Notes

Capture everything

• All inboxes –> one in-basket then go through this process:
  • What is it? Is it actionable?
    • Yes: What’s the next action:
      • Do it: if it takes less than 2 minutes
      • Delegate it: send to the person + add to waiting list
      • Defer it:
        • Calendar — for events, activities, deadlines, birthdays, holidays, time blocks
        • Reminder: for tasks with a due date or to do at a specific time/place
        • Next actions: things to do as soon as I can
    • No: decide where it belongs
      • Trash:
      • Someday/maybe: hold for review
      • Reference: retrievable when required

working with projects per GTD David Allen approach

Horizontal focus versus vertical focus: Horizontal focus gives you “relaxed control” via “(1) clearly defined outcomes (projects) and the next actions required to move them toward closure, and (2) reminders placed in a trusted system that is reviewed regularly.

Vertical focus: mostly informal, brainstorming. Usually you don’t need a formal structure or plan or very detailed outline. Sometimes, sure. But not usually.

Vertical focus usually doesn’t need formal models for project thinking, but it can help a lot to have an informal project-focusing model.

The purpose of planning out your projects: ease stress, clearer thinking, better results

“…when people do more planning, informally and naturally, they relieve a great deal of stress and obtain better results.”

Highlights

We need ways to validate and support our thinking, no matter how informal.

The goal is to get projects and situations sufficiently clear and under control to get them off your mind, and not lose any potentially useful ideas.

The Natural Planning Model - a series of steps that you naturally go through for a complex process - 1. Defining purpose and principles - 2. Outcome visioning - 3. Brainstorming - 4. Organizing - 5. Identifying next actions

Purpose = intention Principles = “the boundaries of your plan.” Vision = “an image of the what” — “the physical world’s looking, sounding, and feeling the ways that best fulfilled your purpose”
Brainstorming = the how phase of natural planning. “Your brain noticed a gap between what you were looking toward [the vision] and where you actually were at that time, and it began to resolve that cognitive dissonance by trying to fill in the blanks.”
Organizing = Sorting all the how elements that you’ve brainstormed. Components (logistics, people, location…). Priorities (“what matters most”). Sequences (first this, then that). Involves challenge, comparisons, and evaluation. Next action = The step to take to make the first component actually happen

Natural planning is not normal — most of us skip some key parts of the natural planning model.

?? Think about — what steps of this natural planning model do I tend to skip? Or hyperfocus on? And what is the result? How can I check myself in the future so I get better planning for better results and less stress?

Unnatural (or poor) planning models and traps

• Asking for a good idea — “If you’re waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won’t have many.”
• Many ideas are the key to coming up with good ideas
• Attempting to come up with HOW ideas before taking the first two steps (purpose and vision) is disastrous
• Reactive planning ⮕ you end up doing the planning process backwards (starting with urgent, unfocused action)

“…thinking in more effective ways about projects and situations can make things happen sooner, better, and more successfully.”

Purpose ⮕

“People love to win. If you’re not totally clear about the purpose of what you’re doing, you have no game to win.”

“Purpose defines success. It’s the primal reference point for any investment of time and energy…”

Purpose creates decision-making criteria. Very important. Otherwise your decisions are all over the place, incoherent, time-consuming…

Purpose defines success, creates decision-making criteria, aligns resources, motivates, clarifies focus, and expands options.

“When you really know the underlying why…it expands your thinking about how to make the desired result happen.”

If you’re not experiencing the (above) benefits of a purpose focus, then your purpose is not clear and specific enough.

Principles ⮕ the “prime criteria for driving and directing a project” “the standards and values you hold”

“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.”
Dee Hock, quoted in David Allen’s Getting Things Done

Vision/Outcome ⮕ What does this project look like in the physical world when it is complete?

“In order to most productively access the conscious and unconscious resources available to you, you must have a clear picture in your mind of what success would look, sound, and feel like.”

“When you focus on something..that focus instantly creates ideas and thought patterns you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Even your physiology will respond to an image in your head as if it were reality.”

“Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than”you” ever could by conscious thought. “You” supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.”
-Maxwell Maltz, in David Allen, Getting Things Done

“…something automatic and extraordinary happens in your mind when you create and focus on a clear picture of what you want.”

“…you won’t see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.”

Clear outcomes are powerful and necessary for achieving anything that is beyond what you have achieved before.

Brainstorming ⮕ the how mechanism of getting from here to the envisioned outcome

Let lots of ideas and random thoughts come up, and don’t edit — and don’t yet attempt to organize. Capture all the ideas at first. Mind mapping, list making, sketching, talking it out, etc

Get things out of your head and into a reviewable format

Basic principles of brainstorming:

• Don’t judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize.
• Go for quantity, not quality.
• Put analysis and organization in the background.
• Same way that the writing process needs to be separated into different phases. Brainstorming and organizing are not the same, and are often antithetical to each other (when trying to use both at the same time). One naturally usurps the other.

Organizing ⮕ this is when you evaluate and structure all the brainstormed ideas and thoughts

The key steps to brainstorming:

• Identify the significant pieces
• Sort by (one or more): - components - sequences - priorities
• Detail to the required degree

Next Actions ⮕ now what do I do to get started?

“…this kind of grounded, reality-based thinking, combined with clarification of the desired outcome, forms the critical component for defining and clarifying what our real work is.”