Question: Can I edit the Next Action list contexts you recommend in the Getting Things Done book?

David’s Answer:  There are no hard rules about these context categories. You might have action lists specific to more than one office or home location; or you might want to combine At Computer and At Office; or distinguish between Web-Access Computer vs. Offline Computer.

You have to navigate among: How many different ways do I want to keep all these different segments? How easily do I want to be able to review them? And how confusing is it if I put too many things together in one list? I recommend you just get started, try out the most common ones (Agendas, Anywhere, Calls, Computer, Home, Errands, Office), and give yourself permission to change or enhance your system to fit your world as you move forward.

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“The point of GTD is not to finish everything, but to be constructively engaged with our process of creating and completing.”
–David Allen

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Here’s a simple calendar guideline from Senior Coach & Presenter Kelly Forrister: If something needs to be done ON a day, it belongs on your calendar. If it can be done ANY day, or BY a day, it goes on a Next Actions list.

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“Creating Wild Success in 2013” is a webinar with David Allen on January 11th. Start your year with some inspiration from @GTDguy himself. Save $10 with early registration, through December 14th.

In this interactive and informative webinar, David will share about completing and acknowledging your wins, creating more of what you want to be doing and experiencing, and the essential GTD tools and behaviors that can support you.

The webinar includes:

• An interactive presentation by David Allen and one of his senior coaches around completion, new beginnings, and wild success
• Participant exercises to see how you can create wild success, personally and professionally
• Educational material, provided as a PDF download just prior to the webinar, to support you in your implementation & mastery of GTD

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DAVID ALLEN
Bestselling author and inventor of
Getting Things Done

Click on the link below to find free articles and diagrams on getting email under control, reference filling, organizing your workspace, time management, and more. You can select from individual articles, or select a zip file to download all at once.

Free GTD articles and handouts.

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“People often remark to me that “GTD does take a lot of discipline!” Actually, it doesn’t, any more than taking showers and brushing your teeth require discipline, once the initial unfamiliarity has been overcome. How long does it take to get there? As long as it takes. You’ll be another day older tomorrow, no matter what. So just keep returning, when you stray. Write things down. Decide outcomes and actions. Organize and review them. And you’ll feel more and more uncomfortable when you don’t.”
–David Allen

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Our friends in Australia and Eastern Asia have been asking for a webinar that fits their schedule. And here it is!

The Keys to Getting Things Done® webinar is being offered at a special time to support our customers in that part of the world. This live webinar will give a fast and fun overview of the keys to Getting Things Done. You’ll learn about the best practices for managing the five phases of your workflow: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. Walk through the decision-making model for moving your “stuff” to clear outcomes and actions. This is a great overview if you’ve been wanting a better understanding of the big picture of managing your workflow with GTD.

This webinar is being offered at a special time to support our customers in the Australia and Eastern Asia time zones—7am in Singapore, 8am in Tokyo, 10am in Sydney, and 12pm in Auckland, on December 14. Check your time zone.

For more information and to register, click here.

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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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