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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 February 5, 2009 06:09 PM
Comments
I used to sit down each evening and plan a daily To Do list to help me decide what to do the next day. I tried to be a slave to that list and was often frustrated because so many things drove into my world and thrashed my list to irrelevance.
Once I had collected everything and had all my horizons of focus in place, it became so much easier to trust my intuition and work first from my calendar and then from my lists. To this day (some 8 years later!) I rarely need to use a daily list of actions to get the right things.
Posted by: Dean at February 5, 2009 07:21 PM
Kelly, you are so right. I frequently tease my friends and co-workers- "Hi I'm Curtis and I'm GTDer. I've been productive for 5 years. Many of them have fallen of the wagon or have an interest but won't start GTD because, it doesn't tell me what to do next or how to prioritize.I have lists but then I get stuck.
As you point out, I remind my peers that the answer is in the process/methodology. I find that when I get stuck or over-whelmed by all the tasks at hand, I've missed something or I have jumped ahead without all the pieces. If I truly relax and apply GTD- intuition or the magic happens. If you honestly capture all and the process consistently, intuition kicks in and you know what you should or should not be doing at any given moment. I find that the only way to strap myself to the wagon of life is with active, patient, and consistent use of GTD.
Posted by: curtis at February 6, 2009 08:23 AM
Ah, your wise words spurred me to action. I find your posts SO incredibly helpful for staying the course with my commitment to GTD. This summer will mark my one year anniversary of reading GTD and implementing the system. It's a constant challenge to stay on track, but it's SO worth the struggle.
Posted by: Heidi - Botanical PaperWorks at February 8, 2009 07:40 PM
Thanks to each of you for posting! I'm sure others will benefit from your experience. - Kelly
Posted by: Kelly at February 9, 2009 06:36 PM
You need to focus on what really matters.
Nobody can tell you what this is, you have to decide yourself.
Posted by: DanGTD at February 18, 2009 11:35 PM
