Someone new to GTD asked David Allen for advice on making GTD simpler to adopt.

David answered this way . . .

It’s hard to get it any simpler than this:

• Keep meaningful stuff out of your head
• Make action and outcome decisions about the stuff sooner than later
• Organize reminders of those items in easy to view places
• Review it all and keep it current

Any one of those elements without the others won’t really produce that much value.

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An easy way for me to explain the “Doing” phase of GTD is to simply say “trust your gut/butt/intuition/hunch/heart.” There is gold in that, and ultimately that’s what it will come down to. But how do you even get to the point of trusting whatever part of you makes a trusted decision?  Here’s where the “ecosystem of GTD” starts to make more sense:

Capture everything that has your attention (Collect)

Make decisions about what it means and what you are going to do about it (Process)

Park those decisions in trusted places (Organize)

Step back to reflect on those choices from a clear, current, and creative place (Review)

So that you can make the best action choice  (Do)

So how will that help narrow down a To Do list the length of your driveway? You’ll want to pull in the  Criteria for Choosing model: [Read more →]

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Sometimes Christmas feels like an all-consuming project that sends us racing through malls, jumping from party to party, and being busy-busy-busy as we fill our time with lots of Christmas fluff.

I want something more than that, though.

I don’t want to have to “recover” from Christmas. I don’t want to start the new year eight pounds heavier. I don’t want my children focused only on the electronic gadgets they hope Santa brings. But everything I don’t want will probably become my reality–unless I take the initiative to implement what I do want.

David Allen’s Natural Planning Model seriously saves my sanity on everything from birthday party planning to creating new programs for my website, so this year, I decided to use the five steps of the Natural Planning Model to create a Christmas experience that is both magical and meaningful.

Step One: Defining Purpose and Principles

For this part, I sat down with my children and gave them the following prompts:

• What’s the purpose of this season?
• What do you want this Christmas to feel like for our family?
• Please finish this sentence: “I would be happy with any Christmas celebration, as long as . . .”

[Read more →]

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David Allen calls the Weekly Review the “critical success factor” to GTD. Why? It’s the glue that keeps it all together.  It’s also one of the steps people tend to resist the most.  Here are some keys for getting the most out of the Review phase to keep your GTD system humming along.

WHAT TO REVIEW:

There are 11 steps in the GTD Weekly Review.  David Allen recommends leading yourself through this every 7-10 days to get clear, current, and creative.

Get clear – ensure all your “stuff” is processed

Collect Loose Papers and Materials
Get “IN” to Zero
Empty Your Head
[Read more →]

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Organize, by far, is one of the most talked about parts of GTD.  And why not? It’s all about cool gear!  With GTD, choosing your tools is up to you and there’s incredible freedom in that.  David Allen is not telling you what tools to use, but how to use your tools.  So let’s dive in to look at what’s helpful to know about this phase.

WHAT TO ORGANIZE:

Organizing identifies the various placeholders or “buckets” where actions and support material are stored that you’ve processed. David Allen has also described organizing as simply “things are stored based on what they mean to you.”  The four primary action lists are:

• Projects
• Next Actions (with optional subcategories by context such as Calls, Computer, Office, Home, Errands, Agendas (people and meetings) and Anywhere)
• Waiting For
• Calendar (for time-specific actions, day-specific actions, and day-specific information only)

Organizing also includes setting up your workspace, a reference system for non-actionable information, and incubation systems (Someday Maybe and Tickler Systems) for possible later actions.

[Read more →]

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Join David Allen and Senior Coach Kelly Forrister as they discuss keys for breaking through procrastination, including:

• Why bright people procrastinate the most
• Dumbing down your brain
• Typical causes and cures
• The bottom line of why we procrastinate

This webinar is free for GTD Connect members.  You can sign up for a free trial membership, and when you log in, you’ll find the webinar information on the home page of GTD Connect.

And coming up in January, GTD Connect members will have another opportunity to participate in the hugely popular 14-day GTD Challenge.  Members who did the recent 14-day GTD Challenge had this to say:

“Great webinar by Meg and Kelly as usual. I liked your advice on picking ‘Wins’ for the 14 days, instead of trying to climb the entire mountain at once.”

“Coaching from the webinar has gotten me more relaxed and re-energized about GTD.”

“The Webinar really motivated me to get back on track. Though I’ve been really busy, I’ve made time to get clear and current again.”

The free trial membership is easy to begin—just first name and email address—with no cost or commitment.

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Yes, you sure can.  GTD Times reader Angela wrote to share her format for tracking action items.

GTD has made a significant impact on my life, and I’m glad to share a specific technique that has worked for me.

I format my Action Items list in a spreadsheet. It’s really convenient to add items as they come in chronologically or during the processing of  ”in.” Then the items can be sorted according to context. This is easily done by just having three columns in the spreadsheet:

1) Context (errands, @computer,  etc.)
2) The item itself
3) Notes such as phone numbers, reference data, referral name, etc.

You can process “in” without wasting time inserting rows in order to put like items together. Just add more items at the bottom of the list. It is a simple procedure to sort the data by context, and BAM – action items are grouped according to context. 

[Read more →]

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Question: How do you handle reading material? I have magazine articles, web articles, books, newsletter special articles, blog interesting articles, etc.  Do you input them into “context” just like any other task?

Senior Coach Kelly Forrister: I consider reading materials fall into two categories: nice to read and must read. Nice to read is like a newsstand. I can read it or not. Those are not tracked on any lists. they are organized into a plastic folder called “Read/Review”.  For must read items, those are tracked on my Next Action lists, just like any other action I am committed to complete. Those are organized based on where the reading takes place (@Office, @Home, @Anywhere or @Computer). The reading is typically stored in a project folder if it’s related to a project, an @Action email or hard copy folder, or I simply paste the URL if it’s a website into the note field of the next action in my list manager.

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This post on planning a baby shower is from the Art department at the David Allen Company.

Here’s a great reminder of how helpful GTD is for any project, personal or professional.

Our team at the David Allen Company is planning a baby shower for  a co-worker.  We met today to do the following:

1. Brainstorm and mind map the project
2. Decide on next actions
3. Assign people to the identified next actions
4. Decide when to loop around again for further planning

Here was our simple mind map that helped clarify the tasks:

Our 20-minute meeting allowed everyone to move forward on this fun project with their own clearly-defined tasks.

GTD can help integrate your professional and personal life. Simple, easy, and fun planning — that’s a “GTD” baby shower!

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