May 31, 2009

Moving to GTD Times and GTD Connect

You'll find me now on GTD Times and GTD Connect

To make it simple and easy for our clients & friends to get the latest and greatest GTD news, tips, tricks and coaching perspectives, I'll be blogging now over on GTDTimes.com, and posting to our online membership program GTD Connect.

You can still search this blog for anything that might be useful. See you over on GTD Times & GTD Connect!

Posted by mdolan at 07:53 PM

March 17, 2009

Video from the GTD Summit - What are YOUR bad habits?

The end of last week in San Francisco about 400 movers, shakers, and GTDr's got together for the first ever "GTD Summit" at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco. It was a phenomenal mix of inspiration, education, and just plan great people sharing what they know.

Here is a nice video put together by David Spark from the Summit:

GTD Summit - What were your bad habits? from David Spark on Vimeo.

Posted by mdolan at 09:43 AM | Comments (3)

March 04, 2009

Follow me on Twitter

I've started using Twitter and invite you to join me there. I'll post links to these posts there along with occasional tweets about tips, tricks, GTD wonderings, and lots of other stuff.

Here's a link http://twitter.com/GTDCoachMichaelto get you started.

Posted by mdolan at 08:47 PM

February 26, 2009

GTD - the perfect antidote for our times

Heard this great piece on NPR this morning about the history of the notion of "doing more with less." Take a listen if you've got about 4 minutes.

The piece caught my ear because "doing more with less" has been a very familiar mantra at our company in the past few months in terms of how to best position our work during this recession. Indeed, many of our new clients are bringing GTD training and coaching into their companies precisely because they have had workforce reductions. Those employees who remain in those situations often have to get the work of 2 or 3 people done and are stretched.

GTD is the perfect antidote for this kind of pressure. It has an amazing ability to help people focus on the right things, and get more done with less stress and less energy. Nice to have a bit of recession-proofing built into our fundamental product!

I hope the economy is being gentle to all of you as well! Hang in there and keep on doing your weekly reviews. ;-)

Posted by mdolan at 09:16 AM | Comments (1)

February 18, 2009

Take control of your calendar by making clear new agreements

I had a great coaching meeting with a client at a very cool proprietary trading company in Chicago. He shared with me a terrific example of how to successfully renegotiate with your team to get back in the driver's seat on your calendar.

This was my second coaching session with him. A year ago if you opened his calendar it would have looked like one solid brick wall - hardly any openings. And if there were any openings they'd be quickly swallowed up by a steady stream of drive-by meetings from many of his direct reports.

He finally had enough and decided to rip up the old assumptions about what went on his calendar and start fresh. AND one of the most important steps in his process was to write this great email to all of his team leaders and staff that includes his new proposals for, essentially, how he's willing to play when it comes to his calendar and email comunications. While it may seem a little blunt at times, I believe this is a great example of how to take back control of one's calendar:

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Time the Great Normalizer

As many of you know, I am a big fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done. If you find yourself overwhelmed with "stuff" and are having a hard time balancing it all, his book is a great place to start. David also offers one-day courses throughout the year, often in Chicago, that are really good. Many of our group leaders took his course last year.

One of the big tenets in his system is the idea of processing. The reality is we have less work than we think, but because we don't take the time to process information effectively, to organize our work into contexts and build a system (focused on actions) to address it, the work quickly becomes overwhelming.

I, as I'm sure many of you, can very much attest to this. As roles have changed and the firm has grown, I found my schedule quickly overwhelming me late last year. A schedule, like a meeting, will fill up the time allotted. I've found that if I don't block out time to work on the important stuff, not to meet, I spend my days in meetings that are often more urgent than important. The ironic thing is if I had more time to work, I actually could meet less as I could spend that time on helping solve the problems discussed in all these meetings.

I'm really excited about where we are going and can't wait to work with you on big problems, but to do this I first need to set some bounds on my schedule in 2009. I want feedback on this, so please let me know if you have any thoughts on how I could improve this (or if you have any concerns). With that in mind, going forward this year, here is how I'd like to operate - at least for now:

* Open Office Hours:
Tuesday: 2-4:30pm
Thursday: 2-4:30pm
Friday mornings: optional

Please use this time to come by and chat with or without an agenda. You can schedule time with Angie directly or just stop in. I am dedicating this time just to meeting with people, I will not be on a call, working on anything else, or distracted. Seriously, please use this time, scheduled or unscheduled, for serious stuff or not-so-serious stuff - just come by. The flip to this is that, going forward, outside of these times please do not stop in and sit down, especially when the door is closed. If you need an answer to a problem, and it's not an emergency, please come by only during these office hours (again, scheduled or unscheduled). Please see below for the process for addressing urgent matters.

* Meeting Requests: In addition to the open office hours above, I have blocks of time set up on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for meetings to be scheduled. We'll use these slots for monthly group leader meetings, reviews, or whatever else comes up. To get on the schedule, please email Angie directly (if your email goes to me and not to Angie, assume that I will not see it and thus will not be able to meet). Also, please give Angie an agenda and an estimated duration for the meeting. The default time for a meeting will be 30 minutes instead of the typical 60 minutes. If you send an Outlook meeting request, by default this is not accepted and needs to be confirmed. Assume if the meeting is not confirmed it is not scheduled.

* Leadership Meetings: Also, so everyone knows, I spend Thursday mornings in firm leadership meetings where Chuck, Brian, Aaron, Tad, Jeff, and I get in sync for the week and make any necessary operating decisions. My Friday mornings are dedicated to MM leadership meetings with a similar agenda.

* Flexibility: With this said, any system we use to manage time has to be flexible. These rules are not written in stone, but if they must be broken, there should be a good reason. I would define this as the need to discuss the immediate termination of an employee or another personnel issue of similar severity; a trading, risk, or expense decision regarding an amount greater than $50K that needs an immediate response (i.e., it can't wait the 48 hours until the next office hours); and other similar situations. If you need to talk to me about one of these urgent scenarios but can't find me, your best bet is to email Angie and cc me. In a true emergency, call my cell.

* Emails: When emailing, assume that I will read email within 24 hours. I typically check it in the morning and late at night. Assume also that if it is actionable, it may take a couple more days for me to get back to you. Email is another thing that expands to fill the time allotted, and if I leave it open all day, I can spend all day replying to it. I have large blocks of time on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to "get to zero," a David Allen idea. So twice a week, my inbox is actually empty, which is quite an incredible feeling as an inbox with 1,253 emails represents a long list of tiny (or not-so-tiny) commitments that weighs on you every time you look at it (consciously or unconsciously). If something does come up and you need assistance in less than 24 hours, please notify Angie.

* My Travel: In terms of travel plans, I have a fairly busy schedule this year. I will be in New York often, as well as a couple other cities for conferences. I plan on visiting London again later in the year as we get things going there and have a few other trips planned as well (for example, hopefully, China in the fall to learn about Asian markets). My travel schedule is typically set 2-3 months in advance; in fact, many of the dates for 2009 are already scheduled. If we need to get large blocks of time on the schedule, please let me know as soon as possible so we can integrate these times with my travel schedule. I will not make up office hours or other routine meetings that I miss while traveling.

Overall, my goal is to spend focused time with our teams to work on the big problems and less time in meetings this year. I can make this happen but will need help from all of you. I believe that with a firmer schedule, I'll be able to work more effectively on the problems that matter.

So, to recap, here are the basics of my weekly, non-travel, schedule:

Tuesday:
Scheduled meetings (appointment, agenda, estimated duration required)
Open office hours 2-4:30 pm (no appointment necessary)

Wednesday:
Scheduled meetings (appointment, agenda, estimated duration required)

Thursday:
Morning - firm leadership meeting
Scheduled meetings (appointment, agenda, estimated duration required)
Open office hours 2-4:30 pm (no appointment necessary)

Friday:
Morning - MM leadership meeting
Morning - optional open office hours

Thanks for your understanding, and I welcome feedback from everyone.

- Nate

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I thought that just rocked. What do you think?

Posted by mdolan at 07:57 PM | Comments (7)