then, ask these two simple priority questions:
- What’s the value in getting it done?
- What’s the risk if I don’t?
Try asking those two questions on the next email you get that asks you to do something. Or the next book you tell yourself you should read. Or the next meeting you’re asked to attend. It might just help you wade through your choices with more ease of mind, knowing you can only do so much, and that you’re making the best choices you can.
Read the full post here on The Daily Muse, or here on Forbes.
Forbes has picked up Senior GTD Coach and Presenter Kelly Forrister’s article on how to tackle a crazy to-do list, originally posted on The Daily Muse.
Crazy To-Do List? Here’s What to Tackle First
Many people try to tackle their mountain of personal tasks by sorting them by priority, and starting at the top. Seems logical—but they’ve actually got it backward. In reality, before you think about priorities, there are three factors you need to consider, because they each actually limit your choices about what you should (and even can) do next.
Limitation #1: Context
If you’re not in the right place, don’t have the right tool, or are not in front of the right person required to take an action, you can’t take that action.Limitation #2: Time Available
The second factor that comes into play is how much time you have. If you’ve got a big project to work on, but you need to bounce to your next meeting or pick up your kids in 10 minutes, it’s probably not a good use of your effort to start it.Limitation #3: Resources
The third factor to consider is what your energy is like. I don’t know about you, but Friday afternoon after a long, busy workweek is not the time to dive into anything that will take a lot of mental bandwidth. Instead, I make choices that match what my mental and physical energy is like. Not to say there aren’t times I need to just “buck up” and get in there anyway, but I like to be conscious about what I’m choosing and match that to when I think I’ll bring my best self, whenever I can.
Read the full post here on The Daily Muse, or here on Forbes.
David Allen answers the question about when something belongs on the calendar vs. organizing it on a tasks list. This short podcast will help you use your calendar and task lists more effectively. Available for download now on the David Allen Company podcast page.
This is from a recent issue of the “Productive Living” newsletter.
Hi Folks,
The major complaint about our Getting Things Done methodology is not that it doesn’t work or that the principles aren’t sound—it’s that people don’t work the system. I’ve learned that many times the problem is not lack of motivation or discipline, but instead some rather mundane and practical behaviors that can be easily changed to make things work much better. I’ve identified three in this essay. If you do a quality check on your own system and where you notice you have cracks and stress fractures, it could likely include at least one of them.
All the best,
There are three common reasons why most people seem to flounder with their personal workflow. At least part of their systems lack one or more of three essential variables: consistent, current, and contextually available. This was reaffirmed for me in a coaching session I did with a senior executive. Here’s what showed up: [Read more →]
