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May 30, 2005
What lurks below the runway?
Here's a very interesting insight about procrastination shared with me by one of the brightest clients I've dealt with, Cole Bitting (founding partner - Flagstone Securities). He's referring to the horizons of focus (runway = actions, 10,000 = projects, 30,000 = goals, 40,000 = vision, etc.) we refer to in GTD.
I had a thought about your altitude metaphor. There is the below ground (below runway??) view. I find getting to that level on of the most valuable. This view comes from examining Tasks where the next step is clearly thought through, but I still avoid like the plague. For these tasks, I have to go below ground. Personally, I will usually shut off all stimuli (unusual for me), close my eyes and dwell on feelings and associations, not thoughts. These impressions are slippery, but once cornered, usually fess up a rich vein of 50,000 + 40,000 + 30,000 foot stuff. Objectifying these vague feelings and impressions is compellingly valuable. One example that I'll give is that I had an old BMW 325i convertible, with cracked rear window plastic. I knew exact who to call, where to take the car, how much the repair would cost, and had the money to afford the repair, but I would not make the appointment. All I had to do was call the number on the task. But I didn't. In fact, when that item was inevitably the top item on my list, I'd jump to the bottom and work my way higher. Avoidance. Which begs the 'why?' question - a question itself which is often avoided or without reasoned answer (the 'uh - I dunno' answer - like the one I get from my kids all the time). To me, finding crystal clear Next Actions that provoke such avoidance is the most valuable part of GTD that I have to-date discovered. In fact, I could imagine that this line of thought could add a lot of scope to the vertical dimension of your GTD construct.
Another perspective on procrastination, where we tend to avoid things that don't have enought meaning, OR have too much meaning. As mentioned in a previous blog, it reminds me of the terrific exposition of the topic by Steven Pressfield in The War of Art - that resistance will be in proportion to the proximity of expressing who you really are.
Posted by David at 08:55 AM | Comments (6)
May 29, 2005
Sidewalk art in Santa Barbara
Kathryn, Anne Gennett and I unhooked from our crank-it-out rhythms yesterday and did one of our favorite things - hopping over to Santa Barbara to shop, eat, hang out...
There's a great Italianesque sidewalk chalk art festival going on up at the Santa Barbara Mission this weekend, benefiting the Children's Creative Project (CCP), a nonprofit program run by the Santa Barbara County Education Office.
Santa Barbara artists at work
Posted by David at 03:44 PM | Comments (4)
May 27, 2005
GTD at USC...
Just got an email from an instructor at USC. It's always a delight to hear about GTD getting into the education system, in whatever form...
"I've used your system now for about 4 years and it's been a tremendous benefit personally and to all I work with, train, lead, etc. I work with various leadership training projects and refer your books often. Also, I teach a leadership class here in Los Angeles at USC advised by Warren Bennis. Your system is credited and included as part of one of the components of a key class here (The Art of Follow Through: Maximizing Your Personal Productivity)- students love it and I'm sure its increased your book sales quite a bit. ...Your tips and insights have had such a powerful impact on my personal performance and as a result on the various groups I lead and on my family. I have more time to do the things that matter and I can do them with more peace and creativity (I'm celebrating my 10 year anniversary this month and we have 2 little girls) Thank you for your diligence and work!" - Andy Roller, CEO - Leader-Source Foundation
Posted by David at 08:21 AM | Comments (4)
May 26, 2005
Handling this-week-due projects...
Got an email this morning from a fan, who still had a good question for me about managing "vertically." It's a common one from a lot of folks who get into GTD, so I thought I'd share it, and my response...
"Once I've brainstormed a project, gotten clear on the outcome, and created my first action, things work great if the project is long term and I can dedicate the necessary time in a weekly review and the necessary space in my file cabinet for support materials. But when I have a project that needs to be done in less than a week and that doesn't merit the creation of a project support materials folder, I can't get the project off my mind for lack of a trusted method of getting the project done."
My response: I've never found any particular tool or model for daily review of project actions, simply because every project has a different level of granularity that it might need to stay on track. The general perspective on this is to use all the action lists and weekly review to primarily feel comfortable about what you're NOT doing, while you're spending most of the week on that project that's in your face.
Posted by David at 07:12 AM | Comments (10)
May 25, 2005
Getting wireless products and mortgage re-fi's done...
Just had two very interesting work days with very different sets of folks. Monday spent the day at Nextel in Virginia with their Wireless Products group. It was orchestrated by their VP, Danny Bowman, a super-enegertic ex-athlete who had picked up GTD paperback in the airport for its title (their slogan is "Nextel. Done."!)..and he'd become a champion. Turns out we had already done some seminars and coaching in another division, and it's always fun to have GTD triangulated like that.
(By the way, was delighted to find out that Nextel's new version of Blackberry has category capability with it's to-do list, which makes it actually GTD-friendly instead of the old simple alpha-sorted single list.)
Then shuttled up to Manhattan and gave a presentation for the first-ever conference for the whole mortgage finance industry, hosted by our super client, Flagstone Securities. 100+ financial-type execs, most of whom had left Wall Street positions to start their own more-entrepreneurial ventures in the new and rapidly growing segment of that world. Listening to them talk about the nature of those businesses and the products and services they deal in is still like trying to understand a complex foreign language (how can I have had so many investment banks and finance company clients for all these years and still not know what the heck they really do???!!! I suppose if I had a gazillion dollars, I'd have more of a need...!)
Interesting thing about Flagstone is that one of their silver bullets is a company blog that they use to post up-to-the-minute potentially relevant data from their research in that industry. It has supported their positioning as the go-to people in that niche, because it makes it obvious and out there what they know. Blogging does have that kind of we're-willing-to-show-what-we-know-(and-don't-know) spin to it, which, for that kind of knowledge work based company, I can imagine would make a difference
Posted by David at 06:29 AM | Comments (2)
May 23, 2005
What, indeed, is "GTD"
Because of seemingly ever-expanding number of GTD-related discussions, ads and blogs, I wrote up an "official" definition of "GTD."
I am asking that if any of you are using "GTD" in any way in your materials you include a link to that page, so it will minimize any confusion or ambiguity about what you are referring to:
http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php
The trademark for "GTD" is in the final stages of the approval process, and we will be publishing some guidelines about it; but for now we would appreciate you helping us out in that regard. It was nice of some of the folks at the DavidCo Forum to already start the process.
Posted by David at 03:33 PM | Comments (14)
May 22, 2005
Learning goes to the movies...
Wonderful seat-mate conversation this afternoon, flying into Dulles, with Jerome Gary, a long-time film/TV producer/writer and screenwriting teacher at AFI. He's very much involved with something called ICT - the Institute for Creative Technologies - out of USC. They're basically doing leading edge stuff combining the best of movie-making talent and simulation training. He had heard of my book, hadn't read it, said he needed it, so I gave him a copy (I'm always loaded with one, for such circumstances).
Their expertise apparently is in creating virtual humans - java-scripted beings that, with sufficient artificial intelligence, will answer questions about why they did what they did, etc. Pretty cool. We brainstormed about having a GTD coach you can then really interact with...!
Interesting Wired article about their use in war simulation training...
Posted by David at 02:55 PM
May 20, 2005
All the news that's fit...
Got interviewed today by a nice guy (Matt Creamer) from Ad Age today for a new rag they're doing for CMO's (new term to me - Chief Marketing Officer). He's a GTD convert, wanted me to chat about productivity issues etc. But in answer to his question about "What media do you watch regularly? How do you get your news?" my reply was that I don't do anything regularly... well, I do check news, and here's how I do that:
NY Times front page is my Web home page. Most days that's the best I can do to stay at least a little bit tapped in to the world. But my weekly read is The Week. It's the absolute best in terms of overview of the world for the week. And monthly I read The Atlantic, as I've mentioned several times blogging. It's just the premier source of info and perspective on culture, politics, sociology, and the arts for me.
NPR is my favorite ad hoc current-events candy, is great in the car, en route wherever, and sometimes unpacking in a hotel room, through the web.
The Week and The Atlantic are paper-based. I just like the touch and feel and pace and personal ergonomics (not the word I'm looking for, but you get what I mean) of the physical magazine. Easier as I move around, to fill the spaces, among other things.
All newspaper editorial writers do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded. - unknown
Posted by David at 07:33 PM | Comments (3)
May 19, 2005
How things really get done around here...
If you ever wonder what makes the David Allen Company really tick...here's the secret weapon.
(Rarest of rare circumstances: I was at our new office digs [107 W. Aliso, Ojai] this morning, all the folks on our office/admin/client services team happened to be there at one time, I happened to have my camera).
Anne Gennett, Elisabeth Vernand, Marian Bateman, Andrea Gleysteen, Kathryn Allen, Mary McDaniel
None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events, both visible and invisible. - Vaclav Havel
Posted by David at 02:15 PM
May 18, 2005
Meetings, meetings, everywhere...
...and not a stop to think.
Been running into a lot of this lately: serious meeting overwhelm. Lots of reasons for this, but I heard a new one that I hadn't really been aware of before. Had dinner last week with Dr. Scott Lemaire, a thoracic surgeon with St. Luke's Hospital in Houston and associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Scott's one of those folks who "just happened to pick up" GTD in a bookstore, and since has become a convert. As we were talking about the too-many-meetings disease, especially in healthcare, he said: "you have to go to meetings just to protect your resources!" If you're not there, they may take your budget, reallocate your staff, take your space... who knows!? Dreadful thought. Not sure there's a good answer to that one, except bringing lots of work to do while you're sitting there guarding the fort.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potetial, that word would be: "meetings." - Dave Barry
Posted by David at 10:37 PM | Comments (2)
May 17, 2005
Quick answer to Marc Orchant about the new seminar
[Marc Orchant caught me on Skype as I logged in, at O'Hare a few mintues ago. Thought our short dialog might answer some questions for the rest of you about the new public seminar... DA]
[3:56:07 PM] Marc Orchant says: Hi David. Got time for a quick question?
[3:56:48 PM] David Allen says: Sure... a moment. I'm in OHare
[3:57:25 PM] David Allen says: What's up?
[3:57:44 PM] Marc Orchant says: How would you characterize the content of the new one-day seminars compared to the classic two-day event?
[3:58:46 PM] David Allen says: More focus on the process of deciding where you are and what part of the models you should do what about, now... e.g. should you do 40k thinking with you spouse right now, or clean your garage --- get a planner or throw it away?
[3:59:52 PM] Marc Orchant says: Excellent. Jeff and I are trying to get some of our newer folks pointed toward attending one of the newly scheduled events. I might try to drop in on one of them myself.
[3:59:53 PM] David Allen says: Basically, what are your presenting issues in life and work right now? And how would you place those withing the GTD models, and therefore what's really strategic for you to do in what area?
[4:00:28 PM] Marc Orchant says: I like the focus. Sounds like an energizing day.
[4:00:49 PM] David Allen says: It'll have the nuts and bolts of workflow, plus more emphasis on the multiple horizons, and what to do about them.
[4:01:30 PM] Marc Orchant says: Thanks for the insights. I'll pass them along to Jeff. Oh, and congrats on the Levenger connection. I can't wait to see what you've cooked up with them!
[4:01:52 PM] David Allen says: Yeah, it'll be fun to be in that arena, too...
[4:02:04 PM] Marc Orchant says: K. Gotta run myself. Safe travels.
[4:02:17 PM] David Allen says: Me too. Ciao for now.
Posted by David at 04:07 PM
Ahoy! Public seminars on the horizon...!
So, we've finally (with many many thanks to Kathryn Allen & crew) finalized hotels and dates for the new one-day seminars I'll be doing, at least for the rest of 2005. (Those of you who didn't like "power principles" in the title will be happy - we didn't really, either). There are discounts for early registrations, too, if any of you are thinking about it and can do some early planning...
I actually pretty jazzed about the new format. I think it'll be both easier for people to get a hold of, as well as galvanize the GTD vets with a deeper look into the model.
Posted by David at 04:07 AM | Comments (8)
May 15, 2005
Serendipities...
Love it when that happens. Walked in to one of the Levenger Chicago stores yesterday (in Marshall Fields), and a guy buying stuff at the counter turned around and said, "I can't believe it. They were just asking me how I knew about Levenger, and I said, 'this guy named David Allen', and you walk in!" Royal Randolph, an Accenture consultant, had been in my Miami public seminar, and had, because of that, become a Levenger junkie. He lives in Atlanta, in Chicago on a project. Such fun.
Royal and me (I'm the short guy)
Posted by David at 06:34 AM | Comments (5)
May 14, 2005
Irreverence hard at work...
I'm starting to collect best practices for avoiding getting things done (AGTD). Two of my favorites are FreeCell (which comes with Windows and is particularly numb-brain-friendly) and GO - the Japanese board game - for which I use the computer program Goliath, created a while ago by Mark Boon. I learned GO when I was 17, have played it off and on over the years, and as software got a lot faster, the AI folks were finally able to create a computerized version that's not too bad (it's more intricate in options than chess). (Not sure if it's still available but a quick Web surf gave this address). GO is not quite as good for escaping if I'm really toast, because it does require a little mental horsepower, but the white and black stones are so pretty...
So if you have any favorite avoidance toys and tricks, add to Comments or forward to me. I'm collecting.
"If you don't know what you're doing, any gadget will do." - David Allen
Posted by David at 08:09 PM | Comments (19)
May 13, 2005
In the midst of the medical center maelstrom...
Spent the whole day with 100+ senior physicians and managers at MD Anderson today, the world's largest medical facility (45 Institutes on this one campus). Pretty awesome place. And, pretty toasted folks, in terms of stress, overwhelm, too many meetings, email, conflicting priorities...the usual stuff, but particularly challenging when you care. Some of the highest-stress environments are the ones doing the best work. Because people care. When what you are doing makes a difference, and any good idea and project will help people, how do you say "no!"? Toughest call many people have to make - how do I unhook from something that's helping people? Because if you don't, you're sucking air out of the more mission-critical things you might need to be doing. These are not easy judgement calls. It's demanding a lot more rigor, to do things like challenge meetings - why are we having this meeting? (Healthcare is dealing with its own deadly virus - meeting-itis!)
Anyway, my hat's off to and heart's with all these great folks, who were as hungry a group as I've ever seen to absorb GTD...
Posted by David at 04:06 PM | Comments (3)
May 12, 2005
GTD and a real systems thinker...
Spent a wonderful afternoon and evening here in Houston with one of the brightest and most charming people I've ever met. Dr. Atul Dhir is President of the research division of US Oncology, a company that manages 500 cancer clinics around the country, treating 20% of all cancer patients in the U.S. Interesting and very successful business model - set up clinics for the standard cancer treatments (which are the majority) which can be done without having to go away to (and pay for) the "biggest and best hospital." Using local docs, close to home, out-patient modalities. They're growing like crazy. Spent a couple of hours this afternoon with a half dozen of their key folks.
Atul is an MD and PhD (molecular biology) with an MBA, trained in India and Oxford (Rhodes scholar); did M&A work for McKinsey in NYC for five years. (Just a portion of his CV!)
Atul "got" GTD a short while ago (though he shyly admits he still has a long way to go), and he and I have started a very creative and inspiring dialogue about the installation of real process - how success is often just making sure the process is right, and organic success and growth just happens. It's certainly galvanizing of my own thinking to engage with one of the most intelligent systems-oriented thinkers around, who's blown away by the underlying power of GTD and its potential. And also the absolutely critical and timely need for it now in the professional world (and how many people don't get it yet)!
Anyway, I continue to be awed and humbled by the elegance and horsepower of people like Atul that GTD is attracting. I just hope I can continue to do my part to facilitate the opportunities for "two or more to gather in the name of..."
Posted by David at 08:20 PM | Comments (3)
May 11, 2005
More fun in financial services...
Very creative session today with a senior group (60 folks) at Citigroup, at their lovely retreat center in Armonk (NY). Leslie had done a GTD for a division of theirs in Paris in March, but this was our first engagement with corporate U.S.
Interesting spin - they did a survey of the whole group ahead of time about a key issue - what were the process problems, etc. - and based upon that we framed the GTD best practices to show how, if they were implemented by the individuals involved, it could significantly improve the outcomes. Very engaged, and I think they got it. Great people to work with, and obviously a highly supportive culture for training & development these days.
It's becoming a common thread in much of my speaking and seminars with the upper tiers these days - many of the organization issues are process issues (decision-making, communication, accountability, stress), and those are personal process issues - not team or company ones (addressable only at the individual level).
...and on to Houston tonight (where I'm in a quaint old hotel writing this - the Warwick - but having to deal with dial-up. So easily spoiled, when I'm thinking that 54k is a slow connection...!)
Posted by David at 08:57 PM | Comments (3)
May 10, 2005
Macs and GTD
Apparently there's a rapidly growing awareness of GTD in the Mac community. Mention in MacWorld this month, and emails like this I got last night...
Getting things done in OS X
Hi David, I just wanted to tip you about my blog post about getting things done on the new Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). I guess you're a PC user, but maybe some of your friends use Macs. Thanks for making such a great book. =) Oyvind Solstad
Norway's on line with GTD, too... cool.
And FYI, our CTO, Robert Peake, is a serious Mac head, as is Jim Rider, our creative director, plus a couple of others on staff. Hopefully we'll dispel rumors that we're not Mac-friendly... I'm actually jealous of people who are bidigital...
Posted by David at 06:35 PM | Comments (9)
May 09, 2005
6000 languages in the world
Another great seatmate conversation last week. Sat next to Don Erickson, CEO of Wycliffe Foundation, a 501C3 organization dedicated to translating the Bible into as many languages as are wanted by people speaking them. According to Don, there are over 6000 languages in use in the world today, and the Bible is only translated into 500. (Getting Things Done is only in 12 - well, I just started, I guess!) Apparently they don't force the Bible on anyone - just try to translate it where there's a desire. Don mentioned that they had just completed a translation in a significant African language - cause for great celebration. It took five years of research to determine if the project/translation was going to be viable, and it took only 25 years to finish it! There's dedication to closure...!
Posted by David at 05:09 PM | Comments (5)
May 08, 2005
A real salon in Minneapolis
A terrific coffee house has recently been opened by a very dear friend of mine, just south of downtown Minneapolis - the Elliott Park Atelier. Shar Kanan used to be my office manager in a previous incarnation of my consulting business (she hired my wife Kathryn into the company before we got together)! Shar's recently opened the Atelier - a hip and happenin' spot - bringing all kinds of people and culture together in a self-revitalizing community (as only Shar can).
If you're in the area, do yourself and them a favor - stop in and say David Allen sent you...!
Scenes from Elliott Park Atelier
Posted by David at 12:41 PM | Comments (2)
May 06, 2005
(Productive) days like this
I love days like this. Late dinner with colleagues last night. Ignored e-mails. Slept in, handled urgencies. Long, creative phone calls with MD Anderson (briefing for upcoming seminar for their staff & docs), Flagstone (high-flying St. Louis-based client very successfully niched in the M&A world), Fast Company (1-hr interview with a senior editor), MarketPlace (interview with one of their feature commentators). Ignored e-mails. A little workout, a little sun. All-afternoon creative meetings with Levenger folks at their gorgeous HQ facility in Delray Beach (as I said, more to come). Stroll a couple of blocks in Coral Gables to Cacao, a great Venezuelan restaurant in the neighborhood, an hour on the phone with Rick and Richard (dear friends, great consultants on our team)... and still ignoring e-mails.
Ah, the wonderfully dangerous edge of knowing how to get in control, so you don't have to be...!
"The chains that bind us the most closely are the ones we have broken." - Antonio Porchia
Posted by David at 08:58 PM
May 05, 2005
Brokers, books, and balmy...
Returned from a lovely evening at Books & Books in Coral Gables, with Steve Leveen giving his mini-workshop and signing his new book, mentioned in my blog below. Steve is an incredibly good speaker, and brings a wealth of experience and love to his message about conscious book-reading.
(More to come, soon, about the Levenger connection. Stay tuned.)
Mitch Kaplan, the owner of Books & Books, treated us to a late dinner "after the show" - wonderful guy, one of the leaders still out there of the small independent, salon/community bookstores (he has authors speaking almost every night). He's also the founder and head of the Miami Book Festival. (Also has a branch inside the Levenger headquarters store in Del Rey Beach).
Mitch Kaplan - owner of Books & Books
We were also joined by Les Standiford, author of the new Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership that Transformed America. I've read Les' previous non-fiction book, Last Train to Paradise, a fascinating account of the train built to Key West.
Lovely late night here in balmy Miami...
Almost hard to remember that this morning I gave a keynote (Ready for Anything: Staying Sane in a World of Too Much to Do) to 500 executives at the Securities Industry Association (SIA) conference in Orlando. I followed a panel of securities regulators talking about new rules in the industry, and they put me on right afterwards hoping that I would add a lighter touch and a salve to the heavy messages. Hopefully that's what they got! They all did get a copy of Getting Things Done, so something might stick or help out there as they unpack all their "stuff" back at the ranch...
Posted by David at 09:31 PM | Comments (7)
May 04, 2005
On Target with a small world...
Flew into Orlando this thunderstorm-y afternoon, for a keynote speech tomorrow for SIA, and just got off a fun call with Bob Giampietro, a senior exec at Target (business development). Bob and I connected a short while ago at least virtually through Buzz Bruggerman (Activewords) and also Steve Leveen (Levenger). Bob and Buzz connect through PopTech; and Bob and Steve because Bob was the guy who got Levenger into Marshall Fields in Chicago - Levenger's first retail store.
Levenger in Marshall Fields
Turns out we're doing our first pilot seminar for Target this summer; Steve's new book, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life is now being presented through Target's book club; I'm meeting with Steve with the launch of his book in Coral Gables tomorrow night... Whew.
Interesting that Bob clued me in on Target's interest in social software, blogging, etc.; and there's a conference going on right now in Minneapolis with my buddy the Scobleizer speaking. From my experience so far, Target indeed is a hip and happenin' place. (When Marian and I had meetings with them at HQ, we were blown away by the employee population there, most of whom looked not a day over twenty-one, and dressed as if they were going to a Tribeca party...!)
Anyway, I love it when the strands come together. As a mentor of mine told me years ago, "David, every great thing that will ever happen to you will come directly (or almost) from your willingness to take a risk and meet someone you didn't know before." So far, so good...
Posted by David at 04:20 PM | Comments (2)
May 03, 2005
Men at work...
Eeeks. Incredibly creative, intelligent folks moving projects forward for the mission of the company...without me!
Slice of life - this afternoon in my office:
Greg Fisk (Webmeister/graphics/media/content craftsman); Robert Peake (standing - CTO, PHP guru, CRM developer extraordinaire); Jason Womack (GTD master teacher in his own right, fellow geek/gadget/gear head).
Posted by David at 09:26 PM | Comments (2)
Lazy man's language builder...
Got a lovely email this morning from Tony Hiller, a Wachovia exec in Florida, including a great little tip:
Recently started to print out from Dictionary.com words I wanted to add to my vocabulary. I would then put the print out in my "tickler file" and let it roll around in there until I felt I had a pretty good grasp on the meaning of the new word. The lazy man's way to expand vocabulary? It works for me.
I'm going to start doing that. I actually use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate on my laptop, so I have access to it when I'm unhooked. Great little program for dictionary and thesaurus on the run.
And my great source of new words is always reading my monthly Atlantic, which always has about half a dozen juicy ones (you know, the ones you think you know, but when you think about it, you don't really know, what they mean!)
Thanks, Tony!
Posted by David at 08:36 AM | Comments (4)
May 01, 2005
Arianna Huffington's already-infamous blog...
Arianna's an old friend, and she's asked me to contribute to her new journalistic/networking venture - the Huffington Post. I'm obviously on her large rolodex of invitees to contribute to what is intended to be a forum for all kinds of thought and comment. Article last week about her/it on the front page of the NY Times. (Need to subscribe to the Times to get, if you're not). She already produces a regular column and a blog. But it will be interesting to see what emerges with this new invitational collaboration, if, as she says, "the blogging revolution has reached a tipping point." If you just want the gist of her vision, here's a piece of the e-mail invitation we got:
As you may have read in Monday's New York Times, my partner, Kenny Lerer, and I are about to launch The Huffington Post, a new internet publishing venture. This site will combine a breaking news section, a section on the media called “Eat the Press”, and an innovative group blog where some of this country's most creative minds will weigh in on topics great and small, political and cultural, important or just plain entertaining.Picture a nonstop, ever-changing group conversation with input from 100 of the most interesting people from the worlds of politics, entertainment, business, and publishing -- a place where some of the
best minds and most creative thinkers in America can inform, rant, provoke, comment on, and link to whatever strikes them as worth a look.A number of people have already agreed to become a part of our group blog, including Larry David, Tom Freston, Vernon Jordan, David Geffen, Nora Ephron, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Tina Brown, John Cusack, Gary Hart, Mike Nichols, Rob Reiner, David Mamet, Arthur Schlesinger, Norman Lear, George Wolfe, Bill Maher, Jann Wenner, Laurie David, Cory Booker, Jim Wiatt, Haim Saban, Walter Cronkite, Albert Brooks, Paul Goldberger, Harry Evans, Liev Schreiber, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David O. Russell, Barry Diller, Tavis Smiley, Ari Emanuel, Paul Reiser, Adam McKay, Brian Grazer, Mort Zuckerman, Brad Hall, Prof. Alex Keyssar, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Sen. Jon Corzine.
I gotta hand it to Arianna - her way of keeping on moving and playing with the times and her role in it has got style, and she's no dummy...
Posted by David at 09:58 PM | Comments (1)
More public seminars coming...
Heads up to my network out there. You're the first to know the name and potential cities & dates of a new one-day public seminar I'm going to launch this summer. It's going to be
GTD: The Power PrinciplesWinning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life
Going to be my higher-level view of the principles behind the principles, and lots of practical application of both the horizontal and vertical control models.
Tentative, but likely (waiting on hotel confirmations etc.)
Los Angeles - July 21
Chicago - August 2
San Jose - August 18
Boston - August 22
Minneapolis - September 22
More to come in the fall, but I wanted to start planting the seeds for first upcoming. Pricing and location details will be forthcoming. Next newsletter (soon) will link to it. Full houses are likely, but I wanted to give the GTDers already out there the chance to spread the word to your network, as well as come on back, yourself, too, for another spin around the block with me.
I've wanted for a while to create a venue to give more of the higher-level view and experience of what GTD is really about. Most people who read the book never remember the vertical stuff - horizons of focus, particularly. I understand getting jacked up about gear and files and labelers and action lists and all that. But real power will come from engaging with 20- to 50,000-ft stuff with equal utility, equanimity, and ebullience (how's them big words?)
Posted by David at 07:00 AM | Comments (16)