David Allen's Blog, page 40

Starting with where you are, not where you should be

Question: Why does Getting Things Done® focus on the “weeds” rather than the higher-level stuff? Why don’t we start with goals and vision and then make our way to day-to-day work?

David Allen: I appreciate your question. The professional and personal self-help training programs consistently emphasize higher-horizon focus—clarity of purpose, values, vision, goals, etc. I agree that such focus plays a critical role in finding alignment, balance, and perspective.

So, what’s the problem? If you’re trying to get to the beautiful lake or beach and you’re caught in the weeds, ignoring the weeds and their constraints will produce nothing but desperation and angst. You first need to know what weeds you’re in, and how to get unhooked from them. If your boat has a serious leak, you don’t care what direction it’s pointed. Relatedly, you must get control of your current situation and increase your stability and mental and emotional bandwidth in order to elevate your focus on where you think you should be going.

So if your day-to-day world is out of control in any way, trying to focus on the bigger picture will only produce frustration and guilt over not effectively doing what you feel you should be doing.

A unique aspect of GTD is that it starts with where you are, not where you should be. It’s a misconception that GTD doesn’t focus on the “Big Stuff.” GTD helps people address whatever has their attention right now so they can free up mental space to more clearly target what they want to focus on. If where you want to be five years from now is your focus, apply the GTD process: What’s your desired outcome? What’s your next action? GTD is horizon independent. The methodology helps you get clear on next actions, whether you’re clearing today’s weeds or chasing tomorrow’s dream.

I find that people often think GTD focuses on “the weeds” because that’s where they are—in the weeds. For example, when students in my courses write down what has their attention it’s never “Fulfill my destiny as a human spirit on the planet.” Yet from my point of view, that is the only project any of us really has. What people write down is, “buy cat food,” “find new babysitter,” “hire a marketing manager,” “plan summer vacation,” “fix the printer,” etc.

That said, someone once approached me during a seminar break and asked, “David, what do I do about this?” He had written down “God.” Well, that is a high-level horizon of focus! Now, he was wearing a clerical collar, so it made a little more sense. (I thought, “What a strange reversal of roles—he’s asking me!”) A bit uncomfortable with the man’s question, I put my coaching hat on and asked, “So, what has your attention about that? Is it an inspirational affirmation, or is there something you need to decide or do about whatever that means to you?” He thought for a moment, seemed to have an epiphany, and walked away inspired.

The point is whatever has your attention becomes grist for the GTD mill. GTD is about doing what you need to do to appropriately engage with life. If that’s higher horizon stuff, make sure you’ve made that operational within the GTD process. If it’s cutting weeds, GTD is the best weed cutter.

 

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The principles of GTD apply to everything

Question: Dear David Allen, Is there an adaptation of your method for writing a PhD? I find GTD helpful in life and at the job, but I have trouble adapting it to a research project. Do you have any tips?

David Allen: The principles of GTD apply to everything, but they don’t engage with the content of what you’re doing.

What’s your desired outcome?

What’s your next action to move toward that?

Are the reminders of those in a trusted system?

That will apply to anything you’re doing in your life. No different from your research project.

 

 

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Where to find GTD Courses and Coaching

Whether you’re new to Getting Things Done, or already have a system in place and want to gain greater mastery, you’ll get value from GTD courses and coaching services offered by our global partners around the world. For example:

United States and Canada – Vital Smarts (courses only)

United States and Canada – Coaching – GTD Focus (coaching only)

United Kingdom and Ireland – Next Action Associates

Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Dutch Caribbean Islands – Meer Effect

Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – Next Action Partners

India – Calm Achiever

Australia – Productivity First and Telus Partners

Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland – produktivNorge AS

And many more! You’ll find the full list of partners on our Global Partners page.

 

 

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Control or Spontaneity? The Paradox

When people discover the level of personal organization I work within, they often ask, “Wow, does this guy ever have any fun?! He’s so organized!” My response is usually, “Who’s not having fun?” Frankly, I organize for freedom, not for hard work.

Much of my personal system of organization was built and is constantly being refined by negative feedback—having to work harder than I need to, having something slip through a crack that caused inordinate pain, cost, or stress later on. Those are indicators of constriction, not freedom. When something like that shows up in my life, I’m always on the hunt for how to set up a system that will automatically prevent that kind of thing from ever happening again.

There is a freedom that is only approachable by the sacrifice of our attachments to anything, including our organization and commitments. That is the ultimate high, living without fear of consequences in the material world. (“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…”—Kris Kristofferson.)  My ideal scene would be to trust that I could pull out my phone, and have the person I need to call appear in my mind in full detail, exactly (and only) when I needed it.

I’m not there yet. If you are, let me know how you got there. Until then, I’ll fumble along capturing my thoughts, commitments, and agreements with myself into objective, external systems, which I will review regularly, feeling absolutely fine with what I’m doing, and what I’m not doing.

People seldom complain that there is a line painted down the center of a crowded highway. Without that structure, we would likely be in constant stress going down the road, and we would not take advantage of the luxury of enjoying the beautiful scenery along the way, or thinking about what a great dinner we’re going to cook.

I do as little as I can get by with, and as much as I need, to get to the place of no distraction, a clear head, and the ability to follow my moment-to-moment intuitive hunches.

–David Allen

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

 

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Episode #41: David Allen Talks with General Randal Fullhart

David Allen talks with General Randal Fullhart (Ret.). Graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1979, Randy has commanded at the squadron, group, and wing levels. He shares insights and tips about his own journey with GTD, teamwork, and leadership.

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GTD Setup Guides

Hello GTD practitioners! We wanted to give you an update on the current GTD Setup Guides available and what’s in our queue for development. If you’re new to these guides, they are the official GTD software setup guides from the David Allen Company to give you step-by-step coaching on applying GTD to some of the best software tools out there.

We currently have GTD Setup Guides for:

Todoist

Trello

Wunderlist

OmniFocus 2

Outlook for Windows

Outlook for Mac

iPhone/iPad

OneNote for Windows

Evernote for Windows

Evernote for Mac

Lotus Notes

Google Apps for Desktop

Google Apps for Android

You can see samples of the Guides and purchase them here.

On our current projects list or on our list for future development:

Things for Mac desktop (coming soon!)

Nirvana

Asana

Microsoft To-Do

What are we missing? What Guide should we write next? (No promises, as every tool has to pass our rigorous vetting process, but we’re always open to suggestions!)

 

 

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Suzanne’s GTD Story

Your name:

Suzanne Hawes

What do you do for work?

Chief Human Resources, Paya Inc

Where do you live?

Ashburn, VA

How did you hear about GTD?

I was working at SC Johnson in Racine, WI. The training department needed some guinea pigs for a GTD program they were planning to roll out. I’m always looking for hacks to be more productive and so I said, absolutely, count me in! Even read the book before the class so I could get even more out of it.

How long have you been practicing GTD?

12 years

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

I truly get more stuff done now. People think I have a great memory, but really I just always try to keep my lists up to date, writing things down as soon as it occurs to me so I won’t forget. Even if I don’t do it for weeks or longer, I still know it’s “on the list”.

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

List management. Two minute rule. Inbox to zero (or anything less than 20 is awesome, because as soon as I empty my inbox 15 emails flow in so I never TRULY get to zero) – note, this is my work email. For personal email, see the next question.

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

Weekly Review. Cleaning out the capture tools at home. Filing – I still let it all build up and then file for an hour or so when my drawer gets full. Keeping an up to date list of projects (would probably do better if I’m doing a regular Weekly Review).

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

Don’t try to be good at all of it at once. Start with a few basic lists. Don’t over engineer it. Limit your capture tools. Find the list system that works for you. I change systems every year or so just to see if I like something better. Sometimes I want an electronic tool, sometimes I just enjoy the feel of writing pen and paper. Right now I’m using Todoist.

 

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New! GTD & Trello Setup Guide

We’re excited to announce the release of our new GTD & Trello Setup Guide. This Guide will show you how to:

– Understand the fundamental GTD best practices

– Optimally configure Trello in the way we have found works best for GTD

– Integrate your actionable email

– Create project and next actions lists in Trello

– Create useful reference lists

– Use Labels and Filters effectively

… and more

Get the guide here or see a sample of GTD & Trello

Not a Trello user? It’s just one of many guides we offer for implementing GTD. We also have guides for Outlook, Todoist, OmniFocus, iPhone/iPad, Evernote, Google apps, and more. See all of our GTD Setup Guides here.

 

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What Gets in the Way of Being Productive?

A typical question I get is, “What’s the one thing that we do that gets in the way of us being productive?” It’s not one thing, but five, all wrapped together: People keep stuff in their head. They don’t decide what they need to do about stuff they know they need to do something about. They don’t organize action reminders and support materials in functional categories. They don’t maintain and review a complete and objective inventory of their commitments. Then they waste energy and burn out, allowing their busy-ness to be driven by what’s latest and loudest, hoping it’s the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it is.

I merely just bottom-lined the worst practices for the five steps of managing workflow—capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. None of these is the ONE problem. Obviously most people keep stuff in their head, which short-circuits the process to begin with. But lots of people write lots of things down—they just don’t decide the next actions on them, which keeps the lists operationally dysfunctional. But even if they think about the actions required, they don’t organize the reminder somewhere that they’ll see when they are in the context to do the action. And even if they did that in a burst of productivity inspiration, most let their systems quickly become out of date and inconsistent. And without the care and feeding and constant utilization of their objective executive thinking tools, that function slips back into psychic RAM. Life and work become reactive responses instead of clearly directed action choices.

So, what do we need to do instead?

It’s a combined set of the five best-practice behaviors. Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up, not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you’re doing and what you’re not doing at any point in time.

I suppose I could have gotten it even simpler: “Focus on positive outcomes and continually take the next action of the most important thing.” But who doesn’t know that? Consistent implementation of that principle, totally integrated with every aspect of our life, is the big challenge. And that’s easier than you’re afraid it is, but not as easy as it sounds.

–David Allen

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

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Mark’s GTD Story

Your name:

Mark Jantzen

What do you do for work? 

I’m a Senior Investment Manager with Fidelity Investments

Where do you live? 

Denver, Colorado

How did you hear about GTD? 

I attended a David Allen seminar at Fidelity before he called it GTD. I believe it was MAP – Managing Actions & Projects.  Obviously read the book when it was published.

How long have you been practicing GTD? 

Since 1990

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

In many areas it was easier & truly stress-free productivity. But that ease has also broadened my perspective to other areas in my life. So it really is about control & perspective.

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

Complete projects & next actions lists

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

Reading & journaling

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

Really get the outcome & next action thinking. Do that part well.

 

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