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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A Community Contribution from April Perry

The first day of school started out great.  My three oldest children dressed in their new clothes, laced up their new shoes, ate a healthy breakfast, and then headed off to school with homemade sack lunches and brightly-colored, fully-stocked pencil cases.  I felt like a wonderful mom.

They returned home seven hours later, happy but tired, toting folders overflowing with paperwork, and that’s when MY work started (I mean…continued).  As I shuffled through more than 50 sheets of fliers, forms, and date-specific notices, I started to feel a little dizzy.  The pile on my counter harbored a LOT of information, most of which needed my attention right that minute.  I was tempted to break into tears or bury my head in a carton of Rocky Road, but then I thought, “Wait a minute.  I’ve been trained in GTD.  I was MADE for situations like this.”   [Read more →]

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A contribution from Michael Dolan, a senior coach with the David Allen Company

Q: I’m in sales and have a customer relationship management system (CRM) whereby we add reminders to call people back and or manage projects as they relate to people there. I use Microsoft Outlook as well to keep all of my projects and contexts in one place. My question is how would you blend these two together?

A: I can very much appreciate this question since we seem to be hearing about this overlap more and more. Sales management systems, sometimes referred to as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, have come a long way in the past 10-15 years. They not only can help an individual or team track progress, agreements and forecasting in one, interwoven place, but they can also help automate some of the workflow that happens between team members in a company. They tend to be fairly contact / company centric in that records and reference about certain conversations and emails sent in the sales cycle are kept in relationship to specific contacts or sales initiatives. For example, [Read more →]

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We just released an A4* size of our new GTD & BlackBerry Guide. For those of you who will print the Guide and prefer this size instead of the standard U.S. letter size, you will now find it in our David Allen Company online store.

This 45 page Guide, created by David Allen and the senior coaches, will show you how to:

• Manage your email effectively on the BlackBerry–including how to get email to zero
• Use BlackBerry Tasks for your Projects and Actions–including descriptions and examples of what goes on different lists
• Use the Calendar as a critical foundation for actions–with shortcuts for switching between different views
• Create useful reference lists in MemoPad–for managing the “non-action” part of your life as well
• Move faster with speed keys and shortcuts–referenced throughout the Guide and on handy quick reference sheet
• Navigate around the BlackBerry easily–with tips on customizing some settings to match the way you work

*210 MM wide and 297 MM tall (about 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inch), used in Europe, and rest of the world, except the US and some neighboring countries where ‘letter-size’ paper (8 1/2 x 11 inch) is used.

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Q: I write down everything but I always seem to end up having problems controlling all the pieces of paper and lists; what are your suggestions?

Coach Janet Riley: Writing everything down is a great first step.  All those “notes” where you’ve captured and collected what’s in your head, need to be put into an “IN” box and then within a day or two they need to be “processed” so that you make decisions about what the work is to be done (an email to send, a call to make, etc.).  Once you process them, put reminders of the work to be done in your Next Action lists or on your calendar.  If you travel, your “IN” box can be a folder, for example. On a regular basis, stop to gather up any notes, business cards, loose papers, etc. that you might have left in a pocket, briefcase, wallet, or which are still on a notepad (tear them off) and put all those in the “IN” box or tray to be processed.  You can read more about Collection and Processing best practices in David’s first book Getting Things Done and we have loads of Webinars and educational resources on GTD Connect about this.

Listen to David’s podcast on the Mind Sweep process for clearing your head. Check out the GTD System Folders or create your own.

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A GTDer asked: Can I use project management software for my GTD lists?

Coach Wayne Pepper: From our perspective, project management tools are good for Project Support, not necessarily Next Action lists though.  In other words, if I have a project that is so complex and intertwined that it needs to be broken down into several sub-projects–many of which are contingent upon one another–then that kind of tool is a really good tool for supporting that project by capturing all those moving parts and pieces, and identifying how they relate to one another.  Those tools are not as good however, for capturing  and contextually categorizing all the discrete, granular next actions which support all those moving parts and pieces.  A simple list manager is often a better central hub for organizing ALL of your Next Action–related and not related to your projects.

Watch the Webinar Wayne did for our GTD Connect members on Organizing Project Plans.

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Question: When/where do I evaluate what to do?

Coach Danny Bader: I am evaluating my options for “doing” anytime I have doing time. The first place I look is my calendar to see what specific things I have committed to doing on the day.  The next place I review is my action lists depending on context  — calls, home, computer, etc.  I will also evaluate the volume of new inputs that are in my collection buckets — email, legal pads, etc – to determine if Processing & Organizing is where I need to focus.

During my Weekly Review I do a thorough evaluation of my entire GTD system to ensure that it is clean, current and complete.

This daily engagement with my calendar and action lists — as well as the “deeper” evaluation of my system during the Weekly Review allows me trust that what I am doing is what I should be doing.

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Clear your head with the man himself…

This is an excerpt from a Webinar David did for GTD Connect, our online learning center.

Listen now (20 min)

We have hundreds of audio and video selections like this on GTD Connect, with more added every week.  Hook into the most active Getting Things Done community in the world.  Check out a free guest pass (no credit card required and we won’t nag you when you’re done!)

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