Elearning! Magazine

DEC-JAN 2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

Issue link: http://elmezine.epubxp.com/i/102793

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 57 of 60

TipsManagement Tips The One-Minute BY DAVID ALLEN I've given numerous "drive-by" radio and TV interviews since my frst book was published —the kind that give you about 53 seconds to give everyone the keys to health, wealth and happiness. Tey have forced me to distill my message to some bare essentials. (HOW'D I DO?) I merely bottom-lined the worst practices for the fve stages of managing workfow: collect, process, organize, review, and do. I can't give the interviewer any one of these as the problem. Obviously, most people keep stuf in their head, which shortcircuits the process to begin with. But lots of people write Without the care, feeding and constant utilization, your objective executive thinking tools slip back into psychic RAM. A typical question is, "David, what's the one thing that we do that gets in the way of us being productive?" Here's my answer: "It's not one thing, but fve, all wrapped together: People keep stuf in their head. Tey don't decide what they need to do about stuf they know they need to do something about. Tey don't organize action reminders and support materials in functional categories. Tey don't maintain and review a complete and objective inventory of their commitments. Ten they waste energy and burn out, allowing their busyness to be driven by what's latest and loudest, hoping it's the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it is." (Workflow) Manager to do instead?" (Some interviews have an additional 53 seconds!) "It's a combined set of the fve best-practice behaviors. Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuf when it shows up, not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete and reviewed suffciently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing and what you're not doing at any point in time." I suppose I could have gotten it even simpler: "Focus on positive outcomes and continually take the next action of the most important thing." But who doesn't know that? Consistent implementation of that principle totally integrated with every aspect of our life is the big challenge. And that's not so easy. —For more David Allen Company tools and educational content, check out the GTD Products section at davidco.com. For the online learning center, visit GTD Connect at gtdconnect.com. lots of things down — they just don't decide the next actions on them, which keeps the lists operationally dysfunctional. But even if they think about the actions required, they don't organize the reminder somewhere that they'll see when they are in the context to do the action. And even if they did that in a burst of productivity inspiration, most let their systems quickly become out of date and inconsistent. And without the care and feeding and constant utilization of their objective executive thinking tools, that function slips back into psychic RAM. Life and work become reactive responses instead of clearly directed action choices. "So, David, what do we need Government Elearning! December 2012 / January 2013 57

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Elearning! Magazine - DEC-JAN 2013