David Allen: May 2004 Archives

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May 30, 2004

London culture week

Flying back yesterday, reflecting on how we really had fun in London. Gotta mention how cool it was to have stunning weather, no horde of tourists yet, and we walked all over great little neighborhoods we hadn't known before. And great cultural hanging out, too. Kew Gardens, the Design Museum , the Tate Modern gallery, Chelsea Flower Show, an exhibit of Charles Waite's photographs, and the National Portrait gallery with a fabulous exhibition of Cecil Beaton's photo portraits. While in between lovely hanging out in cafes on the Thames. Gotta say, I love London... Now, if the dollar would just pick itself up vis-a-vis the pound...!

Posted by David at 04:10 AM

May 29, 2004

London stuff, BBC interview

Finished a lovely week in London, doing work with CreditSuisse and our first public seminar. Stunning weather, my sweetie Kathryn accompanying me, great food and drink, new neighborhoods explored, etc. And my office got a call from the BBC for an interview (turns out I was in London anyway - fun serendipity). Apparently Blair's press secretary has kept them focused on advance planning by reviewing things upcoming regularly. Hmmm. Rocket science, indeed.

David

Posted by David at 07:35 AM | Comments (1)

May 19, 2004

A real culture-change initiative

Do you have a "culture of intentionality"? Great question. Just in a conversation with a client (major insurance company) who considers creating a "culture of intentionality" one of his three major objectives in order to achieve an almost 100% increase in sales for his organization. His observation was that, in more than twenty years of high-performance sales management, our Getting Things Done methods are the best (actually, the only) way to systematically address that issue. I think that's a nice way to frame the issue of creating a culture that assumes positive constructive activity toward where you want to go is simply the only way to operate...

Posted by David at 07:51 AM | Comments (1)

May 17, 2004

Validating the simplicity

Nice posting today from a GTD users group site that's probably better coming from someone other than me...

An observation -- much of this site seems to be devoted to finding all sorts of different methodologies/software/etc to implement the GTD program, and again--just an observation--much of this has little or nothing to do with the GTD system. I've read both of David Allen's books, and I've just returned from Boston where I attended his 2-day seminar entitled, appropriately enough: "Getting Things Done.' Highly informative, and well worth the expense. Attendees included Fortune 500 executives, various CEOs, Harvard Business School Profs and students, and a host of others who simply wanted to learn the GTD system.

One of the main things I learned is that David juggles an incredibly busy schedule, is on the road approximately 200 days per year, and manages everything he has to do with his Palm using the plain vanilla software, along with the PV Palm desktop. Lesson learned: if he can do it, so can I.

In reviewing much of what's on this site, I think a great many of us have been playing with different software--and then that becomes the game, rather than GTD. A few days ago, we had a thread dealing with Time Design. David spoke about it. it's wonderful stuff--but all it really is is a fancy list keeper, and the question is "Do you need a fancy list keeper?" If you like the toy, by all means. But as David defines it, it's a mid- tech solution to the GTD problem, and if you may need something more high tech than that--and high-tech doesn't mean more complex. David's message is easy to understand: "simplify." I realized that I didn't need all the fancy bells and whistles to get things done-- and in fact, they were becoming obstacles in the path, actually slowing me down. I'll spend the next few days processing my notes from the seminar, and in a week, I should have my office humming the way I want to. If you haven't read David's first book, "Getting Things Done," I'd recommend doing so--and taking its lessons to heart. The payoff is not merely getting things done, but more time for the really important things in life--like fishing and family.

best,

Dr. Eric A. Silver