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t is an honor and a privilege to announce that I am currently featured on Getting Things Done!
About a month ago, the GTD team reached out to me to ask if I would share my story about how I discovered the system and use it. Without any hesitation I jumped at the chance. Here is an except from the story:
“How long have you been practicing GTD?
I started in 2011. I am one of those excited people who dove in head first and did a total implementation of the GTD process within the first month. One of the best support tools for the early years of practice was the 10 CD set of David Allen’s complete GTD two-day seminar. I pretty much listened to it on repeat in my car. Each time I listened, it took me deeper into the GTD process. I still dive into seminar from time to time for a refresher.”
Read the rest of the story at the Getting Things Done web site.
“Why should I go to all the trouble to empty my email inbox?”
“I understand the resistance to to-do lists, and the complaints about keeping them. I’ve noticed a couple of reasons for this. The main one is that most to-do lists are incomplete lists of still un-clarified “stuff.” Looking at them creates as much stress as they might have relieved in the first place. Typically, what people have on their lists (if they have them at all) are things like “Mom,” and “bank,” and “marketing VP.” It’s great that they have captured something that has their attention, but there are still critical decisions to make with some critical thinking about that content.”
Living in Florida means that I occasionally visit Disney World. If you have been to a Disney park, there is something that you might not have noticed, mostly because it is not there – TRASH! Disney parks are kept to a very high cleanliness standard. Walt Disney himself observed that if trash is left accumulate, it will quickly sour the experience. He figured out that by 
Physical actions are visible to other people such as calling someone on the phone, typing an email, drafting a memo, or talking to a colleague. A common trap is to believe that “thinking” about an item is a next action. Thinking could be part of a next action if that process is accompanied by a physical movement to capture the ideas, such as drawing a mind map.
Sometimes when we think about the effort it will take to get organized a negative reaction will arise. Is it really worth all the time and energy necessary to put things in their right spot? How about the constant practice of getting things out of your head – sounds like a pain! Can’t we just relax and have fun?
“Imagine if we had a learning curriculum for modern knowledge work.
“A typical question I get is, “What’s the one thing that we do that gets in the way of us being productive?” It’s not one thing, but five, all wrapped together: People keep stuff in their head. They don’t decide what they need to do about stuff they know they need to do something about. They don’t organize action reminders and support materials in functional categories. They don’t maintain and review a complete and objective inventory of their commitments. Then they waste energy and burn out, allowing their busy-ness to be driven by what’s latest and loudest, hoping it’s the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it is.”
