This past year I have been studying the work of Tiago Forte, a San Francisco based productivity consultant.  Tiago has been building on the work of David Allen to find ways to enhance the ability of knowledge workers to manage projects and build productive workflows.

In an interview on the podcast, This is Product Management, Tiago presents key concepts such as the development of “meta-skills”, finding focus in any environment, and forming new habits.  From the podcast web site:

“Tiago’s approach builds on Allen’s system, applying the latest tools, and accounting for the challenges modern knowledge workers face. Tiago’s approach helps busy people use their brain for thinking instead of storage, break projects into actionable next steps, implement the right tools, and build habits to get work done.”

The interview runs for 35 minutes, but the web page with the podcast provides a handy highlights section if you want to jump to a specific topic.  It is well worth a listen.

Reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done was a key professional development moment for me.  It transformed my understanding of knowledge work and allowed me to bring organization to my office for the first time.  I would not have achieved my current level of success without the principles outlined in the book.

So who is this man behind the GTD® logo?  The web site, Early To Rise, recently interviewed David Allen to learn more about his background, how he developed the core GTD® concepts and his current personal goals for this work.  Here is an excerpt from the interview where David is asked about how the Getting Things Done philosophy fit into professional training programs that were around twenty years ago.

What was your specialty exactly?

It really became how to create more space in the mind and get rid of distractions. That was just an informal approach, but an HR rep showed up to one of my workshops at one point and flat out said we need more of my methods in society. Not long after, I did a presentation for Lockheed with these methods and it hit a nerve. That’s when I knew I had something unique.

You can find the full interview on the Early To Rise web site.

One of the greatest challenges in setting up a new organizational system is the transition to trusting it.  Yet it is hard to trust a new system until it has proven itself.  This is often a Catch 22 that tends to result in the return to old habits and systems.

In his most recent blog post, David Allen highlights this challenge.

“If you don’t fully trust your personal systems, you are likely to be dedicating inappropriate and unnecessary mental attention to details and content, often with a resultant negative emotional component. You’ll feel pulled, overwhelmed, and often like you’re close to losing control.

“But you can’t trust your system until it’s trust-worthy. When is that? When you know you have captured all your commitments, clarified what you’re intending to do about them, decided the actions you need to take about them, and have parked reminders of those actions in places that you know you’ll look, where and when you need to.”

Read the full blog post at GettingThingsDone.com.

(Sorry for the delay in postings due to Hurricane Irma.)

Let’s be blunt, your head is a crappy office space.  In the moment, it can be very seductive to believe that you can remember anything that comes across your plate.  In practice, our minds drop important items regularly.  That is why a system that takes the burden of remembering off your mind is very important.  In a recent blog post, David Allen reflects on this point:

There is a light-year of difference between a system that has merely a lot of our stuff objectified, and one that has 100%. Few people have experienced what I’m talking about, because there are few people who have ever gotten to a 100% empty head—absolutely every project, action item, and potential commitment we have made with ourselves and others externalized in an easily reviewable format.

Read the rest of the post at the GTD Blog.

The game of productivity and efficiency work can sometimes be hard to score.  As this is a skill to be mastered, it is helpful to identify key stages of progress in order to feel a sense of achievement.  In a recent blog post, Coach Kelly Forrister identified five key markers of a proficient GTD practice.

1. It feels weird to keep stuff on your mind
Capturing what has your attention is a key practice with GTD. Getting better at GTD means you are capturing what’s on your mind when it shows up, moment-by-moment and keeping something ON your mind, well, it just feels weird.

Read the other four signs on the Getting Things Done web site.

Want a great time saver for your work and personal life?  Try a solution promoted in the GTD methodology: the two minute rule.

When processing your inbox any action associated with an item that will take two minutes or less to do should be done immediately.  This is because it would take more time to organize the item in your system then to resolve it straight away.

The two minute rule has some flexibility.  For example, if you have lots of time available for processing, extend it to three minutes or more per item.  If you have limited time, reduce it to a minute or ninety seconds per item.

In the end, some actions are best done when they first show up.  That is why completion of two minute items leads to less stress and more success in your work and life.

A short interview with David Allen recently appeared in the pages of Inc. Magazine.  While not a long article, it offers insight into the mind of the Getting Things Done author and his own personal challenges.  He also provides valuable advice for being productive.  From the article:

Why aren’t people able to be productive and manage their time well?

The first mistake is people keep stuff in their head. Your head is a crappy office! Building the external brain is a whole lot of what GTD is about. Your brain was not designed to remember and remind. That’s not its function and most people are still using it for that, and it doesn’t work.

Read the rest of the article at the Inc.com web site.