Would you like to get more done, have more successful outcomes, and feel more relaxed while doing it? I've spent the last 25 years researching productivity and how to accomplish more with less effort. The methods I'm going to share with you will help you manage all the details of your personal and professional life with more confidence, knowing that at any moment you are doing exactly what you should be doing from all the choices available to you. Let's start with the educational foundation for stress-free productivity,  which I call "Getting Things Done®," or GTD® as it has become popularly known. It's a work-life management system that will help you go from personal stress and being overwhelmed to an integrated system with focus and control. What I do is based on a radically commonsense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments, organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles, and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. Here are some of the things I can help you with: - Capturing anything and everything that has your attention
- Defining actionable things discretely into outcomes and concrete next steps
- Organizing reminders and information in the most streamlined way, in appropriate categories, based on how and when you need to access them
- Keeping current and "on your game" with appropriately frequent reviews of the six horizons of your commitments (purpose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects, and actions)
My system explores each of those steps, in detail and with real-world examples. It includes simple advice for how to work (and live!), in that more efficient and productive way. Why do we need this kind of help now? We are faced with a world that changes overnight with the emergence of new technologies and lifestyles. We've gone from an analog world of top-40 hits on vinyl albums to a digital world of downloadable hits from every genre. We've invented new products, hoping to make our lives better — the fax machine, personal computer, PDA, Internet, cell phones, etc. — delivering data faster and faster to more people.
But we haven't necessarily become more efficient, and life hasn't necessarily changed for the better at broadband speed. While the world was being introduced to new hardware and software, no one had developed a mindset or the education to seamlessly integrate the new technologies with everyday life. We've had a lot of new stuff — more channels, more podcasts, more text messages — but not a new way of thinking.
Most everyone I talk with says he or she has far more to do than time and energy to do it. I focus on helping you get things done that are meaningful to you, with truly the least amount of invested attention and energy. I bring you the thought process for getting things done that makes all the gear and technology more usable.
Let's look more closely at how you can use my advice on Getting Things Done to make your life better.
Everyone wants to achieve more successful outcomes with a sense of relaxed focus and control. The place to begin is capturing anything and everything that has your attention. Why is that so important?
Because your mind is a lousy office. When you have a thought about something you want or should do, it is usually so simple and so obvious when you're thinking of it, you're sure you'll never forget it or that you'll remember it in the right moment. Then two minutes later, with the next thing on your mind that you're sure you'll never forget, you've forgotten that you've forgotten the first thing!
If your mind had a mind, it would only remind you of something when you could do something about it. Here's a simple example — do you have any flashlights with dead batteries? When does your mind remind you that you need batteries? At the dead ones! If your mind had a mind, it wouldn't bother you at the dead ones but would clearly let you know only when you were in a store that had live ones!
Just because we think of something, that doesn't mean that we are being productive or constructive about or with it, or that it will be fulfilled. We have to realize that the thought itself is just a beginning, and if we care at all that it brings value or improvement, we probably need to capture it, clarify what it means to us, and organize the actions and information embedded or associated with it.
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