David Allen's Blog, page 43
December 26, 2017
GTD and Todoist
It’s here! The new GTD & Todoist Setup Guide is now available in our online store. Or, if you are a paid GTDConnect.com member, it’s free for you in your members-only document library. The Guide is packed with tips from our coaches on how to get the most out of Todoist for GTD.
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December 20, 2017
The Big Secret About Goal Setting
Goals are tools, not golden calves.
I was facilitating a senior level discussion in a medical technology company, and they were grappling with the issue of the role of R&D and how to “fill the pipeline” with new products that would keep them competitive. As one top exec proposed some aggressive goals for the number of new products created and developed within the next 18 months, another equally top exec challenged “Why set goals for R&D? What difference will it make? What will anyone do differently because some committee gave them a number like that to produce?”
It is not unusual to find many people jaded at best about the value of goal-setting, given the stress created by what are often perceived as artificial expectations decreed from on high.
There is always the dilemma of trying to set targets low enough to be realistic, but high enough to be galvanizing, exciting, and challenging.
This is a topic for endless business books and motivation pundits. I just want to highlight one perspective I’ve found very useful over the years: The value of goals is not in the future they describe, but the change in perception of reality they foster, in the present.
What we focus on changes what we notice. Our brain filters information, seeing one thing in a situation instead of something else, based on what we identify with, what we have our attention on. In one meeting optometrists notice who is wearing eyeglasses, affirmative action advocates notice the ratio of minorities in the group, and interior designers notice the color schemes.
Similarly, if you stop for a minute and give yourself permission to imagine five years from now, if your life could be as fabulously spectacular as you could possibly imagine, what might a weekend afternoon be like? Reading great reviews of your best-selling book? Sailing the ocean in your own boat? Feeling relaxed, inspired, and having great fun with plenty of free time to read, play with kids, explore new hobbies…?
Now imagine how good it could be ten minutes from now. Likely there will be different images that you will generate or perceive.
Both are exercises in fantasy. Each will give instructions to our mind to search for information that will be relevant to the pictures. Which is better? Depends on whether you’d like to start noticing sailing magazines, ideas for a book, or creative ways to have more discretionary time. That information is all around you, all the time. But if you’re not wired up to perceive it with a focus that opens you to it, you’ll think it doesn’t exist.
The reason for long-term goals is the permission they give us to identify with the greatest optimistic picture of ourselves and our world we can so it changes our filtered perceptions. We need to have believable images to identify with; and the more time we give ourselves, the more realistic they may seem. The future never shows up—have you noticed?—it’s always today! But playing with it as a working blueprint can be a remarkably useful tool to see things (and how to do and have them) that you never saw before, right now. The most innovative companies are the ones with the biggest goals.
The future is an illusion, but a handy one.
–David Allen
This essay appeared in David Allen’s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post The Big Secret About Goal Setting appeared first on Getting Things Done®.
December 15, 2017
Episode #36 – Overcoming Procrastination
Listen to a fascinating segment with David Allen where he outlines the sources of procrastination, shares a few fun examples of the dynamics at work, and talks about the steps you can take to overcome it.
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December 11, 2017
GTD Tips for Getting Your Inbox to Zero
Looking for a quick summary on how to get your inbox to zero? Click here for a helpful free article from one of the GTD coaches.
November 21, 2017
Get a Grip on Your Process, or Give It Up
If you’re not willing to commit to keeping your head completely empty, it’s not worth trying to make any “personal management system” work. Give it 
up. Don’t kid yourself. Throw your productivity tools away.
OK, I’m becoming more direct and succinct. (At 72 I think that serves us both, and I choose not to beat around the bush.) But I’m also getting a bit bored with people half-heartedly attempting half-implemented solutions as they attempt to do “just a part of” GTD and complaining about it “not sticking” with them. Now, a partial engagement with this methodology won’t really hurt (and can create some minor wins), but it produces such a minuscule fraction of the value possible if you go all the way. People who say they are “doing GTD” are still showing me half-filled-out lists of still-undecided stuff in their system. They may have a few folders set up, a couple of next-action lists; but a majority of their stuff is still scattered from tables to briefcases to kitchen drawers to their heads—all un-retrievable in any consistent fashion.
Stop complaining about your stress and your overwhelm! Look outside—the universe is not stress-out or confused. It’s fine. It’s only the way we are engaged with it that creates our negative reactions. GTD is the process we’ve uncovered that creates appropriate engagement. What you’re dealing with at hand may not be easy or fun, but being in the driver’s seat about it moves that experience to a much more mature and effective level. But If you’re not willing to make this process really work, 100%, don’t tire yourself with the pretenses of half-baked solutions. They just add insult to injury, and quite frankly, may not be worth the energy to continue.
It’s like trying to keep air in only three tires on your car. Hello. IT WON’T DRIVE WITHOUT THEM ALL! If you’re going to flop along anyway, don’t waste your energy trying to keep just a couple in good shape.
Either your head is the place to keep track of stuff, or it’s not. You’d have a hard time intellectually justifying something in-between. If you use a calendar at all, you’ve already admitted you need external support to manage your life.
But, hey, why not? Just keep it all in your head, throw away your calendar, and trust that you’ll have what you need for information and perspective whenever you need it. If you had the guts to really do that, 100%, it might work. I might actually try that some day. Until then I will be responsible to the creative process that I’m born with, frequently makng agreements with myself and others that I need to define, clarify, track, and renegotiate regularly, to get off my own back and to make meaningful things happen.
But, if there’s only part of all this in your system and only a part in your head, you won’t trust either place to give you appropriate guidance. You’ll be driven in your choices of what to do by simply the latest and loudest things in your psyche. Good luck.
OK, I admit it—I’m just projecting some of my own frustrations with the resistance to full-out execution of the Getting Things Done process that I have encountered with so many people, and the unfortunate give-up energy I have seen from people who “fell off the wagon.” Don’t take me too seriously. Most people haven’t really had the game defined so they could see how the partial solutions are no solution. But if you have…
Give yourself a break. If you’re going to play this game the way you are trying to play it, you’d better really play it.
Write it down. Anything, everything. Decide what your intention is about it, and what the next step would be. Do the action, delegate the action, or defer the action to your list of optional things to do. Look at all that regularly. Be conscious about what you’re doing, and what you’re not. Get free. You should be focusing all your energy on bigger issues, greater joy, and more expanded opportunities.
Thanks for listening.
–David Allen
This essay appeared in David Allen’s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
November 17, 2017
Episode #35 – The Case for Capturing
Listen to an engaging presentation David Allen gave on the case for capturing. In it, David explores the concepts of psychic RAM, society’s move into knowledge work, and the freedom we feel as we begin to implement the GTD methodology.
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November 3, 2017
Work/Life Balance
There’s not really work/life balance, there’s just balance. I mean, work is anything you want to get done, right? It doesn’t have to be pejorative. Having a good vacation can be work. Just think of the affirmation: Wow, this really works! Is that a bad thing?
There’s a lot of stuff we have to do that’s not glamorous. What you should be after, instead of some arbitrary boundary between work and home life, is a balance that you define for yourself. And that starts with values. Why do you have the things you have? Why are these important? When you ask these questions, the end game is in focus and the rest of your thoughts—work or otherwise—serve that end. But you need to be in the moment and you need to write down your thoughts as they hit you.
A lot of folks suffer from what I call the “latest and loudest.” These are the distractions that seem so important in the moment, but that don’t really serve your values or further your end game. Write what you think your values are so you can interpret them and take appropriate action. Ask yourself: Do I feel comfortable with the actions I’m taking in the moment? Or are they driven by external influences?
–David Allen
October 20, 2017
Are You Micromanaging Your Mind?
One of the greatest traps in growing a business is also a pitfall for self-management: If you don’t trust your system, you can’t let go of operational details and you’ll limit your ability to create at a bigger level.
Many successful entrepreneurs I have worked with over the years could be characterized (and have been, by their employees and friends) as “highly creative control freaks.” It’s understandable, because usually it takes that kind of strong, directed energy to create a business, to make something out of nothing. Much like a parent will go to superhuman lengths to protect its vulnerable offspring, someone who gives birth to an enterprise almost of necessity must have skin as thick as an elephant’s and the aggressive/defensive capacity of a samurai warrior. It takes tremendous focus, determination, and, yes, a certain lack of sensitivity, to create something new and get it to stick around in this world.
That protectionism can, of course, become their undoing. In order to continue in their visionary capacity to grow and expand, they must mature not only their team and their systems but themselves as well, to prevent the strangulation of micromanagement. They have to trust. But trust is not something you can just do because you should. I suppose you can develop a greater sense of overall optimism about life, but you don’t merely learn to trust—you learn to build trust. And you do that by creating a system and working it, so you can let go at that lower functional level, without letting go of the bigger picture of what you’re trying to accomplish.
A beginner at the wheel of a car will have jerky, small movements. They are maintaining control, just at small increments of focus. Only as they learn to trust the car’s responsiveness can they let go on that level, extend their horizon, and cruise at higher speeds more easily.
Similarly, if you don’t fully trust your personal systems, you are likely to be dedicating inappropriate and unnecessary mental attention to details and content, often with a resultant negative emotional component. You’ll feel pulled, overwhelmed, and often like you’re close to losing control.
But you can’t trust your system until it’s trust-worthy. When is that? When you know you have captured all your commitments, clarified what you’re intending to do about them, decided the actions you need to take about them, and have parked reminders of those actions in places that you know you’ll look, where and when you need to.
Entrepreneurs have to break out of their comfort zone of operational control and let go, getting good people in the right places, accountable for the right things and monitored appropriately. Similarly, to keep a clear head focused creatively at the right things, you must have all the right things in your personal system and the behaviors to look at them at the right time. Cognitive science has now validated that if you try to keep more than four things in your mind at once, you’ll lose objectivity about their relationships with each other and denigrate your performance. Less important things will bother you more than they should, and you won’t give the tactical and strategic stuff the objective attention it deserves. And if some part of you knows that you don’t have everything captured and organized in the right place, your brain simply won’t let go of some attention to unseen details. You’ll find yourself still to some degree at the mercy of the latest and loudest. It’s the price paid for staying in the comfort zone of keeping control of it all in your head.
When people begin to implement the Getting Things Done® methodology, they initially experience a rush of energy and creativity, while feeling more relaxed at the same time. But those positive experiences can slip away quickly without the confidence that the content of their systems is complete and current (the inventory of which could have been changed and expanded hugely with the last phone call).
People have often said, “Gee, I have everything captured in the system, but my mind is still worrying and reminding me about this and that.” My question is, “How long have you been working your system?” Usually they have only recently set it up. That won’t be sufficient to build trust yet, and your mind will still try to keep control.
That’s why the challenge is to keep going—to keep coming back to everything captured, clarified, and organized. And the trick is to come back often enough, reflecting on the contents, for the mind to be able to let go, trusting that remembering and reminding is really being handled by something better. Then you’re truly free to be thinking about things, not of them.
–David Allen
This essay appeared in David Allen’s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
October 19, 2017
2018 GTD Organizer and GTD Organizer are now available!
The 2018 GTD Organizer and 2018 GTD Calendar are now available. The GTD Organizer (pictured) includes all of the lists we recommend, plus a 15-month (November 2017–January 2019) calendar and extra pages. The GTD Calendar is just that, without the additional lists. Available as a PDF download to use on your computer or print. Buy now or learn more
October 11, 2017
Episode #34 – Crafting Your External Brain
David Allen presents a webinar on how to craft integrated external systems that allow you to focus more productively. He explores the cognitive science behind the external brain, what the purpose of it is, and how you can use it most effectively with your GTD system.
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