David Allen's Blog, page 37

The Strategic Value of Clear Space

Are neat people more productive?

How easily you can make a mess is how truly productive you can be. Maximum freedom to generate and play around in creative chaos is the optimal condition for constructive thinking and work.

This is true on a project, in the kitchen, in your office, and at your writing table—anywhere and anytime you want to get real work done.

I don’t usually work in a neat fashion. Whether I’m writing an essay, arranging flowers, or making guacamole, I wind up strewing stuff all over the place. If you were to walk into my office while I was working or thinking about something, you’d likely see notes, books, and files strewn around somewhat randomly; a mindmap on my computer screen; doodles and words scrawled on my whiteboard. When I really get involved in something and my creative juices start flowing, it’s likely to look like something exploded in the middle of it. I have a singular focus, but it doesn’t seem orderly until it’s done. My best work happens that way. Yours will too.

 

The freedom to make a mess

But if you’re already in a mess, you’re not free to make one. If you have a desk piled with unfinished, unclear work; if you’re trying to repair something in your garage with tools and incomplete projects strewn everywhere; if you’ve got thousands of unprocessed emails in your inbox; or if you’ve just got a lot of issues and situations in your life and work on your mind—you’re going to be laboring under a serious handicap.

That’s why, when I’m not doing anything else, I’m cleaning up. I’m getting my inboxes to zero, getting my desk in order, clearing off the kitchen counter. I’m also capturing, clarifying, and organizing stuff that’s pulling on my attention. There’s an event, a problem, an opportunity coming toward me I can’t see yet. Something will emerge that I will need to focus and work on, coming from the outside or from my own inspiration. When that happens, I want to be ready. Things will get messy, but they will neither start nor end that way.

 

Begin in a clear space

To tackle something most productively you must begin in clear space. Physically you need all your tools in order and an open space for spreading your raw elements and assembling structures. Psychically you need an empty head, clear of distractions and unfinished business holding your attention hostage. From this starting point you will have your best chances for creative thinking, optimal ability to deal with surprise, maximum flexibility to come up with workarounds and innovative solutions. You’ll be able to take advantage of serendipitous, potentially valuable ideas.

If you have a problem to solve, limited resources to allocate, or an ambiguous situation to clarify, you’ll want to work from a clear deck. You are most productive when all of your available resources are present and accounted for, unencumbered with irrelevant pressures and dross, with an ability to apply relaxed but concentrated focus.

Zen practices refer to a “beginner’s mind.” The ready state for enlightenment is a consciousness devoid of preconceptions. Much of the training in the esoteric spiritual disciplines is concerned with de-conditioning the psyche, allowing the full experience and awareness of what’s fundamentally true in the present, without the illusory colorings brought on by interpretations from the past or projections into the future.

That’s the best place to come from—mentally, emotionally, and psychologically—if you’re developing the agenda for the staff meeting, formulating the best way to approach your boss about the delay in a major project, restructuring your board of directors, or planning the family vacation.

This is not a state from which most people live and work.

 

How do you get to clear space?

So, how do you get to that clear place? Can you only achieve it by dedicating years of disciplined asceticism on a Tibetan mountaintop? That’s one way, but there’s a nice shortcut.

In your physical space it’s pretty simple—just put stuff where it belongs.

In your psychic space it’s also pretty simple (though often quite subtle): you merely have to find out why things are on your mind, and eliminate the cause. Why are you distracted? What causes your mind to be unclear and inappropriately filled with unproductive thinking that makes no progress on what you’re focused on but which creates stress and disturbance that undermines your energy and focus? The basic cause is some decision you haven’t yet made and/or you haven’t parked the resulting contents into a trusted system.

“Mom” will only be on your mind if there’s something current going on in your relationship with her (her birthday? her health issue?) about which you haven’t clarified what outcome, exactly, you’re committed to achieve or what you’re specifically going to do about it as a next step to making that happen. And even if you’ve already clarified those points precisely, if you haven’t put the reminders of that outcome and that action step in places you know you will review at the right time, you’ll still have it impinging on your consciousness.

That’s going to be equally true about your son’s college choice, the status of your retirement account, your choice about hiring a new executive assistant, and your company’s strategic direction.

 

The bottom line

Decide the outcomes you’re committed to. Decide the next physical, visible actions required to move toward them. Place reminders of all of that where you know you’ll look at the right time. Keep everything in your life and work that way—clear, current, and complete. Discover the strategic value of clear space. Get ready to make a mess.

 

This essay appeared in David Allen’s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

 

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Episode #45: Dealing with Competing Priorities

Do you ever struggle with managing competing priorities and don’t know how you’ll get it all done?  Join David Allen for a conversation that’s packed with practical GTD coaching advice on how to deal with competing priorities–from getting a higher perspective on your life and work, down to trusting your moment-to-moment action choices.

 

Listen Now—Dealing with Competing Priorities


 

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David Drake’s GTD Story

Tell us a little about yourself:

My name is David Drake, MS, PhD. I am a professor of microbiology & infectious diseases. I am in the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research, College of Dentistry, University of Iowa.

How did you hear about GTD?

When I became an Assistant Professor many years ago, I realized that my old methods of keeping on top of everything were not working.  I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore one afternoon and looking at the business books to find a new approach.  I spotted David Allen’s book and was quite intrigued.  I think the first edition of the book had just come out.

How long have you been practicing GTD?

Well, that was in 2003-4, so at least 15 years now.

How has GTD made a difference in your work and life?

I finally have a comprehensive approach to get all of the stuff coming at me processed, defined, and into a trusted system.  This allows me to be more creative doing my deep work.

What areas of GTD are you doing really well (or at least better than you used to)?

Processing all of my inboxes, maintaining my actions and projects lists are all things I feel I am doing very well.

What areas of GTD would you like to get even better at doing?

Finding a new approach to doing my Weekly Reviews.  I think I need to leave and go somewhere besides my office. I have not tried that, but I think that will significantly improve my Weekly Review process.

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out with GTD?

I have studied productivity systems for over 30 years now.  GTD is the cornerstone of all that I do.  It takes time to learn, but it WILL change your life.  But you also have to personalize it to fit your personality and style.  One size does not fit all, but the principles behind the GTD process really do!  Find a mentor who can work with you.  I am always willing to help others.

 

 

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When did email become my job?

Question: At what point did answering e-mail become my job?

David Allen: Well, at what point did answering anything—your mail, having conversations in your hallway—become your job? It’s all your job. You just have to decide what your work is. As the late, great Peter Drucker said, that’s your biggest job, to define what your work is.

So how do you define what your work is, and therefore should you be doing that? The good news about this overwhelm is that it’s forcing people to make executive decisions that they never felt like they had to make before. “I need to do everything that comes my way.” No, you can’t anymore, sorry. You are going to have to do triage. That means you are going to have to have a conversation with your boss. You are going to have to show up with a list of everything he or she has given you and have a conversation. “Gee, thanks for these new things, can we talk? Because I am not going to be able to do them all.” It’s forcing those kinds of conversations.

That’s why people have this attraction/repulsion to GTD. It ain’t lightweight stuff. If you are really going to work this, that’s what’s going to start to show up.

 

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What should you do?

What should you do? 

With many choices you are given moment-to-moment, what should you do? There are five steps in the Mastering Workflow model of GTD®: Capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. So which step is most important? How do you decide whether to collect stuff, process an inbox, organize your work, reflect on all of your choices, or just do something? The decision comes back to a key concept in the Getting Things Done® methodology:

What most has your attention?

Is any one of those five stages more critical than another? It depends. And, it will change moment to moment. You may have a lot of unprocessed emails piling up in your inbox, but there may be some action you should be taking that’s more important than getting IN to empty. At times, organizing more effectively or differently will take precedence. And certainly there are times when the priority is to step back and reflect on the total inventory of your work.

If you’re not sure which of these processes you should pursue in the moment, I’d recommend cleaning up your inboxes and reducing your backlog toward zero.

A few good reasons:

It helps clean up residual stuff needing decisions so you can think more clearly.
It ensures that all the options about what you could be doing are evident in front of you.
It serves as preventive maintenance so that you can be ready for new stuff coming toward you that you can’t foresee.
It’s usually rather fun and freeing to be playing a part of the game that you know you can win by cleaning up, making progress, and generating creative and productive ideas along the way.

The Solution

So when in doubt, clean an inbox. Then see what you really feel like doing.

This essay appeared in David Allen’s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

 

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The 2019 GTD® Organizer is now available

What is the GTD Organizer?

The 2019 GTD Organizer is an elegant, functional, and complete system, built on the GTD principles. We created it to give people a way to get people up and running with a tool that is completely aligned with GTD.

How to Use It

The GTD Organizer comes as an editable PDF download that can be used in several effective ways:

As a PDF file that you type into and store electronically
As a PDF file that you type into and then print as your paper organizer
As paper forms that you can print and then write on as your paper organizer

 

What’s Included in the GTD Organizer

The complete GTD Organizer includes:

Notes/In
2019 Calendar, in week-at-a-glance format (Mon, Tue, Wed on one page; Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun on the next page)
Next Actions Lists
Agendas Lists
Projects Lists
Project Support Pages
Someday/Maybe Lists
Focus & Direction Pages
Reference Pages
Contacts Pages
Extra Pages

Available in letter or Junior size.

Don’t need list pages or already use the Organizer? We also offer a Calendar-only version.

 

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Getting things off your mind

Even very important things can be on cruise control and not on your mind. If your attention is being grabbed, then there’s almost an inverse relationship there. The degree to which your attention is being grabbed is the degree to which you are not free to place your attention where and how you want to. So, if nothing else, it’s just a pure practical idea that, if you can get rid of the demons that are grabbing hold of your brain and shaking it around—whether that’s buy cat food or reconsidering your career—then it will give you a lot more freedom to be thinking about those things in more creative ways or not have to think about them at all. –David Allen

 

 

Have you done a Mind Sweep lately? It’s a great way to see what’s grabbing your attention. We offer live Guided Mind Sweep webinars on GTD Connect and you can also listen to the free podcast with David Allen through the GTD public podcast.

 

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Aliman’s GTD Story

Tell us a little about yourself:

My name is Aliman Sears from the Island of Oahu, Honolulu, Hawaii (Kailua side). My primary work is chief operating officer and co-founder of a nonprofit psychiatric social work agency. I am also adjunct professor of philosophy at Chaminade University, Honolulu.

 

How did you hear about GTD?

In 2016 during meditation I “directly received” that I could get myself organized and relieve stress if I captured everything, decided what needed to be done with it (if anything), then wrote it down on my “To Do” list. Note I had never heard of David Allen nor GTD. I started doing these three steps, and it radically changed the way I worked in a wonderful way. But I didn’t have the benefit of the whole system, so I was still struggling with “not enough time.”  Fast forward to March 2018 at the end of a meeting, when one of our consultants said, “David Allen, who has a system called GTD, says that at the end of a meeting you should have clear actions to take, and you should define in a very concrete way the next, actual, physical action that you need to do to move the project forward.”  I just stared at him—I was stunned. My inner/intuitive fireworks blasted into the sky. Before everyone was even out of my office, I jumped online and ordered FIVE copies of David’s book—sight unseen! I somehow knew this was it! The books arrived about a week later, and by page four I was amazed and knew I had finally found something to help put things in perspective. I gave copies to my key staff, and we’re now in process of implementing GTD company wide.

 

How long have you been practicing GTD now?

I discovered GTD in March 2018, and started implementing it in April 2018. It took one month to get through the “Capture” stage as I had about five stacks of “stuff,” each about five feet tall! That’s why the next thing is so amazing:

 

How has GTD made a difference in your work and life?

A) My office is pristine—only R.E.D.S and nothing else—it’s been that way for six months. This one fact is amazing! B) My staff is chagrined because they always said, “Don’t worry, Aliman will forget about X and Y.” And they were right. But since GTD I don’t forget anything anymore.  C) After a few months of GTD, I stopped waking up at 2:00am wondering and worrying. D) I get 100 emails a day and had 1,000 in my inbox; now my inbox is zero at least once per day and nothing “slips through the cracks” any longer. E) I FINALLY have a handle on everything I’m committed to; I know exactly where all my projects are or are not, so I no longer have a gnawing sense in the background that worries me about whether or not something is done.

 

What areas of GTD are you doing really well (or at least better than you used to)?

Email inbox to zero. Also, I now have in my office a manila folder system for all my projects that display on a long shelf behind me (about 120 projects) so everything is at my fingertips. The file folders are numbered and the numbers correspond to control numbers on my Projects Lists and Next Action Lists.

 

What areas of GTD would you like to get even better at doing?

Weekly Reviews!  Also, I need to settle on a paper system or electronic. I sort of do a mixture now and I’m not sure that’s going to work well in the long run. I took the Focus Survey and got some coaching from Frank Sopper, which was tremendously helpful. Next I’ll do a little coaching with a certified GTD coach (next week) and really look forward to bringing my practice to the next level.

 

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out with GTD?

If you’re just starting out—PLEASE—just read David’s book (2015) and implement it as he recommends. I can’t tell you how much pain I went through trying to tweak the system in a way that seemed it would be easier for me. That backfired! I went through about SIX ITERATIONS of my system, and each time it got closer to David’s, until when it was finally settled and working well, and to my chagrin, I saw it was exactly as David had set out in the book! Now, months later, I have tweaked it a bit to fit me better. But in the beginning save yourself a lot of time and resources and implement it as David suggests—there’s a reason he wrote the book and set it out that way!

 

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Getting to inbox zero

Question:

According to David Allen, we should get clear daily. Does this mean daily inbox zero for email? I feel like if I got to inbox zero daily, especially with email, that’s all I would do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach Kelly Forrister:

Great question. It’s really a balance of every day of the 3 types of work, as described in GTD’s Threefold Nature of Work model:

Defining work (getting clear)
Predefined work (things already scheduled for you to do that day)
Unplanned work (All of the things that show up for you to handle each day)

While inbox zero every day is a great goal, you don’t want to sacrifice predefined work or unplanned to only do defining. Some people have such high volume too that getting in to zero each day just isn’t realistic. And those less than two minute ones can chew your day away quickly. That said, most people, in my coaching experience, don’t spend nearly enough time on defining because they don’t consider it “real work.” And, they have so much backlog that it seems unattainable.

Defining is as much of your work as anything else. To figure out how much defining time is realistic for you, take the average number of emails you get a day and divide by 2. That will give you number of minutes required. For example, if you get 200 emails, you need 100 minutes to clarify those. For most people, it works out to about an hour or two a day just for dedicated processing (not in one sitting necessarily).

At the very least, your Weekly Reviews should drive everything to zero. And if that feels like too much to do in one sitting, do the Get Clear part of the Review one day and Get Current and Creative the next.

 

For more support on how to get to Inbox Zero, check out the webinars on GTD Connect and the free article on getting your inbox to zero.

 

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Where should I start with GTD?

People worldwide are discovering the Getting Things Done® methodology; and often I’m asked, “Where should I start with GTD?!” They have either read the book, been to a course, heard about it on a podcast or from a friend; and they have sufficient inspiration or at least curiosity to test it out. But because there are multiple aspects and components of the GTD approach, they’re feeling a bit lost about how to engage, to begin with.

It’s also a question posed by people who have seriously “fallen off the wagon” in their GTD practices. They’ve tasted the delicious aspects of stress-free productivity the process provides, but things have slipped, and they’ve fallen back into the experience of unclarity and overwhelm. “How can I best get back on?!”

For anyone and everyone in either of the above categories, I have a very strict and specific procedure that must be followed, without exception. If followed, it’s a guarantee of success. If not, well… good luck.

 

Where, exactly, should you start?

(Hang on, this is going to be tough…)

Start anywhere.

Yes, anywhere. Any portion or component of the GTD approach, applied, will bring at least a bit more clarity, focus, and control for you—without exception. And very likely when any one thing is executed, it will create a reverberation effect and spread to other parts. It’s a holistic model—i.e. any piece can be worked, and it will add to the whole gestalt.

Capture what’s grabbing your attention. Simply decide the very next action on anything you need to be making progress on. Clean a closet. Allow yourself to fantasize where and how you’d like to be, five years from now. Any of those actions (or a hundred more) could prime your pump to engage in some next step.

That said, one cool starting point would be to go through Part 2 of the book Getting Things Done, which serves as a hands-on instruction manual, step-by-step, walking you through the implementation of GTD. Of course, you could hire a David Allen Academy certified coach who can do the same thing (virtually or in person), with the added impetus of having someone right with you, holding you to and through the process (think: personal trainer in your gym).

But if those are not options for you right now, I’ve listed below some typically great starting points. I’ve used each of them many times both for myself and for clients and friends. There’s no danger here—nothing about GTD is like running with scissors! It’s all good stuff.

 

Take your pick

Write down what’s on your mind. This is an obvious one, if you’re familiar with GTD at all. But for beginners and even sophisticated practitioners, it’s a recurring refrain: unload! Even if you take a mere three minutes and jot down the top-of-mind things rattling around in there, you’re doing great.

Clean a drawer. No kidding. It’s one of the best therapies in the world for getting back in your psychological driver’s seat. And, unless you just moved into a new place this morning, there is always a drawer to clean.

Get a piece of cool gear. A new notepad, a fountain pen or slick-writing ballpoint, some new app you saw someone using really productively, a shredder, a labeler, an executive-like in-tray, plastic folders or envelopes…whatever floats your boat that indicates better or more capturing or organizing. Good toys can be magical in this regard.

Tackle one pile. There’s likely at least one stack of stuff somewhere in your environment that you’ve gone somewhat numb to, but you know it contains things to be sorted and organized—trashed, filed, or curated for next actions or projects.

Delete one email folder. Surely there’s at least one that is outdated that you can dump.

Purge a filing drawer. Similar to, but a bit more rigorous than dealing with a pile, this can often make a big dent in getting your act more together. Everything in your drawers and filing containers belonged there at one time, but time itself changes the meaning of much of it. Crap self-generates, it doesn’t self-destruct.

Do a two-minute-action walk-around. Get up and walk around your office or home looking for anything that needs doing that you can use the two-minute rule for. Change the light bulb. Tighten that whatever with a screwdriver. Raise or lower a seat. Straighten that painting. Put those boots where they really belong.

Define and take the next action on one new cool thing to do. A vacation spot to explore, a creative pastime to start, a special event to put together.

 

Celebrate the easy wins

All of these (and many more) would be part of a full GTD implementation, in any case. And, if doing any of these kinds of activities starts to get your productivity juices flowing, it would be wise to channel that energy into some next level in your capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging practices. We all need to make sure we’ve lowered the bar sufficiently to get going, on anything. Then we celebrate the easy wins and move forward to the bigger ones.

This essay appeared in David Allen’s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

 

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