Getting Things Done

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen The Capture Step of GTD® If you're familiar with the Getting Things Done model and methodology is the primary step to start with, that is, to get your head empty of anything that has your attention. And in turbulent times, it's very probable that you've got a whole lot of stuff that has emerged, that has your attention. Interestingly there's an inverse relationship between, on your mind, and getting done. So the things that have your attention mean they're probably not on cruise control. There's some decision about them you need to make and some sort of organization of the results of that, in a reminder system. But the first step is just to get it out of your head. So if you haven't done one lately, and especially if things are changing and you've got surprises and things that you're dealing with, newly so. Then it's a real good idea to get those out of your head. So, pen and paper, you can't beat it And I suggest, that you first of all have an in basket or

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Rearrange Space Often times I think we just go numb to the spaces that we've gotten used to. Where we work at home, how we cook at home, how we live in our living rooms, or dens, or wherever. Sometimes space makes a huge difference, and there are times when it's time to then re-think. Should I rearrange this room? Should I rearrange how we're doing? Ask yourself, how are you living? Where are you spending your time? A lot of people have gone unconscious and whole environments have gone unconscious. Living room, people often don't live in their living room. They live in, usually, in the kitchen or the den, or wherever. It's an interesting exercise to go through. What's the purpose of this room? And is it really arranged appropriately? Like I would really want it, or what would be maximal for me. Especially if you've just transitioned to having to work a lot of time from home. A real good idea, if you haven't done this already, is to look around your work spa

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen The Night Before People have often interviewed or asked me, How do I spend my day? What kind of rituals do I have to sort of stay on top of my game on a consistent basis? The one thing that I really do consistently, and I share with people is what I call "My day starts the night before”. Before I go to bed, or sometime in the evening what I do is pull up my calendar and look at the next 1, 2, 3 days, maybe the week. Just to get a sense of, what does the landscape look like? In terms of the hard landscape, the things I'm committed to have to do, I need to be in that meeting, that virtual meeting at 3 o'clock, I need to be able to tomorrow, to make sure to that I pick up X Y Z, whatever. So, I do that the night before. First of all, because I love to sleep, It allows me to sleep as long as I can before I actually have to do something. Also, I'm not surprised when I get into my day. There are enough surprises we have to deal with. I want to be able to tee myse

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Current Reality: How Do You Feel? We need to make sure that we're really clear about what's true in space and time right now. Even if we have a positive direction we need to know where we are so we know whether to go left or right from where we are, but we need to start with where we are and not necessarily resist whatever the current reality is. You've got to start from a real base. And this one might be a little challenging, but this is one I call Current Reality: How Do You Feel? What are the feelings going on? What's the emotional state that you're in? Not that you should necessarily reinforce that, or spin in that. Or think that that's a good thing, to be worried, to be afraid, to be confused. Those are common kinds of emotions that we have often times in turbulent times. But you need to acknowledge that you've got it. You don't want to repress it, you don't want to stuff it down. The environment around you, certainly people that are close to you, will

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen What Does the Still Small Voice Tell You To Do? This one may sound a little strange as a tip, but it's one that has served me for my 74 plus years. Trying to make a priority decision... What do I do right now? How do I do that? There's no algorithm, there's no formula that you can really trust. The one I found to trust, is basically your intuition, or your spirit, or whatever kind of word you're not allergic to. That says, wait a minute, there's part of me that probably knows more about all of this then maybe even my conscious mind is capable of grasping all at one time. So being able to trust your intuitive judgement, that's a cool thing to do. Truly, a whole lot of people are so in chaos, that they can't tell the difference between intuition and indigestion. But I think we all, if you just quiet yourself, just for a couple of minutes, and listen What should I do next? What's the most important thing I need to do? What would make the biggest difference to

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Capture Tools Everywhere When things pop into your head that you're going to need to think about, deal with, do something about have to make a decision about or whatever that's potentially relevant to you. Then you need to make sure you get those out of your head and capture them because your head is a terrible office, it'll fool you because you think of it you're sure you won't forget whatever that is but two minutes later you're thinking of the next thing you don't want to forget but you forgot the first thing. So you need capture tools. So, mine are low tech for the most part. No batteries, no Wi-Fi required. This is with me all the time. A pen and a little pad. When I'm sitting down anywhere that's a flat surface longer then a few a minutes, I've got a pad and a pen, can't beat it. Who knows when lightning is going to strike, something's are going to occur to me I need to deal with. Particularly while I'm working on other things and dealing with other

David Allen offers a Two-minute Tip: Catch Up Hi. David Allen. Two minute tip for turbulent times. This one's called, Catch up. Now, obviously in turbulent times we're often kind of up to here with stuff to do, but you're likely to have some downtime. Some time where the most productive thing to do might be to clean up the backlog. That is to bring up the rear guard, as we say. For instance, how current is your bank balance, your investments? How sharp are your kitchen knives? How well have you fertilized your garden for the spring or the summer? What's up, what's out there that you say I need to catch that up? I'm not totally current with whatever that's about. And that may be some of the best things you could do is to go find something that you need to catch up because by the way, the smaller the backlog of outdated things or things that are not current, the cleaner and clearer it is to deal with surprise and new things coming towards you. So the best thing to do right now, if you have some windows to do th

David Allen offers a Two-minute Tip: Fix or Finish Something Simple: David Allen with a two minute tip for turbulent times. This one is called fix or finish something simple. You know, many times when we are in a situation where, golly, it's easy to be worrying, it's easy to be hung up, it's easy to be procrastinating, it's easy to be maybe confused about what your priorities are or what you need to do. Sometimes the best thing to do is to aim low and close and get a cheap win real quick. Like right now. I'll bet if you looked around your environment, you'd find a number of things that would not take you but a few minutes to fix or finish, or to deal with and it's been kind of not necessarily bothering you in a big way, but bugging you and you know it's something you need to do at some point, you need to move this over there. You need to take that off the wall. You need to replace a light bulb that's been out. You need to take some WD40 and lubricate a door or something that's been squeaking. There's a number

Bruce Fetzer took a productivity training with David Allen in the 1980s. Since then he has been applying what he learned. His work with the John E. Fetzer Memorial Trust has been his major focus in the last few years. The mission of the trust is to advance integrated, relational views of reality through exploring scientific frontiers and universal spiritual practices. David Allen engages Bruce in a discussion of the role of business in doing good work through meta-science, or the study of the scientific method. They also explore how to integrate inner life with outer action.

In this episode, David shares some useful insights regarding how we already plan projects when we're at our best: The Natural Planning Model.  He contrasts this behavior with the much more common unnatural or reactive planning models.  You'll also learn about the importance of vision and principles when planning, and a practical way to get stagnant projects moving again.  

Today we have three separate, rare segments pulled from the archives on different concepts that are all related to memory and performance improvement.  First, you’ll hear a segment regarding the idea of mental RAM, and what happens when we leave unclosed loops open in our lives.  Next, you’ll learn about multitasking vs. rapid refocusing and how that state helps us scale our performance.  And third, you’ll learn a few handy uses for checklists in order to continuously improve over time.  

What behaviors actually make a difference in your GTD system?  Listen as David Allen shares tips on removing system drag in front of a live audience.

Today David Allen shares best practices for Someday/Maybe & Incubation lists in front of a live audience. He provides plenty of example scenarios where Someday/Maybe lists can serve, as well as the specific circumstances it would be helpful to incubate information until a later date. You might even get a few new ideas for how to further improve your system as you listen.

This engaging and inspiring interview with David Allen, by Tragedy and Hope broadcasts, explores the key principles of GTD and how to make informed choices with ease. The interviewer, Richard Grove, is a GTD enthusiast himself, and his intelligent questions make this interview particularly interesting.

At the June 2019 GTD Summit, David Allen briefly shared a vision of the “ultimate GTD app,” which consists of 19 pages of hand-drawn drafts of the screens he would want to use. To expand on that topic, we recorded David talking with Eric Mack and John Forrister about the past, present, and future of GTD software. It's a wide-ranging discussion with stories that will inform, entertain, and maybe even surprise you. This episode is part two of two.

At the June 2019 GTD Summit, David Allen briefly shared a vision of the “ultimate GTD app,” which consists of 19 pages of hand-drawn drafts of the screens he would want to use. To expand on that topic, we recorded David talking with Eric Mack and John Forrister about the past, present, and future of GTD software. It's a wide-ranging discussion with stories that will inform, entertain, and maybe even surprise you. This episode is part one of two.

This is a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation between David Allen and Brian Robertson. They discuss how we as humans relate to our own attention, and how the increasing complexity of our work environment has necessitated that we get stuff off our minds. They point out multiple common threads between Getting Things Done for individuals and Holacracy for organizations. They also consider what happens after your personal system and your organization's system are on cruise control.

Join David Allen for an intriguing discussion about leadership and the architecture of story, with Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez. They came to fame when they created the presentations that Al Gore used in speeches for several years before An Inconvenient Truth won the Academy Award for best documentary. Their book is Illuminate, "a road-map to help leaders move people to embrace bold visions and carry them forward." They describe five phases of an organization's story, and how leaders need to communicate to inspire progress. The team at Duarte have also been a trusted resource for David Allen Company in the storytelling involved with our GTD curriculum.

Jason Atwood has built Getting Things Done into his company from the start. Listen as he shares with David Allen about starting Arkus, a Salesforce consulting firm, well after his own GTD practice was on a solid foundation. Beyond encouraging his employees to adopt GTD, he provides them with ongoing tools and support. During the onboarding period, he even meets with new employees to answer questions and refine their GTD implementation.

This episode of our podcast is from David Allen's opening talk at the GTD Summit in 2009. We've just announced the 2019 GTD Summit, and we'd love to see you there. Get all the details at gtdsummit.com.