A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I enjoyed a regular "refresher" to get re-connected with David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. At the time, my touchstone was to listen to David's 8-CD series, "Getting Things Done Fast," which was a recording of one of his live seminars. I later found that my copy of this wonderful program is quite rare, and they have been out of print for at least 2.5 years. That's a shame, since the program was a great resource. I've loaned it out to a few close friends, but that doesn't scale very well.
You are no longer out of luck
I've got good news, though. I recently ordered a copy of a new offering from David and the gang - it's called "GTDLive!" and it is a 10-CD recording of a live seminar that David conducted about GTD. At $395 US, it's not cheap but it is...
- cheaper than going to a live seminar;
- better than the old GTD Fast set since it comes with a bit more material and a set of laminated GTD templates;
- reusable on-demand, any time you need a refresher.
I just finished listening to this over the course of my daily commutes (it took over a week to get through it all - there is a lot here), and it was a shot in the arm to get me back on the wagon with some of the GTD habits I've been neglecting.
Check it out - and you, too, can have David Allen talking to you with the push of a button.
P.S. GTD Connect members get a pretty good discount on this program.
[Updated]
P.P.S. If you already have the original GTD Fast set, I don't think this one is worth the extra cash since they are very similar in the fundamentals of GTD. However, if you don't have the old one I think you'll love this new GTDLive! set.
Read More
I can't believe I never knew about it, but I just found out about a wonderful resource for frustrated air travelers. This is particularly handy for those of us in the northern hemisphere, since we're getting into the height of over-booked, under-experienced travel: summer vacations.
The resource I learned about is the "Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights" (CAPBOR). They can be reached in the US by phone at 1-877-FLYERS6 (1-877-359-3776), and they are staffed by volunteers who specialize in helping you deal with problems you encounter during air travel. Add it to your address book, just in case.
CAPBOR helps you understand your rights, formulate your requests in the best way to circumvent rigid airline policies, and if you have a canceled flight they will even help you find out flight status / alternate flights, help you book hotels and car rentals, and find out weather information.
You can find out more about CAPBOR and their mission at flyersrights.com, and learn about the services they can offer. They also have an excellent blog at strandedpassengers.blogspot.com. Both are well worth checking out.
Related items:
Read More
You may not have noticed it since I 'pre-wrote' some posts here that went live automatically, but last week I was on a 200-mile horse trek with my son and a bunch of other folks. It was an awesome learning experience, with no phone, no email, no electricity, etc.
There was pletny of time to work hard, reflect, enjoy the scenery, and recharge on that trip. There was also a ton of new things to learn.
I had the chance to share a few insights from that trip in this month's "Rapid Fire Learning" roundup at Joyful Jubilant Learning (JJL). Click through to JJL find out what I learned, and please share your top 5 learnings for June in the comments of that post.
Read More
I just found out that there is a free teleseminar coming up on July 9th for Dan Roam's book, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. Joining Dan on the call will be Seth Godin, Anil Dash and Rich Sloan so it will be very good, I'm sure.
If you recall, I reviewed The Back of the Napkin last week and I think it's awesome (that's Dan over there on the left).
You can register for the free seminar or find out more at Dan's blog.
Read MoreYapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) which I reviewed in the past, is launching some new capabilities today. To refresh your memory, the things Yapta is best at are:
- helping you track airfare prices to get the best deal (you get alerts when the price drops) and
- helping you get money back from the airlines if the price drops after you buy your tickets (again, they alert you and provide instructions for how to get a refund or a voucher from the airline)
I've been using this for a while and, thanks to "best" #2, I've gotten several hundred dollars back form United when my airfare dropped on one of my family's vacation trips.
What's new today?
In the past, you had to use a browser add-on to get Yapta's functionality, which meant you used a bunch of other web sites to search for flights and used the add-on to "tag" the trips you want to watch.
Now, they've unified several capabilities into a web experience that doesn't require a browser add-on. You can, through their web site:
- quickly search for the cheapest flights based on your saved preference profile,
- start tracking price fluctuations for a number of routes and flight combinations all at once (great for planning trips that are a good distance in the future), and
- get alerts via email when fares drop or fall below a "target" price that you can configure.
After you purchase your ticket, the site will alert you when you're elegibile for a travel credit from the airline. That's how I got my vouchers from United - and it was dirt simple, since I followed the instructions Yapta included in their email.
They've also added some other convenience features like storing your frequent flier numbers, information on your unused tickets, and information on your travel credits.
There's much more than I've described here - check it out yourself -- for free -- at Yapta today.
Read More
