Getting Things Done

Ep. 96: Sharing GTD with Kids

From the archives: David talks about having a window into the professional world for kids before they enter into the working life.

Ep. 95 - Setting Goals

From the Archives: David Allen on setting Goals for 2010 with Christy Nicholson of Scientific American. Advice you can use for any new year.

Ep. 94: A Guided Mind Sweep with David Allen

Please enjoy a segment from a webinar David Allen did for our GTD Connect members. It's a guided mind sweep. It's a really great opportunity to experience what you'll find at GTDconnect.com and also be able to walk yourself through this really important practice with your GTD implementation. Subscribe on iTunes or wherever else you find your podcasts. Or simply head over to: https://gettingthingsdone.com/podcasts #GTD #gettingthingsdone #DavidAllen #GTDpartner #GTDofficial #mindlikewater #Freedo...

Ep. 93: Weekly Review

David talks about the value of the GTD Weekly Review®

Ep. 92 - Action Lists

GTD Coach, Meg Edwards, talks about how you can customize your lists and tells you how she sets up her action lists. Find what works for you.

Ep. 91 - David Allen Interviews Charles Duhigg

Ep: 90 - The Outdoor Mindsweep

In this episode, Meg Edwards shares how she performs an outdoor Mind Sweep. She models for us how a Mind Sweep can be done anywhere, and how this process can be used to bring additional items to mind when you're in a given context. If you'd like to hear more about the Mind Sweep and how it can serve you in capturing more items to gain control, listen to episode 3 where David Allen guides you through a full Mind Sweep.

Ep: 89 - How to Stop Procrastinating On Your Taxes (...And Everything Else)

In this episode we present an excerpt from a talk that David gave in front of a live audience. It covers procrastination, what type of people are the most susceptible to getting stuck, and how to stop procrastinating on your taxes….and everything else.

Ep. 88: Two-Minute Tip — Outcome and Action Thinking

A bit of a repeat if you've listened to my other tips, but one I just wanted to reinforce. Outcome and Action Thinking. Outcome and action are the two core elements of productivity. What do I want to produce or experience? And how do I need to allocate or reallocate my resources to make it happen? So that kind of thinking, as simple as that sounds, is something that we need to train ourselves to do. It's really a cognitive muscle you need to work with. So anything that's got your attention, anyt...

Ep. 87: Two-Minute Tip — Be Crazy About What Could Be Cool

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 may all be in right now or experiencing in some way, shape, or form they're going to teach a strength,...

Ep. 86: Two-Minute Tip — Upgrade

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 software. I need to upgrade any of my technology, and any of my tools. If you're painting, do you have ...

Ep. 85: Two-Minute Tip — What's Really True?

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's leaving. It's so awful. Everybody's leaving the company? What do you mean? Well, Sally said she th...

Ep. 84: Two-Minute Tip — Clean Up, Close Up

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 want to throw that away or not. That's fine. But it's not a bad idea, especially in times like these,...

Ep. 83: Two-Minute Tip — Get In Your Groove

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's when to take a walk, how often you need to exercise, how often you need to talk to people you nee...

Ep. 82: Two-Minute Tip — Laughter and Soap

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 been trained by my wife, when I walk in the door, Wash your hands David! Which I do. And I have to la...

Ep. 81: Two-Minute Tip — What Are You Learning From This?

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 this in terms of relationships, in terms of your systems, in terms of how you're approaching your care...

Ep. 80: Two-Minute Tip — I Am Unreasonably Joyful

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 real tip, to just kind of break yourself out of some of the code that we're in. You'll think better...

Ep. 79: Two-Minute Tip — The Two Minute Tool

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 up on it, not do it, put it in the backlog or whatever. Frankly, that's the efficiency factor. It w...

Ep. 78: Two-Minute Tip — Clean Up Your Computer

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 kind of knowledge work at all. This is reference, this is creativity, this is communications. This is y...

Ep. 77: Two-Minute Tip — Areas of Focus, Responsibility and Interests

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 areas of focus and interests. For instance, you may have a project about your kids, well that's becau...

Ep. 76: Two-Minute Tip — Get Your Cockpit Under Control

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 about this. You just want to not have to rearrange things, look for things, when you're ready to jus...

Ep. 75: Two-Minute Tip — One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Barrel

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 you need to get ahold of. You know, our Getting Things Done methodology is a lot about creating approp...

Ep. 74: Two-Minute Tip — Renegotiate Your Commitments

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 yourself clear, so that you don't feel like you're constantly having to do all of those. There's an in...

Ep. 73: Two-Minute Tip — Catch Up Your Communications with People

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 from relationships that I've had. Surprising serendipitous stuff. But as a bit of an introvert, I actu...

Ep. 72: Two-Minute Tip — What's Really Got Your Attention?

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 difference? Would give you the most physic space essentially. Would relieve the most pressure on you...

Ep. 71: Two-Minute Tip — Worst Case Scenario Building

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 relieve that pressure, and the way out is through. The best thing to do is to sit down and figure o...

Ep. 70: Two-Minute Tip — Labelers

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't have one already. You'd be amazed at how much of a difference it makes, to make sure your files lo...

Ep. 69: Two-Minute Tip — Catch Up On Legal Stuff

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, healthcare. All those legal documents that manage what happens if you can't manage it. And what goes on ...

Ep. 68: Two-Minute Tip — Crusty Projects

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 a room. Or set up a whole new filing system that you wanted to do. It's a good idea to make sure tha...

Ep. 67: Two-Minute Tip — Get Your Paper Based Filing System in Order

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 places. In a 2 drawer file cabinet, a rack of files, right on my desk, and then upstairs in an atti...