Practice This

 
by ralphbijker

David Allen – the man behind the GTD brand and the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – offers the GTD Mastering Workflow seminar. Here is the promise:

What You’ll Learn

• Highly effective and simple techniques for handling email, paperwork and projects.
• How to implement specific action steps to make sure that you are aware of all of your commitments (to yourself and others)
• How to capture what has your attention, and place it into a system that you can trust – day in and day out
• How to clarify and organize your work, and reduce your sense of overwhelm in the process
• How to file paperwork, reading, emails, notes, and more – so that you can find it all again where and when you need it

Whoa! That’s exactly what I need! … Or do I?

As a field consultant I have developed my personal approaches when I was working for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). In this post I am reflecting on my approach to the workflow and the techniques I am using.

Handling Email

There are 3 simple principles I follow:

• Zero Inbox policy. It prevents wasting time on scanning and rescanning your Inbox. More info: Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules.
• Reduce places to look for emails. Looking for emails in fewer places saves time on jumping over different folders looking for the right email. I have three places where emails leave: Inbox, Projects folder, Archive. More info: Time Management: Boost Personal Performance With Caching Techniques
• Read email proactively, not reactively. Reading emails is distracting unless you do it intentionally. Most people read emails as it comes following some kind of notification. That’s reactive approach and it is distracting. Remove email notifications, stop distraction, read emails proactively. More info: Remove Distracting Email Notifications – All Of Them.

Managing My Attention and Commitments

To manage my attention and commitments I use the following 3 rules that focus me on stuff that matters, prioritization, and time management:

• Stuff that matters. First I identify stuff that matters, my life projects. It is related to work, family, personal development, etc. More info: Define Your Life projects – Design And Implementation
• Prioritization rules. I adopted Covey’s prioritization rules that are based on Urgent/Important attributes. Extremely simple and practical. More info: Prioritize What You Do – Steven Covey Way [The Way That Works]
• Time management. My approach for time management is simple – I treat it as a budget. Allocate time for stuff that matters upfront, then execute against the plan. More info: Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget.

Organizing Work

Once I identified the stuff that matters and allocated time budget for it I use annual, monthly, weekly, and daily rituals to organize my work:

• Annual plan. Annual plan helps me identify my annual time budget.
• Monthly plan. Monthly plan helps me break down the time budget into weekly budget taking into account holidays and other potential leaves.
• Weekly plan. Weekly plan helps me allocating specific time budgets to specific life projects.
• Daily ritual. Daily ritual is basically executing against the plan.
• Weekly ritual. Weekly ritual helps me reflecting on what I have accomplished during the week and make proper adjustments to the week to come.

More info: Free eBook: Effective Time Management With MS Outlook 2007

Information Management

My information sources are mostly based on emails I receive and the RSS I am subscribed. The trick is filtering the info and funnel it to my personal topical knowledge base.

• RSS filters. I am subscribed to many feeds so scanning the feeds efficiently for new posts saves me time. More info: How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information
• Personal Knowledge Base [KB]. My personal knowledge base is based on Outlook folders. For each topic I have dedicated folder. Each time I encounter an info nugget I just move it into the folder for further reuse.
• Use keyboard. Using keyboard and mastering shortcuts is essential for fast performance. Using mouse is inefficient. More info: Email Processing On Steroids – Use Built In Shortcuts And Set Up Your Own.

Should I attend David’s workshop?

Related Books

• Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
• The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You do Best
• Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
• First Things First