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February 10, 2009

What is GTD? podcast

I did a "What is GTD?" podcast recently for the members of a non-profit group called the Project Leadership Podcast. It's about 30 minutes and is my take on David Allen's work and GTD.

Posted by Kelly at 11:58 AM | Comments (4)

February 05, 2009

How to know what your priorities are

I know some people have been waiting, with great anticipation, for David Allen to tell them the secret to knowing their priorities. It's in the GTD book, but some people don't want to believe it can be that easy and were waiting for David to unleash the special, secret coding system in his new book so that their GTD system would finally tell them what to do.

No system will tell you what to do.

It's your heart, gut, butt, instinct or intuition (pick the word that resonates with you the most or offends you the least.) That is what is ultimately making your decisions. And how can you trust that?

Put the agreements you make with yourself and everyone else, in a place you trust and review it regularly.

Bottom line, you are the one deciding whether or not to spend time with your kids or read that report on the weekend. Or, whether you should call the client or call your dentist. The more complete the inventory of your choices, and how that maps to what's important to you personally and professionally, the easier and faster that decision will be.

Posted by Kelly at 06:09 PM | Comments (5)

February 02, 2009

More on GTD & BlackBerry

I'm curious to hear from BlackBerry users out there, who are familiar with the GTD processing & organizing logic, how you are handling actionable emails on your handheld device?

Every time I think I have a solution nailed down for this, I come across another client setting where the syncing is different than the last and putting out guidelines of GTD and BlackBerry would not hit everyone's configurations. For example, some of the inconsistencies I've seen include:

- Some people read mail on the BlackBerry and it shows up as a read email on the desktop. For others it stays unread on the desktop Inbox (this one particular irks me because it forces people to double-process. What are companies thinking?? Their employees don't have enough input as it is?!)

- Some people can file emails into folders on the device that sync to the desktop, others cannot and everything has to stay in the Inbox.

- Some have Tasks syncing to the handheld, others do not.

You know I am not a fan of just leaving it in the Inbox, especially if new mail continues to pour in. If anything, I tell my BlackBerry clients who can file into folders on the BlackBerry to create one called "@Desktop" and file it in there. That at least corrals it into one place to process to completion back at their computer. And/or, if filing on the handheld is enabled, file the email just like you would on the desktop and go over to the Tasks application and manually add a Task.

If you've got a trusted solution that works for you, like I asked back in 2006, please share it here.

Posted by Kelly at 04:36 PM | Comments (19)