Arguably, one of the most famous and well known speakers at the Do Lectures in Wales which I attended in September was David Allen, the author of the infamous book ‘Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity’. David’s talk focused on his process of getting things done which has made him a world famous author, consultant and speaker.

I first came across David Allen, a couple of years ago, when I read his book. The book and the methods contained within are used by many corporate executives and managers in organizations as well as smaller businesses and freelancers. David admitted freely that he created a lexicon around ideas that were already out there and synthesized other peoples’ ideas to come up with his world famous system.

He made an interesting point about so called “information overload” in this era of continual information streaming through our digital devices. People have said (including myself) that we’re constantly being overloaded by information. He made the point that we don’t walk into a library and die which would be one amusing example of information overload. As human beings we are capable of dealing with significant amounts of information, however, we get stressed and worried about missing the meaningful information within all the other information that comes across our consciousness on a daily basis. The second problem he identified is having the strategic problem of clear space within your working day.

To get around these two issues, he has come up with the ‘Getting Things Done’ method also known as GTD which has two core ingredients of self and organizational management: firstly, having things under control and secondly, the issue of perspective.

In the GTD method, control is broken down into how to capture ideas, tasks etc, as the mind is not made for holding ideas. Once captured we focus on clarifying these ideas, organizing them, reflecting on them, and lastly engaging with them. The second ingredient of perspective, is broken down into six areas of action: your purpose, your principles, your vision, your goals, your responsibilities, your projects and lastly, your actions. David believes that there is an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much is getting done. So the essence of the GTD system is getting stuff out of your mind and into the 11 step system.

When I first came across the book a couple of years ago, I did try and implement the GTD system. There is a lot going for this system and it has helped many people around the world take control of their work and focus on getting things done. However, the more I’ve spoken to people about it, and the more I’ve researched other ways of doing things, I’ve realized that there’s a lot of people who don’t get very far with GTD because it focuses too much on the system rather than focusing on getting the actual work done. David himself admits that it takes about 2 years for somebody to get this.

Maybe 2 years is a little bit too long :)

From my perspective, if something is not intuitive and habit-forming within a month, it’s possibly not the right thing to do for you. I think the core principle that David has about getting stuff out of your head and into your system is a really good idea and it doesn’t have to be the GTD System. I think systems work best for people when they have designed them for themselves.

A system could be writing things down in a notebook. It could be the post-its around your computer that remind you of things that you have got to do. It could be that scheduling things in your diary or your Google Calendar is the best way to go about it. It could be that using an online project management system to break things down into individual tasks where you get reminders in a daily basis about things you’ve got to do lights your fire. I think the important thing is to have a system that works for you.

I am a firm believer in the importance and power of habits. Yes, getting things out of your head is a good way to ensure that things get done but making things into habits is another way. You don’t have to write on a list that you need to brush your teeth in the morning, or you need to stop and eat some lunch. It is a habit, a daily habit that you just do. Going to yoga class is a weekly habit; it’s not something that you have to remind yourself to do. Habits becomes part of the fabric of everyday life and I think this is an important distinction.

When I coach clients, we talk about the importance of building habits and trying things for at least a month because they then get ingrained into the fabric of things that you do on a daily or weekly basis. For example, from my own perspective, I don’t need to remind myself on my weekly schedule to write a blog post here because it has become a weekly habit (except for this last week as I was away). I may scribble down ideas for articles but I have an ingrained feeling that if I haven’t written something by Friday, it is time to write something – because it has become a habit. Planning my work for the next week on a Friday afternoon has become a habit and so has not opening my inbox before I get some tasks done. At the beginning it was difficult, but now, it has become so part of what I do, on a daily basis, I don’t question it anymore.

David made the point that to focus on the bigger picture, the most important thing is to get the “now” nailed, i.e. knowing what you are doing and having your next action steps clearly outlined. I am not sure that I agree, in fact, I would almost think the opposite, that the bigger picture of your vision, your values, your goals, will impact on everything that you are doing now, and that if you focus too much on the nitty-gritty of “now”, the tasks, the next action steps, then you will never give yourself the time to focus on the bigger picture.

If you keep this idea of your vision and your bigger picture very close to you, for example, a notice above your desk or a reminder on your desktop, then everything that you are doing is going to be influenced by that, and you will come to instinctively know if something that you are working on is bringing you closer towards that vision, and towards that goal. This strategy is a way of really cutting out neatly a lot of the unnecessary work that you would normally be just doing on a day to day basis because you have got your ‘bigger picture’ in mind at all times.

The last point I wanted to make was one that I wholly agree with David on. This is about being responsible for your commitments and making decisions about whether you want to do them or not. I think this is a really essential point.

Most of us have probably too many things going on in our lives, too many responsibilities, and too many commitments, some of which will wholly be aligned with our vision, our goals, our values, and some of which will be other people’s goals and values that we are trying to align ourselves with. A useful exercise is to sit down and write out everything that you are responsible for, and everything that you are committed to at this present moment. This can be a great way of really deciding what is important to you and you want to focus on. Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing has a great article on how to ‘prune’ projects.

You can watch David’s Do Lecture here: