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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 For a few weeks this summer, David Allen will be contributing to the Business Week blog on time management. David has already posted on how to get that vacation experience throughout the year, and why "too much stuff to deal with" is A Mislabeled Problem. More posts to come. You can also watch and listen to a new interview with David on Fast Company's Work Fast TV show. - The David Allen Company Team The art of life lies in a constant readjustment of our surroundings. - Kakuzo Okakura
Business Week blog on time management.

David has already posted on how to get that vacation experience throughout the year, and why "too much stuff to deal with" is A Mislabeled Problem. More posts to come.

You can also watch and listen to a new interview with David on Fast Company's Work Fast TV show.

- The David Allen Company Team


The art of life lies in a constant readjustment of our surroundings.

- Kakuzo Okakura

]]> info@davidco.com (David Allen) http://www.davidco.com/whatsup.php Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:22:38 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 Easy accessibility to your GTD lists is key. If your brain thinks it will take longer to get something onto a list than to hold on to it in psychic ram, it will have no incentive to let go of it. For those of you who are fans of Google spreadsheet as a GTD list manager, a quick way to get actions on to your lists is to create a "form" for new entries. What a form will do is give you a few simple fields to capture next actions. What you enter will automatically get filed onto your spreadsheet (setup as GTD lists) in the proper format. No need to even navigate to your spreadsheet. Here's how to set that up: 1. Once you've created a Google spreadsheet, open up your spreadsheet on your desktop 2. Go to the sheet you are using for next actions (will be easier if all next actions are in one sheet) 3. Click on the Form tab 4. Click on Create a form 5. All of the columns in your current worksheet are captured as a form and will open in a new window 6. Once in your new form, hover over the Categories question, select Edit, and create it as a drop-down list instead creating options for each of your contexts (quick fill on the first letter of the list name will work if you don't use the @ at the beginning.) 7. Change the Next Actions question to the format of Paragraph text for more space to type 8. When you are done making changes, click Save, then Next, choose recipients. You don't actually have to send it to anyone. Just create a bookmark for the unique URL you see there. I added it as a button on my Firefox toolbar called "Add Actions." What this gives you is a simple web page that includes all of the fields you need for capturing a next action on the fly: For those of you with web access on your phones, this could make getting things onto your lists much faster and easier. If you primarily work from your desktop, keep an open window for this form when you start your day so that you can easily toggle over to it.

For those of you who are fans of Google spreadsheet as a GTD list manager, a quick way to get actions on to your lists is to create a "form" for new entries. What a form will do is give you a few simple fields to capture next actions. What you enter will automatically get filed onto your spreadsheet (setup as GTD lists) in the proper format. No need to even navigate to your spreadsheet.

Here's how to set that up:
1. Once you've created a Google spreadsheet, open up your spreadsheet on your desktop
2. Go to the sheet you are using for next actions (will be easier if all next actions are in one sheet)
3. Click on the Form tab
4. Click on Create a form
5. All of the columns in your current worksheet are captured as a form and will open in a new window
6. Once in your new form, hover over the Categories question, select Edit, and create it as a drop-down list instead creating options for each of your contexts (quick fill on the first letter of the list name will work if you don't use the @ at the beginning.)
7. Change the Next Actions question to the format of Paragraph text for more space to type
8. When you are done making changes, click Save, then Next, choose recipients. You don't actually have to send it to anyone. Just create a bookmark for the unique URL you see there. I added it as a button on my Firefox toolbar called "Add Actions."

What this gives you is a simple web page that includes all of the fields you need for capturing a next action on the fly:



For those of you with web access on your phones, this could make getting things onto your lists much faster and easier. If you primarily work from your desktop, keep an open window for this form when you start your day so that you can easily toggle over to it.





]]> kelly@davidco.com (Kelly) http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2008/07/gtd_google_spre.html Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:46:39 PDT Tips and Tricks http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2008/07/gtd_google_spre.html Kelly's Blog This is one of Maxwell's first photo-shoots. Spittin' image of me isn't he!? I'll be taking off a couple of months from blogging to take care of Maxwell. Here's a bit that I wrote in the dizziness of the early hours of my wife's labor (and forgot to publish at the time): Talk about open loops. The past few hours, as we work through these early contractions and watch them get more regular and frequent, has been like an open loop fest. Any uncollected (and many previously unconscious) things I've had my attention on have been bubbling up like bubbles in a champaign glass. Noticing my own psyche spin with excitement and wonder and nervousness as I cycle through my own anticipation and support AnneLise through her own journey and Max's transition to this world. Can't wait to hold him in my hands. Michael


This is one of Maxwell's first photo-shoots. Spittin' image of me isn't he!? I'll be taking off a couple of months from blogging to take care of Maxwell.

Here's a bit that I wrote in the dizziness of the early hours of my wife's labor (and forgot to publish at the time):

Talk about open loops. The past few hours, as we work through these early contractions and watch them get more regular and frequent, has been like an open loop fest. Any uncollected (and many previously unconscious) things I've had my attention on have been bubbling up like bubbles in a champaign glass. Noticing my own psyche spin with excitement and wonder and nervousness as I cycle through my own anticipation and support AnneLise through her own journey and Max's transition to this world.

Can't wait to hold him in my hands.

Michael

]]> michael.dolan@davidco.com (mdolan) http://www.davidco.com/blogs/michael/2008/04/taking_some_time_to_orient_our.html Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:14:26 PDT Self-Observations http://www.davidco.com/blogs/michael/2008/04/taking_some_time_to_orient_our.html mdolan's Blog