GTD made visual

At Zen Habits Massive GTD Resource List, I stumbled upon three great workflow charts that make my attempt at understanding what GTD looks like appear quite pitiful.

GTDvisual

Whoever is behind them has done a wonderful job of making GTD visual. See Workflow Charts saved at the GTD Pinterest board: Start with Collection, Processing & Organizing, then check out Daily Review and Actions and Weekly Review and Actions. Amazingly helpful.

Scott Moehring created another excellent GTD advanced workflow chart (initially discovered at DIYPlanner) The tips at the bottom are especially neat, don’t miss them.

The Concepts of GTD graphic (pdf) from Brevedy is another one to check out. An article at medium expands on this one.

Learn more about GTD essentials and GTD and me.

Posted in productivity

Discovery of the day

I discovered Exceptional Dental Practice via The Happiness Project. You might be thinking about now, “why would I be interested in a blog about dental practice?” And so I’ll tell you: great writing on topics that range from customer service to teamwork and communication. She jokes about how boring the name is, and that she should have called it something more like Oral Fixation! The Happiness Project has a wide variety of well-written information too.

Posted in Ideas That Work

Decision Making

woman sitting in front of macbook

Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com

Quote: “96% of organizing is decision-making” from Deborah Kawshima.

Oh, my, goodness…no wonder I have trouble with this! So much to do, so little time – how to decide whether to take on a project? How to decide where to start? Managing time is about organizing activities. Problem solving is decision making and decision making is problem solving. Problems are projects.

“Everything on your desk that’s not moving is a failure to make a decision.” -John White.

Decision Making Simplified

  • Define the problem
  • Expert advice: ask
  • Compile information: research
  • Inspire ideas for possible solutions
  • Decide and plan
  • Execute the plan and evaluate success

Beware:

Things to consider:

  • Every decision involves risk. What’s the worst that could happen?
  • Determine the importance of factors that will affect the decision
  • Realize you may not be able to obtain all the facts
  • Listen to your gut feelings
  • Ask others for their opinions
  • Take a break to look for fresh perspectives
  • Try it out with the option of changing your mind
  • Decide to postpone a decision if there’s no time pressure
  • Take your time with big decisions
  • Learn from mistakes

Tools

Life With Confidence Quotes: “Every decision you make…is not a decision about what to do. It’s a decision about Who You Are.” -Neale Donald Walsch

Posted in productivity

Create results

Letting Go

Tonight I attended an event where mystery author Nancy Pickard spoke about writing. (If you enjoy mysteries, try one of her books for an enjoyable read.) One point that she made stuck out to me: the magic of creativity happens best when we let go…just let go of our outlines and plans and follow where our imagination leads us.

Slow Leadership has some thoughtful musings about How Useful is the Pareto Principle? Perhaps the 80/20 rule is more useful in hindsight review of what worked well (and what didn’t) than in predicting future results. Another article on “Hamburger Management” Revealed discusses how doing everything as quickly and cheaply as possible leads to less than stellar results. Focus resources on top priorities to create spectacular results.

Posted in productivity

Discovery of the day

Two powerful productivity posts from Scott Ginsburg, the Nametag Guy: What’s in Your Wallet? and Daily Appointments with Yourself.

Posted in productivity

What does GTD look like?

Part of my difficulty with David Allen’s Getting Things Done system has been understanding where to place different actions within the system: on which list does this item go?

  • Date sensitive – Calendar
  • More than one step – Project list
  • An action step for a project – Next action list
  • An idea – Someday/Maybe list
  • Pending – Waiting for list

This is how I imagine GTD looks:

GTDvisual

See also GTD made visual, GTD and me, GTD mini-system, Paper Planner Tool for Weekly Review, and GTD Essentials

Posted in productivity

Discoveries of the Week

A Different Version of the Four Quadrants by Mark Forster at Get Everything Done

Develop a balanced you at LifeOptimizer.com

Zen Habits Single Best Productivity Tip (Simplify)

Posted in productivity

To everything there is a season

…a time for every purpose under the sun. ecclesiastes

-Live with everything you’ve got, and love with all of your heart

Posted in personal development

Symphony

I’d like to share this piece that was written by Mike around 1990. It was read at his funeral yesterday.

Symphony. ..

Last week we went on our long planned and much needed vacation camping trip. For many it would not have been much of a trip, since we traveled no further than Melvern Lake, but for us it was great. While there, late one afternoon at dusk, we went for a family walk around the camp grounds. While walking, our nine year old, Richie, scolding Rosemary and myself for talking, making too much noise. ‘When you “get away from it all” you’re supposed to leave your work at home, but mom and dad on this occasion were guilty of talking about business while we walked. The sun had gone down. It was that twilight time, with nightfall and darkness close at hand. We continued walking and talking, but Richie persisted, saying something about us making too much noise. He couldn’t hear the symphony. Symphony, what symphony we inquired. Our Richie stopped, stood before us, like an orchestra conductor.

He said, “listen, over there is one part, there another, and there another. They are all playing together, a symphony. We paused and listened. “Don’t you hear the music, the different parts” he asked us? Finally it dawned on us what he was talking about, what he heard. He was talking about the sounds around us, the crickets and things and how it was music, a symphony. It was something we would have missed, if it was not for our fourth grader. Something special.

Too often, we do not take the time from “important things” to stop and listen to the music, the symphony that only God can make. It is always around us, playing every second
of every day. If you take the time to listen, and let the music into your heart it becomes easy to see just how small the wants of mankind; power, control, money and foolish pride, really are. How small we really are, when compared to the symphony… .

Posted in personal development

The How of the Story

I’ve been reading a book that says there are only so many plots for stories. But not to worry, the thing that interests us is the how. How will the guy get the girl? How will the hero triumph?

I have read some things about the law of attraction that say the how of something will take shape once we have defined what we want and imagined how we will feel when we have it. The Masters of the Secret with Bill Harris says that when you focus on what you want, you develop ideas about how to get it, you notice resources that could help, you become motivated to act and develop inner qualities. At times this may seem effortless, but it’s not.

The thing that interests us is the how. How can we accomplish the desired goal? What actions do we need to take?

Posted in personal development
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