Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Slipstreaming and GTD

intr.v. slip·streamed, slip·stream·ing, slip·streams

To drive or cycle in the slipstream of a vehicle ahead.

I'm doing a bit of slipstreaming myself as I go through my homemade GTD refresher course. I've looked through some of my old bookmarks of Getting Things Done articles, and rediscovered some gems about the joys and challenges of GTD. In case you are on the same sort of quest, I thought I'd share a few:

Anyway, these are a few of the sorts of links that have kept me moving on the "just one more click before I go to bed" routine for the past couple of hours. Hope you get something out of them. And when you've used these links up, if you want more good stuff, click around on my link list over there on the right. Some smart folks in there.

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What's the Next Inaction

Spring is in the air, and I'm up to some spring cleaning. Earlier this week, I mentioned that I felt the need to re-ground my self in the basics of GTD. I'm still listening to the Getting Things Fast audio and it's still helping.

As I emerge from my Stuck Place in the quicksand, I wanted to share a blinding flash I've had.

It seems that my kung fu has gotten rusty. I've drifted away from defining next actions crisply enough, and have been defining a bunch of near-actions instead. I'm now calling them 'next inactions' for lack of a better descriptor.

I'm sharing this because you may have some too.

What's a next inaction? An example from my list is "Make dentist appointment." Sounds remarkably 'next action-like' doesn't it? But, it wasn't on my @calls list, didn't have the phone number associated with it in any way, etc.

I've found quite a few of those. Along with ambiguous things like "John comp" - what am I supposed to do there?

The solution is easy, and once upon a time I did it pretty consistently. Just answer the questions:

  • What's the successful outcome?
  • What the physical next action with no dependencies?

Nothing to it, right? ... Back on the horse.

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[Updated] Re-grounding in GTD

I decided it's time for a refresher on GTD, since I've found myself letting the piles in my inbox get a bit taller lately, I've tended to only empty them partway, etc. - in other words, I feel like some of my old, bad habits are encroaching.

So, I started listening to David Allen's Getting Things Done Fast audio program again last night. It's helping - after listening for the first half hour or so, it was a tangible shift. I went from, "Man, I have so much to do..." to "OK, I can do this - I've done it before - it's not that hard."

By the way - my trigger point was that I realized I was starting to look for yet another organizational tool. Been down that road before - realized I was compromising my process, and it wasn't really a tool issue. And, lo and behold, a few tracks in David says that "the price of all this is eternal vigilance" or something to that effect. No kidding.

If you feel like you're getting a bit 'loosey goosey' on GTD, dust off your copy of GTD Fast and re-ground yourself - it just might help.

Update:

Further commentary on this - I mentioned I got a Planner Pad a few posts back. Looking at making the transition to paper is what made me realize I was looking for a silver bullet. While it is a fabulous tool as a paper-based system, I am an electronic kind of guy due to the information I deal with all the time. I'm going to try to incorporate some of the "funnel" concepts into my routine, but I'm sticking with Outlook, the GTD Add-In, Goodlink, and KeySuite as the core of my system.

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Timeless leadership lessons

I've mentioned in the past that I'm a big fan of Audible, and I have been sprinkling audio books in with my 'normal' reading fare. As part of my 2-book-per-month credit as an Audible Premium Listener, I recently downloaded an audio book called "The 21 Most Powerful Minutes In A Leader's Day" by John Maxwell. It's available in audio via Audible, or in print form or on cassette from Powell's.

When I initially downloaded it, I thought it was going to be another take on the "start your day by planning what you want to do or you'll end up doing a bunch of random stuff." Boy, was I surprised, and pleasantly so.

If you have something against the Bible, this one may not be for you. Otherwise, read on.

This book is a series of short chapters that take stories from the Bible and relate them to leadership lessons that are very thought provoking, and quite poignant.  The "21 Minutes..." in the title refers to the suggestion that you listen to one chapter a day and reflect on it. That process should take about 21 minutes a day.

For the last week or so, I've been listening to one of these chapters each day during my morning commute (on my lovely iPod Shuffle, of course, which is connected to my car stereo). I really look forward to the chapter each morning now, and the thinking about the concepts have already helped me out at work. The first chapter, for example, is about courage and breaking through your current limitations as a leader, and uses the contrast between the leadership styles of David and Saul to illustrate its points.

If you don't mind getting a bit of business teaching from stories written thousands of years ago, I recommend this one. Even if the Bible isn't your thing, why not give it a try? After all, I'm not Hindu, but I have learned a lot from Ghandi.

One other thing I realized after the fact: this book is published by Michael Hyatt's company - if you haven't checked out his "Working Smart" blog, please do. He has some great productivity tips over there.

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[Updated] I'm a shuffler...

Update, April 10, 2005 - yet another reason to become a shuffler:

The other day, someone asked me how long the battery lasts on my Shuffle. I had to say, "I don't know." Which is, of course, the best answer I can hope for as a roving gadget freak!

OK, my latest gadget is really cool. I have the 1 Gig version of the iPod Shuffle and I really like it. It's very tiny (fits in a pocket with no trouble), and holds a ton of audiobooks from Audible (I have a Premium subscription, which gets me 2 books a month). You can also use it for music, of course - it works with iTunes, like the other iPods.

What do I like about this? It's very small, for one. I have a "normal" iPod, and I find I sometimes leave it home when my laptop bag gets too heavy.

Also, the battery life is very impressive, and it recharges directly from my USB port - no other cables to carry around.

Finally, it is dirt simple to use. The controls are so easy to learn.

Why don't you give it a try? The price is reasonable - $99 or so for the 512 meg version, and about $150 for the 1 Gig version.

The link above gets you to Amazon - you can also get them at Target, Circuit City, and a number of other places.

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