I R O N – M A N A G E R

In the first part of this post I discussed David Allen’s GTD philosophy for Getting Things Done as far as the weekly review. Collecting and processing everything that demands your attention and identifying your next actions that you can actually do.

There were a few other aspects of the book that are important to also include in your process for identifying what you should be doing at any point in time.

Firstly the book introduces the concept of horizons of focus. These are described by altitudes:

They go all the way from the runway which is what you are actually doing now and 10,000 feet which are you current projects all the way up to 50,000 feet which are the ultimate purpose for you or your organisation.

Whilst your weekly review covers up to 10,000 feet you should make sure you take time to step back and take time to consider the levels from 20,000 to 50,000 feet. This is the monthly review. Also there may be times when you wish to refer back to them, to support an important project, career or life decision that you are considering.

For me the definitions of the various levels link quite directly with documents or concepts from my own organisation. My performance contract for the year, my own development plan, my 3 year plan for my department and even my company’s own values.

The last major concept that GTD introduces is Natural Planning

Natural Planning gives a way of working through the order of through processes, whether it’s to set the agenda for a meeting or even to plan a project. Whilst they might be called something else in any given situation, they can be defined as follows:

1 – Define purpose / principles

2 – Outcome visioning

– View beyond completion date

– wild success – what would that look like ?

– capture features

3 – Brainstorm

– Capture ideas – mind maps and fishbones

– Don’t judge or challenge, evaluate or critisise

– Quantity not quality

– Put analysis and organisation into the background

4 – Organising

– Identify significant pieces

– Sort by:

Components

Sequences

Priorities

– Detail to required degree

– Fill in gaps

5 – Identify next action(s) who and by when

Again the concept of arriving at next actions that can actually be done is obvious. Like any good plan it is not compete without details of who will do what and by when.

This has served me well on numerous occasions both for planning agendas for important meetings and setting up projects. The concept of challenging people to think about what would wild success look like is very powerful. People will suggest things that they think I achievable and would not normally mention due to subconscious filtering process but once they are out on the table you can ask why not ? What do we need to do to get that ? Suddenly the group starts to challenge preconceptions and the momentum gathers.

The final aspect that David Allen brings out in his book which is not rocket science but not well used either is the use of checklists. Have as many as you want. Refer to them in your weekly and monthly reviews and/or as the situations dictate. I have one for each of my managers for instance (we are spread globally and seldom all in our offices anyway) so I capture things that I actually want to speak to them about rather than matters which are suitable for a quick e-mail, so that when I do get them on a call or even get to see them in person, I can refer to this rather than thinking “I am sure there was something I wanted to talk to you about”.

Hopefully thes two posts have given enough in sight into the basics of GTD to interest people in the ideas and make some think that this could be just what they have been looking for and perhaps they do some of this but not all of it and not as a regimented process perhaps.

My advice – simply buy the book and read it and then implement it. It’s probably been the single most important text that I have read relating to my career and how I work and truly has made a significant difference to how much I do get done but also my peace of mind in a world where there are always more demands than time in the day to satisfy them.

If you read many of the posts on this site you will quickly notice that I am a big user of GTD; so it strikes me that one of my earlier posts should be to explain what it is and what is does for me. I am actually going to split it over two posts as it’s such a large subject.

GTD is the acronym for the productivity concept inspired by the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.

This is not an attempt to fully explain how to implement GTD (for that you need to read the book) but rather to explain the main concepts and their advantages.

The GTD philosophy is based on David Allen’s assertion that to be most productive you must free your mind from other distractions in your subconscious of trying to remember everything that you need to do and, to do that, you need to capture everything in a trusted system that you refer to routinely enough that nothing gets forgotten.

The result is what he refers to as Mind Like Water which comes from a Japanese principle.

The basic premise it that you collect EVERYTHING that you need to do and categorise it, process it, have a system to review it and then a way to decide what to do and where/when.

So what David Allen refers to as Workflow becomes:

1 – Collect

– Get everything that demands your attention on one place

2 – Process

– Decide what things are

3 – Organise

– Decide where to put them in your system

4 – Review

– Daily

– Weekly

– Monthly

5 – Do

– Usually based on 4 criteria; context, time available, energy available, priority

During this processing as part of a weekly review Allen has several categories and rules to follow. Two of the main ones are:

– if something takes more than one action to complete then it’s a project and a project is made up up actions so find the next action to actually progress that.

– if you come across something during the review that can be done in two minutes of under then do it there and then. This is the Two Minute Rule.

So once you have conducted your processing one of the things that you end up with is a list of next actions that you can actual act upon to start to get things done.

Also in this review process you will defer items, put them in your calendar perhaps, delegate some, classify some as someday/maybe to come back to in the future and waiting for where someone else has to complete an action before you can proceed.

This weekly processing review is central to the process. A daily review would cover next actions and calendar items and in a monthly review you would cover more high level and strategical items (more about that in part 2). This means you always have a system that you can come back to where everything you need to do is in one place and won’t be forgotten. Hence you can concentrate on what your next actions are and not spend part of your mind trying to remember what you will need to do afterwards or tomorrow or next week.

The attached diagram shows how the process and workflow fits together.

GTD Workflow Diagram

Once you have your list of next actions you have the question – what to do first. Allen has 3 models to apply here:

Four Criteria Model

– Consider time, energy, context and priority.

Threefold Model

– Doing predefined work, work as it shows up or defining your work.

Six Level Model

– This relates to horizons of focus which I will cover in the second part of this post.

For me reading this book and discovering the process that it delivers was a major breakthrough and has changed how I work permanently. I had always been quite organised so was clearly in a receptive state for this kind of principal. Some work in a disorganised way and would never see the benefit of even starting such as system. I found myself reading the book and thinking ahead on how I would implement it. I already followed many of the principals so I didn’t have to stop doing anything or throw any of my systems out; just add to them or modify some.

I now run a regular weekly review, religiously, every Friday morning, to such an extent that if I have to miss it for some reason I have to find sometime over the weekend to get it covered, even if its just a cut down version. Its mainly for work related activities but my main personal stuff is in there are well. No point having them not in the system and providing the subconscious distractions that the system is designed to prevent.

My tools for running my own GTD system are Outlook for e-mail, calendar and tasks lists and Evernote for everything else. (More about Evernote in a future post). I was using these before I came across GTD but I have modified their use to fit the system. I have created a check list for helping my weekly review which is shown below, I complete one of these every Friday morning as part of my review, which normally takes 30 minutes and is one of the most critical and productive 30 minute spells of my whole week normally. the items in blue text are contained in Outlook and the items below are all in Evernote; a series of saved searches.

My GTD Weekly Check List

I have been a major Evernote user for a couple of years and run a full GTD system, as you will see from many of the posts on this site. I have often seen questions asked about how to best set up GTD in Evernote and about any useful reference books on that subject.

I have read Dominic Wolff’s book on setting up Evernote for GTD. It contained some useful tips but also seemed to be a little of a refresher about GTD itself and some of the main principals. To be honest it didn’t contain any huge revelations. Much of what it advised many of us have already figured out for ourselves trying to set up Evernote for our GTD system.

Ther are a host of other books out there on similar topics and I think in the main they are similar to Dominic’s in what they deliver. If you have just read GTD and not yet started to use Evernote or Outlook or Onenote yet, then they are a short cut to setting a system up immediately. However, if you are a long term GTD user and have been employing Evernote and others for some time then there are no diamonds in them.

I saw a review of the set up guides for Evernote and Outlook available from the GTD store and even these seem to be stating much that is obvious and quite basic for $10 each. Most of us have resonated with GTD and tools like Evernote because we a wired that way to some extent, not because we had no clue about such methods to begin with.

So setting up GTD in which ever apps you prefer ends up being a matter of personal choice and what works best for you and could also be constrained or determined by the software or hardware that your employer provides; Windows PC or Mac, Outlook or Lotus Notes, Blackberry or iPhone and so on.

I think after reading GTD for the first time, many of us are looking for any book that gives us a similar magnitude leap ahead in our personal productivity and effectiveness. Maybe it’s not out there. Maybe that set of revelations from David Allen was it and everything else will simply be incremental enhancements. Or maybe not ?!

Just starting with “Making It All Work” which is David Allen’s follow up to “Getting Things Done”.

Here’s hoping for another leap ahead !

There are numerous posts, blogs, articles on-line trying to help people manage their e-mail and not being managed by their e-mail, giving tips on best practice and how to be most productive. Here are my thoughts on a couple of the principals, with something more thorough to follow in subsequent posts.

Whilst a number of experts and articles suggest not opening e-mails first thing in the morning to aid personal productivity, the argument being about the distraction it brings and that what you had planned should be more important that what others try to get you onto via e-mail.

However, in today’s global business world this is not always practical.

If you have internal or external customers in other time zones then that early check can make the difference between a response within their same working day or not, which might be critical on some projects.

A quick check on BlackBerry during breakfast helps me know what does need a couple of words right then or something more when I do get into the office, before getting back to what I had planned. Throughout David Allen’s GTD explanations he repeated mentions that you should have systems that are flexible, as requirements change after all.

The principal of inbox zero and not using your inbox as a to-do list are however valuable suggestions. Try and only open an item in your inbox once – either answer, archive or put into your system for collecting more involved action items to process. If you open it, read it, think about it close it and come back to it in your inbox again (and maybe again) then it really is taking too much of your time without making any progress.

People are often searching for tips on better productivity and/or how to set up a GTD system and what apps to use for that or their TO-DO lists.

Here are a few rules or tricks of the trade that work for me on those lines.

1. There is a lot of discussion about productivity but is that the best metric, same for efficiency.

Productivity – you get a lot done but is the right stuff ?

Efficiency – you get things done easily but is it focused for maximum effect ?

Effectiveness – you get the right things done at the right time for maximum benefit for yourself and/or your organisation.

So make sure what ever systems you are using make you effective, not just productive or efficient.

2. Do the thing that you least want to on your to do list first.

Whether it’s a difficult conversation with someone or a report that you don’t enjoy with a looming deadline or something necessary but that you find mundane.

Get it off your to do list early and it won’t be there staring back at you and distracting you because you know you will have to do it at some stage. Once it’s gone then it’s gone and you will feel better in yourself and energised to get on with other actions that you find more fulfilling. Mind like water.

3. Group things and do them in context.

Whether it’s a block of phone calls in one sitting or a period of clearing your e-mail inbox or writing a group of 2 minute e-mail responses together or spending some time on a report or spreadsheet. Hitting them in one go will help you get through them faster. Swapping from one type of thing to another and then back again over and over through the day is a thief of your time.

4. Don’t leave things on your to do list too long.

If something has been there for some time and you spot it each time you check your system but move onto something else then ask yourself: why is it that you are not doing it, does it still need to get done, is it really important, if someone else set you the action then how come they have not chase up on it ? Maybe it can be put into hold or someday/maybe or perhaps you should just delete it and if it is important it will come up again.

Or perhaps you should do it now (see 2 above)

5. Don’t be ruled looking for the perfect system

Don’t spend too much time tinkering with your GTD system and trying new apps all the time. Set something up that works and then use it. If it clearly needs fixing or changing to suit you then do that but otherwise just use it and get things done that need to be done. Maybe go back to it once a year and have a revamp but otherwise just let it work for you rather than trying to find a slightly better system. That can suck hours of your time when you could be getting actions off your list.