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November 29, 2005
Current events catch-up...
Had one of those luxurious (???) days today, most of which on behind-schedule planes, en route from Ojai to Detroit. The good news is that I caught up on my two current event rags - The Week, and The Atlantic. Have to say the current issue (December) of Atlantic is one of those that just struck me as particularly Atlantic-esque and cogent.
Jim Fallows has another article in his stunning series on Irag and U.S. political, military, and social savvy (and significant lack thereof). It's so great to hear a voice with this kind of intelligence and audience instead of NewsCenter 4 pap. Problem is it still seems to be a voice much in the wilderness...
And articles about Kazakhstan (wow, who knew?), Russian politics, reflections on the Iran hostage situation, etc. After getting through most of this issue tonight, it brought me to a refreshed and sober perspective of the world we're threading through. My thanks fo the folks at The Atlantic....
Posted by David at 08:28 PM | Comments (12)
November 26, 2005
Evening light
One of the greatest things about where we live is that our one-acre property runs due east/west, as does the Ojai Valley. So we get incredibly beautiful early morning and late afternoon light. Especially in the winter, when the sun is lower. We also have a 100-yr-old 100-ft.-tall Aleppo pine tree in the front yard, that sometimes catches that light just right...
Evening light...
Posted by David at 09:57 AM | Comments (1)
November 24, 2005
If you're killing time this weekend...
The optical illusion from a few posts ago is actually originaly from Michael Bach's wonderful collection of such things. (Thanks to Mark Levinson for this info...)
Posted by David at 08:41 AM
November 23, 2005
Checklist par excellence...
Wayne Pepper, a recent great addition to our staff of GTD facilitator/coaches, shared this with me, created by his son, Scout (age 10). It's a checklist of the relative values of various favorite candies, to monitor his limit of 7 points a day, legislated by The Authorities (mom & dad).
Gotta be one of the best representations of the strategic value of personal process...!
Scout's candy valuation monitoring data
Posted by David at 07:44 PM | Comments (3)
November 21, 2005
Creative Canadian...
Michael Bungay Stanier sent me a copy of his very creative book, Get Unstuck & Get Going, several months ago. He's apparently a fan of GTD, wanted to start a conversation, since our work obviously overlaps. I've unfortunately only had time to skim his stuff, but it's pretty cool. He just sent me a link to his newest little piece, the Eight Principles of Fun, which is worth stopping what you're doing for a few minutes and letting it take you on its trip.
Posted by David at 12:51 AM | Comments (3)
November 20, 2005
Whirlwind week...
After Seattle RoadMap, had a day at home, then off again to Toronto, where I gave our second seminar for Torstar, the parent company for the Toronto Star, Harlequin Books, etc. Nice to come back to a culture and a lot of great press about how much of GTD had stuck and spread since the first one early this year. Followed by another Institute for Management Studies (IMS) session seminar there, with lots of folks from the government of Ontario and some of the larger Canadian corporations. On to Minneapolis (barely, because of 50mph winds at the aiports), to do another IMS session there, plus a day with our friends at General Mills, finishing up our pilot GTD Masters program, training internal support coaches for the process. Also gave a pro bono workshop for heads of the local organizations funded by the General Mills Foundation, part of an on-going series of management and executive development events they provide them.
While I was in Toronto I had a wonderful dinner with the head of a biotechnology startup - Peter Gallant, CEO of Pathogen Detection Systems, Inc. They've discovered a technology that easily, immediately, and accurately detects ecoli bacteria, among other things, in water systems. An informative and interesting dinner for me, because as well as leading the start-up, Peter teaches entrepreneurship at Queens University, and is quite knowledgable about the venture capital world, especially in Canada. The occasion of course was that Peter's a major GTD fan, came across my stuff a couple of years ago, and swears by the transformative power of the methods. One interesting spin for DavidCo that Peter shared, in terms of positioning, is that the risks of VC funding for a start-up are threefold: market potential, IP security, and execution. The latter is a big missing link out there, and GTD, applied, minimizes the risk of non-execution. Makes perfect sense, of course, but the trick will be to make that appropriately known to the VC firms who might want to make GTD implementation a requirement for funding.
Me and Dr. Peter Gallant of Pathogen Detection Systems, after dinner...
Posted by David at 08:59 AM | Comments (5)
November 15, 2005
Cool little perception exercise
Rick Kantor passed on this link, which I hadn't seen before, but which so elegantly reminds of the issue of perception vs reality... Nice marketing piece, too, since they got me to spread their brand!
Posted by David at 12:31 AM | Comments (4)
November 14, 2005
Bonsai sunset
Twenty-four hours at home. Tending to the bonsai/life issue of what to leave, what to take away...?
Priorities...
Posted by David at 02:44 AM | Comments (6)
November 13, 2005
Good article in Fast Company re: simplicity
In the November Fast Company there's a good article by Linda Tischler - "The beauty of simplicity" - that highlights the eternal struggle in product design between ease of use and sophistication of features. The elegance of the simplicity of Google's home page vs the "integrated remote" controllers. It's the issue many people have around customizing GTD - how cool can I make and automate my system and still keep it simple enough to use when I don't feel like doing system? Lots of great ideas work in your head, but in your hands they die a sure death.
Posted by David at 11:38 AM | Comments (4)
November 11, 2005
GTD for your birthday?
Just finished the Seattle RoadMap seminar today (with unfortunately only about 50% of my vocal chords firing, given a bad case of laryngitis I got in New York earlier this week!) Worked out OK - I even learned to use fewer words to make my points (always a good thing).
A fun thing that Kathryn reminded me a few minutes ago, decompressing here in the hotel with her tonight, about a father and daughter in the seminar together - he giving her the seminar as her requested birthday present.
Something similar seems to have happened at least once in every seminar I've given lately - people giving and being given the GTD seminar experience as their desired celebratory event. Flattering to us, of course, but the more significant thing to me is that the methodology is, in at least a few quarters, seen as one of the best things you could do for someone else.
I'm not voting for proselytizing to the world about GTD, or anything else - I'm somewhat allergic to that often insecurity-based behavior anyway. But it is inspiring to have others participate that way in truly a gift that keeps on giving...
"Generosity gives assistance rather than advice." - Vauvenargues
Posted by David at 09:36 PM | Comments (4)
November 10, 2005
A beef with the language
A sign of my age. Last night, arriving in Seattle for the RoadMap seminar tomorrow, I ate in the very hip W Hotel restaurant (that means dark and un-soft in texture and music) across from a couple that were almost old enough to be my grandkids. Aside from the fact that they were cute, they had two irritating habits that are common to that gen, it seems. First, about 30% of the time at least one of them was talking on or punching things into their neon-glow cellphones. And second, (which is the subject of this mini-rant), about 10% of their vocabulary was "like..." Not as in "I like it" or "it was like my mother used to make." "Like..." as in, "He is, like, really dumb - like, yeah...like, really..."
For a while I've been wondering why the word used that way has become so ubiquitous in the vocabulary of the under-30 set. Here's my theory: the kids are chicken. They want to express themselves with freedom and style, but are unwilling to own what they mean. If you think someone is dumb, how about saying, "I think they're really dumb." Or even better, "They're really dumb." (It's obvious that you think so.)
By adding the "like," as they do, it somehow makes it more of a caricature or a cartoon of what they think. I don't have to be held really accountable for what I think, as long as I express it with the caveat that it's "like"... so in case it's not really what I think, I'm off the hook.
Maybe kids have always been insecure about expressing themselves, and this new spin on the language allows them to stretch into new levels of freedom and at least pseudo-honesty. I just think it's a culturally supported cop-out. Like, really...
Posted by David at 12:21 PM | Comments (34)
November 06, 2005
Is he still alive?
One of the best things I've heard in the last few months is one of my staff recounting a question someone asked them during one of our in-house seminars: "Is David Allen still alive?"
I've never been particularly comfortable with my name on the masthead of our company. My personality style frankly would prefer to slip away into the night ("Who was that masked man?")
But it's been easier to sell a personality than a process. Oh well. So when someone in our professional world wonders if I'm still alive, I'm thinking: "thank you jesus!" The myth is so much better than the reality, anyway. The sooner I might become a Booz, Allen, McKinsey, or whatever (who were/are they, anyway?), the more I figure the value of the process has achieved its deserved place in the annals of self-management best practices.
[This is being written by a software-generated application, that has no relationship to the real David Allen, who (if he ever existed [and we're not sure]) had no part in its creation.)
I find it harder and harder to live up to my blue china. - Oscar Wilde
Posted by David at 09:41 PM | Comments (9)
November 01, 2005
Very cool little travel device for road warriors
I just got the way cool little Linksys Travel Router, which lets me run wirelessly in my hotel room when the hotel only has wired hi-speed. And a great feature is when I travel with Kathryn, we both can use our two laptops wirelessly simultaneously through the one connection. It seems to speed it up, too. Had a problem with the retractable plug, but otherwise a great accessory.
Posted by David at 07:03 AM | Comments (6)