David Allen describes the difference between what you’ll find on a next action list and a to do list:

90+ % of the to do lists I’ve seen are incomplete inventories of still-unclear things.  The Next Action definition (if you’re really getting down to having no ambiguity about the next visible physical activity required to move something forward), actually finishes the thinking you’ve implicitly agreed with yourself that you’ll do.  “Mom” is an unclarified to do item.  But when “Mom” is translated into “Celebrate Mom’s birthday with a party” as a project outcome, then “Call Sis about what we should do for Mom’s birthday” is a clear next action.  Because “Mom” is vague, it still triggers stress when you look at it on a list.  “Call Sis . . . ” triggers action and positive engagement.

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For anyone who has tackled a science project, or any kind of project, here is a Community Contribution from April Perry

Tackling a 5th-Grade Science Project

My 11-year-old daughter came home with a huge packet of science project information a few weeks ago, and the entire family started feeling the stress.  Before the world of computers and fancy tri-fold poster board, science projects were a cinch.  I remember hunkering down at my dining room table with construction paper, some magic markers, and a simple sheet of white poster board.  But today’s children have a lot more pressure.  They need charts and graphs, digital photographs, and well-written hypotheses.  It’s enough to overwhelm the children and the parents.

Instead of letting the stress get to me, I decided to apply the principles I learned from Getting Things Done and show my daughter that projects don’t have to give us headaches.  Here’s what we did:

Step 1: We read through the packet of information and made a list of tasks based on context. 

[Read more →]

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By popular request, here is a list of all of the FREE GTD resources offered by David Allen Company:

• GTD Times – This is the the official blog for the David Allen Company. Loads of helpful advice, tips, special offers, tricks & strategies for implementing GTD.
• Podcasts - Includes the GTD best practices series with David & his team.
• GTD Connect – The two-week free trial is a fully-functional experience of our online learning center (except for downloads.) There’s no obligation, no payment required, and nothing to cancel. [Read more →]

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One of the categories of Action lists David Allen recommends in Getting Things Done is “Agendas.”  This is a great category for tracking items that you want to discuss with people or teams you meet with regularly.  Your Agendas lists become a trusted parking lot for things to bring up the next time you have the opportunity to have a discussion.  Many people will use Agendas for the staff they manage, and for the manager they report to.  Agenda lists can also work well for family members and recurring team meetings.

Here’s how Community Contributor Meghan Wilker uses them:

In the workplace, one of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by being effective. And, in this era of constant — and I mean CONSTANT — interruption, one of the best ways to be effective is to be strategic about how you communicate with others.

Humanity has been stricken with several email-related diseases over the past few years. Two in particular are insidious contributors to the interruptive environment. [Read more →]

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David Allen discusses the 6 Horizons of Focus

Aside from the fact that the volume of what people need to organize is often light-years beyond what they imagine, there is much more to getting a grip on your “work” than most realize. Managing the flow of work can be approached from many altitudes, as there are many different levels of defining what your “work” really is. Whereas we may have some lower levels in control, there are often incomplete and unclear issues at higher levels that can and need to be addressed, to really get it all under control. And often there are issues about the nature and volume of work that cannot be resolved viewing it from an inappropriate level. We have roughly categorized “work” into six levels, or horizons of focus. [Read more →]

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For those of you who use Microsoft Outlook® for your GTD system, we hope you’ll tune in to our next webinar on GTD Connect.  Senior Coach Kelly Forrister will walk you through the essentials of optimizing your productivity with Outlook.  You’ll see examples of how to set up the Task lists for projects and actions, best practices for the calendar, email, and much more.  Outlook 2007 will be shown, but most of what will be demonstrated will be universal to all Outlook versions, and applicable to all Outlook users.

Join us on Thursday, January 27th from 10am-11am Pacific Time.

Free for all GTD Connect guest pass, monthly and annual members. To register for the webinar, log in to GTD Connect and follow the link on the home page.

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David Allen received this email from a student:
I consider myself to be very smart and imaginative. The people that get to know me always have a very good impression of me and have great expectations from me. More importantly, I have a lot of dreams and ideas. But I’m not very practical and everything ends at a theoretical phase. I never have clear objectives and I’m always confused by dozens of thoughts and can’t focus properly on what I do.

Most of the time I feel like I’m wasting my time, and would rather be doing something else. I always feel I ought to organize, so I make a nice, tight schedule. But after a couple of days it’s gone, and I’m back at the beginning.

If I had to describe the last 10 years of my life in a sentence I would say: “I woke up every morning to row in yet another direction.”

[Read more →]

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Most of the fancy features of most organizing software go unused, as do most forms and lines and boxes in most paper-based planners.  Most of what’s out there to help is grossly overbuilt.  Once you realize that you only need to define your projects with the next actions on them and keep track of all that in a complete but simple set of lists, you won’t need to bother yourself with much else. – David Allen

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David Allen’s essay in the new Productive Living is about two key questions that make a big and positive difference for us. 

DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT 

The everyday outcome focus challenge . . .

 

The two questions that bring clarity to most anything on this level are: What’s the successful outcome? And, what’s the next action to make it happen? These provide fundamental clarity for Getting Things Done, and they lie at the core of most everything I teach.

Keep reading David’s article. 

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.

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A Community Contribution from Erik Hanberg

There’s an idea I’ve read about when it comes to how different kinds of people schedule their day.  It’s maker versus manager.  Like me, many people work as both maker and manager.

Managers tend to schedule in one hour blocks.  There’s usually not a question about whether or not there’s a meeting at 2:00; it’s a question of who that meeting is with.

Makers tend to think in half-day blocks, scheduling three, four, or more hours for a single task.  Writing, coding, creative problem solving, etc., are all done best with a lot of hours put toward them all at once.

I’ve found the same tension in my own schedule as well.  Some of my work makes perfect sense in hour-long segments.  But some of it really needs to be in half-day chunks: building websites really requires at least two hours of solid attention to get anything significant accomplished, and often more.

I’ve gotten much better at scheduling meetings to give me the half-day chunks I want for coding or writing.  Here are some of the ways I’ve balanced it:

• [Read more →]

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