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July 28, 2007

It's not about the lists

I've heard David Allen say that many people miss the real purpose of making lists in GTD. You don't make the lists to only do what's on the lists and nothing else in your life. You create the lists so that the lists take your attention off that stuff so that you can REALLY do what you want to do. And then do that with 100% of your focus, attention and creativity.

There's a comfort zone I found works for me and my lists where I have as few lists as I can get by with, but as many as I think I need to slice and dice my stuff in a way that makes it manageable. And, they change from time to time, if for no other reason than to just change the look to get me excited about them again. (It's kind of like new running shoes--it's amazing what that does to get me motivated to get out and run.) My current action lists, all managed in Palm Desktop software, are:

Projects
Someday/Maybe
@Calls
@Errands
@Home/Office
@John
@Laptop
@Boss
@Waiting For
@Wherever

An easy way to figure out which context lists you need is to look at the people, places and tools you need to do your work, personally and professionally. That will serve as a good starting point.

The magic, motivation and purpose of the lists for me is that I can have the freedom to do whatever I want to do (whether it's on the lists or not) without feeling the pressure to only do what happens to be top of mind or top of the pile. In the middle of a chock full week of GTD classes, I snuck in a play day in San Francisco for my birthday. If I didn't have my lists and trust that they were current and everything on the lists could wait, I wouldn't have had nearly the same experience of relaxation and joy.

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work. - Gustave Flaubert

Posted by Kelly at 09:23 AM | Comments (4)

July 13, 2007

Jott as a capture tool

I've been playing around with Jott as a mobile capture tool for my GTD system. If you're not familiar with Jott, it's a free voice to text service. This is bound to strike a chord with some of you given how many people raise their hands in my seminars when I ask, "How many of you leave yourself voice mails as reminders of things you need to do?"

Here's the scenario:

I'm driving in my car, which is a place I often do my best thinking. I pick up my Treo and press the shortcut key on the side to activate Voice Dial (I'm using VoiceSignal for Palm).

Phone: "Say a Command"
Me: "Call Jott"
Phone: "Jott...Connecting"
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
Me: "Myself"
Jott: "Jott to self"
Me: "Check iTunes for that Fergie song"
Jott: "Got it"

Hang up and you're done. Usually by the time I get back to my computer, Jott has sent me my voice message as a transcribed text message that I can easily edit, copy and paste into my Action list.

A thing I wish worked a little better is the speed that the messages come back to my email Inbox. There seems to be a delay. I wish that were in a matter of seconds, but sometimes it seems to be up to several hours, at least with my initial testing.

I played around with doing a GTD Mindsweep (random collection of ideas and thoughts) into Jott. I loved it. Each time I paused it assumed I was done and prompted to create a new Jott. Each one came into my Inbox as a separate message.

I was initially thinking it would be great to build some scripts to have Jott messages automatically go to my To Do list if I'm dictating a clear action step, but I sometimes need to correct what Jott transcribes so I'm not going that route yet, but that would be a great addition. Reminds me of the parsing technology Actioneer created a few years ago.

You can also delegate Jott messages to other people. I have spared my husband of that one so far.

Posted by Kelly at 04:27 PM | Comments (11)

July 03, 2007

Undercommit and overdeliver

Thought I'd pass along this great piece of advice from David Allen on getting started with GTD:

"My suggestion is to get at least a small "cockpit of control" set up as physical work space, and clean at least the desktop; and start from there. One step at a time. Take one pile at a time. One project at a time. Use the framework from the book, but don't overwhelm yourself with the idea of doing it all at once."
- David Allen

It can get overwhelming to think you need to do GTD all at once. Start small. Undercommit and overdeliver (as one of my favorite mentors once taught me) with tackling your implementation and mastery of this. You'll get benefit from any piece of GTD you implement, so I suggest start where you can experience a win for yourself. Then expand out from there.

David has said it can take 2 years to become "Black Belt" with GTD. Might as well enjoy the road along the way!

Posted by Kelly at 11:15 AM | Comments (4)

July 02, 2007

Describing GTD

We've all been there. You meet someone new and they ask the proverbial question, "What do you do for work?" The easy part for me is that by saying I teach a class called Getting Things Done it's usually self-explanatory. Lots of people have heard of David's book or have their own idea what that phrase means (work/life balance, time management, productivity, get organized etc.) This person was intrigued and asked, "If you had to give me a few tips for how to get stuff done, what would you suggest?" In a few sentences I walked her through the core of GTD:

- Collect and download everything that's got your attention, especially the stuff you're holding on your mind.
- Decide the very very next action you need to take on any of those.
- Organize it into a few key buckets:

a list of your outcomes (Projects)
a list for the things you need to do (Next Actions)
a list of things other people owe you (Waiting For)
a list of the things you might like to get to (Someday/Maybe)

- Look at it all on some kind of regular basis to make sure it's still current (Review)
- So that you can always trust you are making the best choices (Do)

By the way, for those of you who've been wondering how to explain or get someone else up on GTD, you might find this is a good way to share what it's all about. I always try giving people the core concepts without getting tangled into what tools they would use to do any of this. I let them choose that because at the end of the day, everyone has a different style of how they want their system to look. I compare it to choosing what house you want to live in. Everyone has a different style. If you really get what GTD is all about, there's a tremendous freedom about where you want your lists to live--from a stone tablet to Outlook and everything in between.

I was flying home from a class I did in San Francisco last week and the guy next to me pulled out a copy of GTD. I was all excited to talk to him about it but he tucked the book in the seat pocket in front of him and proceeded to sleep the entire flight. I guess he needed sleep more than GTD!

Posted by Kelly at 10:40 AM | Comments (6)