GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Two-Minute Rule

August 19th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

Would you like to extend your life by 6 months? Then follow this simple rule: “If you can get an action done in less than two minutes then do it now!”

This works because it will take you longer than two minutes to write it down on one of your lists of NEXT ACTIONs, recall it when it’s appropriate, figure what it’s about and get in done – so just do it, or as someone I knew used to say JUST F****** DO IT or JFDI.

This can be as simple an action as “I need to refill my fountain pen”. By the time you’ve written that on your list you could have done it so just do it!

Once you’ve got to the DO phase you’ve only three options:

  1. DO it now if the action takes less than two minutes.
  2. DELEGATE it to someone else if you’re not the most appropriate person to do it.
  3. DEFER it by putting it into your system on one of your CONTEXT lists as something to be done later.

Some people seem to get hung up on what they can do in exactly two-minutes. It’s not the time that’s important, it’s the principle. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a minute or ten – it’s just a rule of thumb. If you think you can get it done “in the moment” then get it done and out of the way.

It’s a useful technique to use when you’re doing your WEEKLY REVIEW. You may want to restrict the cutoff to one minute if you haven’t got much time or extend it to ten if you’ve got plenty of time.

The two minutes isn’t a hard and fast(!) 120 seconds. Use your common sense. Perhaps another way to phrase the rule is “if you can do the action in less time than it would take to put it on your list, retrieve it at a later date, and do it then. Do it now”

If you use the GTD Outlook Add-In then the latest version has a built-in Two Minute Timer and the David Allen Company has one in their store.

Posted in Contexts, Defer, Delegate, Do, Two Minute Rule, Weekly Review | No Comments »

Do

August 12th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

DO is the final phase of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow.

Now that you’ve COLLECTed and PROCESSed everything that has your attention, ORGANISEd all the open loops to make sure that OUTCOMEs and NEXT ACTIONs have been decided on and REVIEWed everything to ensure that it’s current, you now have to decide what to DO.

To make the right choices, you need to think about where you are (CONTEXT), how much time you have (CALENDAR), how much energy you have, and what your priorities are.

If you’ve listed your NEXT ACTIONs according to CONTEXT as we discussed in ORGANISE, it should be easy to identify what actions you could accomplish by looking at the appropriate list. Pick something off the appropriate list that you have the time and energy to DO.

We will return to priority at some future date when we look at the HORIZONS OF FOCUS but for now we’ll just identify what these horizons are:-

  • RUNWAY – Your current NEXT ACTIONs (look at these daily)
  • 10,000 FEET – Your PROJECTS (look at these weekly)
  • 20,000 FEET – Your responsibilities (look at these monthly)
  • 30,000 FEET – one to two-year goals (look at these quarterly)
  • 40,000 FEET – three to five-year goals (look at these annually)
  • 50,000 FEET – career, purpose, lifestyle (look at these annually)

This has been a very quick run through the Five Phases, so feel free to post any questions as comments. In the meantime take a look at the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free and don’t forget the basic manual on how GTD works in David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Posted in Calendar, Collect, Contexts, Do, Horizons of Focus, Next Actions, Organise, Outcome, Process, Weekly Review | No Comments »

Organise

July 28th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

Now that you’ve COLLECTed everything that was on your mind and PROCESSed everything so that you know what each item means to you (what’s the expected outcome and what’s the next physical action to move it forward) we can start to get ORGANISEd!

Most people, when they try to implement GTD, have a problem with separating PROCESSing from getting ORGANISEd. But this is a key step because in ORGANISE you build the trusted system that will allow you to release all the stuff that’s clogging up your brain and allow you to reach the GTD “nirvana” of being totally buried by the amount of things you need to do but having nothing on your mind – what David Allen calls a “mind like water”.

But you’re not there yet!

First you need to group all the results of what you’ve PROCESSed into appropriate categories so that you can retrieve and REVIEW them when you need to – remember that REVIEW is the next phase of mastering workflow.

The four key categories are:

  1. PROJECTS – projects you are committed to finish that will take more than one action
  2. CALENDAR – actions that must occur on a specific day or specific time
  3. NEXT ACTIONS – actions that need to be done as soon as possible
  4. WAITING FOR – projects and actions that you’re waiting for someone else to do

For each of these categories you need to make a list of each item you’ve PROCESSed that falls under that category. For CALENDAR items that’s easy – they go on your CALENDAR.

A list of PROJECTS is just that.

A list of WAITING FORs is also relatively simple to compile.

The lists of NEXT ACTIONS should be broken down into separate lists depending on the context in which the action will take place. This is a key principle of GTD that differs from other activity management systems – listing actions according to where they happen.

Typical CONTEXTS are:

  • AGENDAS – lists of the people you need to communicate with, and meetings planned, with the topics you need to discuss
  • ANYWHERE – list of actions that have no restrictions on where they can be carried out
  • CALLS – list of calls you need to make, by type of phone (mobile, landline, etc.) if that’s appropriate
  • COMPUTER – list of actions that require a computer
  • ERRANDS – list of things you need to do whilst you are out and about
  • HOME – list of actions that need to be done whilst you’re in your home environment
  • OFFICE – list of actions that require you to be in your office
  • READ – list of articles, books, etc that you’ve decided to read
  • SOMEDAY/MAYBE – list of items and actions that you might wat to do at some point but not now

So now, armed with your lists of NEXT ACTIONS for each of the CONTEXTs above plus your list of WAITING FORs and PROJECTs you’re ready to go into action. But before we do that, next week we’ll look at the REVIEW phase that’s key to GTD – how you keep your lists up to date.

Then we’ll look at the final phase – DO – where you actually Get Things Done!

Again you can get an overview of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free!

Posted in Collect, Contexts, Do, Organise, Process, Projects, Weekly Review | No Comments »