August 11, 2008

Two reasons why we procrastinate

We all do it: kick something around on our lists (if we were even brave to put it ON a list), curse it, skip over it and try really hard to ignore it. Yet, we can't let it go. The longer it lingers, the guilt and stress builds or the opportunity is simply missed. Sound familiar? Good, join the club, you are like everyone else on the planet who procrastinates!

Is it necessary to eliminate procrastination to be effective in your personal and professional life? Not necessarily. Sometimes a little breathing room on something is exactly what I needed to get more clarity that I didn't know I needed on it. But it is helpful to know some strategies for unsticking your stuff, especially if it's something you really need or want to do now. There are two primary reasons why we tend to procrastinate:

1. The outcome is not meaningful enough to you
2. You don't have a clear next action

Now, think of one thing you are procrastinating on. If you had to go take action on that right now, do you have all of the information you need to take that action? If not, you haven't nailed the next action. Back yourself up to a clear next action. Go more microscopic in your next action if it feels too big or complex. Now, the outcome. What images do you hold when you picture yourself finishing that thing? Failure? Boredom? Jail? Out of control? Painful? Good chance that outcome is not only not meaningful enough to you, you're not picturing a successful outcome. Procrastination will pounce on that like weak prey. Reshift your outcome to a finish line you see yourself winning. Yes, it's that easy.

Posted by Kelly at 04:56 PM | Comments (3)

August 01, 2008

GTD & Outlook 2007

For those of you working with Outlook 2007, you might want to get the new GTD & Outlook 2007 whitepaper. We overhauled the previous Outlook document with new tips, tricks and strategies for maximizing Outlook for your GTD system. You'll also find new instructions for setting up categories in 07 (although customizing your tasks view has stayed exactly the same.)

Note: If you have the GTD Outlook Add-in for 2007, the Tasks setup is done automatically when you install the software, so you don't need to buy the whitepaper for that purpose.

Posted by Kelly at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2008

GTD & personality types

While GTD may not be for everyone, I think there's something it in for anyone. In fact, it's often fascinating to see the range of people who are attracted to GTD. In any given month I can be doing GTD classes for Baptist camp directors, Wall Street brokers, software engineers, admins and actors. You would also be amazed at how people implement GTD and what they find valuable. I've had incredibly technical people decide to keep their lists on paper. I've had artists love the system because it helps them be more creative and wanted to keep their lists online. I've had power planners have major "Ah-ha" moments from working with the less linear part of their brain doing something like mindmapping, during Natural Planning Model (p.54 of the book).

Someone recently wrote to me and asked:
David has occasionally made reference to Myers Briggs personality types and I wondered if anyone has worked out whether some of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicators) fit better with GTD than others.

For instance, I'm an ISTJ and GTD comes naturally to me. My wife is an ENFP and it doesn't come at all easy to her. When we did the GTD-Q analysis (A GTDConnect feature) she, not surprisingly came out as a Visionary/Crazy Maker and I came out as a Captain/Commander. We make a great team!!

But I wondered if, in your coaching experiences, you'd ever used MBTI and whether you've seen any tie-up with willingness or aptitude to GTD?

My response:
Good question. I have not seen any formal review of GTD and types, although we've all encountered the differences in coaching and seminars. Our staff has gone through many assessment tests so we are both familiar with them and know how to work well with each other and our clients.

Some types will be more attracted to tracking than others. Even within tracking, some will want a less linear system than others. Some will want to do more planning versus just diving in and doing. Specific to Myers-Briggs, here are a few resources I have found interesting:

Out of Time: How the 16 types manage their time and work
Type Talk at Work

By the way, according to Myers-Briggs, I'm an ENFJ and my husband is an INTP. We couldn't be more opposite in that respect and we work fantastically together!

I think personality type tests are interesting, if they are used in the spirit of learning who we are and how to leverage our strengths. I've also seen them help people relax and accept some part of themselves that they previously had been pressuring themselves to change. If you tend to be a crazy maker, then enjoy being a crazy maker!

Posted by Kelly at 10:20 AM | Comments (2)

May 30, 2008

Those burning GTD questions...

This week I'm going to open up the lines to anyone who would like to ask me a GTD question. I've been working with this methodology for a long time and I'm happy to share strategies for getting clarity on what might be stuck for you.

Anything not quite making sense for you?
Wondering where something gets organized?
Have anything you're just not sure how to process?

This window won't be open for long so fire away while you can!

Update on 5/31: Thanks for the tremendous response. The lines are now closed :) I'll be posting some of my answers (in generic form/no names mentioned) on my blog in the coming weeks. Thanks!

Posted by Kelly at 11:53 AM

May 19, 2008

GTD on the Go....

People often ask me how I manage traveling 3 weeks out of the month and still stay on top of my stuff. It's pretty simple: my systems go with me. There is almost no difference for me to be at my home office in California or sitting on a train to New York (as I am right now.) There are a couple of key things that make my system work, almost whenever and wherever I need to get stuff done:

* My lists all sync to a handheld. I never need to boot up my laptop to see my project or action lists. If you don't have a handheld, print your lists--works just as well. Don't make it hard to access to your stuff.

* I have a broadband wireless card for my laptop to process email anywhere I can find a signal. A fact probably surprising to some of you--I do NOT do email on my handheld. I wait until I can get to it on my laptop. So much easier for me to properly process and it means I'm not always ON, since email doesn't stop coming in.

* I generally don't book meetings the first morning I'm back from a trip, knowing I'll have my hard copy Inbox to process, expense report to do, unpacking to get to, etc.

* For any hard copy stuff I might need, I use plastic folders to transport that. My traveling folders include:

In (collects receipts and anything an Inbox would)
Actions (pending actions)
Waiting For (support for items I'm waiting on)
To Office (things to get filed or handled back at my office or anything an Outbox would)
Nice to Read (just that--no love lost if I don't read it)
Travel Support (a collection of things handy for travel: maps, airline employee recognition cards, envelopes etc.)

These take up about an inch in my briefcase and always have anything I'll need on my trip.

And perhaps the most important key for me:
Just like when working from my home office, I guard my time to allow at least an hour a day to process email. This is key. Backlog is no fun.

Posted by Kelly at 02:14 PM | Comments (5)

April 27, 2008

Rolling up your hoses when you're not fighting fires

We were in a staff meeting the other day discussing some of the finer points of David Allen's 3-Fold nature of work. Part of the Doing phase, the 3-Fold nature describes how you spend your time:

Doing Pre-defined Work (choosing from what's already processed and organized on your lists and calendar)
Doing Work as it Appears (responding to latest, loudest and new opportunities)
Defining Work (your own processing and reviewing time)

Everyone has a mix of all three of these choices. It won't necessarily be an even split of your time and attention. Depends on your job, and frankly your personality. I often like to do bite size chunks of doing work as it appears to stay interested and engaged in something that's taking more mental effort. It's a balance though and only you will know if you are in/out of balance with any of these choices.

If you think about it, even someone whose job is about doing work as it appears, like a fireman, is still working on being ready for the fire while they are not IN the fire. In fact, their ability to deal with that fire effectively requires them to have spent time getting their gear ready so that they can move quickly.

It's no surprise, whenever I cover this module in a GTD class, the majority of the participants find themselves spending more than than they think they should in Doing Work as it Appears and not nearly enough time in Defining Work. The tricky part about it is that each of these phases can really affect one another as well. The less time you give yourself to define your work, the less defined work you have to choose from and the greater the tendency to do work as it appears.

Do any areas of 3-Fold nature seem out of balance to you? Anything you can you do to shift that?

Posted by Kelly at 12:30 PM | Comments (6)

April 10, 2008

What makes a good GTD list manager?

Having a total life reminder system is a key to GTD and a trusted list manager to track projects and actions is one of the first choices for people to make when implementing the system.

Unfortunately, some of the programs out there that are trying to be "GTD list managers" miss the mark not by what they didn't include, but by what they did include. Some of them build in too many convoluted features, that in GTD terms make the whole thing more complex than it needs to be. Not saying you can't get value from some of those programs, but you'll be watering down the simplicity and elegance of GTD if you force yourself into using every feature that some of them include. If you get what the core components should be, you can usually get creative at customizing or ignoring what will end up being a drag for you down the road. So what makes a good GTD list manager?

Key features to look for:
* Sorting lists by context - many programs have a "category" feature that will easily support this.
* Ability to assign a due date - not forcing it on all of them, but allowing it for those that need it.
* Portable for on the go access - can be synched to a handheld or printed.
* Easily accessible - less than 60 seconds to get something in/out.
* More attractive to you than repelling - you've got to like the system you're entrusting your brain to.
* Doesn't force priority codes - if you know GTD, you know that forcing priority codes is old news and rarely accurate anyway.
* Place to capture additional notes - attached to an item to capture relevant info related to the item.
* Ability to search and sort in various ways.
* Robust enough to handle all of your stuff.

Is there a perfect GTD list manager out there? Probably not. But lots of them will work just great if you keep it simple and stick to the core features that work, without you thinking about how to make it work. It becomes seamless and like second nature to you.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
- Charles Mingus

[KF 4/27: You'll will find comments below from people who are suggesting and promoting software products to do GTD. Please know, since it may not be obvious in their post, some of these comments are posted by the seller of that software with the direct intention of getting you to buy that product. Since I don't have the time or inclination to test everything people are suggesting, nor do I want to block comments on my blog, please just use your common sense when checking out software people are recommending through my blog. Thanks! Kelly

Posted by Kelly at 04:29 PM | Comments (20)

April 05, 2008

Dealing with interruptions

Interruptions are a fact of life in every job and in every company. It's one of the most common things people tell me drags on their productivity. Formany of us, our jobs require us to handle work as it appears, so the only choice really becomes to get better at managing the interruptions. I received a letter from someone recently asking me for advice on this topic:

My day generally consists of interruptions, and interruptions to the interruptions... I get critical items referred to me in the hallway on the way to handling another interruption... How do I keep track of all this and avoid the mental "stack overflow" involved?

Having "collection tools" on hand all the time is critical. Studies show the average adult can only hold 7 things in your "working memory" at one given time (+ or - 2 items.) That's not much and from what you describe, your working memory gets pinged constantly. Most people do these days with not only interruptions from others, but cell phones going off, new mail notifications, instant message, etc.

- Walk around with a small pad and paper in your pocket at all times to collect this stuff in a place other than you head. Seriously, go low tech with this. Pad and pen. If you want David Allen's version of this, it's in our online store.

- Don't be shy in telling people, "Hey, can you send me an email or leave me a voice mail about that?" If it's really important to them, they will. That way, you can process it on your own time.

- Treat yourself to what David Allen calls the Mindsweep as often as you can, and at least once a week in a Weekly Review process. Sit down and just clear your head. Your head is an Inbox, just like your email, paper and voice inboxes, so you've got to empty it on a regular basis along with the others to avoid that "stack overflow"
and get to stress-free productivity.

- Make sure you've got a physical Inbox (tray or folder works great) to capture your incoming stuff at your desk, especially when you need to reroute your brain quickly onto something else. For example, if someone interrupts you and it's something you've got to take, "bookmark your brain" about where you just were on a piece of paper and drop that into your inbox. You'll not only be more present with the person in front of you, since your brain won't trying to hold on to that place you just were, but you will also have a trusted place to go back to (your Inbox) to pick up where you left off.

- Take yourself offline sometimes when you really need to get stuff done. It will be easier for some of you than saying "No" to the interruption. Turn off email notifications. Go offline on IM programs. Even close your email Inbox if you keep getting distracted by new mail pouring in. Close your door, if you've got one.

Consider this: every interruption you take trains other people about how to work with you. If they know they can drop something on you at the last minute, they'll have no reason to think that's not the way to work with you next time as well. Are there any interruptions you are getting that in retrospect, could have been handled a different way? Good opportunity to do some retraining with those around you.

Posted by Kelly at 07:03 PM | Comments (3)

March 24, 2008

Getting GTD off the ground

If I had to guess what the biggest challenge people have with GTD, it's not maintaining the system, it's building it. And you might feel that the task of building it seems daunting and undoable, given the world doesn't really slow down because you've decided to take time for yourself to get this thing off the ground. I doubt your colleagues are sitting back saying, "Hey, let's not send emails to him or pull him into this meeting. He's really trying to get his work defined and his GTD system built." Not likely. So right off the bat, unless you've got two days of uninterrupted time to dedicate to the building phase, as David suggests in Part Two of the GTD book, you're more likely going to build it in stages. It will take longer, but a great system can be built in stages.

1. Choose a list manager to track your projects and actions
2. Get a good reference filing system built for your non-actionable stuff
3. Get In/Pending/Out buckets/folders/trays to be able to move things through the system.

Once the constructing is done (your house is built), then you're in populating mode (move your stuff in.) Get everything from all of your collection buckets, processed and organized into your new system. Look for the major places you have stuff coming in. Likely the big "stuff" piles to go after first are your head, email, paper and voicemail.

In my GTD classes, I suggest people setup a project called "GTD Up + Running." Then assess and draft a simple project plan to capture all of the potential next actions to get the system fully setup. If you think doing this in pieces is going to work best for you, pick one or two to start that will give you the biggest payoff to get under control and add that to your calendar or next actions list or just go do it. Then move your way through your project plan until the system is up and running. I bet it will take less time than you think.

One tip on choosing a list manager: Don't let the quest of finding the "perfect list manager" stop you from getting GTD off the ground. Consider that there is no one perfect system. Nearly any list manager can be adapted to work with the GTD model, from spreadsheets to paper planners to corporate programs you're already using for your calendar and email. Choose one you like and you know you'll actually be attracted to use.

Posted by Kelly at 02:44 PM | Comments (13)

February 26, 2008

Handling meeting notes

Someone recently asked David Allen for his best tips, tricks and processes for handling meeting and conversation notes.

Since this is a common question we tend to get, I thought I would share David's reply:

"I process most meeting notes into our custom contact manager database. That's where I track most everything that's worth tracking. Sometimes I just put a small note in the notes field of my tel/add for the person, if it's just like on this day we did this and that...

The real question to ask yourself is: What's the purpose of the notes? Only with a clear answer to that do you know how much detail you need to keep, and where and how you should keep it.

Many times I just keep my handwritten notes in their file, in my general reference files.

There's no clear black and white delineation about information, if it's just information that "might be useful" at some later time. Always a judgment call, weighing the payoffs and the prices."

Posted by Kelly at 10:19 AM | Comments (13)

February 20, 2008

GTD is for anyone, but those techies sure love it

While GTD's popularity seems to span across generations and professions...it's the techie groups that seem to be especially drawn to it. Perhaps it's due to the "open source" nature of GTD that allows people to engineer their own list manager. We don't tell you what tool or program you need to use. If you understand what builds a great system, there's tremendous freedom in what that looks like to make GTD work.

NPR explored this topic yesterday in a feature about GTD and it's appeal to the technology world. Running time 4 minutes.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19105832

Posted by Kelly at 08:58 AM | Comments (1)

February 12, 2008

It's either actionable or it's not--there is no gray zone

There are two forks in the road when you process an email: it's either actionable or it's not. Yet time and time again people tell me that they get emails that they think fall into this mysterious gray zone. It's the email from a coworker/customer/friend that implies action, but it's not an action they want to take. Yet their standard won't allow them to delete or ignore the email because some part of them thinks they should be doing something about it. Guess where the stress tends to show up? In the gray zone that gets created from the "shoulds without a decision" about this kind of stuff. Does receiving an email automatically create an agreement just because it landed in your inbox?

I was coaching someone recently who had tons of emails that fell into this gray zone and her reaction was to simply file them into a Reference folder. My role, when I'm a GTD coach, is to be vigilant with (and for) people when they are processing their stuff. I noticed that when she moved something into the Reference folder, she said "I'll get back to that someday," but she didn't track that action anywhere. So did she really let it go? Of course not. She still has an implicit agreement to do something about that email, so filing it away just moved it to a less obvious place.

I received an email recently that could have easily fallen into that gray zone if I let it. My first reaction was to delete the email but I knew the person would be expecting my reply. And they would have every reason to expect my reply because I've handled this kind of thing in the past, even though I don't consider it core to my job. So I can't blame them for sending it, I've trained them that it's OK to send that kind of input to me until I tell them otherwise.

One of the most powerful aspects of GTD, in my experience, is the part about agreements. What am I doing to create, promote or allow the input I am receiving? What's the agreement I am making with everything that I collect? Is there anything I can do to better communicate when my priorities and interests shift so I stay clean, even when things land in my world that I don't want or think I should do? Am I clear about my Horizons of Focus (runway-50k perspective) to know if this is my job to handle? There lies the simplicity and freedom in working GTD. Pay attention to what has your attention and agreement.

This all may generate more questions than answers, but I thought it was worthy of a blog post. I'd love to hear your input on this (no implied agreement! just for those of you who want to...)

Posted by Kelly at 08:34 AM | Comments (11)

January 15, 2008

Balancing proactive vs. reactive

Someone recently asked me, "How do you manage your day so that you are proactive versus reactive? I assume you have lots of people/projects pulling for your time -- how do you stay focused?"

Here was my response:
There's always a blend of proactive versus reactive in everyone's day. The best mix of those will be different for everyone, based on what your job and personal life require. In the GTD book, this is described as the 3-Fold Nature of Work (p.50). For me, I build in plenty of my own proactive time so that when I do get pulled in new directions, I'll be ready for that and my own work won't suffer. I give myself my own defining work time in the morning and evening just to collect, process & organize. Many days I'm reacting to things I had no idea would show up--which is not always a bad thing. It's a balance and an intuitive judgment call that only you know works or not.

I'm guessing interruptions are a big part of you not staying focused as much as you'd like. Get rid of the easy ones like turning off the email notifiers for every new email. If you're working with people who are pulling on your time more than you like, then set boundaries. People are likely interrupting you because you've trained them it's OK to do that. If you work in a culture of interruptions, you've got a bigger challenge to deflect the interruptions without offending and alienating. Give people options. For example, if someone comes to your door and says, "Got a minute," and you really don't, give them a time you can chat. If you get a project delegated to you that will blow your other priorities out of the water, it's up to you to decide whether that's a good thing for you or not. Communication is key. There's a good chance that when someone delegates something to me, they don't have a clue what else that affects. It's up to me to know what will not get done, if I say yes to this new thing coming in. Having my project and action lists current definitely makes it easier to change directions and shift priorities more easily. Then it's just a balancing game.

For more information on this topic, grab the free article from our online store.

Posted by Kelly at 03:40 PM | Comments (2)

January 03, 2008

David Allen gives the keys to GTD on YouTube

A few months back, I had the pleasure of accompanying David Allen to Google where he presented the keys to GTD to a standing-room only crowd. It was a fantastic talk and it's now available on YouTube:

The Matrix of Self-Management is great stuff and will be new to many of new.

Enjoy!

Posted by Kelly at 09:39 AM | Comments (9)

December 03, 2007

GTD Live

If you have never been to a live GTD seminar, I highly recommend checking one out. No matter what your implementation has been, they can be a great way to bring your GTD system and mastery to a new level. I've been a student of this model for over 15 years and I still hear something new each time I sit through a seminar as a participant. As your life, job and interests change, so can your system. For you Connect members out there, there's a great David Allen video clip on Connect around "The Subtle Levels of GTD" that's worth checking out about how GTD evolves for you over time.

There are two flavors of live seminars you can attend:

GTD RoadMap - Taught by the man himself, David Allen. A great class for getting an overview of the whole picture of GTD.

GTD Mastering Workflow - Taught by GTD staff presenters, like me. A great hands-on class.

We tend to describe the difference between the two seminars as:

The Mastering Workflow GTD seminar, is very tactically oriented - how to get quick control using the fundamental thinking process and the five phases of workflow mastery. The RoadMap will include a condensed version of that material but will focus more on the whole picture of the self-consulting process, including prioritizing from multiple horizons, applying the core productivity principles, and making change stick.

Posted by Kelly at 08:55 AM | Comments (7)

November 04, 2007

The 2AM Worry Club

Any of you in the 2AM Worry Club? You're sleeping peacefully and your inner committee wakes you bolt upright in bed to remind you of something you missed, need to do, should have done, need to track down or have to figure out. With reasoning out the window, some part of you wonders if maybe your boss/coworker/client is up too and you should just call? Sure! They'll just love that.

In my experience, the reason that happens is that in the mind's effort to be a loyal servant for feeding the conscious brain incompletions, it has no idea that 2AM is not the best time to be thinking about that thing. So for lack of a better choice, it thinks it should worry about it to at least make some progress on it. Next time, try writing it down. It's hard to organize it in your brain on a mental "not now" list when that's not how your brain is designed to work. Consider that it's your brain's job to feed you what it thinks is not complete. Writing it down is a way to bring it to completion, at least temporarily.

If I wake up with something on my mind, I write it down and leave it in a place I know I'll see when I get up in the morning. My mind lets it go. It doesn't mean I've solved the issue or problem, but it's off my mind. In the morning, I look at what I wrote and ask two questions: What's my desired outcome with this thing? What's the next action? Those answers go into my system: Calendar, Projects list, Action lists, Waiting For list or Someday/Maybe. Simple as that.

I'll often name something a Project that I'm just trying to get some clarity about. The Waiting For list is also brilliant for those 2AMers where I'm waiting to hear about or get resolution on something. The weekly review ties it all together to give me consistent review of all of these lists and to reinforce the idea that it's OK to let it go.

Do you have any 2AM kinds of things grabbing your attention? What would you call the project around any of that? What is your next action or is there anything you are waiting on?

Posted by Kelly at 04:51 PM | Comments (8)

October 21, 2007

The belt that keeps the pants up

For as hard as travel can be--I log about 100,000+ air miles per year--there is one huge benefit: I get long stretches of uninterrupted time to get my system clean & current. I relish a cross-country trip where I don't have any new input coming in and can do those things that if I were in my office mode doing "real work" I probably wouldn't as easily take the time to do. I'll do things like clean out old stuff from my laptop, get to my nice to read stuff, process my paper and email inboxes to zero and most importantly do a Weekly Review.

If you've been around GTD for a while, you know that this time for your own processing, especially the Weekly Review, is really the belt that keeps the pants up. It's what David Allen calls your Defining Work time. And, it tends to be one of the harder habits to create, despite that part of you who knows how great it would be to have total confidence that your stuff is clean & current and you're doing what you want and need to be doing.

If you don't have built-in time like I do on a plane, here are some other things I've heard can work to create that time for yourself:

* Come in before anyone else or stay later than everyone else. Not always a fun one, but sometimes it's the only way to plow through stuff.
* Block your calendar for your own processing time. I heard of someone going so far as to put "Meeting with CEO" on her shared calendar so people wouldn't overbook the time.
* Do your Reviews in a place you know you won't be interrupted, like a local coffee shop, at home or in a conference room.
* Give yourself a goal you can win. If some part of you is staying you need 2 hours of uninterrupted time to do a Review or get your Inbox to zero, and you can't remember the last time you had that kind of time, well then you're setting yourself up to fail. You'll never "see" 2 hour windows of opportunity. Pick a smaller chunk of time. I figure 15 minutes of focused review time is better than nothing. Clearing out 100 old emails from your Inbox is better than nothing.

In order for me to be able to do this virtually anywhere, my system is pretty portable. I have a couple of key folders that are always parked in my travel briefcase:

In
Action Support
Waiting For Support
Nice to Read
Out

I also sync all of the lists on my laptop to my handheld so that I can be updating my lists whenever I feel like it, and don't have to be chained to a laptop. If a handheld is not your thing, print your lists.

Of course, there are plenty of times too when watching the world go by at 20,000 feet is the best use of my time, and that's OK with me. The lists will still be there.

This is a view looking down on beautiful Santa Barbara, California.

Posted by Kelly at 12:53 PM | Comments (4)

October 04, 2007

You either trust your system or you don't

In my opinion, there's no middle ground: you either trust your system or you don't. In many GTD seminars I do, after seeing my lists and all of the things on them, someone in the audience will comment, "What if your system crashes and you lose everything?" I have backups. My desktop synchs to my handheld and it's also all regularly backed up onto a USB drive. It's also all password protected with multiple layers of security, thanks to our IT group. Some will take that further and say, "Well, what if you lose those backups TOO?" Sure, and what if the sky falls down and a woman is elected president. Oh, the drama of what ifs!

Here's what I think is the real underlying issue: if you've never tasted having nothing in your head and having it all in a total-life reminder system, it's nearly impossible for your brain to think there is a better system. It's one thing to empty your head and decide what you're going to do about that stuff. But if your brain doesn't trust the decisions are going to get parked in a place better than holding it in your "Psychic Ram," it won't let go. Your brain has to trust that the place you are keeping your lists is as good or better than your brain.

I encourage people to do whatever they need to do to create a system they trust. If you have any nagging doubt about what you're putting on your lists and choosing to keep it in places that are not as foolproof (like your head or scattered notes), I would say you have an opportunity to shore up the leaks. For some people that's knowing there is a backup. For others, it's about the privacy issue--who will see what I put on my lists?

Whatever is holding you back from creating a trusted system can make a difference in your success with GTD.

Posted by Kelly at 02:26 PM | Comments (6)

September 25, 2007

Join me on a podcast about GTD

I'm doing a 30 minute podcast about GTD tomorrow at noon EST ( Wednesday, September 26th) with the women over at The Sassy Ladies. The call is open to anyone who would like to listen. To register, sign up for their email newsletter, and they will email the call-in information to you.

Posted by Kelly at 10:29 AM | Comments (5)

September 19, 2007

You don't DO projects

There's a best practice in GTD that will drive your entire system: You don't do projects, you do next actions.

Ever wonder why some things sit on your lists and you never seem to get them done? You know the ones that you snarl at every time you can your list? If you're like most people, you probably think it's not getting done because you're procrastinating. You may not be procrastinating on it at all. There's a good chance that what you've got listed is not your next action, or it's actually the name of a project, so some part of you keeps skipping over it because what you're seeing is not actually what you need to DO.

When I go in to coach people on GTD, they'll often pull out one big list that they've been calling their To Do list. Scanning down the list with them I can tell what they've got is a jumbled mess of Project names, next actions, future actions, reminders, waiting for's, someday/maybe items and bits of reference. The first thing I'll do to is suggest they rebuild that list into the following distinct buckets:

Projects - a master list of your desired outcomes that require more than one action step
Next Actions - your very next actions (project related or not and includes only the next actions), sorted by context
Waiting For - actions waiting on someone or something else
Someday - things you might somehow, someday want to do
Calendar - for the actions that require a day or time
Reference - non-actionable information you just need to hold on to

My projects list is one of my most trusted lists. It tells me all of those multiple step outcomes I am tracking toward completion. That includes anything from:

Replant the garden
Submit the 2008 budget
Publish an article on GTD & BlackBerry

I look at the Projects list about once a week in my Weekly Review. Day-to-day I'm primarily working off of my Next Actions lists, Waiting For list & Calendar (what GTD calls the Runway.) Another thing that's valuable about having the Projects list vs. Actions is that when I mark things off as Complete on the Actions list, I've still got the safety net of the Projects list to remind me that I still have a bigger outcome I am tracking. Then I go ahead and capture the very next action on my lists.

Scan whatever represents your "To Do" lists. Anything on those lists that you've been calling an action, but it's really a project? You might find it'll unstick itself if you separate those two from each other.

Posted by Kelly at 01:26 PM | Comments (11)

September 14, 2007

Becoming Master & Commander of your Inbox

While GTD can apply to nearly any tool you use to manage email, I wrote an article addressed for you BlackBerry(R) users out there. It's about how to become Master & Commander of your Inbox. It gives some good tips & strategies for getting email under control again and a few different ways to do that, GTD style.

Read the full article

Posted by Kelly at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2007

Walking a little lighter

I received this great testimonial from a participant about the power of GTD Mindsweep:

"I am already doing things with a "lighter step" this morning due to the psyche lift from the mindsweep of the last few days. Things are a little easier and I am being more productive already."

In seminars, I usually give the participants about 8 to 10 minutes for clearing their head, with a couple of guidelines:

*Write down what's got your attention.

*Write as much as you can, as fast as you can.

*Don't organize or analyze it, just collect.

*Let your brain bounce between personal and professional agreements. Follow it wherever it goes.

*Don't commit yourself to doing anything with what you write down yet, just collect at this point.

*This is not a To Do list yet since you haven't decided what your next action is, it's just a "Stuff" list.

It's amazing what a short period of time like 10 minutes can do to unlock in your psyche, if you give yourself the freedom to let go of it from your mental To Do list. David Allen has always said that writing it down puts you in control of it. It's hard to corral it when it's stacked like a mental sticky note on top of hundreds of other ones that are begging for your attention.

People often ask me how often I clear my head. I do a Mindsweep as often as I can and at least once a week in my Weekly Review. These days, keeping things in my head as my only reminder feels weird. So does leaving the house without some kind of collection tool to get stuff out of my head, like a paper pad or my PDA.

If you haven't given yourself the gift of clearing your head lately, take 5 minutes before you end your day today or when you start your day tomorrow and do a Mindsweep. I bet you won't regret it.

Posted by Kelly at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2007

Being selfish with your time

One of the things I hear from people all of the time is that they are so yanked around by other people's fires, crisis & priorities, their own processing time takes the biggest hit. I hear stories all of the time like:

* An 8 hour day used to be the norm, now 10 hours feels like leaving early.

* Zero in "In" used to be a regular occurrence, now there's backlog that would take days to process.

* So many back-to-back meetings there's never a chance to even download what happened in the last one before dashing off to the next one. Meeting notes to be processed are piled up in a 1/2 dozen notebooks.

* Filing? Are you kidding? The "To File" pile is knee-high.

* We HAVE to read our email during meetings just to stay on top of it.

The best strategy I can share about getting in control again is to be selfish with your time. If you are in a shared calendar environment, there's a good chance open spaces on your calendar are considered free game. And I doubt anyone else is holding back from booking a meeting with you so that you have some quality "review, get clear, get current, stare at your belly button and figure out your priorities time" instead of coming to their meeting. If you want that, it's up to you. Now, I know this is easier said than done. In some of your environments, the volume and demands for your time coming at you like your face is in front of a fire hydrant. That's even more reason to be vigilant about carving out your own processing time. Remember, processing is different than doing. Backlog comes from the unprocessed too, not just the undone.

* Consider blocking your own calendar for meetings with yourself. I know many people & teams that do this just to create some protected calendar time for processing email at the beginning and end of day. A good guideline for how much time you need is about 30 seconds to process each piece of input you get (paper or digital). For most people that comes out to about an hour to hour and a half per day for their own processing time.

* Don't accept meetings that start the moment you walk in the door, before you've had a chance to process email. Otherwise, there's a good chance your attention will be on what's lurking in email and not on the meeting. I think this is why so many people process email during meetings. Being a presenter of meetings, I can tell you I can spot a BlackBerry user in a seminar from across the room. They are barely "there". If what's going on in email is really that important, is it really a good idea for you to be in that meeting anyway?

* Consider delegating some of the things that are choking your system--like filing. If you can't delegate this, then get your filing system to a place where filing something will take you less than 2 minutes and no more.

* Give yourself buffer time between meetings. Some companies will end meetings 15 minutes before the hour to allow transport time for people to get to the next one. Not to mention letting your brain decompress before it has to shift gears.

And, the best thing I know for getting back in control is the Weekly Review. If you haven't done one lately, how about giving it a whirl?

You need to spend quality time, detached from the daily grind, thinking about, getting control of, and managing the daily grind.
- David Allen

Posted by Kelly at 11:02 AM | Comments (12)

August 02, 2007

Stop digging and start climbing

We've all been there: I feel stuck so I might as well get busy doing something...anything...so I at least feel like I'm at least making progress. Email is wonderful for this. Send/Receive never fails to distract me into a busy trap. It grew up on the same farm as procrastination. I'm not saying plenty of valuable work doesn't show up in email, but I think anyone these days can relate to getting stuck in the infinite loop of email rather than doing what we know we should be doing instead. Just because it landed on email doesn't mean it's your job.

How do you know that what you're doing is the best use of your time, talent & attention? We've all had our internal tap on the shoulder (or kick in the gut) telling us, "HEY, YOU! You know you're not doing what you're meant to be doing!" Trust that. I don't know about you, but I'd rather get those reminders from my own internal monitoring before my boss does.

One of the best GTD tools I use to keep myself on track with doing what I'm meant to be doing is in what David calls the Horizons of Focus:

50,000 - Purpose (why are you here, what's important to you?)
40,000 - 3-5 year vision & strategy
30,000 - 1-2 year goals and direction
20,000 - Areas of responsibility, focus and interests
10,000 - Projects
Runway - Current Actions

Specifically, the 20,000 foot level defines your areas of responsibility, focus and interests. Most people tend to have 5-7 "hats" that they wear professionally and personally that make up the 20k level. That doesn't stop things showing up on the runway level that demand my attention, but it sure makes it clearer to know what to take on as next actions and projects. It's pretty simple for me, when I get something that doesn't map to something for me on the 20k level, such as "Present GTD classes", there's a good chance it's not a priority for me and it's easier to say no. Or, it's an opportunity for to get even clearer about what my 20k level is since it does change.

I'd suggest sitting down and mapping out your 20k level, especially if you've been wanting more clarity on your priorities. Make two columns: Work and Personal. What areas are you measured by in your job? What are the roles you play personally? That's the kind of stuff that makes up your 20k level. See if that makes a difference in some of the things on your Projects and Action lists. Would you choose anything different? Would you let go of anything?

Posted by Kelly at 04:08 PM | Comments (5)

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 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)

June 25, 2007

Getting Things Going

Someone asked me recently in a seminar, "I have this big list of things to do, but how do I get myself to actually DO it?" Wouldn't it be nice if this were all about just organizing stuff? There does come a time when you want to do it. Here are a few tips for getting things moving, especially for the ones that have seemed stuck:

1. Define what done looks like. A clear outcome does wonders for getting motivated to get going.

2. Define what doing looks like. Pick a clear next action that you physically, visibly see yourself doing.

3. Pick an easier next action. Often things can get stuck when the next action is too big. Pick a smaller step to get the ball rolling.

4. Ask yourself if you have all the information you need to take the next action you chose. If not, the action you chose might not be the very next action. Back yourself up until you get to the very next step. That will help.

5. Does this still need to be done? Have you reviewed this lately against some of your other priority levels lately? Just because you capture something on a list doesn't mean you end up doing it. Priorities, interests, standards and resources shift and so will the things on your list. It's OK to renegotiate the agreement.

6. Can it be delegated? Can someone else do this for you?

7. Can any of the things on next actions move to Someday/Maybe? Does it all need to be done now?

8. Carve out time for yourself on your calendar to take action. Sometimes seeing it as a "hard landscape" meeting with yourself to work on something helps.

The beginning is the half of every action.- Greek Proverb

What's worked for you to get things moving?

Posted by Kelly at 08:27 AM | Comments (3)

May 24, 2007

The GTD Bellyflop

Does this sound familiar?

You read the GTD or took a class with one of us. You loved it, you got it, you were inspired. You had a month of bliss where your head was clear, your lists were current, your files were lean and mean and you were living the Productive Experience.

Then you ___________ (fill in the blank):
- went on vacation
- got a giant problem or project dropped in your plate
- had a bunch of urgent stuff show up
- got interrupted more than usual
- got sick
- got bored

As a result, your lists started to get out of date, your inboxes got choked up and you started waking up at 2am thinking about all the stuff you need to do. I heard someone describe this recently as the GTD Bellyflop. It happens to all of us. In fact, the Productive Experience that David Allen describes does not mean you are always in control, relaxed, inspired, focused, getting things done and have current system to maintain it all. Could anyone really maintain that productive experience ALL of the time? Not likely. In fact, sometimes it can be good to get out of control to have the reminder about what that was like and why that doesn't work. If you were once in that Productive Experience, it won't be hard to get back to it because you have a reference point. It's kind of like exercise. Have you ever been in great shape? If you get out of shape, it's not as hard to get back in shape because you know what that was like and what you need to do to get there.

The easiest way to get yourself back on track with GTD and to that Productive Experience is to do a Weekly Review. Carve out an hour for yourself to get as clear & current as you can. Update your lists, process your Inboxes down to zero, scan your projects list to make sure you've got all of your next actions captured, do a mindsweep to clear your head. Any and all of those can get anyone back on track.

It's natural to have starts and stops with GTD. Give yourself a break if you've been holding yourself to a standard that you will never be out of that Productive Experience. Really, it's OK to have the occasional bellyflop.

Posted by Kelly at 09:13 AM | Comments (3)

May 14, 2007

Catching fleas

Trying to manage incompletions in my head is much like trying to catch fleas on a dog. One second I feel like "I've got it!" and the next it's gone. Regardless of how important it is, the mind can only seem to manage a certain number of open loops before one of them is bound to fall through the cracks and get replaced by something else.

One of the keys to GTD is getting your head clear. I regularly do the GTD Mindsweep process (page 113 of the GTD book). Sit down and empty your brain of all of the "stuff" you've got your attention on. Put it down on paper or digital--whichever is faster for you to collect it. Don't analyze or organize it, just collect whatever pops into your head and allow yourself the freedom to add stuff to the Mindsweep without any commitment to doing what you write down. I bet you'll be amazed at what shows up. You might find walking around your office or living space will also trigger different things for the Mindsweep than staying in one place. Do it however long you want. You'll probably start to find a natural point where you'll feel like you've swept most of the mental post-it notes out of your brain.

Then, when you're ready, decide what each item means to you, if anything. I'd walk myself through these 3 questions:

1. What is it? Is it actionable?
If no, it's either trash, Someday or Reference.
If yes, it's likely a project with a next action or simply a next action not related to a project.
2. If it is a project, what's the desired outcome? Write that on your Projects list.
3. What's the very next action? Write that on your Action(s) list.

...then on to the next one. This may actually go faster than you think. I tell people to expect about 30 seconds per item to walk yourself through those questions. The Mindsweep is one of the 11 steps suggested in the Weekly Review process. I find I often do it more often than that because I just love the experience of a clear head. I can't say I've ever looked back after clearing my head and said, "Damn, I wish I didn't do that." I bet you won't either.

Get a purge for your brain. It will do better than for your stomach.
-Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Posted by Kelly at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 03, 2007

Stuff is stuff is stuff

Here's one of the easiest things to keep in mind with GTD:

Stuff is stuff is stuff

It all gets processed (decided) the same way. No matter what. Whether it's a voice mail, email, thought in my mind, scratch piece of paper in my Inbox, drive by delegation from someone, it all gets processed by asking, "What's my outcome? What's the next action?" That should be good news to you. It becomes like a game of objectively looking at your stuff and asking those two questions.

How it is organized will vary, but even that can be consistent enough that it becomes like second nature. For example, I have two folders in my email Inbox to organize my actions that have already been decided: "Action" and "Waiting For". I have two plastic folders that serve the same purpose and are called exactly the same thing.

For me, it all gets tracked in one central place: my Palm Desktop lists. I prefer the simplicity of going to one set of lists to show me all of my work. That means, whatever is in the Action or Waiting For folders, the action that represents has been captured on one of my lists. (By the way, other people don't necessarily do it this way and choose to have the folder be the reminder. It's personal preference.)

Posted by Kelly at 09:42 AM | Comments (2)

May 01, 2007

Can people "get" GTD in a seminar?

I was chatting with a reporter this afternoon who is doing a feature article on David Allen. I was sharing with him what my job is at the company (coach and seminar presenter.) He asked an interesting question, "Do people really get GTD in a seminar? Don't they need to experience it (KF: meaning back at their desks)?"

People do get to experience GTD in the seminar. I love that about our classes. I mean, who wants to hear just lecture for 2 days? Within the first hour of a GTD class we get people into the Fundamental Process where they see the power of getting stuff off your mind (collect), decide what it means (process), and park it in a place your brain trusts you'll get back to (organize). The cool thing about GTD is that you can do that at anytime, with anything and it'll probably take you less time than you think. Read Part One of the book and you can get value right away. The whole game is outlined in the first 81 pages.

In one of my seminars for a high-tech company recently, I set the participants loose in the room to process and organize their mindsweep lists. They had a chance to setup their lists in the class and get a real taste of GTD with their work. About 10 minutes into it, a participant shrieked with delight and said, "This is the best day of my life!"

There you go. Power of GTD at its best. I love my job.

Posted by Kelly at 06:11 PM | Comments (3)

April 30, 2007

Managing Project Actions

We just posted a podcast I did with David Allen on managing project actions ala GTD. I wanted to do this podcast with David because it's one of the most common questions I get in seminars. If the outcome gets tracked on the Projects list and Action steps get listed on the context-based GTD Action lists, then what about all of the project parts/notes/ideas that fall in between those? Where do actions get parked until they go on the Action lists? Learn what David likes to use for organizing and planning projects.

http://www.davidco.com/podcasts/play/12.html

If there's a particular GTD topic you would like featured as a podcast, please let me know by adding a comment to this post. I may be able to snag David for another one.

Posted by Kelly at 11:09 AM | Comments (6)

April 09, 2007

Taking the rocks out of your shoes

Anyone got a filing cabinet that repels you more than attracts you? Check out my new Coach's Corner article about the world of filing cabinets.

http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner/Kelly_Forrister/article75.html

Enjoy!

Posted by Kelly at 12:21 PM | Comments (4)

March 29, 2007

Building your GTD house

Last count, there were something like 60+ software programs based on GTD. Add another several hundred, if not thousand, web sites chewing over GTD and all the options for implementation. With so many choices, it can become overwhelming to build the "perfect" GTD system. And, you'll never hear David Allen say one product/tool/list manager is the only way to do GTD. Wouldn't that be nice actually? It would simplify things for all of us! Choosing your system comes down to your personal preference and some people find themselves faced with the paradox of choice.

At a bare minimum, a GTD system would have 4 primary action lists/views: Projects, Actions, Waiting For and your Calendar. If you set out to find a good list manager to bucket these primary lists, that's a good place to start. Here are 4 tips for building your GTD house:

1. Start with what you know. Yes, there are a ton of options out there for making your life faster and easier, but if you've got to spend time learning the tool before you can easily work the system, start with a tool you already know. Lots of people start with paper lists for this reason. That alleviates the immediate pressure of mastering a new software program. If you go digital, make sure the program you choose doesn't overcomplicate things. I go for speed, not complexity. It's one of the reasons I've been a fan of Palm Desktop all these years. It stays simple enough while giving me room to manage a sophisticated set of lists.

2. Populate your system as thoroughly as you can and review it regularly. The best way I know of for my brain to trust my lists (more than holding it in my brain) is for my lists to become like my second brain. Nothing is not worthy of the lists (repot orchids or update the workbook--it's all on the lists.) If it is an agreement I've made, it's in my system and my brain trusts it's OK to let go of it knowing I'll see it in any daily or weekly reviews. Remember, the brain doesn't necessarily know the difference between buy shampoo and finish performance review. To your brain, they are just incompletions that the brain will lob over the fence to get your attention whenever it thinks your free (not necessarily when you can do anything about it.)

3. Make your system portable. If you don't have a way to sync your lists to a handheld (Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile device) then print them on a regular basis. Downloading stuff from your brain only works if you can access the lists you need, when you need them. If you're at the hardware store on a Saturday and your lists are back at your office then you've trained your brain that off-loading your actions is not a good idea. Same thing with sitting in your boss's office and your Agenda items are buried in a list or folder back at your desk. Having your lists with you will also give you more chances to take advantage of weird windows of time for adding to your lists as well. Nice to capture buy shampoo the first time it comes around, rather than the 10th.

4. Give yourself time to make it a habit. Good or bad, a habit takes about 28 to 32 days to get created. I suggest picking a list manager and trying that consistently for about 30 days. If you find it's not a good fit, then switch. At least you would have given yourself a chance to get the basic moves down with it and see if it matches your style.

I was watching this bee outside my office window this morning, as he considered his choices with my Stargazer Lily.

Ah...if only life were that simple!

Posted by Kelly at 11:05 AM | Comments (9)

March 16, 2007

Actions that get uglier by the day

Procrastination fascinates me. I love looking at it like a scientist to figure out why I procrastinate on some things and not others. I've got one right now that's been on my lists for 5 weeks, and it's not getting any prettier. I was in a two-day meeting and took 16 pages of hand-written notes. I need to review the notes to see if I captured any good ideas that need to get into our knowledge databases, my reference files or my someday maybe lists. I already gave a quick scan for current actions, so I know nothing timely is lurking on them. So I figure I am at a crossroads here:

Do I still need to do this?
Do I still want to do this?

This is one of those value-add actions that no one is tracking me on. No one would know if I NEVER did anything with these notes, yet I am still committed to doing something about them. After all, if I took the time to take the notes, shouldn't I at least do something with them? What if I captured THE greatest pearl of GTD wisdom ? I know what I want to do, I just don't want to do it, but think I should do it. So funny. Really.

Got any meeting notes buried in legal pads that need to get culled through? I bet I'm not alone...

Posted by Kelly at 02:45 PM | Comments (8)

February 27, 2007

Is it really procrastination?

I'm not saying procrastination doesn't fly its flag on plenty of occasions, but I don't think it's always the cause of why things don't get done.

When something starts to repel me on my action lists more than attract me, it's usually because:

1. I don't have all the information I need to take the action

or/

2. It's not my very next action

For example, I've got a list about a mile long right now for my home-related next actions since we just moved. One of the first ones that was added to my list was to "buy new fluorescent lights for the kitchen." They flicker and it's annoying. So off we go to the hardware store to buy new lightbulbs. Whoops, what size? Back at the house, I've gotta shift gears into something else and can't finish the light project, so I change the action on my list from buy new lights to measure for new lights.

It sits there for a few weeks and doesn't get done. At this point, I could either change my standard about the flickering light or get more specific. The flicker still annoys me, so I'm still committed to doing this.

I take a good look at it and consider why is this still on my list? Oh right, need to get the stepladder to pull down the screens to measure the lightbulbs. Where is the tape measure? Can't measure without the tape measure.

See where I'm going with this? What started as "buy new lightbulbs" was really "find tape measure." You may not take things down to that kind of microscopic next step, but for me, it can make the difference between getting something done with the least amount of effort and attention....or not.

I challenge you to go back to your action lists and find the most repelling thing you can find that feels "stuck." Is what you captured as your next action really what comes first and next? Do you need more information before you can take that action? If so, that's not your next action. Back yourself up and capture the very next physical, visible step. Make your lists work better for you and I bet you'll let yourself off the hook that you're procrastinating on some things. It may just be some mislabeled next actions dressed up like procrastination.

Posted by Kelly at 09:39 AM | Comments (5)

February 24, 2007

Keeping the simple things simple

I pride myself on being a little tech whiz when it comes to gear & systems. So when my new broadband and VOIP phone system at home went down yesterday I moved into problem-solving mode. I started troubleshooting the IP address of my wireless card. No luck. In fact, my laptop froze and I had to reboot to bring it out of trying to release/renew the IP settings. I checked my firewall settings. No difference. After spending about half an hour checking my settings to see why things were not working I decided to call my wireless provider to have someone come out to look at it. Before doing that, I decided to check the cable modem box. I noticed a tiny little button on the back of the device called "Reset." So I grabbed the ubiquitous tech tool the push pin, reset the button, and as if by magic the cable modem and VOIP are back online and working perfectly.

This is one of those funny examples to me of making something more complicated than it needs to be. It's a good reminder for me to keep the simple things simple. Those of you who are in GTD Connect might have heard a similar story in the recent interview David did with General Fullhart about training Air Force pilots. He tells the story of teaching pilots to check the obvious stuff first, like 'Is the lightbulb on the dashboard burned out?' before taking the plane down. The solution may be easier than you think.

Posted by Kelly at 08:37 AM | Comments (2)

February 16, 2007

Decide before you Organize

I was one of the lucky few that seemed to make it out of Chicago on Wednesday, despite a blizzard. I started my day at 5am with a view of the city covered in snow:

By the afternoon, I was in San Diego enjoying a walk along the beach with my Valentine:

I worked with two high-tech companies this week. Both have huge email volume, lots of meetings and rapid growth. My theme this month seems to be about the key difference between Collect vs. Process Vs. Organize. Lots of people seem to have bottlenecks in their systems trying to do all 3 of these phases at once.
Collect is really where stuff is coming in (email, voice mail, paper, your head etc.). Process is when the thinking and decision making happens asking, "What's the outcome and next action?" Organize is where you park it in a place you trust. The key distinction I try to make is that nothing gets into the organize phase until it's been processed. By the time it's organized into my system, the thinking has already been done so that I can just do.

If I'm starting to get stuck when I go to do something from my lists, it's usually because I haven't done enough of the thinking and clarifying about my outcome and next action.

Posted by Kelly at 09:48 AM | Comments (6)

January 22, 2007

Email Etiquette Tips

I was presenting a seminar today in Missoula, Montana and we were talking about email etiquette as it relates to productivity. Here are some of the highlights that I've personally gotten value from over the years:

*Reserve the To: field for who has the action, everyone else goes in CC: (if you've ever received an email with 14 of you in the To: field and you could all take action so NO ONE takes action you'll get value from this one.)

*Use a code such as "NNB" in the subject line for quick messages back and forth to tell someone there's "Nothing New Below" in the message body. This makes processing email based on subject lines alone a snap.

*If the subject line changes, change the subject line. The overly-used "Checking In" might have been a great subject line 8 emails ago, but it might not have anything to do with the current thread.

*Don't cc: God and the world. I find that people tend to be overly generous in sharing information on email. Consider that every email that someone gets take 30 seconds to process on average. Is this worth their time? If you're not sure, ask them if they want to be cc:d on that kind of stuff.

*If you're getting emails that don't relate to your current areas of focus, interests etc. let the person know. They may not realize you don't need/want to get cc:d on that.

One of the most comprehensive lists of email etiquette that I've seen lately was put out by ITSecurity.com. They've also got some great tips for eliminating spam. Both worth a read, in my opinion.

Posted by Kelly at 08:34 PM | Comments (5)

January 17, 2007

Moving faster

One of the things I've gotten great value from over the years is learning the speed keys for the key programs I use. David Allen has said that learning speed keys (and improving typing speed) will make you about 4x faster over using the mouse.

For example, in my Lotus Notes mail, Ctrl+M creates a new mail message from anywhere in Notes. I'm often in a database and need to draft a quick message. Ctrl+M saves me about 3 key strokes. For Outlook users, your Mail shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+M. In GMail, the letter "c" will compose a new message if you're in your Inbox and have shortcuts turned on in Settings. For Entourage, Command + Option +N will launch a new email.

Last summer our staff got ActiveWords software installed on our computers at the request of David, who is a big fan of that application. To fully disclose here, it looks like we now recommend this product in our online store, although that's not why I am a fan of this cool product. I recently started using it and have found it very handy for taking a few of my shortcuts even a step further. For example, with ActiveWords, I created a little script to not only engage the Ctrl+M shortcut in my email, but it auto addresses the To: field. For example, my "JFo" shortcut in ActiveWords automatically launches a Notes email form and fills in the address field with my husband John's email address. I also created a script for creating Tasks in Palm Desktop. By activating ActiveWords on my desktop (Ctrl + space bar) I can add things to my Palm Desktop Task lists without having to open up Palm Desktop, go to Tasks and click New. I simply use the keyword "todo" in ActiveWords, no matter what I'm in the middle of on my computer, and it brings me to the exact place I need to create a new Task. Great for on-the-fly capture into my system.

I'm sure I'm not even using ActiveWords or the shortcuts in any of my programs to their full capacity. In fact, even with a program like Lotus Notes that I've used for more than 10 years, my husband was over my shoulder the other day and saw me clicking to get to the Replicator page and then clicking the Start Now button. He said ever so lovingly and neutrally, "Why don't you do Alt+blah+blah....it's SO much faster?"

Yes, we are the GTD super-geek couple.

Posted by Kelly at 11:25 AM | Comments (6)

January 12, 2007

GTD is not just about getting organized

One of the easiest things to get out of GTD is to feel more organized, yet getting organized is just one of 5 key phases for mastering your workflow. Cleaning up your space and organizing it may bring short-term relief, but it may not bring long-term trust if what you've organized doesn't even scratch the surface of what your work is and what has your attention. There are actually 5 phases of GTD for mastering your workflow with best practices within each:

Collect - Gather everything that has your attention in all forms it comes to you (your own mind, from others, by hard copy, into email etc.)
Process - Make decisions about it ALL asking, "What's the outcome I'm looking for?" "What will be true when I'm done with this thing?" Knowing what done will look like gives you clear direction to then ask, "What's the next action?"
Organize - Create a trusted system and set of lists that will show you what you need. If you're setting up lists, there will be 4 key action buckets to view your work: Projects/Outcome, Actions, Calendar and Waiting For.
Review - Review it all regularly (about every 7 days) so that you are clear, current and creative in all of the ways you want to be. This weekly review is also one of the best things you can do to build confidence in your system.
Do - Choose what you can do with the greatest level of trust and intuition in the moment knowing that what you're choosing from represents your total work, with all actions decided, organized in a place you trust and have reviewed regularly.

Posted by Kelly at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2007

What's your quit point?

I was asked a phrase this morning in an exercise class that's been intriguing me: "What's your quit point?" During physical exercise, it's easy to convince myself to quit when I get tired, especially if the place I'm going is further than I've ever gone before. That further point can be subtle in a sport like yoga (pivot my foot one inch to the left) or obvious in running (run one extra mile.) Learning to recognize my quit point in whatever I'm doing gives me the power to move beyond what I think I can or can't do. It can become like a game where I win no matter what.

What are the quit points in your workflow? Here are some typical ones I've certainly been guilty of at times:

- Opening an email, scanning it and closing it because it just seems like too much to handle right now. If I'm really feeling clever I'll mark the email as unread or print it, as if that will somehow bring divine inspiration about what to do.

- Doing the Inbox shuffle with hard copy stuff looking for the easiest ones and throwing the rest of the stack back into In.

- Trying to plan a project in my head based on one thought, idea or meeting and reacting with next actions rather than leading with an outcome.

If I'm really applying GTD, no matter what I'm dealing with often takes less time, effort and brain power to figure out what to do than I think it will.

You need to think about your stuff more than you think, but not as much as you're afraid you might. - David Allen

One of the most valuable GTD keys for this is the Fundamental Process with any input:

What's the outcome? What's the next action?

Deciding what to do doesn't mean I need to do it in that moment. If my quit point is to close an email because it seems to unclear, overwhelming or vague, do I need more information? Am I clear what the outcome is? Is this part of my job? Am I trying to rush through my Inbox without giving things the proper attention they deserve? What would support me best here in this situation?

Coming back to that Fundamental Process demystifies whatever I'm dealing with. Two simple questions I can use no matter how complex something seems.

Posted by Kelly at 12:46 PM | Comments (1)

December 29, 2006

Wind Storms

I'm the first to admit that the weakness in my workflow is email. I LOVE EMAIL--especially new email. New email is always more exciting than the stuff I got 5 minutes ago, much less 5 months ago. I have to really watch that I don't stay stuck in front of the fire hydrant of Send/Receive all of the time, at the expense of the work I've already defined. I'm probably not alone in this :)

Well, our email server has been down for the last 24 hours due to a major wind storm in Ojai. I have had no business email during that time. Nothing new to distract me from the things I need to do, could do or might like to do, such as the value-add stuff I tend to put off: seminars I could listen to, articles I could write, books I could read, PowerPoint slides I could update, etc. These kinds of things have no due date and no one tracking me on whether I do them or not.

Over the years, it's been interesting to me to see the progression of my GTD systems. I have pretty well mastered the action and project levels. I'm very well organized by most people's standards, but that doesn't mean I am always working on the right stuff. The good news is that I'm getting better at recognizing when I'm stuck on a track that's not the best one for me. Sometimes it takes a wind storm to shake things loose.

Posted by Kelly at 09:54 AM | Comments (1)

December 28, 2006

What's the motivation to do GTD?

I was listening to a seminar where David Allen talks about motivation and GTD. Oh, let me sidetrack here and say that I was listening to it on my brand spankin' new red iPod Nano, compliments of Santa.

I was struck by his comment, "If you need to get motivated to do something, then you're not motivated to do it." People will sometimes comment to me in seminars that my lists and system seems like a lot of work to maintain. It honestly never occurs to me to be work or something that I need to build in a lot of motivation to maintain. I just do it because I can't imagine not doing it. The scuzz factor, as David calls is, would be too great if I didn't do any of this. And, the rewards are too sweet to miss out on. He tells a funny story about people brushing their teeth. Most adults these days can relate to brushing their teeth without an external motivation to do it. Sure, as kids, our parents had to tell us to brush them. Eventually though, our own internal monitor took over and the motivation was just there. It becomes like second nature. That's how I experience GTD and my systems.

I had a group of 100 people yesterday in a seminar in Minneapolis. Most of them were new to GTD. My advice to them and for anyone new to all of this is to start small. Pick an area that will bring you the biggest relief. Where's your gnawing sense of anxiety right now in your workflow? Email overwhelm? Paper or reference filing out of control? Scattered to do lists? Consider what you would like to do or experience differently about that. Then apply the best practices of GTD to that area consistently for a month. I've heard it takes about 32 days to make something a habit, good or bad, so doing it once or twice may not lay the new tracks down that you want.

If you've been around GTD for a while is there any area to expand or improve upon? Any parts of David's books you want to revisit? With the New Year approaching, I think it's a good time to take a look at what kind of things I'd like to be true in 2007.

Happy New Year. I wish you all the best.

Posted by Kelly at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2006

Make your lists portable

I can't tell you how many times in seminars people ask me, "If I'm putting all of these lists on my work computer what do I do when I'm not near my computer?" My response is always the same: make your lists portable. A handheld device (Palm, BlackBerry etc.) is a great choice, especially if your IT dept. will support it. If a handheld is not your thing then print your lists. I know lots of people these days who choose a hybrid system of digital and paper. They print their lists to keep with their note pad as they bounce around between meetings, work, home etc.

I was listening to one of David Allen's podcasts with Merlin Mann where David emphasizes the need to portabalize your lists. If you create your GTD lists but then don't have those lists at a place or time when you can take action, then the information on your lists will eventually crawl back into your brain. If your brain also knows that what you put on those lists won't be with you when you can do something about it, you'll create an unconscious resistance to using those lists. If you're a GTD fan, you've heard the drill by now:

Your brain is a great place to have ideas, it's a terrible place to manage them.

Pretty much any electronic system will give you a printing option for the Calendar and Tasks. Outlook gives extra options under print setup for printing to specific paper devices, like a Franklin Planner.

I sync all of my lists to my Treo. I love that I can have my entire system in the Palm of my hand and get some things added and knocked off my lists at the oddest times. Did you ever have a time where you unexpectedly had to wait and could have tackled some simple things like phone calls? With your lists with you, those weird windows of time will be well spent. If nothing else, get a quick review done while you're waiting in those endless holiday shopping lines.

Posted by Kelly at 09:14 AM | Comments (10)

December 07, 2006

What's your slippery slope?

Have you ever noticed that an area of your house that started as a temporary storage place is now the black hole for stuff? (Hey--after 2 years it's not likely you're going to need that empty box your printer came in so do yourself a favor and toss it.) Or, the first flat surface when you walked in your house that was a place you used to drop today's mail is now a two-foot pile? Or, leaving a few of those emails in your inbox that were must do's by the end of the day 4 months ago have somehow turned into 467? A few weeks of not exercising and the thought of getting back on the treadmill even for a simple workout feels like being asked to run a marathon? I call that the slippery slope. Before you know it, things can go from bad to worse and digging out of it can seem daunting.

The good news is that it's usually less work than you think to get it back to the place you want it to be, especially if you start with small steps. If email is your weak area, pick 25 old emails to go through to start. That'll take you about 12 minutes. (30 seconds per email.) If it's an area that like your paper filing that's out of control, break it into more doable steps like purging one letter or one drawer at a time. If you've got a storage area that is overgrown with stuff, decide to get rid of 5 things at a time rather than overwhelming yourself with the thought of having to clean the place all at once. With exercise, 5 minutes on the treadmill is better than nothing, at least in my case.

And if you're a GTD'er you probably know by now that ANY part of the Weekly Review is better than nothing! Pick one thing from the list and commit to that. Done a mindsweep lately?

Posted by Kelly at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2006

GTD email tips for BlackBerry users

The team at RIM who writes their BlackBerry Connection newsletter recently interviewed me about GTD for their users. Check it out:

Empty that Inbox! Manage your messages with a system

Posted by Kelly at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2006

Now what?

I got this great letter that I wanted to share. For those of you who are wondering how to bring GTD to others, especially your kids, I thought it was a wonderful demonstration of the power of asking, "What's the next action?"

Kelly, I was in your Getting Things Done class. I found it very useful and inspiring - I actually did get my email Inbox from 378 down to 4 the next day! But later in the week, I used it at home in a rather unexpected way. My daughter, who is a Senior in high school this year, was feeling pretty overwhelmed with projects due, college applications due, frustration with a difficult friendship, the ACT approaching, etc. It had all washed over her, and she was in tears, asking me what she should do. I thought about "next steps," and, as it was getting late and she owed someone a phone call, I told her she had to do that right away. She did that, and came back. I asked her what homework she had, and found that one thing was just part of a worksheet for Spanish, so I said, "Go and finish that." She did, then came back and said, "Now what?" We kept that up until I went to bed (not being a teenager myself, I tend to go to bed earlier than my kids these days). It really helped her, taking just one step at a time, and it gave me a good practical example of how this can work. She was much calmer the next day. And I hope she remembers this in college! (We'll practice it some more at home, I'm sure.) Thank you so much for your inspiration in class! Susan

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Posted by Kelly at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2006

GTD and Google Tools

I've been playing around recently with ways of setting up a GTD system with Google tools. I thought it would be useful to pass along since there is some interesting application here. I'm also a big Google fan, so I like finding ways to make their tools even more useful for people.

I setup a sample Google Personalized Home page with 6 key tabs:

Here's what I've put under each tab:

Actions - I added 6 Google "Gadgets" for To-Do's. If you do a search in the Google Gadget Library, the one I like best is the one called "To-Do List" by Matt McCarthy. I chose this one because it seemed the easiest to add and complete tasks.

Mail - A gadget for Google mail goes under here.

Projects and Someday - I also used the To-Do List gadget to track Project and Someday/Maybe lists.

Notebook - A gadget for the Google Notebook. A great place for project notes, meeting notes, checklists and key reference.

Agendas - I found the "Sticky Note" gadget by Sophia B. useful for setting up Agenda lists for key people. You could also certainly use the To-Do List one for these or the Sticky Notes one for Actions, depending on which one you like better.

Calendar - a gadget for the Google Calendar.

I've also played around with using Google Spreadsheet to also track Projects and Actions. Some people find that tool more useful and like the collaboration and sharing features. If you try this option, I would suggest making a separate worksheet tab for each of the context lists.

For Google Mail, I've been testing out a pretty straightforward approach. I created two key pending lables:
@Actions and @Waiting For

....then a label for each current project. When processing mail, if something is actionable or waiting, it gets either the @Action or @Waiting label as well as the Project label if it's related to a current project. Every email gets archived after it gets labeled to maintain zero in the Inbox (because it takes less effort to work from a place of zero in the Inbox than to keep anything in the Inbox as your only reminder.) For non-actionable stuff that needs to be saved, it simply gets archived.

I know Google search is excellent. And for that reason, some may find the Project label an unnecessary extra step for them and searching through Archive is suffice. This is probably one of those personal preference things. I'm one of those people that likes being able to see emails by topic at the click of a button. Also, I have found that any search tool is only as good as the keyword I'm searching on and it's possible the word I'm searching on is not in any email, so for that reason I find that Project labels are handy for current projects.

Curious to hear from Google users on what's worked for you.

Posted by Kelly at 12:14 PM | Comments (10)

November 14, 2006

Sharing GTD with key people in your life

Many of you who have been through my seminar have heard me talk about how GTD works in my relationship with my husband John. I'm lucky in that John embraces this stuff as much as I do and many of the systems in our house and lives are GTD based. A couple of things that we do include:

Inboxes at home - an indispensable tool for handling the back-and-forth mundane stuff that doesn't need a conversation
Agenda lists - to track what's going on for us right now (I have one for him, he has one for me)
Great filing system which we both use and trust for our personal home files

It's a treat for me when John is able to come with me on a work trip. Last week he came along for my Seattle>Vancouver trip:

I know it's not always easy to get someone to do GTD. They've got to see value in it for themselves. For us, the value is that the mundane and daily grind of life is handled by simple systems so our lives can be as fun and free as possible.

If you've been able to get your spouse/partner/family on any GTD systems, how did you do that? I'm sure others would love to hear what worked.

Posted by Kelly at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)

Using time wisely

Here's a great story I wanted to share from a GTD'er who goes by the pen name Cynical Geek:

Using My Time Wisely

After you work for 20 attorneys, no matter how much you believed the standard before, you realize that time really is money. You begin to think about your own life and what your own time is worth. While I'm not able to bill for my time (I'm a salaried employee) I do think about my time in a different manner now. Since I began reading "Getting Things Done" by David Allen, my work habits have changed along with my life habits. I sat at the tire store yesterday waiting on four tires to be put on my car and I was actually being productive instead of watching the soap operas that were playing on the TV or thumbing through the crappy selection of magazines available for customers. I sat, with my see-thru document file (loaded with my folders for Read/Review, Action Support, To Home, To Office, and Data Entry) in my lap and spent 15 minutes being productive. You'd be amazed what you can do in 15 minutes when you take your work with you. Sure, I looked like a stuck up executive in a tire store, but if that's what it takes to get the job done then it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you look like, because I know that I'm just a person like everybody else, and most people that get to know me understand that I'm not pretentious.
So I move on with the GTD methodology at work and at home. It keeps me sane, and I feel more proactive than I have in years. I'm getting ready to have 40 more devices (Dictaphone no longer sells analog dictation devices, they're all digital) and a production server to manage/route those devices. Prior to GTD I would have freaked out, semi-contemplated quitting my job, asking for another full-time support person and complained to myself a lot. Now that I have discovered GTD, I just create another GTD Project in Microsoft Outlook and schedule some reminders. The use of technology is only going to increase at my job, and I'm ready.

Posted by Kelly at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2006

GTD and Lotus Notes Doc is here!

The long awaited GTD and Lotus Notes implementation guide is here. Thanks to all of my awesome beta testers who provided feedback on this many months ago. Our staff has been working hard to make the document as complete as possible in how to get the most out of Lotus Notes with the GTD methodology. If you are a Notes user, you'll find some great tricks and tips for the Calendar, Email, Personal Journal, To Do's and much more.

Check it out:
http://www.davidco.com/store/catalog/GTD-and-Lotus-Notes-p-16276.php

Cheers,

Kelly

Posted by Kelly at 07:42 AM | Comments (3)

November 02, 2006

Tracking the when....then items

One of the primary action lists we suggest is a Waiting For list. This list tracks anything I'm waiting on from someone or something else. Obvious uses would be orders placed, voice mails I've left, emails I've sent or verbal conversations I've had where I'm tracking that someone owes me something. I typically track waiting for items by listing the person I'm waiting on, what I'm waiting on, the date I started waiting and any applicable due date. Such as:

Wayne - get back to me about suggestion for Atlanta hotel - 10/31

Another way I often use my Waiting For list is to track the "When I do this...then I can do this" type items as well, so nothing falls through the cracks. For example, I just had someone (I'll call Joe) email me asking me to call them about an upcoming meeting. I'm waiting for one of my colleagues to handle another thing, related to this upcoming meeting, before I want to make this phone call back to Joe. This call to Joe doesn't belong on my Calls list yet because I can't take the action. So my waiting for list is tracking that I need to call Joe back after the other thing that is dependent on my colleague happens first. Such as:

Anne - talk to Fred about the budget so I can call Joe back about the meeting - 11/1 - due 11/9

My Weekly Review is a great way to loop back on the Waiting For list, if it doesn't happen sooner than that. With so many moving parts in my life, the Waiting For list is extraordinary helpful to track this kind of weird thing that is still a critical item, but not something I can do now.

Posted by Kelly at 03:21 PM | Comments (3)

October 30, 2006

Would you choose the same Stuff?

We had an flood in our bathroom and bedroom the other day. I discovered it via text message from my husband. He knew I was doing a seminar so he texted me with enough information to get my attention, but not too dramatic to freak me out. "Flood in bathroom. Getting new rug." It was serious enough to require replacing the rug and do some repainting. Hello new project.

I spent most of yesterday bringing the stuff back into the room. I thought it was interesting how my Stuff had proliferated and things had landed in the wrong place. How did the sleeping bags end up under the bed? Oh yah, after that last trip I didn't feel like taking them down to storage. Why am I saving all of these CD cases? Oh yah, I thought I might need them but now I'm realizing I haven't looked at them in two years.

It was actually quite refreshing to have a chance to look at everything that was going back into the room. Do I need this? How often do I use this? Is this exactly the way I want it?

If you took everything out of your office and then had to put it back in (and really gave yourself time to look at everything) would you choose the same Stuff? Would you change anything? Pick one thing that's been bugging you that you know has taken more of your attention than it deserves and change it. Are those pictures on your desk exactly the way you'd like them? Are your files working for you or do they need some purging? Are you comfortable in that chair you sit in 8,10,12 hours a day? Can you see your monitor clearly?

Try it. I bet changing that thing that's been taking your attention is going to be like taking a rock out of your shoe. You'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

Posted by Kelly at 02:32 PM | Comments (2)

October 27, 2006

Mind like water

I just wrapped up a great week with some clients in Minneapolis. On Tuesday I did a full GTD - Mastering Workflow seminar for 100 people. The next day was designed as an Implementation Day for those participants--an idea I absolutely love. I sometimes hear in seminars that people love the information and want to get started but they are not sure if their boss/team will think it's OK for them to spend the time away from their "real work" to "get organized." This particular client makes it easy for participants by carving the class out on their calendars as a two-day training. The entire day following the class is permission to implement GTD. In the afternoon, we regrouped for a two-hour Q&A, Outlook power user class and more. Awesome.

Minneapolis is one of my favorite cities. I took time out on the other night to walk around one of the lakes. I caught this shot on my Treo. A great example of Mind Like Water!

Posted by Kelly at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2006

When is fast too fast?

I was doing some volunteer work today. They had asked me to come in to help them with a specific project of installing some software. Simple enough. As soon as I got there, one person announced to me that it was "one of those days." It was clear to me that the energy in the office was frenetic. At that point, I was fairly relaxed and was clear about what I was there to do.

2 hours later I somehow became involved in 3 concurrent projects/problems, none of which was making much progress. I had also become frenetic and stressed like the rest of the office. I was trying to do everything too quickly and all at once. I felt like my whole internal engine had starting revving at a higher speed, but not in a good, creative way. Instead of giving my attention and creative focus to one thing, I tried multi-tasking and being a latest and loudest problem-solver. Problem is, I didn't do any of it very well. If I had stuck to my original project and purpose for being there I think I would have seen better results and completion. Instead I took on 3 projects and did a mediocre job with all of them.

When does fast become too fast?

Posted by Kelly at 06:26 PM | Comments (1)

October 02, 2006

My lists

In a recent blog post, a GTD'er named Peter asked me "Is it possible for you to share an example of your lists?" I'd be happy to share more specifics about how I manage and use my lists, in case this is useful:

Email: Lotus Notes
Calendar, Tasks and Memo Pad: Palm Desktop
Handheld: Treo 650
Paper notes: Levenger Circa Pad - full size and pocket size

My lists:
In the Tasks Function of Palm Desktop, here are my action lists for all of my personal and work commitments:

@Anywhwere - for things I can do anywhere, as long as I have the thing (such as hard copy critical reading)
@Calls - no mystery there
@Errands - things to do out and about such as shopping lists, things to drop off, pick up etc.
@Home/Office - things I can only do at home and/or in my home office
@Laptop - actions that require the computer
@Talk To - Agenda lists for key people (boss, co-worker and husband)
@Waiting For - things I'm waiting for from someone or something else (call backs I'm waiting for, email responses, orders placed etc.)
Projects - the list of my outcomes that will take more than one action step to complete

Currently, I have 25 projects and 50 next actions on my lists. No where near the volume some people have, which is fine by me!

In the Memo Pad I have these reference-type lists:
Blog Ideas
Checklists
Fun
Guidelines
Health & Fitness
Inspiration
Like To Buy
Places to Go
Someday
Someday-Work
Travel

I have been a Palm Desktop user for about 10 years and am very happy with it. Even though it means my email is in another program, I find the benefit of Palm's simplicity worth the effort of manually entering actions that come by way of email into my Palm Task lists.

By the way, even if you don't use a Palm handheld, you can download the desktop program for free from Palm's web site.

Posted by Kelly at 10:30 AM | Comments (17)

September 28, 2006

Starting Small

Even though organized is just one piece of the GTD system, it's often one that brings great satisfaction. I don't know anyone who doesn't get some sense of completion and freed-up attention from having an organized space.

I spent 5 minutes this morning deleting some of my browser bookmarks. I'd gotten a little overzealous lately on creating bookmarks for websites that interest me. That list had grown to over 2 pages and every time I tried to get to the ones I use the most I had to wade through a long list. It became an annoying drag on my system. They had become the electronic equivalent of books on my night stand that I "might" like to read. I whittled the list down to a third of what it was. What a simple, easy thing to do and it wasn't on any to do list.

Next time you find yourself with a weird window of time, see what you can do to free up your attention from something that's been nagging at you. Clean a file, delete or archive some old email, get rid of those unused icons on your desktop, enter a business card that's been hanging around into your address book or donate the 67 soy sauce packets from your desk drawer to the kitchen.

Get organized doesn't have to be an all-day, rainy Saturday adventure. When is the last time you really felt like doing that anyway when that opportunity showed up? 5 minutes here and there can make a great difference in the space and your attention right now. Start small.

Posted by Kelly at 03:54 PM | Comments (3)

September 26, 2006

Stepping back

I've been watching my workflow lately and noticing that simply getting up and leaving what I'm doing does amazing things for my clarity when I come back.

I can have days where I churn away on all sorts of things on my laptop. Some of it is very productive and other times it's just "snacking" on more input and not getting completion on anything of value. When the latter starts showing up, I've been noticing that if I get up and walk away from my computer to get water, go for a walk, or take a stretch, I have a much fresher perspective when I come back than if I had sat there trying to chew through something over and over again.

It's funny, I didn't really connect this until I started doing Sudoku puzzles. I can stare at a puzzle trying to figure out solutions and come up blank. If I leave it even for 5 minutes, then come back to it, I see something that I did not see before.

Posted by Kelly at 02:56 PM | Comments (4)

September 25, 2006

GTD and Notes...coming soon!

For those of you anticipating the release of the GTD and Lotus Notes guide, it's still in the works, but not quite done. We're working on final touches now. These things always seem to take longer than I think they will! I'm really happy with the way the document came out and I think you all will be too.

To my awesome beta testers--thanks for your patience. I'll notify you by email when it's done. I don't know exactly when that will be, so it's probably safest to say soon.

Thanks.
Kelly

Posted by Kelly at 02:48 PM | Comments (2)

Why do you maintain your lists?

My experience with GTD is that it puts me in a place of maximum productivity, clarity and freedom to get things done.

I often get asked/challenged in seminars, "Don't you spend a lot of time maintaining all of this?" People will see my lists, of which there are many, and assume it takes more work maintaining the lists than it is to do the work on the lists.

My typical response is, "Yes, of course it takes time to maintain this, but GTD saves me more time than not doing any of this." If I didn't have any lists, I'd likely be re-hashing, re-looking, regurgitating the same stuff over and over again because there would be no trusted place to show me my current work in any logical way.

Over the years, even as my life and work has become more complex, my maintain time now is as streamlined as possible. It's certainly gotten easier for me as I've built trust and consistency in my systems. I have a