David, first thank you for a fantastic RoadMap seminar in London, I am a new man! I feel so in control!

With respect to this blog entry, I was wondering if your aha is related to what Stephen Covey focuses on, i.e. Important but not Urgent actions. I am waiting eagerly to hear more from you on this!

Regards

Mark

David, I look forward to more on what I see as a truly significant insight on this vital aspect of life and work management.

Thanks for being open to those "Aha!" moments.

Let me just say: GTD totally rocks! You've changed the lives of so many people I know. While waiting for the programming-types to catch up with your latest Aha!, I'll be tweaking my paper system for keeping track of my tasks. =) (Ah, the advantages of paper!)

I use Douglas Johnston's awesome D*I*Y Planner Kit. Have you seen those forms? I _love_ his forms, and many people around the world use his 3"x5" and 5.5"x8" forms to do GTD and other systems. I don't know how he manages to fit so much onto an index card and still make it usable, but it's totally awesome. Sure, I could use plain index cards to keep track of my next actions, but the forms just help me focus and have fun.

His templates are free for personal and non-commercial use, but I can imagine David Allen-branded organizers and customized forms at your power workshops. I heard he's thinking of doing freelance work. Maybe he can even design a set of forms to fit your audiences!

(I don't earn anything from this. I just think his forms are ubercool, and that they'd be a great fit for what you're doing!)

Mark et al,

The idea of leverage and priorities is nothing really new. But as I'm maturing more in my thinking with GTDRoadMap, it's clearer and clearer to me that the key is paying attention to what has your attention - because there's likely a message in there that you may not be consciously aware of yet, as to its payoff. - David

Sounds like Pareto:
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/productivity/how-to-work-less-and-succeed-more-116317.php

Thank you David, this will add a lot of clarification during my weekly and daily reviews. Thank you very much, I linked to this article from my blog and I am looking forward to seeing you at the Roadmap in Santa Monica on 10/6.

Thanks for the interesting point, David. I wonder if this is this the same as "Lakein's Question" ("What is the best use of your time right now?")

matt

P.S. Thanks so much for GTD - it's helped me tremendously. Also, I'm looking forward to seeing you at the Boston RoadMap seminar at this month's end.

..it's clearer and clearer to me that the key is paying attention to what has your attention - because there's likely a message in there that you may not be consciously aware of yet, as to its payoff. - David

Thanks! That line goes into my "GTD-remember what it's all about" file!

David

I think you need to expand this to encompass the impact upwards through the horizons of focus.

What I mean is that the domino effect doesn't just necessarily traverse the Next Action Lists or the Projects list. Instead it could ripple through 20,000ft and upwards.

In fact, if you have truly captured everything at each horizon then it is very likely that the things that truly have your attention are these very opportunities.

Is this the true value of the runway upwards (bottom up) approach as opposed to the life downwards? That you are able to focus on a simple next action that could have a truly life changing effect? Yet your mind only has to worry about implementing the next action without all the baggage associated with trying to change your life from the top downwards.

Look forwards to future posts from yourself on this. In particular how to conciously implement this (I suspect that we all unconsiously do this with both positive and negative effect - the power in influencing this process in a consious manner could be awesome)

The "leverage" is a part of the more complicated question of "what needs to get done now". To me, this is a big picture question, not one focused merely on time - but on affect. Speaking of which, I have other things I should be doing right now....

David, any plans to add trackback functionality to your blog posts? That way, we can comment in our own blogs and link to yours.

There has always been an unspoken priority in GTD but emerging organically in the weekly review process. Your 'aha moment' has been to formalize that aspect of the weekly review. The challenge for many is that a lot of the things they have to do are obligations to supervisors, not self directed activities. The result is the action providing the most leverage can appear further down the list than it would were the individual truly self-directed.

Still wishing you'd plan a public event in Houston, TX.

I look forward to hearing more about this. However, you have always said to 'continually take the next more important action.' So, GTD has always had prioritizing. This sounds like just a very good way to think about what is most important.

I've always felt that there is some golden thread in my task list that would pull all things together...if I could figure which thread it was.

Along with things, how the heck do you know which contacts are the ones to leverage...or that you should be "tickled" back into contact with?

To me the main priority code is always stress.

What is the task that is stressing me the most by not being done?

Doing that seems to clear up much more freedom to be productive than anything else, even if it's more quantifiably rational. I'm somehow reminded of the old line that "Economic Rationalism Isn't" :-)

Ralf

Don’t worry David, it’s not a “sell out” … the reality is, there ARE things in all our lives that, “if completed, would positively affect the most things of importance in my world”. That’s just the way things in life line up. it makes total sense to keep looking out for them, and to be sensitive to when they are trying to attract our attention.

Part of the elegance of GTD is that it allows us to be totally happy with what we are not doing, while we are focussing on a particular target: and where in GTD does it say that our choice of a particular target cannot be the thing that would positively affect the most things of importance in our world?

GTD recommends making intuitive choices about next actions - surely our intuition will tell us that a key action like this is the best next thing to do?

Stress is something you cause in yourself. You are the only one who has any control over your stress. If that doesn't sound right, think of the most stressed out person you know besides yourself. Who or what is doing that to them?

What do you think?

Could I be the first to share this dirty little secret with David and fellow GTDers? Many GTD devotees have been prioritizing for years.

I've never been able to decide if I had "evolved" or "perverted" GTD by prioritizing, but I knew I had no choice. My days are too crazy and next action list too long not to add some kind of "must do" list to help me refocus quickly after the latest interruption.

The key is not to prioritize too many things, but to admit that there are a few next actions that no matter how crazy the day gets really do have to get done to move important balls forward or simply to avoid disaster.

Since I try to implement GTD primarily in Outlook, my trick is to remove any categories from the "must do" task (next action) which then moves the entry to the top of the Outlook Task page. If I have more than 3-5 "must do's" there, I stop for a minute and re-shift my priorities.

I've taught this trick to a few GTD teammates here at Skyline Music and they love it.

Since I try to implement GTD primarily in Outlook, my trick is to remove any categories from the "must do" task (next action) which then moves the entry to the top of the Outlook Task page. If I have more than 3-5 "must do's" there, I stop for a minute and re-shift my priorities.

This is a nice gold-nugget ! Thanks mate

Hi David, I look forward to your own clarification. Just for fun, here is mine. I found it kind of humorous that I was doing this...

In reponse to this...

Uh Oh. That's right out of Franklin Covey. Interesting. Very interesting.

I wrote this...

Actually, I don't think this is like Franklin Covey at all. I expect that David is speaking of making an inuititive choice, in the heat of battle, about which thing is the highest leverage task. That is nothing at all like assigning A,B,C and 123 priorities the day before or even putting the Big Rocks in first.

I can see how David is following the same system as before. This simple modification reflects the fact that for people who spend most of their working day in one location, contexts can have a good deal of overlap, and you may tend to work Projects through a series of NA's rather than work on various NAs. David is just helping people in such a position get the most bang for their buck. Or even, all other things being equal, utilizing your @Calls list for maximum impact. ...Just my thoughts.

Warm Regards,
Gordon