If you need to get on top of your Microsoft Outlook® email, calendar, and tasks by implementing GTD, this is the webinar for you. You’ll learn the best recommendations for building a GTD system in Outlook to seamlessly handle your work and personal commitments. It’s only 90 minutes, and it’s packed with tips and tricks that will start saving you time right away.
Wednesday, June 27, from 10am-11:30am Pacific Time
You can find more information about GTD Public Webinars by clicking here.
GTD® & Outlook® Webinar – June 27, 2012
Steve Jobs would ask you to leave a meeting if you had nothing to contribute. Ken Segall saw it happen, and describes it in an article called Meetings Are A Skill You Can Master, And Steve Jobs Taught Me How. The article points out that, “Every company wants to maximize productivity and cut down on unnecessary meetings.” But they don’t always know how to go about making meetings more effective.
David Allen cautions that “one of the greatest blocks to organizational productivity is the lack of decision by a senior person about the necessity of a meeting, and with whom, to move an important issue forward.” [Getting Things Done, Chapter 10: Getting Projects Under Control]
How often have you been in a meeting where someone wasn’t really necessary? How would your organization react if you declined to attend unnecesary meetings?
American business travelers took 445 million trips last year. Between delayed or cancelled flights, uncomfortable accommodations and inconvenient downtime, most people find business travel to be frustrating and a drain on their productivity.
David Allen, the consummate road warrior, will present a free one-hour webinar on how he stays productive while traveling.
Stress-Free Productivity on the Road on June 5, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific / 2:00 p.m. Eastern.
In this educational and entertaining webinar, hosted by CLEAR and the David Allen Company, David will discuss how to:
Space is limited, so please click here to sign up now.
David Allen Company provides training and consulting services designed to increase performance, capacity and aligned execution for organizations and individuals.
CLEAR is a membership program that shortens travel times by providing members with exclusive access to expedited lines at airport security checkpoints.
To take advantage of a 3-month free trial with CLEAR, click here and enter CGTDCLEAR in the promo code field of the enrollment form. The code expires August 31, 2012.
Hi Folks,
Before you spend another minute creating yet another list with ABC, 123, or high-medium-low codes as a way to define your priorities, read my essay this month. You may discover there’s a more natural path for getting you what you need to get the right things done.
All the best,
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT
WHY ABC PRIORITY CODES DON’T WORK
“How do I set priorities?” Because I hear that so frequently, I assume most people think they could and should be doing it better.
The “ABC” priority codes don’t work. Listing your top 10 things you think have to get done, in order, doesn’t work. You’ll have a different priority set at 8:00 tonight than you will at 10:30 this morning. And sometimes the most strategic thing for you to do will be to water your plants. Like, when you’ve been in six meetings, felt beat up in five of them, and by 4:30 your brain is scrambled eggs, and you barely have the attention span of a gnat. That’s the time to water your plants and fill your stapler. Why? Because you can’t do anything else, and you’re going to have to water your plants sometime anyway.
On a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, there is no algorithm or formula that will last very long, or is really worth trying to nail down in some written or coded system. The four criteria that you will use to decide what to do are (in order of precedence):
Context (what can I do where I am?)
Time (when do I have to do something else?)
Energy (how wasted/fresh am I?)
Priority (what has the highest payoff for me if I do it?)
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.
Get clear, get current, get creative. Sound good to you? That’s what you get from a weekly review. David Allen calls it ”the critical success factor” in GTD. Lifehacker has two recent posts on this topic. The first is their link to our video of David talking about the value of the weekly review, and why it provides the leverage you need to be more productive. The second is a how-to that includes practical tips for getting into the groove of doing a weekly review.
Your time is valuable. The time you put into a weekly review is a guaranteed investment in yourself.
David Allen talks about the GTD Weekly Review, and how to do more executive thinking about your life. Technology changes over time, but this is timeless advice.
(This video is streaming from YouTube, so it may take a few moments to load.)
If you’re looking for practical time management training, watch a busy mom for a day. You’ll learn that moms are experts when it comes to organizing their to do lists by contexts. They can move forward on projects, even when others might not see the possibility for progress. Some might call it multitasking, but in fact it’s more the ability to rapidly refocus, using whatever technology is at hand, including Facebook.
Moms Rely on Facebook More Than Other Women
by Leslie Meredith, Senior Writer, TechNewsDaily
12 April 2012 07:30 PM ETForget the weekly playgroup to compare notes with other moms — many now head straight to Facebook. Moms use the social media site more frequently than women without kids, and with far more finesse.
Marketing firm Performics yesterday (April 12) released its study of 3,000 active U.S. social networkers, and found moms were more proficient than other women at getting information from Facebook. Fifty-six percent of moms considered themselves to be “experts” at using social networks compared with 36 percent of other women.
You can click here to read the complete article.
From the Business Center at PC World, GTD is listed as a browser-compatible productivity system. That will be a relief to those who don’t want to be tied to any specific device, or to a paper planner.
Can a cloud-based productivity system work for you? Or are there times when you have to have your calendar, projects, and actions at hand because the cloud is out of range?
Getting Things Done
We rely far too much on our imperfect memories to help us organize tasks and get work done. Trying to keep track of multiple projects leads to human error as we forget important tasks and waste time worrying over which project we should be working on at any given moment.
The solution: As soon as you remember a task, write it down so that your fallible, distractable brain isn’t the only place where you’re storing a record of it. This is the core principle of Getting Things Done. If you use it while working online, identifying your next task is a simple matter of consulting your to-do list.
In a guest post on the Workshifting blog, read tips from Mike Williams, CEO for the David Allen Company (and vetted GTD coach!) on some simple ways to apply GTD. His post also includes an experiment for making your next meeting more effective.
Are there meeting tips that you have found helpful that others could benefit from? Share them here. Other GTD Times readers like to hear what works for you.
