I RECENTLY picked up the NoteTaker wallet from David Allen's site. I'm a firm believer in David's GTD precept to have a "capture device" with you at all times so you can get things out of your head (and eventually into your system and off your mind) whenever they come to you. I'd tried index cards, my notebook, my Palm and then BlackBerry. Nothing matched the ease of paper, but what I wanted was something that would be with me always, and be as easy to carry in jeans as in a suit (and index cards and notebooks are decidedly not).

I had thought about David's wallet in the past, and took the opportunity to inspect his first-hand when we spent some time together last year (disclosure: I have at times served as a "friend of the court" to David and his team, but am not a paid consultant of DavidCo.), but was concerned about the size. "What would I do if I was limited to just a few cards, license, and cash?" I wondered.

"Stop carrying all that extra crap around in your wallet" was the answer.

I've been using the thing for a few months now and love it. Slender (no trouble carrying in jeans, shorts , or suit jacket pockets), high-quality leather, and the retractable Rotring pen, which quickly expands to be a full-sized ball point so you're not fiddling with some minuscule half-pen, is ingenious. In the wallet I comfortably carry the pen, the writing pad (the wallet comes with 9 or 10 extras), five cards of various forms (license, passkeys, insurance card, credit cards), an NYC MetroCard, a pic of Kate, the last five or six receipts I've collected, and some cash.

It all fits well, and the minimizing process, like when I switched to a smaller briefcase last year, was a useful exercise in itself. "Do I really need to carry those extra credit cards with me at all times? Why, should I even have those extra credit cards? (No. Shred them.) And those frequent flier cards?" Nope ... I put them all in a travel wallet that I carry in my briefcase at all times anyway. It's a nice principle: Move to a smaller space and simplify.

It's worked very well. Not only can I quickly jot down any thought for processing later, having the pen in the wallet makes it easy to note receipts and all that other paper you collect while using your wallet on the road. Highly recommended.

AN INTERESTING ARTICLE in the Journal (reg may be required) about how some firms are mandating meeting / conference call-free time for employees, with Dow Corning mandating one meeting-free week per quarter and IBM rolling out "ThinkFridays," keeping Friday afternoons free of meetings and interruptions. Great ideas, both.

I call this type of time "white space," and have tried to incorporate it in my own schedule for a few years now as a means of managing continuous partial attention and schedule overload. My approach is to have one week a quarter with no air travel or overnight stays (as for me, it's the travel that's more of an issue than the interruptions). I've also blocked one day a week as a "No Travel" day for several years, although this year I settled on that day as a Friday and started blocking every Friday afternoon from noon to six PM with "No Appointments" on my calendar. Only I am allowed to schedule things during this time (as opposed to my assistant or other staff and team members).

I've found that block of time irreplaceable, not so much that I can work without interruption, but so that I can be free to control some block of time as I choose, be it for work, spending time with my direct reports, or leaving the office early to spend time with Kate. How do you manage a schedule full of meetings? By scheduling non-meeting time. How's that for irony.

I'VE SWITCHED from the Treo 650 to the BlackBerry Pearl, and I couldn't be happier. I'll try to post a longer review later, but the bottom line is that I find the Pearl significantly more reliable, a better phone, and easier for implementing GTD (primarily because the enterprise server syncs tasks and memos on-the-fly).

HOW STARBUCKS CEO Jim Donald manages his time. (Found via colleague Amy Amundson's del.icio.us feed.) Priceless: Returning his own email and voicemail.

How I Handle Email (And Keep My Inbox Clean)

This WS Journal CareerJournal article -- How You Handle Your Inbox Can Say a Lot About You -- is well worth reading. Thanks to Getting Things Done I've made the shift over the past two years from the generally cluttered inbox to the clean. Regular processing and the weekly review are the keys. The current count: 46 emails in my office inbox, all read, none older than Monday, and none needing an immediate reply (or they did, and I have replied but not finished processing the message into a task, calendar item, or folder for keeping). I have some travel time coming up, and I'll use the flight time to knock the rest off and get my inbox to empty.

The fact is, 500 emails in your inbox create in most people an enormous sense of guilt: guilt for not responding to people with whom you likely have some meaningful relationship, and guilt for not keeping up with your workflow. 500 untended-to emails are like 500 little broken promises, to others and to yourself.

Here are my simple principles for keeping up with my email flow:

Turn off your email program's "auto-fetch" feature. Most email clients download mail on some schedule -- from every minute to every hour. I've turned mine off on all my tools: laptop, desktop, and phone. Get email when you're ready to deal with it. This dramatically reduces your interruptions through the day and dramatically increases your ability to focus on the work or person in front of you. After all, you have a mailbox outside your house that anyone can use at any time, but you don't check it 12 times a day, do you? (Note: I often have people say "But what if something's urgent?" You have a telephone. If it's urgent they'll call. "What if it's my boss and he expects me to be checking email constantly?" Turn off auto-fetch for a week and you'll slowly change your boss' expectations of your availability.)

Turn off your email notification sound. In the event that your email client must have some schedule for download (you can't turn off auto-fetch), turn off the notifications -- the bells, pop-ups, and other things that say "you've got mail." Again, you don't need the distraction.

Separate processing time from work time. Whatever you do, don't flip back and forth between dealing with email and doing work. Set aside time several times a day to download and process messages. Then go back to work. I usually process messages three or four times a day: once in the morning, once at night, and maybe twice during the day. (Again, doing this will also recalibrate the expectations those sending you messages have about your availability.)

When processing, complete any email task that you can complete in two minutes or less. This is the only exception to the "separate processing time from work time" principle. Emails aren't really messages, they're work in message form -- commitments to honor, conversations to have, things to read. items to print. When I read an email the first thing I ask is "Can I deal with this in two minutes or less and be done with it?" If the answer is "yes," I do that thing right away and delete the message. This might be writing a short reply, printing the message, filing an attachment, or putting something on my calendar. But I do it, right then, and then dispose of the message in a folder or the trash. This "two minute rule," which I credit to David Allen, is very powerful, especially when applied to your life as a whole. Walk around today and every time you see something that isn't how it should be, ask yourself if you can make it right in two minutes or less. If so, do it -- and see the results you have by day's end.

When processing, arrive at one of four ultimate dispositions for every message -- turn it into a task, place it on the calendar, file it, or delete it -- and then get it out of the inbox. As I noted above, I don't think of emails as messages, I think of them as bits of work that I have yet to convert into their proper form. A message saying, "We're on for our call tomorrow at 11" isn't fully formed as work until I've placed that appointment on my calendar. I do that, and then delete the message. An email that says "Please read this" is a task yet to be completed. I print the item, place it in my briefcase, and delete or file the message. An email with contract details which I need to keep is actually a filing task. I drag it into the folder for that project. The point is that the art of having a clean inbox isn't about "dealing" with or "responding" to messages as much as it's about "converting" them. When I see email I say "What do I need to make of this? Is it a task, appointment, something I need to keep, or something I can delete?" I then help that message along it's way to its final destiny and get rid of the message accordingly.

Use handheld tools to process messages on-the-fly, but NOT to reply. It may be possible to type emails with a BlackBerry or phone, but it's also darn slow and inefficient. I never write messages of any length with my phone. I limit my replies to a few words and that's it. I do, however, use my phone to ensure I have no emergencies and to get some processing time in when I'm on the go. It's very easy in the back of a cab or at an airport gate to download mail (remember, I don't use auto-fetch), make some quick dispositions of messages, delete spam, and send a few "yes / no" replies. I then won't have to deal with those messages when I connect on my laptop, and those that do require a long reply I can then deal with using a real keyboard, saving me significant time in the process.

Some of this I've picked up along the way, some I owe to David Allen. Take what you will, but this is what works for me. I can say this: My life is a heck of a lot more relaxing coming home at night and knowing there are NOT 179 possible commitments, tasks, or appointments sitting out there, needing my attention. I may appear anal retentive, but I sleep great.

Go forth and convert!

David Allen Folders

Earlier this year David Allen was kind enough to send me a set of his new traveling file folders. I've been using them for several months now and I like them very much. They're durable, attractive, have just the right balance between flexibility and rigidity -- and their plastic slides easily into and out of a bursting briefcase. Highly recommended.

Admitting It Is The First Step

From today's New York Times:

Business travelers sometimes jokingly call BlackBerry text-messaging devices CrackBerries because of the addictive powers of constant communication anywhere in the world. In what may or may not be the least successful intervention attempt ever, the Sheraton Chicago Hotel is promoting a program in which guests can turn in their BlackBerries to the general manager, Rick Ueno, who will keep them under lock and key in his office to help guests kick the habit — though the BlackBerry will be given back on demand.

File under "Signs of the Impending Apocalypse." Advice here.

David Allen Stops Blogging

DAVID ALLEN HAS STOPPED BLOGGING, at least for a time. The reason is in keeping with his Getting Things Done philosophy:

I'd probably continue it in some form, if I didn't have a multitude of other things to do that are taking priority. It's another time I need to practice my own GTDing and renegotiate my own commitments with myself to stay up with my changing world.

A great point. Part of being in control is being realistic about your commitments, and one of the significant benefits of GTD is how knowing all your commitments (I have 257 of them across 12 lists) suddenly makes you a realist about incoming requests.

And I should know. I've started so many blogs--some that stuck and some that did not--that I've wondered if I get more out of the creation than the posting. Sometimes I want a change of voice, or of topic. And sometimes I've just gotten bored. I've even slowed down here recently, although I think S1A is here to stay (although I might move to a different platform ... tinker, tinker).

Still, this comment makes me wonder if David might miss something more meaningful:

I'm just too stretched to keep enjoying the luxury of late-night college-student-union chatting (blogging).

He made a similar comment when we were together for a few days last Fall. I'll say now what I said then: For somebody who makes his hay from intellectual capital, a blog can be more than chatting over a virtual latte -- it can provide the opportunity to participate in and lead a community of thought.

Thought leaders don't just create material or theory that inform discussions of practice, they participate in those discussions. Blogs great platform for doing so, with far greater reach than day-to-day interaction with colleagues or clients. As a result, a blog can help accelerate the discussion, awareness, and adoption of the practice (an important point if you sell ideas for a living).

Examples abound: Anderson, Weinberger, Moere, Winer, Garr Reynolds, Dubner & Levitt.

In each case the expert at the center of the conversation is getting more informed about his or her area of interest, and more firmly established as the thought leader on that topic, each day. If I were selling ideas for a living it's where I would want to be. I hope to see David return to blogging. To get the full effect his content should probably change a bit -- more on how he interprets the world through the lens of GTD and less on hobbies and travels -- but I hope to see him return nonetheless.

Tags: david allen

The Power of Paper

LIFEHACKER has a nice post on the power and utility of paper. I'm a very connected guy and I use a lot of technology. But I still put a lot of faith in paper, and often think business people have been seduced by the novelty of the technology that surrounds them.

Paper is fast. By the time you've opened your PDA or Laptop, I've jotted a note. By the time you've loaded a web-based article in your browser cache, I've taken it out of my "Reading" file and am, well, reading. Paper is also tangible: There is a wonderful kinesthetic quality to reviewing a calendar hard-copy or striking items from a printed or hand-written list. I think that quality makes the experience of review and action more tangible and more lasting.

Example: Kate and I have begun training for a year's worth of distance races, leading up to the Marine Corps. Marathon this October. I wanted to keep a running log to capture exercise and diet, and while I could do so electronically, I chose a small Moleskine ('Mole-eh-skeen-eh') notebook. I did so because I can carry it nearly anywhere, and I can quickly grab and jot items when opportunity strikes. I also knew it would be more powerful to see the ink of my exercise and dietary choices sinking into the paper -- in my own hand -- than it would be to see them appear on a screen.

In fact, I carry three notebooks: A Moleskine journal for personal reflection and as a "commonplace book," a Levenger Circa for work, and the running log. And in a marriage of digital and physical, each week I print my calendar and next actions, which I keep on my laptop, and insert them in my Levenger simply so I can enjoy the qualities of paper as I get things done.

Paper may also be the best medium for something else everyone should carry: A ubiquitous tool for getting things out of your head and off your mind as soon as possible. I've carried 3x5 index cards for this in the past, but know think I'm going to switch to one of these new, small Moleskines. They're thin and flexible enough to carry in the back pocket of your jeans, yet nice enough to carry in your suit-coat pocket.

Look at your worklife and ask the question: Is everything that's digital serving me best in digital form? I think you'll answer, "Probably not."

Tags: moleskine, levenger

More On My Levenger Notebook

I'VE RECEIVED A NUMBER OF EMAILS regarding my "how I use my Levenger Circa notebook" post. They relate to a poorly written and insufficiently descriptive passage on my part:

Given that most of my work time is spent on the road, I find it's much easier for me to review my calendar and commitments when in the back of cabs, on airplanes, etc. on paper rather than on my PDA or Laptop. So as the final step of my weekly review I print:

• From Outlook, a list of next actions due over the next seven days (given that most of the next actions in GTD are undated, these tend to be reminders.)
• From Outlook, two-page "week at a glance" calendars for the next four weeks.
• From Outlook, monthly calendars for the next six month.
• From Outlook, the full set of my next actions (organized by context: Calls, Agendas, Computer, Online, Home, Errands, Projects, Someday / Maybe, etc.)
• From MindManager, my "flight panel" MindMap, which is basically a graphically-represented review of all the things I'm tracking at a higher level (maybe 20,000 feet) -- there's a post on this to follow.

Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, I'm able to print this on one of our copy machines that allows me to combine all of this into a single, double-sided document. I then punch this document with a Levenger Circa punch and put it in the notebook in the GTD tab, right up front.

To a person, the emails have asked, "How the heck do you get that all on one page?" I don't, and the line "Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, I'm able to print this on one of our copy machines that allows me to combine all of this into a single, double-sided document" is the problem.

I DO print it all on one double-sided document, but NOT all on one double-sided page. The document typically runs 12-16 pages. But thanks to the digital merging by the copy machine, all those individual documents I'm sending from Outlook and MindManager merge into a single 12-14 page doc -- which is nice, because the content is all back-to-back (rather than having one-page docs, like the list of next actions for the next seven days, have a blank back page), and I'm able to print the two-page weeks at a glance on facing pages.

Apologies for the confusion. One document, not one page. But that'd be a neat trick. Hmmm ...

Tags: gtd, levenger

Threaded Next Actions: "+" Means "More"

A TENET OF GETTING THINGS DONE is to only list on your task list items that are the very next action you should take. Don't list "Make car service appointment" if the very next thing you must do to move that work forward is "Find phone number for auto dealership." It's a great example of the power of language: The "next action" framework keeps you describing specific, actionable items -- which are more likely to draw your activity than less actionable, nebulous tasks.

Often, though, you'll want to jot down or plan out a series of related tasks as a sort of simple project plan ... even though you would only put the very next action on your list. Accordingly, a great piece of simple advice floating around the Getting Things Done community is to "pre-list" a series of related tasks, appending them to the next action. As a simple example, you might append ...

• Revise notes from BigCoCorp. meeting

... with ...

• Ask Jeff to proofread BigCoCorp notes
• Make final formatting changes to BigCoCorp notes
• Email BigCoCorp notes

Outlook and Lotus Notes make it easy to do this by having a "notes" field for any task / next action, and many GTD practitioners (including me) copy and paste the next task in the series into the title field over the description of a just-completed task. Click the picture at the right to see how this looks on my system.

Here's the problem: Every once in a while I click the "completed" checkbox on a next action, sending it off to completed next action oblivion without remembering that I have a series of following tasks in the notes. I need a little reminder that this next action is actually the first of a thread, which is where my "plus hack" comes in.

I prepend any next action that's the first of a series with a "+", which is a reminder to myself that there are more action steps in the notes. This keeps me from accidentally checking off and deleting threaded tasks. What's more, Outlook naturally clusters next actions that begin with "+" together, so I get a nice summary of my more involved (and generally project-focused) next actions at a glance.

Works for me; your mileage may vary.

Change log: I posted this in a hurry, and realize now there were a number of typos in the text. I've changed the post since to clean those up.

 

Technorati Tags: gtd, hacks

* Scheduled post, written earlier.

Setting The Boundries For Next Actions

I KNOW A NUMBER OF MY regular readers also practice Getting Things Done. While reading my RSS feed of the GTD forums the other day I came across this post, which reads:

Here are a couple of tips that were given to me by Meg Edwards during some tele coaching.

Projects lists should only contain those things that you need to deliver on in the next 9 months. Deliverables beyond that belong on your 'Someday / Maybe' list and can be turned into Projects when they fall into the 9 month window. If you make sure you include a review of your Someday / Maybes in your weekly review you wont miss the projects and you can get them off your mind.

Next Actions Lists should only contain NA's that you plan to complete in the next 2-3 weeks. Other actions that I think of during my weekly review are written and stored with Project Support Material and I can turn them into NA's when I need to.

These two simple things have helped keep my NA's and Project lists under control.

As someone with ...

• ... 62 items on his Projects list ...
• ... 43 items on his Someday / Maybe list ...
• ... and 177 Next Actions across a set of 10+ contexts ...

... it served as a nice reminder as I work to make good calls about where things should sit during my weekly review (which I'm doing now, BTW ... weekend time at the office is a wonderful setting for the weekly review).

One thing worth noting: With 282 items "out of my head" and on my lists, I don't feel my lists are out of control. I've kept an occasional tally of how many items I've had listed over the past six months or so (more to follow in a separate post on that), and I don't begin to feel the lists are too busy until they get north of 310 or so. For me, that's testament to the power of GTD: You're able to track literally hundreds of items, and because you know the disposition of each your sense of control actually increases.

After all: Try to keep track of 282 things in your head. That's what a lack of control feels like ...

Update: After a good purge of my lists following the above counsel my lists sit at 199 items. Most of the things I killed were completed projects, next actions that I won't get to in the next 2-3 weeks (which I put in the notes of existing projects as next actions to be "born" later), and items on the someday/maybe list that I'm not ever realistically going to consider doing, even someday or maybe ...

Technorati Tags: gtd, weekly review

An Excellent Overview Of Getting Things Done

I HAD A FEW MOMENTS BETWEEN MEETINGS and (via Technorati) found this new article in American Way about Getting Things Done. It's one of the better "I haven't read the book yet" introductions to GTD I've seen, and I'd recommend it to just about anyone. After all, does this sound familiar?

In a nutshell, the Allen methodology rests on three key insights about “stuff,” the nature of work today, and the way the mind operates.

Stuff, for Allen, is the Great Enemy, the Lord of the Flies. As he puts it in Getting Things Done, stuff is “anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step.”

That’s a big butterfly net, sweeping in, well, almost everything: a $20 million real estate deal, a sore elbow, an elderly parent’s need for care, a squeaky garage door, an unanswered e-mail, an invitation to join a church softball team, a dissatisfied customer,­ a cluttered closet, a burgeoning waistline, a monster deadline, a wilting houseplant. And stuff never stops: While you’re reading this article, stuff steals into your life from 100 roads: e-mail, cell phone, frowns from your boss, overnight mail, oil-change reminders, sticky notes left on your computer monitor, please-help letters from your kid’s school, postponed doctor visits.

GTD helps you get control of your stuff.

Technorati Tags: gtd, david allen

How I Use My Levenger Circa Notebook

YEARS AGO I STARTED carrying a Levenger Circa notebook, and it's the keystone of my professional record keeping. It's a wonderful product -- great paper, nice leather -- but if I find the aesthetic of Circa most appealing, I find its flexibility most valuable.

In meetings I tend to get a lot of questions about the notebook and how I use it, so I thought I'd quickly profile that here.

First, I carry this one, although in a dark brown leather they no longer produce. I like the larger size and the leather, although they make notebooks with plastic covers that work just as well. In terms of use, I have the notebook divided (I use these rigid plastic tab dividers because they create a nice writing platform) into several sections, with a nice printed label on each tab:

• Getting Things Done: Given that most of my work time is spent on the road, I find it's much easier for me to review my calendar and commitments when in the back of cabs, on airplanes, etc. on paper rather than on my PDA or Laptop. So as the final step of my weekly review I print:
  • From Outlook, a list of next actions due over the next seven days (given that most of the next actions in GTD are undated, these tend to be reminders.)
  • From Outlook, two-page "week at a glance" calendars for the next four weeks.
  • From Outlook, monthly calendars for the next six month.
  • From Outlook, the full set of my next actions (organized by context: Calls, Agendas, Computer, Online, Home, Errands, Projects, Someday / Maybe, etc.)
  • From MindManager, my "flight panel" MindMap, which is basically a graphically-represented review of all the things I'm tracking at a higher level (maybe 20,000 feet) -- there's a post on this to follow.
  Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, I'm able to print this on one of our copy machines that allows me to combine all of this into a single, double-sided document. I then punch this document with a Levenger Circa punch and put it in the notebook in the GTD tab, right up front. That's my reference for the week, and I use the first page (which has the next actions for the next seven days) as a portable inbox where I write things down to enter later in the system on my PC.
• This Week: Notes for my meetings and projects this week, organized alphabetically by project. The great thing about Circa is the pages are easily replaceable -- you just pull them out and then press them back into place. So during my weekly review I pull the project files for work I'll do in the next week (most of which is meetings) and insert my prior notes into the notebook. At the end of the week I pull those notes and put them back in their appropriate files. I also keep a printout of my travel itinerary at the front of this section, along with a short list of key deliverables for this week (my "weekly radar").
• Reference: These are notes that I don't have commitments for this week but to which I might need to refer. Usually stuff from last week, where I think I might get a call this week.
• Other Notes: My place for keeping notes on the fly. This is where I might map out ideas or projects, or capture notes from unplanned meetings or calls.
• Paper: A tab where I keep blank paper.

This photo, taken with my phone, does a poor job of showing how this looks, but you can get the idea.

I've found it very useful ... especially having a paper record of my Getting Things Done world that I can refer to and easily see in an instant. I don't worry much about it getting out of date ... while my support staff updates my calendar on the fly, that syncs to my phone in real time and I check it to confirm any calendar questions. Having the printouts of calendar and next actions is only so I can easily review lists and commitments and strike next actions on-the-fly; my PC (with Outlook) remains my "trusted system" and single source of truth.

 

Technorati Tags: levenger, circa

On Continuous Partial Attention

THE O'REILLY RADAR has a nice account of a recent speech by Linda Stone (former research lead at Microsoft) on "continuous partial attention" -- the diminished state of effectiveness that comes from attending to multiple communication inputs at the same time (noted before on this site here). Here's her hook:

Pop quiz.  It's okay to answer "yes" to a question even if you're contradicting an earlier answer:

• Technology has improved my life
• Technology has harmed my quality of life
• I pay full attention to people when they talk to me, when I am in meetings, when I work
• I pay partial attention to what I'm doing and I'm scanning my devices or software for other inputs
• Technology sets me free
• Technology enslaves me

In 1997 I coined the phrase "continuous partial attention".  For almost two decades, continuous partial attention has been a way of life to cope and keep up with responsibilities and relationships.  We've stretched our attention bandwidth to upper limits.  We think that if tech has a lot of bandwidth then we do, too.

With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges.  Continuous partial attention is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities.  We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network, we feel alive when we're connected.  To be busy and to be connected is to be alive.

We've been working to maximize opportunities and contacts in our life. So much social networking, so little time.  Speed, agility, and connectivity at top of mind.  Marketers humming that tune for two decades now.

Now we're over-stimulated, over-wound, unfulfilled.

Sound familiar?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: turn the stuff off. Shut off the computer and turn off email auto-notification (after all, we have a mailbox outside the house that's available to people 24-7, but we don't check it 40 times a day, do we?). Frankly, shut off your cell phone, pager, Blackberry, and Treo while you're at it.

We need white space to think, work, and process. You may not be accessible, but trust me: you're still available. If somebody absolutely needs to get you during that hour or two (or three), they will. As you can probably surmise from this blog, I'm one of the most technologically connected people out there. That said, I unshackle those channels all the time (it's one of the reason so many of the posts here are noted "scheduled post, written earlier" -- when I blog, I blog, and when I don't, I don't).

It's essential to a decent workflow, and frankly, quality of life. Communication technology affords enormous advantages, but every technology also creates it's own problems -- continuous partial attention being one.

From time to time each day, unshackle the new media and set your work free. You'll be glad you did.

Tags: linda stone, continuous partial attention, oreilly radar

 * Guess what: Scheduled post, written earlier.

Getting Things Done Via Blackberry

GARY SLINGER HAS STARTED writing a series of very thorough posts on how to implement Getting Things Done using a Blackberry. The first post is here. I'm glad to see his take on the process; as a Treo user I've struggled in explaning some elements of the process to Blackberry users with whom I work.

Technorati Tags: Gary Slinger, GTD, Getting Things Done, David Allen   

Advanced GTD Workflow

I'M SURPRISED HOW FEW Getting Things Done devotees have seen the one-page Advanced GTD Workflow. I keep a copy each in my Levenger notebook, in my traveling in-box, and in my inbox on my desk.

It's great to look at from time to time as a reminder of strong workflow process ... the "feeling too much stress?" section is also a nice day-to-day reference.

The workflow is free for download from David's site; note that it's a PDF file.

* This is a scheduled post, written earlier.

What's In My Bag

I ENJOYED READING THIS MICHAEL HYATT POST from this past Spring about "what's in your carry on." As a frequent traveler, every so often I'm asked what I take on the road, and in the spirit of Michael's post, here are my standard carry-on contents.

First of all, I carry the Tumi Gen 4 Expandable Computer Brief in napa leather. It's the top of the line, but with luggage I've found you very much get what you pay for. Tumi's reputation is the best, and it's well deserved. The bag is functional, has many pockets (including rubber-lined pockets for a water bottle and wet umbrella), and most important, it has a sling compartment that saves your laptop from shocks. Critical if you're living on airplanes or mass transit. When expanded, it can carry a huge amount of material--especially important if you do multi-city, multi-meeting trips as do I. I love the leather, but candidly, I hate to see it weather. My next (and third) Tumi bag will likely be ballistic nylon.

In the bag I typically carry:

• One book for reading, and sometimes two. Currently: The Metaphysical Club.
  
  
• A large-size Moleskine ruled notebook, which I use as a personal journal. Moleskine makes a wonderful journal. I first saw them in the news shop at the Savoy in London in 1999, and finally picked one up early this year. They're great.
  
  
• An iGo charger, which I use to charge my laptop. The nice thing about iGo is you can use interchangeable tips to charge other items, like your phone or camera, and only take one charger on the road. So far, I've not gotten other tips. The iGo comes with an airplane and car adapter as well, so you're pretty much good to go for charging anywhere.
  
  
• A Bosca Flight Attendant travel wallet. Carries all my travel documents, frequent guest/flier cards, cash, etc. with ease. My grandfather worked in a Bosca plant in Springfield, Ohio, and in addition to being a fine piece of leather, it's a sentimental favorite.
  
  
• An older iPod with Etymotic's er6i headphones. I've posted about these headphones before; they're spectacular for air travel, exercise ... they do it all.
  
  
• Airplane sleeping comforts: An eye mask, earplugs (if I don't want the Etymotics in), and some Tylenol Cold. I don't sleep well on planes ... too tall to be comfortable ... but a combination of these three makes most red-eyes bearable.
  
  
• A 1 gig jump drive, which I use to backup the current year's files on my PC. It's also useful for giving documents to clients, admins, TelePrompTer operators, etc.
  
  
• A Hitachi 2 gig microdrive and it's PCMIA adapter. This slips into the PCMIA slot on my laptop and is the drive on which I keep all my personal computer documents (the more you work off your PC's hard drive, the sooner your hard drive dies). The adapter also lets me slide any other compact flash-format card into the laptop, like the memory card for my digital camera.
  
  
• A Treo 650 Smartphone. Very nearly the perfect all-in-one PDA, phone, email, web browser tool. I also carry a charger (I should really get the iGo tip) and an extra battery. An example of its handiness: On Friday I needed to send a document to a client but didn't have access to wifi at the airport. So I saved the file (MS Word) on a secure digital card, popped the card in the phone, wrote an email to the client, attached the doc, and sent it along. Seamless. (In fact, as the phone came with DocumentsToGo, I could have edited the document on the phone, if I had so wanted.)
  
  
• A large leather Levenger Circa notebook. I'm going to write a separate post on how I use my Levenger, but suffice to say it's a wonderful tool. I started using Circa four or five years ago, and now they're the tool of choice across the firm.
  
  
• Cords: A charger for the iPod, a sync cable and charger for the Treo, a short Ethernet cable, a dial-up cable, and here's one most people don't carry: a headphone-to-RCA jack cable that lets me plug the iPod into any stereo. Nice if you have a stereo or radio in the hotel room with RCA jacks as you can listen to your music on the road without headphones. Incidentally, these cords all fit nicely in a mesh cord pack that comes with the Tumi bag.
  
  
• The road warrior's greatest companion: The IBM ThinkPad X40. Again, a pricey solution (like the Tumi), but with laptops, too, you get what you pay for. With the X40 you pay for small, light, and rugged. I and others in the firm have carried other laptops -- they just don't hold up like ThinkPads (although anybody can abuse a laptop into submission if they're not careful). Battery lasts forever. Wifi works seamlessly. It's a great traveling PC. (That said, if the world were a perfect place, I'd carry this ...)
  
  
• A packet of iKlear Apple Polish and klear kloths, which I use to keep the screen on the ThinkPad clean and bright (DON'T use water, ammonia, or alcohol ... they trash LCD screens).
  
  
• Client files and project materials. Anything I don't need on a given travel day I pack in my rollaboard suitcase (again Tumi: a Gen 4 Wheeled 22-inch Frequent Traveler ... absolutely incredible bag, especially for packing suits ... again, you get what you pay for), keeping my brief a bit lighter.
  
  
• Supplies: Index cards and pens. I'm very picky about pens, and my current favorite is the uni-ball Signo 207. It's a great gel pen; only downside is no cap, but I don't typically carry a pen in my pocket, so it's not a big deal. It's even refillable.
  
  
• Stationary. In the back pocket of my Levenger I carry some stationary and envelopes that I liberate from hotel room desks. Not a lot; maybe four or five of each. I'm a big believer of high-touch in a time of high-tech, and having some stationary on-hand makes it very easy to jot a handwritten note or letter to someone on the fly. Mailing is easy: just give your letter to the front desk of whatever hotel you might be frequenting and they'll send it for you (and usually not bother you for the postage). I also carry some office stationary in a plastic folder that I can use to print "official" documents on the road, should the need arise.
  
  
• Two clear plastic tie-top folders, both of which are part of my Getting Things Done system: One that's labeled "Home Inbox," where I put anything I want to process at home, and another labeled "Work Inbox," where I put anything I collect on the road that I should process at the office (receipts, business cards, notes to myself, etc.).
  
  
• Two standard plastic file folders, one labeled "Reference / Pending" where I stash any non-client-file materials I'll need for tasks during that trip, and one labeled "Read / Review" which is my read and review file.
  
  
• A book of crossword puzzles for times when I'm toast and don't feel like reading.

It's a lot, but it keeps me productive. When packed, the bag looks something like this. What's in your bag? I'd be interested to know.

Great Lines: David Allen

WHEN DAVID ALLEN PRESENTED AT OUR CONFERENCE last week I kept a running list of what I thought were his "great lines"[1]: one-liners he'd toss out that I wanted to remember and reference. (I do this often when I hear presenters or speakers; to see great lines by information design guru Edward Tufte, go here). Here are David's:

• My stuff is just advanced common sense.
• Decision making: It gets more constipated the higher up you get.
• My definition of successful executives is those who solve more problems than they create.
• From my experience, "team" means "nobody."
• Listen folks, there are certain times when you should not be talking to key people about important things.
• GSA: The gnawing sense of anxiety.
• Dumb and happy is the place to be.
• You don't want to be so stressed? Don't care so much.
• A lot of your competitive edge is your ability to deal with surprise.
• You can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.
• Work is a martial art.
• Quoting Peter Drucker: “Your toughest job is defining your work.”
• Stress comes from breaking agreements with yourself.
• If you keep track of agreements, you'll make fewer.
• When you break things down to the next action step, it’s really easy to do.
• You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not doing.
• Your mind doesn't have a mind.
• The biggest barrier to implementation is addiction to stress.
• If you’re not willing to do it all, don't bother doing anything.
• We start with the individual out.

1. GTD fans: I actually keep a list of great lines in the memo section of my PDA  / Outlook. It's a great way to capture lines from books, speeches, etc. that you want to remember later for inspiration, use in writing, etc.

MERLIN MANN has written two nice posts about to-do lists. I know: to-do lists--how much is there to know? Well, that depends. For some folks a to-do list is three things on a sticky; for others it's 300 items across 75 projects. Either way, it's my experience that with to-do lists, as with anything, there's always a smarter way.

Like always starting with a verb, for example. I don't know about you, but for me there's a big difference between looking at this list:

• Oil change
• Travel agent
• Inbox
• Driveway

... and this list:

• Call service dept.
• Call travel agent
• Process inbox
• Buy driveway sealant

The second is more active, and speaks more to my taking action, than does the first. That's because it starts with verbs. A little hack, but for many, and effective one.

Merlin nicely summarizes much of the extant "to-do list smartness" in his two-part article. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN MY WORLD know I've taken up David Allen's Getting Things Done model in the past year. I've found it beyond useful, and recommend his book to anyone interested in getting on top of their work flow.

If you pursue the method aggressively, though, it's easy to find yourself with several hundred "next actions" in your system, dozens others on your "someday" list, and still dozens more on your "projects" list. Each of these lists represents a different level of granularity. David uses an altitude metaphor to describe the difference in detail, and in my GTD world, the metaphor plays out like this:

• Next Actions = The "runway" of work that I do moment to moment
• Projects = 20,000 foot things that I'm tracking over time, each of which has several next actions
• Someday = 30,000 foot items that I may pull down to the Projects list at some point (or not)

A key part of David's system is a weekly review where you pull up to, oh, 10,000 feet or so to review what's what (I posted my weekly review here). It's extremely useful time. That said, I've also found need to keep an eye on items that require my focus over the next week, but which aren't useful to prioritize (as GTD users know, prioritization tends to be a lost cause: One call from an important person or one suddenly-needed business trip and your priorities are blown out of the water).

Toward this end I've started putting a "This Week's Priorities" item on my calendar. It's an un-timed appointment, so it rests at the top of my day in Outlook or on my Palm. In the notes field I list the things I have to be certain to accomplish for the week, hell or high water, regardless of the day. Here's this week's list as an example (names changed to protect the innocent):

• Draft compensation section for CRA playbook
• Update ERP journey document
• Draft and send [name's] cover to the ERP journey document
• Draft [name's]' [event] speech
• Finalize TMG agenda, activities, meals, and take-homes; notify presenters; and discuss agenda and take-homes with the Lodge
• Call [name]
• Draft [name's] sales summit comments
• Set coaching session with [name]
• Call [name]
• Talk to [name]
• Finalize and send TMG PPT deck
• Read Wharton article
• Book holiday travel
• Confirm if we should be meeting with [company] subsidiary leads

You'll notice that some are single next action items ("Call [name]") while others qualify as projects (more than one next action: "Finalize TMG agenda, activities, meals, and take-homes; notify presenters; and discuss agenda and take-homes with the Lodge"). That's fine by me; the next actions sit on their appropriate lists in my system, and the projects on the project list. Either way, I have a simple radar screen of things I need to be mindful of as I work through my days.

I put this list together during my weekly review (usually the Friday before). It's a nice way of separating the wheat from the chaff for all the next actions I could take for the next week, and as I noted above, the list sits as an un-timed appointment on my Monday calendar. As the days pass, I move it from day to day, so it's always at the top of my day's agenda.

I also get the satisfaction that comes with striking items from the list throughout the week, which as any list-keeper knows, is half the fun.

So that's one of my modifications of GTD: The "This Week's Priorities" list, AKA "Weekly Radar," AKA "Flight Panel." Hope it's useful to you.

My Weekly Review

Most of the folks in my day-to-day life know that earlier this year I began using David Allen's wonderful Getting Things Done approach to workflow and time management. I was so impressed, indeed, that I ended up connecting with David, primarily so I could more confidently and directly refer him to clients and counter parties.

I'm working on a post that's a look back on the four or so months that I've been using the approach, but one thing I really try to encourage others to start is the "weekly review": the hour or two that David suggests we spend each week to fly up to 30,000 feet or so, process inputs, and plan for what's coming. It's certainly the most valuable time of my week save that spent with Kate, and as I go into this week's review today (Friday afternoon is my preferred time, but my schedule won't permit that this week), I thought I'd post my modification of the weekly review process as an FYI.

I've posted my weekly review in the extended entry. The process typically takes one to two hours, presuming I can isolate myself from interruptions (for me that means cell phone forwarded to the office, office phone on "Do Not Disturb," email off, and door closed). As noted above, it's based on David's initial recommendation, modified some to reflect my world.

I also do a brief (30 minute) home review on Saturday or Sunday, where I process the home inbox, pay bills, etc. Between the two not only do I stay more ahead of the game, I make better use of my time, and as David encourages, I'm much more able to feel good about what I'm not doing at any particular moment.