Question: In your book, you talk about the 3 kinds of work:

1/ Pre-determined work
2/ Doing work as it shows up
3/ Defining your work

What percentage of a person’s time should be dedicated to defining work?

David Allen: No rules here.  “Defining work” usually takes about 30 seconds per input (email, notes, paper, thoughts, etc.), which means 30 to 90 minutes a day for most professionals.

If you want a great guide to help you define your work, grab the free GTD Workflow Map illustrating the steps for processing & organizing.

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A Community Contribution from Erik Hanberg

Here’s how I deal with email and keep from getting too overloaded:

1. I have one inbox. Everything goes to the same place (accounts either forward to Gmail or I’ve actually set Gmail up to reply from those accounts).
2. I only check email when I can reply to it easily. Unless I’m waiting for something specific, I try not to check email from my phone, because it’s a recipe for getting an email that requires a length reply that I don’t have the time to give on my phone. And that just stresses me out until I can reply appropriately.
3. I don’t use preview windows. It’s too easy to only get half the information and miss important stuff. When I used Outlook for work, this happened way more often that I would have liked. I thought it was a feature, but it turns out it wasn’t helpful at all. It made me browse email more than read email. [Read more →]

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Google announced Priority Inbox today and the emails started flooding in asking, “Isn’t this anti-GTD?”

Google says that Priority Inbox “automatically identifies your important email and separates it out from everything else, so you can focus on what really matters.”

So, what does David Allen say about this kind of tool and the questions about something that sorts your inbox being “anti-GTD?”

Having email sorting/filtering would be anti-GTD if you use it to avoid decision-making, but not if it’s just for evaluating what kind of attention to put on something. Using colors for certain people’s emails in  Lotus Notes (as I do) would also be “anti-GTD” if you never dealt with the non-colored ones. We’re not officially endorsing or recommending this.  Just saying it’s something that you can make work.  – David Allen

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Once you have determined your next physical action, you can either complete it in the moment, hand it off to someone else to do, or keep track of it in a way that you will be reminded of it appropriately. -David Allen (in chapter 12 of Making It All Work)

Want any easy way to remember these?  If you’re following the GTD Workflow Map, these are your choices of Do, Delegate, or Defer.  Of course, don’t forget about Delete, which comes when you are first deciding whether or not it’s actionable.

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One of the key buckets in your GTD system is Waiting For.  So what’s the biggest creator of Waiting For? Sent emails. Sure, you could slog through your Sent folder for which ones you actually need to make sure to track, but that’s like searching for a contact lens on the beach.  Good luck having that be a trusted and efficient system.  Another way to track Waiting For items is to create a simple rule or filter in your email program.   Here are those rules for two popular mail programs:   Gmail & Outlook.  If you’re on a different mail program, it’s usually pretty simple to set something like this up if it’s got a filter or rule function.  [Read more →]

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How do ever expect to get things done on your lists if you never step away from your Email Inbox?  Seriously folks, those lists need care and feeding too.  Just like the Inbox doesn’t get to zero on its own, your lists don’t ever get completion unless you:

1. Do what’s on them
2. Decide not to do what’s on them

You need time for processing and defining your work, just like you need time for doing what you’ve already defined, as well as time you need for choosing to do work as it appears.  So is David Allen suggesting a nice, neat little pie chart of 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 to spend your time?  No.  But everybody needs time for each one of these areas.  And technically, while reading email is part of defining your work, it can quickly teeter into doing work as it appears when you start using it as a distraction or procrastination technique to avoid what’s on your lists.

If you really don’t want to do what’s on your lists, checking email won’t solve that. I’d say you have a bigger issue to look at there called why are your lists repelling you?

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In this 30-minute podcast, David and his team talk about the critical “thinking” stage of GTD.  They share practical tips, personal examples and suggestions for the processing stage of mastering your workflow.  Listen now.

If you missed the previous episode in our GTD best practices series on Collect, you can catch it here.

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In my earlier blog post about getting your email inbox down to zero, GTD’er Gil asked the question, “So, what do you suggest when the problem seems to be the sheer quantity, not just mail management practices?”

There are two things I would look at:  Speed + Input

One angle to consider is to get really good and faster at processing.  Speed will be required when you’re getting tons of volume every day if you hope to get through it all without it consuming your entire day.

I think it’s also helpful to look at what you’re getting with a fresh eye, now and again.  Do you need to be getting everything you’re getting?

[Read more →]

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