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Kelly Forrister http://www.davidco.com/podcasts/play/15.html http://www.davidco.com/audio/KellyOrganizingPlaygroundFeb19.2008.mp3 Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:27:07 PST 55:08 Get a Life! is the title of a feature in the current issue of Fortune Magazine. GTD goes toe-to-toe with other coaching methods, with predictably great results. Business Week has also recently published a feature article about David Allen and GTD, entitled Getting Serious About Getting Things Done. There's sure to be more GTD in the press as we approach the publication of David's new book, Making It All Work, in December, and the GTD Global Summit a few months from now. - The David Allen Company Team Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Get a Life! is the title of a feature in the current issue of Fortune Magazine. GTD goes toe-to-toe with other coaching methods, with predictably great results.

Business Week has also recently published a feature article about David Allen and GTD, entitled Getting Serious About Getting Things Done.

There's sure to be more GTD in the press as we approach the publication of David's new book, Making It All Work, in December, and the GTD Global Summit a few months from now.

- The David Allen Company Team


Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

]]> info@davidco.com (David Allen) http://www.davidco.com/whatsup.php Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:31:48 PDT GTD Productivity Getting Things Done David Allen DavidAllen Time Management http://www.davidco.com/whatsup.php?=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e I recently presented a seminar where a participant brought up the project of getting her daughter into college. Since that was a current project for me as well, I wrote to her about how I applied the Natural Planning Model to this project. For those of you unfamiliar with the Natural Planning Model, it is David Allen's approach to getting projects creatively under control. The specific details of this five-phase approach can be found starting on page 54 of David Allen's book, Getting Things Done. Here is the email I sent to this participant regarding her project: Dear Sara, I wanted to share with you what I did to help my son with his efforts to get into college. Like your daughter, my son is a senior looking at schools. The deadlines for college applications had been approaching, and he had not completed any applications. In response, I took him through the Natural Planning Model. Specifically, here's what I did with him: 1) Purpose I asked him to tell me why he wanted to go to college. At first he started with reasons that seemed to belong to others, but I encouraged him to get real with it — why did he really want to go to college? Was it to learn a trade? Develop strong friendships? Have an adventure? Meet new people? Enhance his education by broadening it or giving it more depth? 2) Guiding Principles I asked my son what was important to him as we went through this process. He said that he wanted the process to be easy and fluid, and it was also important to him that we do it in a spirit of cooperation. 3) Vision Once we got his Purpose and Guiding Principles clear (and I had him write all this down by the way), I asked him what his ideal scene was for college as best as he could describe it in that moment. I used the following cues to stimulate his thinking: - Large or small school? - Metropolitan or rural setting? - East coast? West coast? In between? Or abroad? - Large classes or small intimate learning settings? - Male/Female ratio? - Living on/off campus? - What is his major? - What will he know at the end of four years? - What types of courses will he take? - Athletics? - Drama? - Other extra-curriculars? — he came up with wanting to be close to ski areas (!) - Political/ideological/religious leaning of the school? 4) Brainstorm We skipped this phase because he already had plenty of schools he was interested in. For kids who haven't yet identified schools of interest, I'd encourage them to take a very broad look at every school that holds any appeal to them, using tools like Barron's, etc. 5) Organize I then had my son rank each of the schools on his preliminary list on a scale from 1 to 10, based upon the criteria he himself had established in the Vision section. When we looked at the schools ranked 6 and above, we realized we had too many. When we only looked at schools ranked 7 and above, we came up with 10, which seemed more manageable. I'd also recommend that students apply the idea that most college counselors encourage — to include a few "fall-back" schools, as well as at least one that would be a stretch for them in terms of the average GPA and SAT scores. 6) Next Actions There were a few schools for which my son lacked sufficient information to be able to rank them, so that became a next action for him — to take "virtual tours" and see what number he would assign based on that information. There were only a few, however, so the next actions we identified were to determine the application requirements for each school in his top ten and set them into a grid so that we could see which applications were due when, and what needed to be completed. This process worked very well. Not only did it get my son moving toward getting his applications done, but it also shifted the energy that we all had around it from drudgery to joy and anticipation of the adventure ahead. I would love to hear from any of you who might try this with your high-school student. I can be reached at wayne@davidco.com.

Here is the email I sent to this participant regarding her project:

Dear Sara,

I wanted to share with you what I did to help my son with his efforts to get into college. Like your daughter, my son is a senior looking at schools. The deadlines for college applications had been approaching, and he had not completed any applications. In response, I took him through the Natural Planning Model. Specifically, here's what I did with him:

1) Purpose

I asked him to tell me why he wanted to go to college. At first he started with reasons that seemed to belong to others, but I encouraged him to get real with it — why did he really want to go to college? Was it to learn a trade? Develop strong friendships? Have an adventure? Meet new people? Enhance his education by broadening it or giving it more depth?

2) Guiding Principles

I asked my son what was important to him as we went through this process. He said that he wanted the process to be easy and fluid, and it was also important to him that we do it in a spirit of cooperation.

3) Vision

Once we got his Purpose and Guiding Principles clear (and I had him write all this down by the way), I asked him what his ideal scene was for college as best as he could describe it in that moment. I used the following cues to stimulate his thinking:

- Large or small school?
- Metropolitan or rural setting?
- East coast? West coast? In between? Or abroad?
- Large classes or small intimate learning settings?
- Male/Female ratio?
- Living on/off campus?
- What is his major?
- What will he know at the end of four years?
- What types of courses will he take?
- Athletics?
- Drama?
- Other extra-curriculars? — he came up with wanting to be close to ski areas (!)
- Political/ideological/religious leaning of the school?

4) Brainstorm

We skipped this phase because he already had plenty of schools he was interested in. For kids who haven't yet identified schools of interest, I'd encourage them to take a very broad look at every school that holds any appeal to them, using tools like Barron's, etc.

5) Organize

I then had my son rank each of the schools on his preliminary list on a scale from 1 to 10, based upon the criteria he himself had established in the Vision section. When we looked at the schools ranked 6 and above, we realized we had too many. When we only looked at schools ranked 7 and above, we came up with 10, which seemed more manageable. I'd also recommend that students apply the idea that most college counselors encourage — to include a few "fall-back" schools, as well as at least one that would be a stretch for them in terms of the average GPA and SAT scores.

6) Next Actions

There were a few schools for which my son lacked sufficient information to be able to rank them, so that became a next action for him — to take "virtual tours" and see what number he would assign based on that information. There were only a few, however, so the next actions we identified were to determine the application requirements for each school in his top ten and set them into a grid so that we could see which applications were due when, and what needed to be completed.

This process worked very well. Not only did it get my son moving toward getting his applications done, but it also shifted the energy that we all had around it from drudgery to joy and anticipation of the adventure ahead.

I would love to hear from any of you who might try this with your high-school student. I can be reached at wayne@davidco.com.

]]> wayne@davidco.com (Wayne Pepper) http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner/Wayne_Pepper/article82.html Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:51:22 PDT GTD Productivity Getting Things Done David Allen DavidAllen Time Management LifeHacks Life Hacks Self-Help Self-Improvement Priorities Tips Time Savers http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner/Wayne_Pepper/article82.html Coach's Corner A foolproof way to create resistance to stretching into new and wonderful places for you is to maintain a sense of over commitment. And one of the surest ways to allow that feeling is to lose track of what your commitments are. The Weekly Review -- done regularly over time -- awakens your self-regulating mechanism. Knowing how overcommitted you are -- really -- is very different than being afraid of how overcommitted you are! -David Allen



]]> kelly@davidco.com (Kelly) http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2008/08/overcommitted.html Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:55:54 PDT Food for Thought http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2008/08/overcommitted.html Kelly's Blog Today I had the pleasure of spending some time with David Allen and some of our other team members as David was the opening keynote speaker at Office 2.0, a conference dedicated to exploring how technology and next-generation web applications are changing the way we work and collaborate. Office 2.0 is all about exploring and discovering the future of online productivity & collaboration. Imagine a future where all of the applications, data, and collaboration lives in "the cloud," a metaphor for the increasingly ubiquitous web. In the future, instead of using your computer to get to the web, you'll be using the web to get to your computer. Considering that most of the coaching that I do now is for clients who are on either Outlook, Lotus Notes, or Entourage, I felt a bit like a technology dinosaur at this event. It's not clear to me exactly what directions this kind of technology will take the implementation of GTD - but the possibilities are exciting. Here are a couple interesting links if you want to explore more about what the future of "office" might be for you. Here's a great little article with seven key definitions of Enterprise 2.0 concepts from E20portal.com, a great source for information and research about this area. Google, with their Google Apps continues to roll-out new user-friendly applications that reside in the cloud, thereby helping you share, collaborate, and access all of the things you are working on. Here's a posting from InfoWorld with more perspective on how far they've brought us in being able to do our essential work through web applications. Cool stuff.



Today I had the pleasure of spending some time with David Allen and some of our other team members as David was the opening keynote speaker at Office 2.0, a conference dedicated to exploring how technology and next-generation web applications are changing the way we work and collaborate.

Office 2.0 is all about exploring and discovering the future of online productivity & collaboration. Imagine a future where all of the applications, data, and collaboration lives in "the cloud," a metaphor for the increasingly ubiquitous web. In the future, instead of using your computer to get to the web, you'll be using the web to get to your computer. Considering that most of the coaching that I do now is for clients who are on either Outlook, Lotus Notes, or Entourage, I felt a bit like a technology dinosaur at this event. It's not clear to me exactly what directions this kind of technology will take the implementation of GTD - but the possibilities are exciting.

Here are a couple interesting links if you want to explore more about what the future of "office" might be for you.

Here's a great little article with seven key definitions of Enterprise 2.0 concepts from E20portal.com, a great source for information and research about this area.

Google, with their Google Apps continues to roll-out new user-friendly applications that reside in the cloud, thereby helping you share, collaborate, and access all of the things you are working on. Here's a posting from InfoWorld with more perspective on how far they've brought us in being able to do our essential work through web applications.

Cool stuff.





]]> michael.dolan@davidco.com (mdolan) http://www.davidco.com/blogs/michael/2008/09/what_will_our_office_be_tomorr_1.html Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:36:19 PDT Perspective http://www.davidco.com/blogs/michael/2008/09/what_will_our_office_be_tomorr_1.html mdolan's Blog