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September 30, 2005

Boston RoadMapping...

Fabulously fun GTD RoadMap seminar today - 200 people showed up here at the Copley Marriott in Boston! Lots of old timers coming back to refresh and invigorate, plus lots of new-to-the-game players.

Great Boston seminar today...

And what a great crew almost in the front row... from one of our favorite artistic/cultural enterprises on the planet - Cirque du Soleil! Turns out one of them got the GTD bug a while ago, and it's spreading in their culture. Had five of them come down to Boston from Montreal headquarters. They're big fans, want to get us into their culture. How cool.

Cirque du Soleil GTDers(and me)!

Posted by David at 03:12 PM | Comments (2)

September 29, 2005

There's something about a college town...

While I was in Burlington, I drove into town to find a restaurant, and was enthralled, as I usually am, by the ever-same nature of college town energy. The crowded cool corners, the cheaper food joints, the young-and-hip shops, the conforming uniqueness of the kids playing independent, the intense coffee-house conversations... Seems everywhere to always have been, and probably always will be. Amen.

Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. - Ambrose Bierce

Posted by David at 05:29 PM | Comments (5)

Green Mountain days

Just finished two RoadMap seminars here in Burlington, VT, underwritten by the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation. Green Mountain has been a great client of ours for five years. Headed by Bob Stiller (a Forbes entrepreneur of the year), they're located right next to Ben & Jerry's in Waterbury, and have the same kind of "green" culture and philosophy of business. Bob started their Foundation to support the community with business and personal growth best practice resources - hence my seminars, which were attended by numerous community, business, and academic leaders. I'm always re-inspired when I get to work within a small community, where good things spread around the network very quickly. Vermont is just, well, refreshing...

Bob Stiller after dinner last night...

Posted by David at 06:24 AM | Comments (1)

September 26, 2005

Dylan

While unpacking tonight at my hotel here in Burlington (VT), happened to catch the last half of the first half of No Direction Home - the Scorsese/PBS production. Very well done...interesting behind the scenes of the sources of lots of nostalgia for those of us who trekked our psyches through the '60's. You can still get the whole thing tonight on the west coast, and the second half tomorrow night, on PBS.

Posted by David at 08:21 PM | Comments (2)

September 25, 2005

The new kittie is fine

For any of you who care to follow the saga of our rescued new kittie, Nikos, he's alive and well. (Forgive another personal note from this weekend...48 hours at home before another two weeks on the road...just smelling some of the roses along the way.)

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Ideness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. - Jerome K. Jerome

Nikos and Finnegan in chill mode...

Posted by David at 09:43 AM | Comments (3)

September 24, 2005

Shapes

How nice to wake up at home today, on a hazy cool morning. Really appreciating my wonderful environment in Ojai. Couldn't help noticing and loving the great "bones" of our coastal live oak trees, which just got a major trimming last week.

My cottage office under the oaks today...

Posted by David at 01:35 PM | Comments (3)

September 22, 2005

Fast forward...fabulous day...

Back from London. 24-hour chill in Ojai. Back to Hartford and New York for IMS seminars. Then a hop back to Minneapolis for our first GTD RoadMap in that fun city. What a full-bore, all-out day today, in a wonderful place that I'm just starting to get a feel for/sense of. Small, big town. Very networked.

140+ people in our seminar, on the 50th floor of the IDS center... nice. Incredibly diverse mix of sophisticated people from all kinds of corporate, healthcare, and service orgs.

And then, after a great dinner at Dakota, a fun and great-food jazz club/restaurant downtown, we found ourselves entranced by an incredible Cuban jazz group playing there, led by Nachito Herrera. Finally left after their last set. Wow. Nachito does stuff with the piano I've never heard before, and his 15-yr-old daughter belts Latin stuff out with a purity and panache I've also never heard before. Find these guys. Awesome.

Nachito Herrera, his daughter, his group...

Posted by David at 11:15 PM | Comments (2)

September 17, 2005

There is a priority code...

You're the first in my network to know. I've humbled myself to admit that there really is a priority code worth noting. (Oh my God - is David Allen really saying we should structure a priority?)

Woke up with the aha! a couple of days ago. It goes something like this:

What on the list, if completed, would positively affect the most things of importance in my world?

In other words...leverage. There are certain projects, certain actions, that if done would be like linchpin events - they'll cause a lot of other dominoes to fall.

I'll be writing more on that in other forums...

Posted by David at 02:42 PM | Comments (19)

September 12, 2005

GTD and a culture

Wonderful anecdote I just received from one of our favorite clients - Kevin Wilde, the Chief Learning Officer for General Mills. We've been collaborating with Kevin and his terrific Organization Effectiveness team to integrate GTD into their culture.

Just encountered something you might find interesting ... As you know, we're two years into the GTD journey here at General Mills. With you and your great team's help, we have trained nearly 2,000 employees. It's exciting to see us reaching critical mass now and starting to realize the benefits we imagined. So here's a pleasant surprise we didn't expect: A GTD grad who told me today she just transitioned to a new job and it was the smoothest handoff and the most powerful start-up she ever had in her career. Reason? The successor and predecessor are GTD practitioners! As the two leaders sat down to turn over the role: - the resource and project files were in great shape, - the various job-related task lists and @agendas were used as a discussion guide, - the levels from runway and above were used to set start-up priorities and understand overall job charter.

So the new leader is off to a great start. And the predecessor can move on to her new role having brought terrific closure to the old job. Now that's "Getting Things Done." - Kevin Wilde

Posted by David at 08:41 AM | Comments (2)

September 07, 2005

Our idea of a good time

Kathryn and I gave ourselves a couple of extra days on the front end of this business trip to London, just because we love being in the city so much (and we needed a wee break from our rather intense routine Stateside). This trip not actually doing much...just enjoying the walks, the neighborhood streets and restaurants, and the atmosphere. London in balmy weather is quite the inviting out-in-the-streets place.

A Hyde Park moment this afternoon...

Posted by David at 08:29 AM | Comments (2)

September 06, 2005

GTD and "body projects"

People have always seemed at least slightly bemused in seminars when they see some "body project" on my list - fix this, finish up that, replace this, etc. But today I was inspired in a slightly unsettling way by someone who really has one. Kathryn and I had lunch here in London with a dear old friend and very senior professional who's been a champion of GTD and our work for years, who's dealing now with a rather rare form of cancer. He mentioned that one of the great things about the GTD thought process that's made a huge difference to him is in being able to relate to the cancer as a "project." There's so much negative mystique about cancer, apparently, that the more one can view the illness as simply something to be dealt with, with actions to be taken, the healthier it is for the psyche (and who knows, then, how much for the body?)

A savvy and awesomely sobering perspective, to be sure.

We are coming to understand health not as the absence of disease, but rather as the process by which individuals maintain their sense of coherence (i.e. sense that life is comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) and ability to function in the face of changes in themselves and their relationships with their environment. - Aaron Antonovsky

Posted by David at 01:54 PM | Comments (3)

September 05, 2005

What time is it?

Always amazing how tough it is to fly direct from L.A. to London, in terms of body clock... We napped in today until afternoon, then a leisurely walk around Regents Park.

Greeted by a denizen Brit of Regents Park

Posted by David at 03:58 PM | Comments (3)

September 03, 2005

Deer golf

Spent an hour yesterday at the Brentwood CA Sotheby real estate office, fielding questions and chatting with a number of folks who had been as a group to the first Santa Monica RoadMap seminar, then playing golf with my old buddy, Nick Segal, who manages the office. Golf is certainly one of those things that truly makes no sense, especially now for me. So, that makes it (sometimes) the absolutely perfect thing to do.

En route to London with Kathryn tonight...

Intruders on the green...

Posted by David at 04:06 PM | Comments (1)