Family. Are you participating in your kids education as much as you would like to? Do you care about maintaining your relationship with your partner alive? How long has it been since you shared some time with your parents or siblings? Friends. Do you keep in touch with those friends who are now living somewhere else or is it that their rhythm of life doesn’t help spending some time together? How long has it been since the last time you called them? Personal development. Are you happy with your abilities in general, with the way you interact with people, with your role in life? What would you need to do to improve? What would you like to do to grow as a human being? Leisure. Is there time in your life for amusement and entertainment? Do you get enough rest? Do you travel? Do you save time for your hobbies, and things that make you enjoy? Health. Are you a dynamic person, are you in shape? Do you take care of yourself? Are you eating healthy? Do you exercise? How do you feel? Finance. Are you aware of your economic situation? Do you save enough money so that you don’t have to worry about unexpected things? Do you invest in your future? Is there something you need to change? Society. How do you like helping the community? What can you do with your actual resources? Donations? Volunteer? Spiritual life. Do you save some time for yourself and to meditate? If you practice any religion, are you happy with your level of involvement?

Ground: Calendar/actions

Horizon 1: Projects

Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountability

What’s your job? Driving the creation of a lot of your projects are the four to seven major areas of responsibility that you at least implicitly are going to be held accountable to have done well, at the end of some time period, by yourself if not by someone else

Horizon 3: One- to two-year goals and objectives

These projects include anything from “look into having a birthday party for Susan” to “buy Acme Brick Co.”

Horizon 4: Three- to five-year vision

Horizon 5: Purpose and principles

What is the work you are here to do on the planet, with your life? This is the ultimate bigger picture discussion. Is this the job you want? Is this the lifestyle you want? Are you operating within the context of your real values, etc.?

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Open tasks tend to occupy our short term memory until they are done. (this is called the Zeigarnik effect)

Those of us who complete a lot of tasks need a good system for keeping track of our commitments. Our commitment system needs to be completely trustworthy so we aren’t tempted to store tasks in our brains.

By failing

By failing to review consistently, they just let things pile up and it gets harder and harder to keep up with their system. They can get the system set up, but then they try to “set it and forget it.” They don’t maintain it. When it comes to your productivity, you need to be consistently reviewing and making adjustments in order to get things done. It’s important to clean up and update your lists, dump any new loose ends into your trusted system, and clear your mind so everything can run smoothly. At Asian Efficiency, we recommend that you do this weekly. Yes, it takes a little bit of time, but the benefit of feeling like you’re finally in control of your life by far outweighs the cost.

Capture Everything: Capture anything that crosses your mind. Nothing is too big or small! These items go directly into your inboxes. Clarify: Process what you’ve captured into clear and concrete action steps. Decide if an item is a project, next action, or reference. Organize: Put everything into the right place. Add dates to your calendar, delegate projects to other people, file away reference material, and sort your tasks. Review: Frequently look over, update, and revise your lists. Engage: Get to work on the important stuff.

Context: “What could you possibly do where you are, with the tools you have?” Time available: “How much time do you have between now and the next time you need to do something else?” Energy available: “Which items do you have the mental and/or physical capacity to tackle right now?” Priority: If there’s more than one item left, use the “6 Horizon Model”––which I’ll touch on below in the section “Why bottom-up is better than top-down“

Level 5: Life––as in life purpose and life goals Level 4: Long term visions Level 3: 1-2 year goals Level 2: Areas of focus and responsibilities Level 1: Current projects Ground level: Current actions

David Allen argues the opposite. He posits that when the nitty-gritty, everyday, ground level stuff is out of control, trying to zoom out to big-picture stuff is pointless and futile––and I agree.

Next 2 Waiting 3 Scheduled 4 Someday/Maybe 5 Completed 6 In-Process Projects 7 Degree Project Support Files 8 Other Project Support Files 9 Checklists and Templates 10 Reference

Context: “What could you possibly do where you are, with the tools you have?” Time available: “How much time do you have between now and the next time you need to do something else?” Energy available: “Which items do you have the mental and/or physical capacity to tackle right now?” Priority: If there’s more than one item left, use the “6 Horizon Model”––which I’ll touch on below in the section “Why bottom-up is better than top-down“

David Allen is pretty consistent in his conviction that your intuition will guide you appropriately. Look at your list, and your mind already knows which is the best and most important, so listen to that. However, he recognizes that not everyone feels that they can do that––at least not yet––and so he provides three frameworks for looking at and determining priority.

Level 5: Life––as in life purpose and life goals Level 4: Long term visions Level 3: 1-2 year goals Level 2: Areas of focus and responsibilities Level 1: Current projects Ground level: Current actions

By imposing a degree of structure, by asking ourselves to behave in a slightly more focused way, we’re giving ourselves an opportunity to develop our creative muscles. It doesn’t always mean that what we create every single time every single day will be an act of great art and beauty, but if indeed the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas, then using GTD principles to create windows of opportunity to generate lots of ideas, sounds like a good approach.

Write, record, or gather any and everything that has your attention into a collection tool.

Is it actionable? If so, decide the next action and project (if more than one action is required). If not, decide if it is trash, reference, or something to put on hold.

Park reminders of your categorized content in appropriate places.

Update and review all pertinent system contents to regain control and focus.

Write down everything that grabs your attention when it shows up (supporting the idea that your mind is better used to have ideas, not hold them).

Create a game you can win with GTD. Instead of saying you’re going to get your inbox to zero every day, start with an easier goal of once a week. Instead of saying you’re going to do the GTD Weekly Review every week for the next 10 years, try scheduling just the next one. And when you’ve done that one, book the next one after that.

The Natural Planning Model is a productive way to think about projects, because it allows to get maximum value with minimum effort. This is an informal approach that does not require great elaboration. Although you don’t realize it, you usually do these five things to accomplish any task, no matter how simple it is:

You rarely think about your principles consciously, but they exist, and are of particular importance when there are more people involved. You don’t want to reach the result at any cost. If your personal values are violated, you will consider the project as a failure.

Tip #1 Learn to love your Weekly Reviews

Tip #2 Prioritize ruthlessly, then cut out some more

1. Just because you put it on your to-do list doesn’t mean you have to do it.

Just because someone asks you to do something doesn’t mean you have to say yes

Just because it sounds like a cool project or awesome opportunity, doesn’t mean you should take it on.

It’s ok to reschedule today’s tasks for tomorrow, or later in the week, or just someday/maybe.

However, at the first time—when you decide that enough is enough, that it’s time to start organizing your stuff—, you should perform a complete (or nearly complete) capture of everything that exists in your mind. This is called The Mind Sweep in GTD, i.e. a overall scan of everything holding your attention right now. It consists in identifying anything concerning your work or your personal life which you consider should be different, and put it all in one single place, which we can call the in-basket.

This is the “incompletion triggers” list that David Allen recommends you to review every time you need to do a mind sweep: Professional stuff: Projects started, not completed. Projects that need to be started. Commitments/promises to others (boss, partners, colleagues, subordinates, customers, organizations, professionals…) Communications to make/get (phone calls, e-mails, letters, memos, etc.) Writing to finish/submit (reports, proposals, articles, promotional materials, instructions, etc.) Meetings that need to be set. Decisions that have to be made. Who needs to know? Significant read/review. Financial stuff (budgets, forecasts, statistics, credit line, cash flow, etc.). Projects formal planning (goals, targets, objectives). Travel. Banks. Administration (legal issues, insurance, procedures, etc.) Customers. Marketing. Promotion. Sales. Systems (computers, phones, office equipment). Supplies. Waiting for… information, delegated tasks, replies, petty cash, ordered items, decisions of others, etc. Professional development (training, things to learn, skills to practice.) Research. Personal stuff: Projects started, not completed. Projects that need to be started. Commitments/promises to others (spouse, children, family, friends.) Communications to make/get with family and friends. Upcoming events (birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, travel, social events, cultural events, sporting events, etc.) Things to do (places to go, people to meet.) Administration (bills, banks, investments, loans, taxes, insurance, legal affairs.) Waiting for… orders, repair, loaned items, etc. Home/household (plumbing, electricity, decoration, furniture, etc.) Computers (software, hardware, connections, internet.) TV, VCR. Music, CDs. Cameras, film. Phones. Sports equipment. Closets/clothes. Garage/storage. Vehicle repair/maintenance. Pets. Health care. Hobbies (books, music, movies.) Errands (drugstore, market, bank, stationer, etc.) Community (neighborhood, schools, local government).

This is one of the places where the GTD system truly shines. As David Allen explains several times in the book, to-do lists are often full of items that we can’t actually do. So they sit there, mocking us. We allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed, never realizing that the reason it all feels impossible to tackle is because it is. In its current form, anyway.

Alright, so you’ve determined that you want or need to take action on this item—awesome! Now it’s time to get clear on what the item will look like when it’s finished. What circumstances need to be met in order for you to check it off your list?

1. Make any choice. 2. Challenge yourself. Don’t compare. 3. Take steps and find out. 4. Start small. Begin anywhere. 5. Reframe. Make it a game. 6. Spill milk. Bounce back. 7. Be average. Good enough is enough. 8. Lay eggs in lots of baskets.