The to-do list apps can definitely make our lives better, yet, there are core principles that a person should learn to be more organized i.e. successful. With newly acquired ‘worthwhile’ habits, the use of great app such as To Do Checklist allows to achieve greater goals and do more actions. We have tried David Allen’s GTD system for three months, and we are ready to provide you with avid summary of his popular GTD book and an advice from world-leading coach. The GTD’s system has been used to train the well-known executives and they have showed great improvements in a very short time.
What GTD Principles Can Do for You?
- It is really about being “properly engaged” with what is going on i.e. your current project or action. This is the real key. It is about being not engaged with everything else what is going in your life but putting the miner things on back-burner.
- There is something unique about this experience and oftentimes the crisis pushes us to perform the kind of behaviors when you can fully concentrate on your goal and clearly envision the outcome that you are moving towards.
- The questions to ask yourself:
- Are you appropriately engaged in the project you are on?
- Are you appropriately engaged in the process of writing a paper / resume / getting new job?
- Are you appropriately engaged with your health / your diet / your fitness program / your yoga practice?
- Another important aspect is the psychic bandwidth. The term ‘psychic bandwidth’ means if you have enough space to process you project’s strategy with your brain. In other words, you may find yourself in a place where you mind is too overloaded to allow you engage fully in what you are doing right now or clearly see the outcome of your work.
- The goal is to fully engage into being productive without a crisis forcing you to do it!
- David Allen says “Don’t keep anything in your head for the rest of your life!” Get rid of stickiness – empty your mind by taking everything on a paper. High focus and perspective requires high level of organization i.e. free psychic bandwidth to process your project, come up with next step and perform an action.
- All you have right now is the ability to make the next step!
- What’s it going to be?
When Crisis Pushes Us to the Limits of Our Productivity
Do you recall an experience of having a total peace amidst of chaos while you were doing a massive project? Do you remember when you had a matter that in retro-perspective looked like the crisis yet down the line you have found yourself in your own ‘comfort’ zone? This is the zone, where time has disappeared and, at the same time, you can recall that you were fully present to what was going on. You were fully engaged with the productive workflow. This brings us to the following thought that ‘crisis can produce a rear kind of calm’ which is one of the secrets to getting things done fast. The experience is all about instant intuitive decision making and instant actions taking. The results are outstanding because you are meaningfully engaged toward a specific outcome!
PRINCIPLE 1: “Use Your Brain For Processing Not Storage”.
Putting aside the meaningful theory of emptiness in Buddhism, in order for your brain to function better and faster, it showed be drained of everything else – emptied. To use a powerful metaphor – your mind is like computer storage with a completely full RAM. As soon as the RAM is more available to the user, the higher is the processing power.
- To empty your mind, take every idea or action you wish to make and write it out on a paper, to-do list, device, etc. If your list is going to exceed the limit of 100 items, so be it!
- Now! Capture all actionable items that require your immediate attention – immediate actions!
PRINCIPLE 2: “All Items Must Be Processed”
In terms of business couching, all unprocessed items in your mind tends to create “bottlenecks” – a sort of piles of useless information that get in the way of the most important things-to-do.
- Process your current projects, assign priorities and come up with possible next-action plan.
- Write down immediate actions to be taken in your To Do Checklist and their deadlines.
PRINCIPLE 3: “MASTER WORKFLOW”
- Collect data;
- Process information;
- Organize your results;
- Review next actions;
- Do the actions! (determine actions -> evaluate daily work -> review the work).
PRINCIPLE 4: VITAL “Five Steps of Project Planning”
Step 1: Define Your Purpose
Step 2: CLEARLY envision the resulting outcome
Step 3: Brainstorm Ideas
Step 4: Organize Your Workflow
Step 5: Identify your next action-step
PRINCIPLE 5: “The Power of the Next-Action Decision”
There is one powerful secret that lies in the success story of any well-known person – all they could do is take the next step. You can only take your next action. When you have done enough and have worked through the above mentioned steps, then taking the next action is easy. It is all about chopping your entire project into little logical pieces with assigned next step action. Now, it is time to take your journey with the next step and the To Do Checklist is here to help you in every step of your way.