GTD Workflow Map and Articles - David Allen

GTD WORKFLOW MAP SET AND COACHING DVD

The GTD Workflow Map is a stunning visual learning tool for understanding how David Allen's models for control & perspective come together. This set includes two full-color Maps in two sizes, shipped in a rolled tube, and a DVD with David coaching you through the Map. This highly anticipated product was a 2009 bestseller.

"I spent more than two years crafting and fine-tuning the map, ensuring that it would thoroughly and accurately describe the essential elements of time- and self-management," says David, "It's as simple as I could get it, while still embodying the subtleties and complexities that have to be factored in, to make it real and useful. And the visual representation we've come up with I think is a highly effective way to make something this meaningful really clear."

-David Allen

If you ever feel like you need to get more in control or regain your focus, here is the ultimate guide for getting and staying on your game. The set of productivity best practices which David Allen has researched and synthesized over the last three decades are brought all together into one stunning visual display - the GTD Workflow Map. It's a rich compilation of the key steps for gathering, clarifying, organizing, and reviewing everything you need to track and manage, as well as an explanation of all of the factors that you must take into account in determining priorities.

The Map gives wonderful, illustrated detail on how the phases of your workflow tie together:

Collecting

Processing

Organizing

Reviewing

Doing

Criteria for Choosing

Horizons of Focus

3-Fold Nature of Work

Each package includes:

1. One large color poster, perfect for your office or conference room. 20" wide by 30" long, 1

or 51cm wide by 77cm long.

2. One smaller color poster, great for keeping close at hand at your desk. 11" wide by 17" long, or 28cm wide by 44cm long.

3. A DVD of David Allen walking you through the key GTD models illustrated on the Map. 35 minutes long. A great way to understand the essentials.

The poster was created by our partner XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Visit www.xplane.com to learn more about how XPLANE clarifies complex business issues through visual collaboration.

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www.davidallengtd.com ©David Allen Company 2008. All rights reserved. RV04DEC09

Why do people complain that there’s no time to get their work done? Because there is more work to do than the work they think they have to do.

Many times people we work with express frustration that they “can’t get any of their work done” because of the overwhelming amount of interruptions, email, and other inputs that show up during the course of a normal day. “I can’t get my work done, because there is so much (other) work to do!”

If you are ever in that frustrated state, it might help to understand the threefold nature of what constitutes your “work.”

You have a choice of doing three very different things when you work – pre-defined work, ad hoc work, and defining your work.

1. Pre-defined Work

This is what you would be doing all day if you got no new input or interruptions of any sort. You would probably be working off the inventory of actions and projects that you came in with – work that you have already determined needs doing. There are the phone calls you need to make, the documents you need to draft, the ideas you need to outline on the project, etc. That list of things to potentially be doing, when you have some discretionary time, would be challenging enough to sift through given your volume (most professionals have 150-200 of these discrete actions). But what you are very often faced with is the necessity (and opportunity) to do...

2. Work As It Appears The phone rings. It’s not on your lists or your calendar. But you take the call, nonetheless, and consequently spend twenty

minutes talking to a client of yours about a potentially important, or at least an interesting, topic. Before you’re off that call, your boss sends you an instant message to schedule a half hour meeting in the afternoon to update you on a new development and get your input on it. You acknowledge back “OK” while you’re still talking to the client. For that meeting, though, you know immediately that you are going to need to update two spreadsheets and surf the Web about a company that’s been on your radar pertaining to this project, before you walk in. That means do it now, or otherwise not eat lunch. In this scenario you are doing the work as it shows up to be done. You are actually defining your work rapidly in this case, and choosing to do the new stuff instead of any of the pre-determined potential activities. Many of us have whole days of this nature. We can’t get to anything on our action lists because the ad-hoc nature of the day wound up defining and requiring our total focus, non-stop.

That, added to our inventory of pre-defined work, creates a substantial volume of on-deck options for things to be doing. But then there’s the e-mail constantly filling up your in-basket. And meeting notes from last night still on the legal pad on the corner of your desk. And the fourteen voicemails that you keep saving because they mean something you might need

The Threefold Nature of Work – by David Allen

www.davidallengtd.com page 2©David Allen Company 2008. All rights reserved. RV04DEC09

to do, but you don’t know exactly what yet. And more voicemails coming in during the day. So, in addition to all the stuff on your lists and all the stuff coming at you during the day that you have to engage with as it shows up, you know there’s still the on-going requirement to be...

3. Defining Work

This is processing and emptying your in-basket, your email, your meeting notes, etc. – assessing the new inputs and making decisions about what needs to be done about them. You may do some quick actions as you define them (a la the two-minute rule), delegate things to others (to be tracked on your “Waiting For...” list), and you will probably be adding more action items and projects to your inventory of defined work, as you review and think about the meaning of the content of those notes. “Oh yeah, I told Raphael I would call him back about possible times to meet next week...”

This activity of defining work, based upon the constant flow of new incoming information and communication, requires an average of one hour per day, for the typical professional. That’s just to stay current – not to clean up and process any backlog that may have accumulated prior to today.

So what? Everything I have described so far is common sense, or at least a common awareness about the way things really are. Here’s the rub: I have noticed that many people act as if (2) is some sort of burden to endure, and (3) is some irrelevant activity aside from their work. “I have my list of things to do. Why am I being burdened with things that aren’t on my lists, and why am I now in addition having to deal with all of these e-mails, voicemails, conversation notes, business cards, receipts, and tons of other inputs coming at me from my outside world?”

I don’t get it. It’s all your work. Some is done when it appears, and some is done when you choose to do it instead of what’s showing up. And processing input is required to trust that the inventory of your pre-defined work is complete enough to evaluate its contents against your new options of things to do.

Are you truly pretending that your boss doesn’t have the authority to reallocate your focus toward a new and unexpected priority? Get real. Are you honestly saying that now the world is at fault for reconfiguring itself to present you with things you weren’t aware of twelve hours ago? Get a grip. And how long can you honestly say you are comfortable doing anything, without checking your voicemail or e-mail?

The key is how efficiently and effectively you know how to process new stuff, and how functional your system is for maintaining and reviewing your inventory of commitments. Then you accept and manage the input processing as a critical component, you review the whole game frequently enough to know (in your gut) how to evaluate the surprises and unexpected work, and you have a sufficiently functional system for capturing and managing all the various rivers and streams of this complex environment, to feel at least OK about what you’re not doing. Master key to life.

How much of which kind of work to do, when, is the eternal dance of the workday. You can’t really do more than one of them at a time, though you can get really fast with processing work while you’re on hold on the phone, and waiting for meetings to start. There may be interruptions that are allowed that are not functional or valuable, but managing those is just tactical to your definition of your job. It’s an eternal challenge of allocating limited resources (the definition of “management”) – it’s not an inherent problem.

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How much of your day and week do you need to assume is going to be ad hoc and unexpected? How much of your day really is required for cleaning up your in-baskets so that you can trust your backlog doesn’t have landmines and unseen priorities lurking? When are you dedicating critical executive time for updating your contents and maybe improving your own process for capturing, clarifying, organizing, and reviewing your work?

Get your habits and your systems up to handling it. And get used to it.

For more David Allen Company tools and educational content, check out our GTD Products section at davidco.com. For our online learning center, visit GTD Connect at gtdconnect.com.

www.davidco.com ©David Allen Company 2008. All rights reserved. 05JAN12

The Four Modes of GTD-Q:

GTD-Q: Which quadrant should you be in?

Visionary (Crazy Maker)

Strengths - Ideas and inspiration - Goal-setting - Creativity - Focus Challenges - Things falling through the cracks - Feeling overwhelmed/stressed when trying to deliver - Inadequate consideration of constraints - Contributing to others feeling overwhelmed What GTD Can Do for You - Systematic approach to capture and consider commitments - Better traction to take action on ideas - Efficient processing of requests from others - Timely delegation of tasks

Captain and Commander (Autocrat)

Strengths - Appropriate focus and control - Can maneuver with agility and flexibility Challenges - Complacency What GTD Can Do for You - Greater attention to subtle opportunities - Stretch beyond current capabilities

Responder (Victim)

Strengths - Tactical responsiveness - May be necessary for short-term stability Challenges - Driven by latest and loudest - Crisis mentality breeds crises What GTD Can Do for You - Get control of incoming “stuff” - Get perspective on where to focus - Relieve pressure

Implementer (Micro Manager)

Strengths - Order and structure - Focused on completing tasks - Highly systematic approach Challenges - Lack of perspective - Inflexibility - Misguided perfectionism What GTD Can Do for You - Systematic approach that is also inherently flexible - Focus on purpose and outcomes - In control through constantly shifting priorities

Pers

pect

ive

Control


The following assessment descriptions are generalizations, based upon David Allen experience working with many people over the years in both their work and home environments. The purpose of these compiled overviews is to assist you in identifying certain aspects of your current situation and to provide suggestions specific to those circumstances that you can use to improve your situation.

In other words, if you are a Visionary, with a non-stop creative mind, bouncing off the wall with a stream of project ideas and inspirations, your improvement will probably not be to have more brainstorming sessions. You need good in-basket capturing with some rigorous next-action thinking and tracking. And if you’ve got great action lists but you’re spending most of your time filling them up with stuff you never have time to actually do, you don’t need more lists. You need a good off-site to decide where you want to be three years from now.

There is no “right” place on this matrix to be. The upper-right-hand quadrant (Captain and Commander) would seem the optimal stance; and in its most pristine form it would be. But if you are not losing control and perspective regularly, you are probably stale. By its very nature, being highly productive means that you are consistently moving forward, and that means making things up and then making them happen by bringing up the rear guard. Just walking somewhere is a process of throwing yourself out of balance, based on a vision of where you’re going, and preventing yourself from falling down, so you get there!

In other words, it’s not about always being totally in control and having the right perspective - it’s just about recognizing where you are and having good tools and techniques to get you back into a positively productive state, whenever necessary.

There are both positive and negative aspects of each style (the negative label is in parentheses). We are all Responders to events in life and work from time to time, but some maintain that as a position (Victim). We are all Visionaries as we hold images in our mind of what we might want, but sometimes we don’t marry that enough with physical realities (Crazy Maker). We all work as Implementers, engineering viable structures to make things easier. But some sacrifice substance for form (Micro Manager). And we all get on top of our game as Captain and Commander, from time to time, but then may not leverage that situation to build sustainability (Autocrat). Again, it’s not about right or wrong - it’s about personal effectiveness. Is your approach working?

If so, no need to spend effort changing it. If not, please consider our suggestions.

This assessment is primarily situational, i. e. it is based on variables that could easily and quickly change for you in time and context.

In reality we are all likely bouncing between all four quadrants many times during a single day. You may come into your office early, organized and focused and feeling like you’re on top of your game, and one unexpected call (full of unexpected opportunities or challenges) can blow that up totally. You get off the phone, your head swimming, with scribbled notes, and you need a good quarter hour to do a brain dump, process your thoughts, and reassess how to spend the rest of the morning. So, though you started as Captain and Commander, your Visionary took over on the call, you became a total Responder at the close, and your Implementer had to handle the chaos, before you could come up for air and be a Captain and Commander again.


Similarly you may find yourself in very different places on the matrix depending on what kind of activity you’re engaged in. You might be a Visionary in the kitchen (with stuff splattered everywhere), an Implementer in the garden (spending $3000 and 300 hours researching and building raised beds for which you miss the planting season), a Captain and Commander as a soccer coach (just enough practice and drills with the right amount of heart and motivation), and a Responder about your car (“Help!! What does this blinking orange light mean?“).

You may, however, find yourself more regularly in one quadrant than the rest. If so, there may be some particular habits or formats that would be useful to install, to ensure greater productivity overall. It will be useful, too, to have some familiarity with the four basic styles and situations, to assist in directing yourself as well as understanding others.

For instance, we’ve found that Visionaries often allow themselves to be Crazy Makers, with an initial resistance to GTD, because they see the only alternative to be their opposite - the Micro Managers. “Getting organized” is perceived as the path to constraint (which it would be, with too much structure). Conversely, the Implementers become Micro Managers because of their fear of the out-of-control-ness of the Crazy Makers. Understanding that there is a position - Captain and Commander - that incorporates the best of both, resolves that dilemma.

It has also proven of great value for people to recognize the Victim syndrome - in themselves as well as in others - and how to frame a non-judgmental assessment about what’s going on with a blueprint for getting out of it.

You can come back to the course to take the GTD-Q assessment as often as you like. You may find it interesting to take again after you have setup your first GTD system, or done a Weekly Review.

For more David Allen Company tools and educational content, check out our GTD Products section at davidco.com. For our online learning center, visit GTD Connect at gtdconnect.com.

GO TO: http://www.gtdiq.com/

Test Your GTD-Q®

The David Allen Company is a global training and consulting company, widely considered the leading authority in the fields oforganizational and personal productivity. David Allen's Getting Things Done®approach enables greater performance, capacity,and innovation. It alleviates the feeling of overwhelm, instilling focus, clarity, and confidence. Learn more about GTD®.

We created the GTD-Q® in conjunction with one of the world's leading professional assessment firms. In less than two minutes,you will get visual results of where you fit in terms of the two critical elements of self management: control and perspective.

The GTD-Q is not meant to describe how you operate at all times. In fact, your levels of control and perspective can change asquickly as what you do during the day changes. Come back to take the assessment as often as you'd like. Take advantage ofthis helpful tool along with many of our otherfree resources to support you in your journey with Getting Things Done.

Please respond to the following statements:

StronglyDisagree Disagree Neutral Agree

StronglyAgree

I have clear, well-defined goals.

I keep up with my workload.

I feel like I am spending my time on theright things.

I have a good way to track all of mythings to do.

The key areas of my work and life are inbalance.

My life is too chaotic.


StronglyAgree

I'm working harder and falling furtherbehind.

I know where I am going and how to getthere.

I have conflicting priorities.

I have a hard time finding things when Ineed them.

I am living the life that I want.

My email is under control and wellmanaged.


StronglyAgree

I feel like I am on the right track to reachmy goals.

I am overcommitted.

I'm afraid that I'm not paying enoughattention to really important things.

My day to day activities are aligned withmy larger goals.

I have too many things on my mind.

I feel like things are falling through thecracks.

GTD Workflow Map and Articles - David Allen

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