Getting Things Done

You know this is another one of those kind of out of the box things but this could be a really good time to do some reflection on new stuff. New relationships. New ways to manage your relationships. New ways of managing yourself. Being able to work more independently, even if you're still part of an organization, and need to be connected to it. We grow with challenges, so the challenges that we ma...

Upgrade, you know if you have any downtime at all, with that kind of backed off time that we have, in the pandemic. It's the situation we're dealing with right now. This is a time to think, it's part of one of those backlog things, one of those things you may have had in the back of your mind. I need to upgrade my computer. I need to upgrade my operating system. I need to upgrade this piece of sof...

How much money do you actually have in your bank account? How do you and the people in your family really feel right now? Really.  What's really going on in your professional environment? In your personal environment? Not generalizing or exaggerating. Most people have a tendency, me too, to generalize. Everybody's leaving. It's so awful. Everybody's leaving the company, what do you mean? Everybody...

I'll steal a play from Marie Kondo's work that she's been doing, by getting people to clean up closets and clean up their environment. And only keep the things you love and that turn you on. Mine's a little more universal. Look, there's a lot of things that don't turn you on that you still need to keep. There's a lot of things that you need to kind of look at and say, yeah I'm not sure whether I w...

Well, you may already have a groove, but I imagine your groove has been disturbed to a large degree by whatever has been going on in the world lately. And especially in turbulent times, it's going to disturb your groove. Get into a new one. So ask yourself. What about my groove do I need to put into a groove? That I can comfortably now, given the world, and given what's been going on. Whether that...

I'll quote my wonderful wife Kathryn. Laughter and Soap. At some point you just need to laugh, and you need to clean up. She sort of nailed it brilliantly. If you haven't done it lately, at least look for a good joke. At least find some way to find something to laugh about. Something funny, something that makes no sense. Those are always wonderful things to do. And soap, obviously clean up. I've b...

In these kinds of times, that's actually in retrospect when we find out we've learned how to grow. We've expanded. We've stretched ourselves. We've challenged ourselves, we've had to look at things from whole new perspectives. So my tip is to shorten that time of reflection and introspection about what these times could mean for us. What we could learn. What you might be doing differently after th...

Out of the box here... I Am Unreasonably Joyful. That's an affirmation I've actually used for many many years. And when I heard it, or when I thought of it, I thought, what a cool thing to do. To just take me out of the box. I'm unreasonably joyful. Given the world we're in, and especially the times we're in being joyful about anything seems to be one of the hardest things to do. But if you want a...

Actually, it's a tip I'd give anybody any time. And those of you familiar with the Getting Things Done methodology will know this already. The Two Minute Tool. The Two Minute Tool basically says, look, any action you've figured out that you could actually complete within two minutes, of where you are in the context you are, in the location you are, you're better off to that right then than to hang...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Clean Up Your Computer Now if you haven't done this already, and you have some down time, or at home time, or whatever. Then, come on guys, it's like when you get your car washed, or your motorcycle washed, or whatever, it drives better. Well very much the same thing with your computer. Come on, this is like a master tool if you're doing any kin...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests Revisit or Create an Overview of Your Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests It's a different horizon of your commitments. You've got actions you need to take, and you've got projects you need to finish. But the reason you have actions, and projects is because they respond to or they relate to a...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Get Your Cockpit Under Control What I mean by that is, your workspace. Where when you sit down, you are ready to fly, you're ready to go. You don't have to rearrange anything in order to be able to do your best work. There's mine, it's been quite functional for several years, something like this. And I don't mean particularly anal or compulsive...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Barrel So this is a cautionary tale. There are times when one situation, project, or circumstance that's particularly important to you, you're not appropriately engaged with yet can color the whole rest of your life, and make it all feel grey, and solemn, and burdensome. Where as it's really just one situation that yo...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Renegotiate Your Commitments See a lot of what the Getting Things Done methodology is about has been about inventorying what your commitments are. What have you agreed with yourself you need, would, could, should, ought to be doing, handling or whatever. And so managing those commitments is a whole lot of what the methodology is about to keep yo...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Catch Up Your Communications with People Another nice thing to do especially in terms of catching up, it's often times subtle. And depending on your personality style about how much you engage with other people. Who do you owe a thank you to? Who do you owe a communication with to update them? All the best things in my life have actually come fr...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen What's Really Got Your Attention? Many of my tips are about sort of catching up, and simple things to do kind of keep your energy up, clean things up, catch up. This one is a big one. What circumstance, situation that you're in right now, if that were put onto cruise control, or if you were appropriately engaged with that would make the biggest...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Worst Case Scenario Building I know this may sound a little strange, but one of the best and healthiest things you can do is to actually do a scenario of the worst case, and then imagine you getting through that. And could you handle it? Because the worst case scenario is likely to be banging around subliminally anyway. What you need to do is to...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Labelers I know that may sound a little dumb and dorky, when you're in a turbulent time to think about a labeler. What's a labeler? Any of you old GTD practitioners probably know how adamant I've been about the value of labeling things. Being able to have a typeset labeler. If you're not doing anything else, order yourself a labeler, if you don'...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Catch Up On Legal Stuff This is a tip, that would be nice to have implemented before turbulent times. And certainly needed no matter when. But it's one of those old projects that often for many people lies in the background, because it's the kind of stuff you don't want to think about. Wills, what to do if we can't make decisions ourselves, heal...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Crusty Projects It'd be a good idea to do an inventory of any old crusty projects that have been sort of hanging around in your life and work. This would probably be a good time to tackle those, or renegotiate them. Just drop them off the list, or move them to someday / maybe. But you may have something like, clean up the basement, or rearrange...

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen Get Your Paper Based Filing System in Order Actually, it's a tip for any time... If you don't have a really good, quick filing system that you can put stuff into and access easily. Then the stuff tends to mount up and then constipate your system. Get it clean, get it streamlined, get it current. Here's mine. My paper based system now lives three...

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...

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 do...

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 i...

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...