David Allen's Blog, page 34
May 30, 2019
GTD and Outlook for Mac 2019 Setup Guide
It’s here! We’re happy to announce our new best-practices guide for implementing GTD® with Microsoft Outlook® for Mac 2019.
This Guide will show you how to:
– Understand the fundamental GTD best practices
– Optimally configure Outlook® for Mac 2019 in the way we have found works best for GTD
– Set up Outlook Tasks for your Projects and Actions
– Use the Calendar as a critical foundation for actions
– Get email to zero
– Create useful reference lists in Notes
Not an Outlook for Mac user? Check out our full library of expert GTD software guides.
The post GTD and Outlook for Mac 2019 Setup Guide appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
GTD® and Outlook® for Mac 2019 Setup Guide
It’s here! We’re happy to announce our new best-practices guide for implementing GTD with Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2019.®
This Guide will show you how to:
– Understand the fundamental GTD best practices
– Optimally configure Outlook for Mac 2019 in the way we have found works best for GTD
– Set up Outlook Tasks for your Projects and Actions
– Use the Calendar as a critical foundation for actions
– Get email to zero
– Create useful reference lists in Notes
Not an Outlook for Mac user? Check out our full library of expert GTD software guides.
The post GTD® and Outlook® for Mac 2019 Setup Guide appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
May 21, 2019
10 Reasons GTD is Like Karate
For years I have woven the martial arts metaphor in and through my writing, training and coaching about the Getting Things Done® methodology. I had the 
good fortune to be able to study karate for several years in my twenties, and my familiarity with that field gave me a rich context of images and concepts to draw from.
I didn’t fully appreciate, however, much of what getting my black belt gave me until later in life. Over the years I began to recognize the value of various habits and standards that training had ingrained in my personal style. They affected my approach to everything. And as I delved progressively deeper into the arena of personal productivity, similarities with karate began to resonate in many new ways. My conclusion was, and still is, that work (and life) IS a martial art—not just a reflection of it.
Though there is likely an infinite list of the similarities, the ones I find most interesting are the process replications—what’s the same in the nature of the two arts themselves.
Here are 10 reasons GTD is like karate:
1. There are no beginner’s moves.
You begin in karate learning moves that you will practice as a third-degree black belt. A roundhouse kick or knife-hand block is the same, whether you are just learning it or you are a sensei. Being responsible for your internal commitments, deciding what next physical action is required on something you want to do or change, clarifying your intention and vision—those are true from beginning to end, no matter how mature you are in life or its process. There’s no elementary way to process your inbox to zero.
2. It feels counter-intuitive and unnatural when you start.
Trying to stand and move gracefully in a karate “front stance” feels initially like one of the more unnatural things the body has ever attempted. It’s almost as weird as writing everything down that you commit to do something about, as it occurs to you. Or spending valuable time cleaning up non-critical open loops on the front end. Weird science.
3. Once you’re used to it, it is the most natural way to move.
Once you master the basic karate stances, your natural walk takes on a gracefulness you wonder why you ever did without. Once you integrate outcome- and next-action thinking into your life, not doing it seems both awkward and backward.
4. It handles basic movement and resource allocation masterfully.
In order to be able to break bricks with your hand and manifest a pinpoint of power in an instant, you learn to move the whole body with extreme efficiency. And once you’ve mastered the five steps of workflow, you don’t complain about your volume of e-mail nor mind putting everything on hold to focus on the surprise that just showed up.
5. It supports a peaceful and spontaneous way to move through the world, with minimal effort.
Once you’ve mastered the fighting arts, engaging in conflict per se becomes unnecessary and hard edges, rules, and structured defenses are much less required. With GTD maturity, a relaxed intuitive focus about what to do, when—unhindered by preconceptions and constraints—becomes the standard rhythm. Easy becomes the way to do hard things.
6. We don’t seem to be born knowing or doing it. (Or if we are, we unlearn it very fast.)
Nobody I’ve met seemed to grow up naturally efficient in how they move and generate speed and power. How many of you, in your first job, automatically asked, “What are we trying to accomplish here?” or, “What’s the next action? (And who’s doing it?)”
7. It can be learned.
Though we don’t seem to naturally inherit high performance motion, it can be learned. Everyone can certainly get better at it, if they can move at all. Everyone can learn how to better capture, decide about, organize, and review the results of their thinking.
8. It can be taught.
I’ve watched people learn both karate and GTD and demonstrate that they “get” it.
9. It can be practiced.
The more you rehearse karate and GTD moves, the smoother, faster, and more elegant you become at the art.
10. There is no end to how good you can be at it.
The more I learned about both arts, the more I realized I didn’t know, and how much more there was to experience, learn, express, and do.
So what? There’s a world of difference available to be experienced in an infinite number of worlds—gardening, golf, dance, music, love, art, investing, sales, war, peace, kite-flying, dog training, child rearing, GTD. But these worlds do not disclose themselves uninvited. They wait for the initiate to ask, to care, to engage. None of these seems easy, self-evident, or natural, though, on the front end. They all have dragons (or angels) at the gate, making it oh-so-easy to be discouraged from going further. Perhaps the easy way is the hardest way, at first.
The post 10 Reasons GTD is Like Karate appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
May 15, 2019
Episode #50: David Allen Talks with Brian Robertson
This is a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation between David Allen and Brian Robertson. They discuss how we as humans relate to our own attention, and how the increasing complexity of our work environment has necessitated that we get stuff off our minds. They point out multiple common threads between Getting Things Done for individuals and Holacracy for organizations. They also consider what happens after your personal system and your organization’s system are on cruise control.
Subscribe or Download to GTD Podcasts
iTunes
Stitcher
Libsyn
Google Play Music
Spotify
SoundCloud
The post Episode #50: David Allen Talks with Brian Robertson appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
Episode #50: David Allen Talks with Brian Robertson
David Allen and Brian Robertson discuss how we as humans relate to our own attention, and how the increasing complexity of our work environment has necessitated that we get stuff off our minds. They point out multiple common threads between Getting Things Done for individuals and Holacracy® for organizations. They also consider what happens after your personal system and your organization’s system are on cruise control.
Subscribe or Download to GTD Podcasts
iTunes
Stitcher
Libsyn
Google Play Music
Spotify
SoundCloud
The post Episode #50: David Allen Talks with Brian Robertson appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
May 9, 2019
GTD and Asana Setup Guide
It’s here! We’re happy to announce our new best-practices guide for implementing GTD® with Asana®.
This Guide will show you how to:
– Understand the fundamental GTD best practices
– Optimally configure Asana in the way we have found works best for GTD
– Integrate your actionable email
– Create project and next actions lists in Asana
– Create useful reference lists
– Use Labels effectively… and more!
Not an Asana user? Check out our full library of expert GTD software guides.
The post GTD and Asana Setup Guide appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
GTD® and Asana® Setup Guide
It’s here! We’re happy to announce our new best-practices guide for implementing GTD with Asana.
This Guide will show you how to:
– Understand the fundamental GTD best practices
– Optimally configure Asana in the way we have found works best for GTD
– Integrate your actionable email
– Create project and next actions lists in Asana
– Create useful reference lists
– Use Labels effectively… and more!
Not an Asana user? Check out our full library of expert GTD software guides.
The post GTD® and Asana® Setup Guide appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
May 6, 2019
Building a Productivity Jungle
The GTD® Summit kicks off in just seven weeks!
We are in the midst of finalizing our program and I am excited to announce that Emily Gregory of VitalSmarts will be joining our incredible lineup. She’s going to be sharing insights on effectively managing 10,000+ people.
As well as our stage content, we have been working on an exciting part of the event that we’re calling the “Productivity Jungle.” There you’ll be able to meet 12 curated companies demonstrating their innovative productivity apps, project management tools and newest educational programs.
Among those companies are Coda.io, Scoro, Meereffect, OmniFocus, NirvanaHQ, and many more that we’ll be announcing over the next weeks.
As always, check out the full lineup as well as our complete roadmap to help you plan your two days. Prices go up again on May 10th—don’t miss out.
See you there!
The post Building a Productivity Jungle appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
Steve Holden’s GTD Story
Tell us a little about yourself:
My name is Steve Holden, and I currently live in Southern California near San Diego. I originally grew up in Northern California near Sacramento. I came down to San Diego to go to San Diego State University (SDSU) to study computer science, and fell in love with San Diego. I have been blessed to be able to stay here in the San Diego area with my wife, three kids, and two dogs.
Photo by Alan Antczak
What do you do for work?
Since graduating from SDSU I started working at a Research & Development (R&D) Navy Lab. My current role is Lead Systems Engineer (LSE). I started out my career as a software developer and database engineer, but I am now doing more system analysis, architecture, engineering, integration, and testing. I have also been a project manager with responsibilities related to managing cost, schedule, and performance.
How long have you been practicing GTD, how did you hear about it, which tools do you use, etc.?
I started practicing GTD in 2002. It is kind of strange, but I got started with GTD based on the name “Getting Things Done.” I had just finished reading the book “Execution” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan that had the subtitle “The Discipline of Getting Things Done.” And after reading the book “Execution,” David Allen’s book title must of caught my eye at the airport bookstore because I picked it up and started reading it immediately. I couldn’t put the book down because it really clicked on many levels with my current feelings of being overwhelmed and having no good way to handle all the inputs in my life. As soon as I was done reading I just started implementing it at home and work.
Given the nature of my work for the government, I’ve always had two systems – one for work and one for home. My work system has been pretty stable for years. I’m using Microsoft Outlook configured like the recommended Outlook Setup Guide using Outlook Tasks for tracking Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, etc. Usually each Project I have gets a dedicated folder in my Windows computer’s Project’s folder. Most of my support material is in Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I am keeping work related Reference material in Microsoft OneNote. I am a big fan of doing mind mapping, and use the Windows version of MindManager for doing mind mapping, brainstorming, mind sweeps, note taking, project planning, etc.
My personal system is currently using Nirvana. I just made the changed in January 2019. My Nirvana setup is using the recent Nirvana Setup Guide. Before the change I was using Google Keep for several years, and my personal blog post about my Google Keep setup still gets a lot of traffic (http://bit.ly/GTD-Using-Google-Keep). Before that I dabbled with doing GTD in Evernote. I am really happy with Nirvana. It is simple to use and I really like the way you can link Next Actions to Projects. I also like that I can access Nirvana via web or with an app on my Android phone or with my iPad.
How has GTD made a difference in your work and life?
GTD has been so central to my life — 17 years if my math is correct. It keeps me on track and gives me a sense of control in the whirlwind of life. I use to be super stressed out about everything going on, however, adopting GTD has made everything so manageable that I actually can’t conceive of not having it in my life.
Two things do come to mind though as examples.
The first is having a system like GTD lets me be more present and actively engaged in where I am physically at. Having my GTD “external brain” lets me account for all my commitments, and what I plan to do about each of those commitments as already been decided. This gives me the freedom to know that if I am in a meeting, or sitting on the couch watching a movie with my family, that this is the best use of my time in that moment.
The second is that if something new — good or bad — shows up, I know how to deal with it and how to process it into my system. Back in October my Mom passed away suddenly. It was awful from an emotional perspective. There was so much that had to be done as her son and Executor that it would have been completely debilitating without having my GTD skills. I can honestly say that GTD was one of many things that got me through that period until now, and me being “organized” really helped my family deal with this loss.
What areas of GTD are you doing really well (or at least better than you used to)?
Overall my GTD game really started improving back in October 2017. The reason is that I had on my Someday/Maybe list — “Become a Certified Trainer of GTD” for my work. And in October I completed that training with VitalSmarts, and then in 2018 I conducted 8 courses training 87 co-workers.
Being on the hook to facilitate classes about GTD really gave me additional motivation to make all of GTD a regular habit. I was pretty good with weekly reviews, but now I’m much better in timeliness and consistency. I have also moved from having a weekly review for Work on Monday mornings and then a separate weekly review on Sunday for Personal, to just one weekly review on Sunday afternoon. This is giving me a better perspective as I start the work week on Monday.
What areas of GTD would you like to get even better at doing?
The one area that I’ve been working on more recently is with ENGAGE. This is to make sure I actually have time on my schedule to do the work that I’ve committed myself to. One way I’ve been experimenting with improving on ENGAGE is by using a Panda paper planning system to make sure I get the right amount of reflection to really know what my key projects, the key tasks that need to get done in a day, and making sure I am still tracking things I am grateful for, things I’m excited about, my big wins, and things I still need to improve on. So far it has been pretty positive.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out with GTD?
Remember that doing GTD is for you. You aren’t being graded on it, and you aren’t being compared to others. Your GTD practice is personal — it is you working on you being a better human being. It is not an event, but a journey that will take time. The pay-off will be a better you. And communities like GTD Connect can help you on this journey.
The post Steve Holden’s GTD Story appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
Steve Holden’s GTD Story
Tell us a little about yourself:
My name is Steve Holden, and I currently live in Southern California near San Diego. I originally grew up in Northern California near Sacramento. I came down to San Diego to go to San Diego State University (SDSU) to study computer science, and fell in love with San Diego. I have been blessed to be able to stay here in the San Diego area with my wife, three kids, and two dogs.
Photo by Alan AntczakWhat do you do for work?
Since graduating from SDSU I started working at a Research & Development (R&D) Navy Lab. My current role is Lead Systems Engineer (LSE). I started out my career as a software developer and database engineer, but I am now doing more system analysis, architecture, engineering, integration, and testing. I have also been a project manager with responsibilities related to managing cost, schedule, and performance.
How long have you been practicing GTD, how did you hear about it, which tools do you use, etc.?
I started practicing GTD in 2002. It is kind of strange, but I got started with GTD based on the name “Getting Things Done.” I had just finished reading the book Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan that had the subtitle “The Discipline of Getting Things Done.” And after reading the book Execution, David Allen’s book title must have caught my eye at the airport bookstore, because I picked it up and started reading it immediately. I couldn’t put the book down because it really clicked on many levels with my current feelings of being overwhelmed and having no good way to handle all the inputs in my life. As soon as I was done reading I just started implementing it at home and work.
Given the nature of my work for the government, I’ve always had two systems—one for work and one for home. My work system has been pretty stable for years. I’m using Microsoft Outlook® configured like the recommended Outlook Setup Guide using Outlook Tasks for tracking Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, etc. Usually each Project I have gets a dedicated folder in my Windows® computer’s Projects folder. Most of my support material is in Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel®, and PowerPoint®. I am keeping work related Reference material in Microsoft OneNote®. I am a big fan of doing mind mapping, and use the Windows version of MindManager® for doing mind mapping, brainstorming, Mind Sweeps, note taking, project planning, etc.
My personal system is currently using Nirvana®. I just made the change in January 2019. My Nirvana setup is using the recent Nirvana Setup Guide. Before the change I was using Google Keep for several years, and my personal blog post about my Google Keep setup still gets a lot of traffic (http://bit.ly/GTD-Using-Google-Keep). Before that I dabbled with doing GTD in Evernote. I am really happy with Nirvana. It is simple to use and I really like the way you can link Next Actions to Projects. I also like that I can access Nirvana via web or with an app on my Android phone or with my iPad.
How has GTD made a difference in your work and life?
GTD has been so central to my life—17 years if my math is correct. It keeps me on track and gives me a sense of control in the whirlwind of life. I used to be super stressed out about everything going on, however, adopting GTD has made everything so manageable that I actually can’t conceive of not having it in my life.
Two things do come to mind though as examples.
The first is having a system like GTD lets me be more present and actively engaged in where I am physically at. Having my GTD “external brain” lets me account for all my commitments, and what I plan to do about each of those commitments as already been decided. This gives me the freedom to know that if I am in a meeting, or sitting on the couch watching a movie with my family, that this is the best use of my time in that moment.
The second is that if something new — good or bad — shows up, I know how to deal with it and how to process it into my system. Back in October my Mom passed away suddenly. It was awful from an emotional perspective. There was so much that had to be done as her son and Executor that it would have been completely debilitating without having my GTD skills. I can honestly say that GTD was one of many things that got me through that period until now, and me being “organized” really helped my family deal with this loss.
What areas of GTD are you doing really well (or at least better than you used to)?
Overall my GTD game really started improving back in October 2017. The reason is that I had on my Someday/Maybe list — “Become a Certified Trainer of GTD” for my work. And in October I completed that training with VitalSmarts, and then in 2018 I conducted 8 courses training 87 co-workers.
Being on the hook to facilitate classes about GTD really gave me additional motivation to make all of GTD a regular habit. I was pretty good with weekly reviews, but now I’m much better in timeliness and consistency. I have also moved from having a weekly review for Work on Monday mornings and then a separate weekly review on Sunday for Personal, to just one weekly review on Sunday afternoon. This is giving me a better perspective as I start the work week on Monday.
What areas of GTD would you like to get even better at doing?
The one area that I’ve been working on more recently is with ENGAGE. This is to make sure I actually have time on my schedule to do the work that I’ve committed myself to. One way I’ve been experimenting with improving on ENGAGE is by using a Panda paper planning system to make sure I get the right amount of reflection to really know what my key projects, the key tasks that need to get done in a day, and making sure I am still tracking things I am grateful for, things I’m excited about, my big wins, and things I still need to improve on. So far it has been pretty positive.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out with GTD?
Remember that doing GTD is for you. You aren’t being graded on it, and you aren’t being compared to others. Your GTD practice is personal—it is you working on you being a better human being. It is not an event, but a journey that will take time. The payoff will be a better you. And communities like GTD Connect can help you on this journey.
The post Steve Holden’s GTD Story appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
David Allen's Blog
- David Allen's profile
- 1479 followers
