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.

 

Getting Things Done (GTD): The turning point

Last year, I began a sort of "vision quest" to get more productive, organized, and focused. I've been on and off the wagon quite a bit during that time, but it's starting to take me less time to get back on the wagon.

For me, the breakthrough was finding David Allen's "Getting Things Done" - a book and much more. Like a lot of the people I know, I've been a bit of a "time management system junkie" for a long time (since my first Franklin planner and training course in the late 80's). Franklin (then Covey, then Franklin Covey, etc.) worked well on a number of levels, but it just didn't scale.

David's system is phenomenal for cutting through all the crap and getting you to a different plane of focus. If you haven't been exposed to it, Getting Things Done (GTD for short) is all about getting tasks (and all the other information that you need to track) out of your head and into a "trusted system" where you can deal with it on purpose. The key is identifying the "Next Action" for every project, wannado, gottado in your life. So, where do you start? Here are the first actions I recommend:

1. Buy and read David Allen's book Getting Things Done (see my link under "Recommended Reading" to find it) - this will get you through the basics

2. Buy and listen to the CD "Getting Things Done Fast" available from the store at David Allen's web site - this will really make it all "click" for you  (at least it did for me)

Stay tuned here and I'll share some of the other hard lessons I've learned on this vision quest of mine in hopes that it helps you find your path more quickly.

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Living transparently

I was in a training session this week run by Barry Rhein, a personal and professional mentor of mine. In the session, he talked about something I'm beginning to think of as "transparent living." Even though the session was focused on creating a holistic account plan from a sales perspective, it forked off into a discussion about the importance of having specific written goals.

This has been a big focus area for me lately, as I'm one of those people who "doesn't want to be restricted by written goals" (or at least that's the way I used to describe it, until I realized I was just in denial). Part of my mental wiring makes me hungry for new information and inputs, and I liked the flexibility of not having a defined set of priorities. At this stage in my life, it's becoming clear that I really need to focus my time and energy in fewer areas to increase my impact on the world I live in, and written goals are central to that.

What really knocked me upside the head was Barry's questioning around how widely our personal and professional goals are shared and communicated. For example, he asked if I had written goals that were hanging up in my house for the whole family to see so they can understand where my priorities are at this point in my life. Wow...

That represents a big shift for me, and I'm working on my plan (and my gumption) to get there. I guess I should probably write that plan down...

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