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Podcast: Kelly Forrister - Organizing Playground Interview
Kelly Forrister teaches seminars and provides individual coaching for clients worldwide. She teaches David Allen's "Getting Things Done", and has been working with his methodology for more than 15 years. Listen in as Kelly shares some of her passion... Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 55:08). For access to all previous podcasts, check out our complete podcast feed.
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What's Up At DavidCo: GTD Global Summit
We are extremely pleased to announce a major event in the world of GTD...
The Getting Things Done Global Summit!
This inaugural event will take place from March 11th to 13th, 2009 at the Intercontinental in San Francisco.
Complementing David Allen's presentations will be a cadre of some of the most accomplished and effective people in the world:
Executives and business leaders who have had the insight and vision to implement a GTD culture throughout their organizations, yielding extraordinary results.
Coaches who will reveal how implementing a GTD strategy has had profound benefits for their clients — from world class athletes to struggling students.
David's Senior GTD Facilitators who will lead hands-on sessions to share their real-world techniques to help you implement GTD for yourself and your organization and maximize the success you will achieve as a result.
Surprise guests that will inspire, awe and excite you with their stories of how they managed to achieve success, in some cases against unimaginable adversity and odds.
Of course one of the greatest benefits to attending the GTD Global Summit will be the opportunity to meet and network with five hundred other GTD practitioners — all in one place.
Visit GTD Summit to learn more!
- The David Allen Company Team
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House--with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone.
- John F. Kennedy
I recently presented a seminar where a participant brought up the project of getting her daughter into college. Since that was a current project for me as well, I wrote to her about how I applied the Natural Planning Model to this project. For those of you unfamiliar with the Natural Planning Model, it is David Allen's approach to getting projects creatively under control. The specific details of this five-phase approach can be found starting on page 54 of David Allen's book, Getting Things Done.
Here is the email I sent to this participant regarding her project:
Dear Sara,
I wanted to share with you what I did to help my son with his efforts to get into college. Like your daughter, my son is a senior looking at schools. The deadlines for college applications had been approaching, and he had not completed any applications. In response, I took him through the Natural Planning Model. Specifically, here's what I did with him:
1) Purpose
I asked him to tell me why he wanted to go to college. At first he started with reasons that seemed to belong to others, but I encouraged him to get real with it — why did he really want to go to college? Was it to learn a trade? Develop strong friendships? Have an adventure? Meet new people? Enhance his education by broadening it or giving it more depth?
2) Guiding Principles
I asked my son what was important to him as we went through this process. He said that he wanted the process to be easy and fluid, and it was also important to him that we do it in a spirit of cooperation.
3) Vision
Once we got his Purpose and Guiding Principles clear (and I had him write all this down by the way), I asked him what his ideal scene was for college as best as he could describe it in that moment. I used the following cues to stimulate his thinking:
- Large or small school?
- Metropolitan or rural setting?
- East coast? West coast? In between? Or abroad?
- Large classes or small intimate learning settings?
- Male/Female ratio?
- Living on/off campus?
- What is his major?
- What will he know at the end of four years?
- What types of courses will he take?
- Athletics?
- Drama?
- Other extra-curriculars? — he came up with wanting to be close to ski areas (!)
- Political/ideological/religious leaning of the school?
4) Brainstorm
We skipped this phase because he already had plenty of schools he was interested in. For kids who haven't yet identified schools of interest, I'd encourage them to take a very broad look at every school that holds any appeal to them, using tools like Barron's, etc.
5) Organize
I then had my son rank each of the schools on his preliminary list on a scale from 1 to 10, based upon the criteria he himself had established in the Vision section. When we looked at the schools ranked 6 and above, we realized we had too many. When we only looked at schools ranked 7 and above, we came up with 10, which seemed more manageable. I'd also recommend that students apply the idea that most college counselors encourage — to include a few "fall-back" schools, as well as at least one that would be a stretch for them in terms of the average GPA and SAT scores.
6) Next Actions
There were a few schools for which my son lacked sufficient information to be able to rank them, so that became a next action for him — to take "virtual tours" and see what number he would assign based on that information. There were only a few, however, so the next actions we identified were to determine the application requirements for each school in his top ten and set them into a grid so that we could see which applications were due when, and what needed to be completed.
This process worked very well. Not only did it get my son moving toward getting his applications done, but it also shifted the energy that we all had around it from drudgery to joy and anticipation of the adventure ahead.
I would love to hear from any of you who might try this with your high-school student. I can be reached at wayne@davidco.com.
Simply GTD with Kelly: Going Numb to Reminders
A smoke detector works because you drop everything when it goes off in case of emergency. Your door bell works because you answer the door when it rings knowing it means someone is there. A reminder on your calendar works because it gets you to focus on something timely--or does it?
Feel like you've gone numb to the Reminder windows that pop up on your Calendar? (Hint: answer yes if you find yourself clicking snooze or dismiss most of the time when you see that window.) Don't feel bad. Most programs are built to help you to go numb to those Reminder because they set them on everything that is timed.
I'm not saying don't use reminders--just use them sparingly so that when they go off, they actually mean something.
Outlook is famous for putting reminders on everything by default. To turn them off by default go to Tools>Options>Calendar options and uncheck the reminders box:
When you really do want to be reminded of something timely, just manually check off the Reminders box within the entry:
In Lotus Notes, the same setting is under Tools>Preferences>Calendar & To Do>Alarms:
And the place to manually set the ones you do want in Notes is in the top right-hand corner of any entry:
In Google Calendar, check under Settings>Notifications.
I've never found I've needed reminders all that much, as long as I scan my Calendar often enough throughout the day. When I start my day, I typically open--and keep open--3 things:
My Calendar
My Inbox
My Action lists
Hope this helps!
Michael Dolan: Taking some time to orient our new Dolan to this world
This is one of Maxwell's first photo-shoots. Spittin' image of me isn't he!? I'll be taking off a couple of months from blogging to take care of Maxwell.
Here's a bit that I wrote in the dizziness of the early hours of my wife's labor (and forgot to publish at the time):
Talk about open loops. The past few hours, as we work through these early contractions and watch them get more regular and frequent, has been like an open loop fest. Any uncollected (and many previously unconscious) things I've had my attention on have been bubbling up like bubbles in a champaign glass. Noticing my own psyche spin with excitement and wonder and nervousness as I cycle through my own anticipation and support AnneLise through her own journey and Max's transition to this world.
Can't wait to hold him in my hands.
Michael
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