March 06, 2006
In defense of capitalism, and some real black history...
Great essay in the current Atlantic by Clive Crook, marveling at how little "awe" we have for the success of the free market and it's comcomitant freedoms. It's called "Capitalism: the Movie" on page 46 of the March issue. Nice to have a good reminder that if we take what we enjoy a little too much for granted, we are in danger of letting it slip away. His point is basically that there is an underlying assumption in our culture (demonstrated through the movies) that business and the free market is a bad thing, and the heroes are the ones who escape being downtrodden by it. He ends with this paragraph:
How about a movie in which a firm prospers under threat of competition by selling things that people want at an affordable price, paying its workers the market wage, and breaking no laws, thereby advancing the common good? Well, you see the problem.
And by the way, right after Crook's essay the Atlantic reprinted articles they published originally by Frederick Douglas in 1866, Booker T. Washington in 1896, W. E. B. Du Bois in 1897. and Martin Luther Kind in 1963. Though I was an American History major in college, reading those again from my present state of awareness was pretty awesome...
Posted by David at 07:18 PM | Comments (9)
January 04, 2006
This is funny...blue-collar Palm
Sorry, couldn' help passing this on.... check it out the blue-collar Palm.
Posted by David at 08:09 PM | Comments (24)
December 22, 2005
Top Ten Signs You're a GTD Disciple
My buddy Eric Mack, who scans the GTD-centric conversation universe much more consistently than I do, found this great list of Top Ten Signs You're a GTD Disciple, that someone out there generated. (Thanks to the author, whoever it was!) Funny.
10. While driving home from work, you have to pull over three times to jot it down and empty your mind.9. You put your weekly review on a Someday/Maybe list. … NOT!
8. You go to McDonalds for lunch but – before ordering – you draw a mind map of what an ideal fast food meal would look and taste like.
7. You use a Brother P-Touch to label your kitchen drawers.
6. You actually know how to pronounce, "Moleskine."
5. You actually understand the workflow chart in GTD.
4. You know the difference between 40,000 and 30,000 feet perspectives.
3. You know that the "two-minute rule" has nothing to do with the conclusion of football games.
2. When you get together with friends, you say, "Show me you project list!"
1. After five minutes of foreplay, you pause and ask your partner, "What's the next action?"
Posted by David at 09:36 AM | Comments (3)
December 13, 2005
Urban sprawl
Just read stats quoted in Eric Utne's Urban Almanac (from US Dept of Agriculture, apprarently) that the average heights for men and women in the U.S. has remained contant (5'9" men and 5'4" women) from 1890 to 2002, but the average weight has gone from 130 to 170 pounds (men) and 110 to 146 pounds (women).
Wonder what difference that has made in things of our culture other than our butts...?
ps: just noticed Utne's Cosmo Doogood's Urban Almanac... no time to surf much, but looks cool.
Posted by David at 11:59 AM | Comments (3)
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 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 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)
October 17, 2005
Airport RAM...?
Great photo from Madrid airport, forwarded to me by Barb Nieman at P&G, who was in a workshop of mine with CRA in Wisconsin. (Thanks, Barb!)
Is this a plane to trust, or not...?
Posted by David at 09:27 AM | Comments (3)
October 14, 2005
Can knowledge workers deduct espresso expenses?
I just read a blurb from The Week that tax officials in the Netherlands have ruled that witches are entitled to tax-deduct the cost of their broomsticks. Seems, then, that I should be able to itemize my various brain stimulants, right?
Posted by David at 10:11 AM | Comments (7)
October 13, 2005
GTD and pop culture
One of the folks in our network (Bill Barnes) was kind enough to pass this on:
I wondered if you had seen Unshelved's take on Getting Things Done. We feature a different book every Sunday in our new "Unshelved Book Club" feature, and since my wife and I had just finished GTD (and started enjoying the benefits thereof) it was a natural. Please pass my best on to David, who's making the world a better place.http://www.overduemedia.com/archive.aspx?strip=20050925
I've heard from several readers who were turned on to GTD from this strip, so I'm glad we're able to help.
Enjoy,
Bill
OK, so this has got to be some sort of milestone in somebody's log...
Posted by David at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)
October 07, 2005
GTD as important shelfware
Someone sent me a copy of a column from The Bookseller in the UK in which Graham Edmonds (author of Bullshitter's Bingo)lists the Top Ten books for a Bullshitter's Bookshelf - books on the shelf to merely make the owner look good - though hardly read or understood. Getting Things Done is one of them - "to give the impression of efficiency." I'm in the company of Seven Habits..., How to Win Friends..., One-Minute Manager, Emotional Intelligence. Quirky validation of making it to the big time, I guess!
"The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second duty is no one yet has found out." - Oscar Wilde
Posted by David at 12:00 PM | Comments (5)
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)
August 19, 2005
Anti-GTD movement...
A CEO friend in my network forwarded this, which is being passed around his company as a t-shirt idea. We've agreed it's a sign that GTD is hitting the Big Time, that we've now got a counter-revolution in the making...!
IF THIS IS MY NEXT ACTION...
IMAGINE MY OUTCOME.
Posted by David at 03:04 PM | Comments (4)
June 24, 2005
A tiny thing that ticks me off...
OK, it's Friday. And here's a Very Minor Topic I have ranted about for years: "Casual Friday."
Excuse me, but if it's OK for someone to show up dressed casually for 20% of their work time, why on earth is it not OK to show up the rest of the time that way? Or... if it's not OK to show up casually 80% of the time, why on earth would it be OK to show up casually at any time?
The only rational explanation anyone in all these years has cared to give me (when I have felt it sufficiently safe to broach this core life issue) was that it's a bone thrown to the troops from senior management as a perk - that one day of the week you get to be comfortable - even if it's not the best way to interface with each other and our customers. Because we care about our people. Gag me.
Can anybody out there give me anything other than unconscious knee-jerk pseudo-progressive-management crap justification for such nonsense?
I'm not voting for casual dress better than business dress. Which is most appropriate for what you're doing? Then why in heaven's name would you then ever do anything else?
What's most intriguing about all this is that I have never heard anyone else raise this question. I can't imagine why so many people have so many things much better to do...!
Posted by David at 10:09 PM | Comments (39)
June 20, 2005
Read the new Atlantic cover article
New Atlantic cover article - (if you don't have access to it, it's in the paper edition) is another stunning piece by Jim Fallows. It's a memo to the U.S. Presidential candidate in 2016 from his campaign manager.
I had dinner with Jim in DC while he was finishing it, and was intrigued with his idea of what he was trying to do. Here's our correspondence about it this morning:
---------------
Jim,
Just got around to holding the rest of my world at bay long enough to read your piece. Wow. Is there something you guys are calling this kind of art form now? Like, expository literary-journalistic hypotheticalism? Great stuff. Chilling, as usual, but great stuff.
I'll blog about it... anything you'd care to share about it, like what the feedback has been or what it was like to write it, that I can quote you on for my network?
All the best,
David
---------------
David, thanks for noticing and writing! Glad to have caught your interest.
The guiding spirit here was actually something old: 'A Christmas Carol,' you know, by Charles Dickens. That is, presenting a "Ghost of Christmas Future" that was chastening enough that, on awakening, people might think: Jeez louise, I'm going to do whatever is necessary to keep THAT from happening!
Or, to put it another way, the assignment for the piece was : find a way to talk about (often-boring-seeming) economic trends without, in fact, being boring! That is what led me to the election scenarios, "Preachervilles," the 'Desert Eagle,' and so on.
Email feed back has been quite positive to date, mainly in the mode of: so if this is true, what can we do with (a) our own personal investments, and (b) the country's policies. Wish I had answers -- especially on (a)!
Jim
(Other relevant point: I actually interviewed A TON of people when doing the piece, trying to get an idea of what the *plausible* future trends were in petroleum, trade patterns, tax streams, and so on.)
Posted by David at 03:44 AM | Comments (15)
June 18, 2005
How ephemeral all this is
My last day in London was spent in bed, hardly able to eat, drink or even to stand up. I woke up early Friday morning thinking I had food poisoning, with all of its glorious symptoms (certainly more than you need to know). I called my Associate Julie (Daniel) to cancel our day together, and she said that there was a 24-hour virus going around London, schools closing, etc. Sort of a relief, that I probably wasn't going to die, nor sue the restaurant. But, having been blessed with a relatively healthy life, I was reminded how easy it is to take for granted the instrument we're walking through this game with (body); and how puny all the issues (as well as the inspirations) can be, when we're up against it, physically.
I remember reading several years ago about Success Magazine's poll of their readers, asking them to vote for the criteria for success. #1 at the top was, yes, good health.
I won't say I had a near-death experience (though I thought there were moments); but I did get to be reminded at least briefly of the state of consciousness in which nothing matters. That can be existential hell or a window into deeper priorities. I don't want to sound too dramatic, but as I make my living in a world of positive ideas and practices, with inspiration as a medium, it was an humbling reminder of my own vulnerability and the value of being able to have a body in good enough shape to be tuned to those frequencies. As I've said many times, perspective is the slipperiest and most valuable commodity on the planet. But health is a close second.
Gratefully I'm getting back to the world of the living now, managing to get on planes and get to Toronto this evening. Hopefully though I won't forget too quickly how grateful I ought to remain, just having the energy to wonder what to say...
To lose one's health renders science null, art inglorious, strength unavailing, wealth useless, and eloquence powerless. - Herophilus
Posted by David at 05:15 PM | Comments (10)
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)
April 27, 2005
Good coaching from a GTD evangelist...
Thought I'd share last night's email dialogue with Merlin (w/his permission) for those of you who might be interested in the small worm can that I opened two blogs ago...
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Hi, David, Saw your post today on IP. As an enthusiastic cheerleader for your work, I like to think I've attributed to you very generously, but if you ever feel that's not the case, I do hope you'll contact me personally. We good? Best, Merlin
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Merlin, (Unofficially) I think so... I certainly appreciate your support and evangelism, and would like to support you, too. We had people starting to use GTD in ads, promoting their own stuff, and our attorney said we've got to step into this or it would really get out of hand. We're going to be coming up with some guidelines to publish about this, and then you can evaluate your stuff against that. I wouldn't concern yourself at this point. Thanks for communicating... David
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Thanks, David. I appreciate the response. I had a feeling that's the sort of thing that you'd intended in your post. I'm sorry to hear that this has become a problem for you, and I do understand your need to protect your brand. It can be very tricky, though, to communicate these things well on the 'net, where you never know how people will read nuance and tone.
It would be valuable for you to clarify the advice you've received to issue C&Ds--that these are essentially going out to folks who are deliberately lying about a relationship with Davidco or who are
implying non-existent licensing relationships, or what have you.
That's a horse of different color from "fan sites" and the like.
*Big* difference to your GTD community, I can assure you. For what it's worth, "Cease & Desist" is a very emotional hot-button phrase in the online community--where you currently enjoy a *huge* amount of respect, deference, and, as Mr. Bush might say, capital. :-)
It would be an awful shame for any of that valuable web karma to be
damaged by an unnecessary misunderstanding, you know? Just one data
point from an admirer. Anyhow, good luck, and please do stay in touch. Best Regards, Merlin
------------
Merlin,
I take your coaching to heart, and will post haste work with my attorney to draft something of an "official" document for the community.
David
Posted by David at 04:18 AM | Comments (7)
April 25, 2005
Heads up for "GTD" promoters...
I'd like to give something of an early warning signal to the rapidly-expanding world of people who are leveraging "GTD" and its methods within their own spheres. Because my company is moving into new arenas of distribution of our education and intellectual property, it is becoming more important to maintain the standard of the brand and the business model to protect and expand the material appropriately. Bottom line: if you're spreading and promoting the GTD methods and techniques from a personal standpoint, because you just care about the value of the information and want to share it with others, I'm in full support of that. If, however, you're using "GTD" and its implicit association with me and the David Allen Company, for personal or enterprise economic gain, that's a no-no. You can expect some version of "cease and desist" coming your way.
I personally hate the police role, and would just as soon ignore it. But we've already had to eat the distasteful back end of something that's not who we are being paraded as such for personal gain, and because our sphere of influence is expanding tremendously, and others besides me have investment in our unique value and its protection in the market place, such is the nature of the material world.
So, do me personally a favor: if there is any ambiguity in your own psyche about what you're doing with GTD and whether you have our blessing or not, please communicate that, and get our take on it, sooner than later. Thanks.
Posted by David at 09:59 PM | Comments (21)
March 11, 2005
Geeking with Eric
What fun... taking off from my wall-to-wall world for a day, drove up to Pine Mountain Club to just hang out with my long-time propellor head buddy and technologist - Eric Mack. We're going to be blogging, podcasting, skype-ing, and miscellaneous snorting around all the productivity bleeding edges, and running down the rabbit trails. Sometimes that's the priority...!
Posted by David at 11:39 AM | Comments (7)
February 25, 2005
Mind like cat
Charles Staley sent me this great pic this morning - his cat Rocky does the Zen and the Art of In-Basket Maintenance thing...
Posted by David at 08:31 AM | Comments (2)
January 29, 2005
Current Atlantic is a must-read
I'm about through reading the current issue of Atlantic (my first to-read - and often only - monthly rag), and though they're all good, this one's got some articles I have to mention, and I hope you read.
The whole issue is terrific, but If nothing else, read my friend Jim Fallows' "Success Without Victory", which is also online, if you're a subscriber (please do subscribe - I'd sure like to know more and more people are getting tapped into that pipe). Stunning, in every sense. I have to profess to knowing just enough about politics to figure I'll never know what the hell is really going on until twenty years later anyway, so I often just cop out of the responsibility of staying informed. Thanks to Jim and others at the Atlantic, I feel like I'm at least partially tapped into some objective analysis in current time. And I'm afraid Jim's article this month just validates the gap between intelligence and policy.
And if that's not enough, try William Langewiesche's article in the same issue, "Letter from Baghdad," for a gigantic taste of reality vs headlines.
And with just enough similarities to my own college-age experiences, Walter Kirn, in one of the most well-written stories I've read in a long time, "Lost in the Meritocracy," rattled my cage with a brutally honest and vulnerable expression of the angst of being cleverly bright, ambitious, and with a desire to escape the lower middle class to "be somebody" in the vague world of the intelligent elite.... brrrr....
Posted by David at 03:25 AM | Comments (3)
September 05, 2004
The back office
Found lurking in my office this weekend...Actually it's Eric Mack, my Major PropellerHead, making sure I'm wired appropriately with a couple of new servers...
Posted by David at 09:24 AM
April 03, 2004
My book as psychic reader?
I ran into someone who said he and his staff were having a great time using Getting Things Done (on audiotape) like one of those 8-ball cubes you turn upside down when you ask a question and it gives you an answer! They would ask a question, randomly run the tape forward and put it on Play. He said it was amazing how appropriate what I was saying at that moment on the tape was the perfect answer! (Warning: do not try this at home.)
Posted by David at 10:55 AM | Comments (1)
