I’m blogging about GTD, eProductivity, leadership and books. If you want to join with me in this journey you can follow me by rss feed, by email or through Twitter
… and don’t be scared to let me know what you think!

There’s a story told by a master story-teller about a man who was successful in everyway that the world seems to determine success.  But the story-teller labels him a fool because he was working for the wrong reasons, his success in the financial side was not for the purpose of a better overall motive and in fact would be destructive to him in the end.

I’m generally not particularly motivated my money, (I certainly wouldn’t be in this job if I was!), but I am a goals and task oriented person by nature.  Innately I know that I always need to be working for a bigger purpose, but I have to admit that all too often, I let myself get bogged down in the here and now instead.

Would I become a Small Thinker?

One of my worries about implementing the “Getting Things Done” system (GTD) by David Allen (using the tool eProductivity by Eric Mack) was that it would force me to concentrate even more on the day to day issues.  Yes, I knew I would get up to date but I was scared I  could become a small picture person because of a system.

Apparently not!

Interestingly, though this shouldn’t really be surprising, the effect of eProductivity and GTD in my life has had the opposite effect.

Today is Tuesday, the first day of my working week, (I go Tuesday to Sunday), and I make this my “Weekly Review” day.  Here’s how Tuesday now looks for me:

Collect and Process

So far, you could say, “So what?  That’s all day to day stuff!”  And you’d be right.  But with the two rules:

1. Do this weekly; and
2. The 2 minute rule

being strictly adhered to, this collection and process step only takes up about one hour, maybe two at the outside.  I acknowledge that if I’d been to the GTD summit the weekly review after that could take longer because of the number of ideas that I would have captured!

Its what happens next that really counts for me.  And this is the part that I had missed out all too often in the past because I wasn’t using a system that allowed me to be productive like I am now.

Relevance Check

Next I review my “Horizons of Focus”.  These are six areas I look at and I then compare my actions and projects (the lowest two areas in horizons of focus) to the four top ones, Purpose, Vision, Goals and my part in it.

So as I finalise my weekly review by going through my projects and actions to prioritise, I’m able to delegate, dump, promote etc based on the really big picture.  I know I should delegate earlier in the process and actually I do.  But things change and this process forces me to reconsider if necessary.

Result

Over the next three months I’ve got a small number of extremely important projects on the go.  The weekly review part of GTD is allowing me to really focus on these.  I need to do a shout out to Eric Mack here because the inclusion of a weekly review coach in the eProductivity (for Lotus Notes) software was a brilliant idea

Next Step

I need to be more holistic.  This first step in my journey was to get my work life sorted but now I need to let GTD and eProductivity infiltrate the really important part of my life – That part that involves my lovely wife and my great kids.  Because even though I talk about working on the important, not the urgent as though I do it, actually I haven’t even got the truly important as part of my Horizons of Focus yet!

[slight pause in typing]

OK, I’ve just added that as a high priority project with a high priority next action!

Related posts:

1. Worldwide GTD Weekly Review Kelly Forrister over at GTD Times has picked up on...
2. GTD and eproductivity Opportunity This is for all those people who use Lotus Notes...
3. GTD for Kids Being a really big fan of GTD (Getting Things Done)...
4. eProductivity and the Next Action With “Getting Things Done” (GTD) the importance of the “next...
5. Do You Make These Mistakes With GTD? “Getting Things Done” or GTD is a methodology by David...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.