David Allen's Blog, page 59

GTD Beyond Productivity

This fellow GTD Practitioner put it so well!

“Since fully adopting GTD, I’ve cured my insomnia, started Tae Kwon Do after 20 years, lost 20 pounds, and started a blog. It goes way beyond productivity.”

-GTD Practitioner

The Freedom in Naming your “Stuff”

 

I have been reminded over and over again in working with executives over the years why so much of the GTD implementation process is empowering to so many people: when things we have allowed into our inner or outer world are appropriately and accurately identified for what they are and what they mean to us, we feel curiously freed from them. Accurately naming things that are in our world gives us power over them, while leaving them unnamed allows them a certain hold on our minds.

Various primitive people have beliefs that giving someone your name gives them a certain ability to exert influence over you. Whether that has any truth to it, I’m not sure. But from my own experience, when something that has potential meaning to me is named, it is more known; and when it is known, its potential hold on me is released.

For instance, if you’d just label all your crap “Crap,” you’d probably feel a lot better. If someone had to call Organization Paramedics for you because you’re so out of control, they could simply bring in a big box labeled “All the Stuff I Don’t Know What It Is or What to Do with It.” They’d scour your whole environment and throw everything in that box that fits in that category. In an hour you’d be totally organized—if you didn’t know where something was, you’d now know where it was! The best part would be that the totality of the rest of your world would not have any of that “stuff” in it, and a fresh breeze would be blowing through your psyche.

A good example of this is having a binder on a shelf without a label or title on the spine. Most people are not aware of the slight pressure that unnamed thing maintains on your brain. But if you create a very visible label for it, you’ll notice being more relaxed about it whenever you walk past it. The same is true for storage boxes and file drawers.

More subtly, do you have any problems that you haven’t identified as projects yet? Got anything you’ve been thinking about that needs clarification, resolution, or looking into, that you don’t have on a Projects list yet, which you can look at regularly to keep actions moving toward? Do you have piles of things around your office or your house that have unidentified agreements sitting within them—read? toss? file? Are there things that you think you need to be moving on but you haven’t defined what “moving” looks like physically or visibly yet (next action)?

If you do, then there is good news for you—there is potential energy and freedom embedded there that is available to you…if you name them! If you don’t, well, it’s just the opposite. The problem is that most people have never fully gotten to the place where everything was really categorized appropriately, according to all the different types and amounts of agreements with themselves. You won’t know how much restriction you are actually working under, until you get rid of it, and see how different you feel.

Naming anything we’re experiencing lessens its grip on us. If I’m feeling negative, when I realize it and call it “negativity” I instantly have greater freedom of choice about what to do with or about it. When I’m just in it, and haven’t recognized, acknowledged and accepted it for what it is, I am more of its victim than its master.

A big key is to name things as accurately as possible. If we mislabel, we run the risk of locking ourselves into limitation 
and stagnation. To say “I’m a totally disorganized person” is probably not true (you couldn’t get out of bed, if that were true). To say “my thoughts and paperwork about my finances are disorganized” might be much more accurate and would lend direction and energy toward resolution of the situation.

Categorizing is to be used for freedom, not constriction. Many people avoid categorizing because they are avoiding making 
a decision about something. Should I read this article? File it? Throw it away? Pass it on to someone? But in the short-term freedom of not deciding, they then constrict themselves with the pressure that they ought to be deciding. I use my Tickler file as an elegant tool to deal with this. I’ll often get things in my in-tray that I just don’t know what to do with them yet (especially particularly cool things I might want to buy). I just ask myself “when will I be smarter?” and tickle it to show up again then. It’s perfectly fine to decide not to decide. You just need to name those things as such, and park them in a decide-not-to-decide system.

Disorganization is simply a discrepancy between where something is and what it means to you. The freedom comes from ensuring that everything has its proper ID badge, so it can get in the right line.

Brian Carter’s Brain Interview with David Allen

David Allen talks productivity, flow and Twitter as a “cocktail party” with Brian Carter on his new podcast.

Watch the interview here!

A Sense of Relief with GTD

Another GTD Practitioner with decreased stress!

“I find myself thinking differently already! Specifically, I’m trying to apply the two-minute rule all the time and I’m getting my email inbox to empty on a daily basis. Looking ahead at my work schedule, I am setting some dates when I will try to incorporate more GTD principles and I have a weekend in mind when I will revamp my office and get all my ‘stuff’ into files or wherever it belongs. I am even ordering new furniture. The best part is, just knowing there is a process that works, that makes sense to me, has relieved a lot of my stress about work. There IS light at the end of the tunnel, and even though I’m not through the tunnel, I now have faith!”

-GTD Practitioner

 

Healthy Email Habits from Entrepreneur

Using nutrition as a metaphor, this article from Entrepreneur offers some tips and tricks for getting “in” to zero, including some words of wisdom from our own David Allen.

Click here to read the full article “Achieve a Leaner Inbox with these 3 Fit Tips.”

GTD Saved My Job

We love getting testimonials from fellow GTD Practitioners!

“Yesterday marks my fifth anniversary of the beginning of my GTD journey. Yes, I’ve stuck with the program for five years and I’m still enthusiastically living the GTD lifestyle. It saved my sanity five years ago; this year it played a major role in saving my job and rebuilding a tarnished image. I ended up in a very bad situation because of the way I handled being left without steady project work for a long period of time after several weeks of training. My skills rusted and my attitude and self-confidence deteriorated; I found myself in a state of learned helplessness. Then one day I found myself faced with being fired if I didn’t “shape up”; with that reprimand finally came a long-term assignment that would no doubt be the deciding factor of whether or not I would remain employed. It turned into an opportunity unlike any other I’ve had in my career and GTD played a major role in my making the most of it. In the past year I’ve gone from being marked as an underperforming employee on the verge of losing his job to a high performer with multiple awards for special effort and achievement. GTD provided the framework I needed to exhibit the highly efficient and effective behavior that allowed me to get my skills and my confidence back into gear and perform at my best. I also had the good fortune of being noticed by one of the product owners who through a mentoring relationship helped me to overcome the bad PR and create a new image. It also led to a new job within the company; I’m now closely working with him on his team. To repay what he’s done for me I intend to share GTD with him once he has the bandwidth to learn it. One of the greatest needs a person has is the need to know he/she is making a difference. You’ve made a huge difference in my life more than once and I’m forever grateful.”

-GTD Practitioner

David Allen featured in The Entrepreneur’s Library

The Entrepreneur’s Library is a podcast, blog and community devoted to books that entrepreneurs would find useful, so it’s no wonder Getting Things Done is featured there.  This blog post features “5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn from David Allen.”

Enjoy the full post here!

 

Soaring with the GTD Two-Minute Rule

A reminder from a customer that implementing even one piece of the GTD methodology can have major positive effects:

“Just wanted to send my success story describing how ‘Getting Things Done’ has changed who I am! I was a little apprehensive at first wondering if the tips would be geared mainly for the workplace and not enough for the home front, which is where I desperately needed help. The two-minute rule now has my family watching me fly around the house with their mouths hanging open. Always one to absolutely dread housework and needing to get major work done in the summer since I work September-May for a school district, I would procrastinate because I was at a loss to know where to begin, and the dust would continue to sit. I would find excuses and continually hop in the car day after day to avoid bigger cleaning projects.   Just from the two-minute rule alone, I even challenge myself to squeeze a three-minute job into two minutes and bounding up and downstairs within my time limit, has now caused me to have a five pound weight loss.  I feel happier and more productive than ever. While the rest of the family watches TV in the evening, I continue to graze to see what else I can squeeze into my day! I feel a secret has been revealed to me and I could never go back to my old lifestyle. Such a simple concept but what a monumental change it has made in my life!”

-GTD Practitioner

WGNtv Interview with David Allen

David Allen clarifies a few GTD principles via Skype with WGN Chicago.

Click here to watch this candid interview!

Taking Off with GTD

Here’s a fun testimonial that we received!

“Since taking David’s class for the first time 3 years ago, my life has really taken off. I’ve gotten 2 promotions and a husband. I won’t give GTD credit for the husband, but it definitely helped with the promotions!”

-GTD Practitioner