Getting Things Done

by David Allen

  In the personal arena, this is where you would want to consider things like: “My career is going to stagnate unless I assert my own goals more specifically to my boss (or my boss’s boss).” Or “What new things are my children going to be doing next year, and what do I need to do differently because of that?” Or “What preparation do I need to ensure that I can deal with this health problem we’ve just uncovered?”

  Through a longer scope you might assess: How is your career going? How is your personal life moving along? What is your organization doing relative to changes in the environment, and what impact does that have on you? These are the one-to-five-year-horizon questions that, when I ask them, elicit different and important kinds of answers from everyone.

  Not long ago I coached someone in a large international bank who, after a few months of implementing this methodology and getting control of his day-to-day inventory of work, decided the time was right to invest in his own start-up high-tech firm. The thought had been too intimidating for him to address initially, but working from the “runway level” up made it much more accessible and a natural consequence of thinking at this horizon.

  If you’re involved in anything that has a future of longer than a year (marriage, kids, a career, a company, an art form), you would do well to think about what you might need to be doing to manage things along that vector.

  Questions to ask yourself here are:

  • What are the longer-term goals and objectives in my organization, and what projects do I need to have in place related to them to fulfill my responsibilities?

  • What longer-term goals and objectives have I set for myself, and what projects do I need to have in place to make them happen?

  • What other significant things are happening that could affect my options about what you I’m doing?

  Here are some examples of the kinds of issues that show up at this level of conversation:

  • The changing nature of your job, given the shifting priorities of the company. Instead of managing the production of your own training programs in-house, you’re going to outsource them to vendors.

  • The direction in which you feel you need to move in your career. You see yourself doing a different kind of job a year from now, and you need to make a transition out of the one you have while exploring the options for a transfer or promotion.

  • The organization direction, given globalization and expansion. You see a lot of major international travel looming on the horizon for you, and given your life-style preferences, you need to consider how to readjust your career plans.

  • Life-style preferences and changing needs. As your kids get older, your need to be at home with them is diminishing, and your interest in investment and retirement planning is growing.

  At the topmost level of thinking, you’ll need to ask some of the ultimate questions. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? What is the core DNA of your existence, personally and/or organizationally, that drives your choices. This is the “big picture” stuff with which hundreds of books and gurus and models are devoted to helping you grapple.

  “Why?”: this is the great question with which we all struggle.

  You can have all the other levels of your life and work ship-shape, defined, and organized to a T. Still, if you’re the slightest bit off course in terms of what at the deepest level you want or are called to be doing, you’re going to be uncomfortable.

  Getting Priority Thinking Off Your Mind

  Take at least a few minutes, if you haven’t already done so, to jot down some informal notes about things that occurred to you while you’ve been reading this chapter. Whatever popped into your mind at these more elevated levels of your inner radar, write it down and get it out of your head.

  Then process those notes. Decide whether what you wrote down is something you really want to move on or not. If not, throw the note away, or put it on a “Someday/Maybe” list or in a folder called “Dreams and Goals I Might Get Around to at Some Point.” Perhaps you want to continue accumulating more of this kind of future thinking and would like to do the exercise with more formality—for example, by drafting a new business plan with your partners, designing and writing out your idea of a dream life with your spouse, creating a more specific career map for the next three years for yourself, or just getting a personal coach who can lead you through those discussions and thought processes. If so, put that outcome on your “Projects” list, and decide the next action. Then do it, hand it off to get done, or put the action reminder on the appropriate list.

  With that done, you may want to turn your focus to developmental thinking about specific projects that have been identified but not fleshed out as fully as you’d like. You’ll want to ensure that you’re set up for that kind of “vertical” processing.

  10

  Getting Projects Under Control

  CHAPTERS 4 THROUGH 9 have given you all the tricks and methods you need to clear your head and make intuitive choices about what to do when. That’s the horizontal level—what needs your attention and action across the horizontal landscape of your life. The last piece of the puzzle is the vertical level—the digging deep and pie-in-the-sky thinking that can leverage your creative brainpower. That gets us back to refining and energizing our project planning.

  The Need for More Informal Planning

  After years of working with thousands of professionals down in the trenches, I can safely say that virtually all of us could be doing more planning, more informally and more often, about our projects and our lives. And if we did, it would relieve a lot of pressure on our psyches and produce an enormous amount of creative output with minimal effort.

  I’ve discovered that the biggest improvement opportunity in planning does not consist of techniques for the highly elaborate and complex kinds of project organizing that professional project managers sometimes use (like GANTT charts). Most of the people who need those already have them, or at least have access to the training and software required to learn about them. The real need is to capture and utilize more of the creative, proactive thinking we do—or could do.

  The major reason for the lack of this kind of effective value-added thinking is the dearth of systems for managing the poten tially infinite amount of detail that could show up as a result. This is why my approach tends to be bottom-up. If you feel out of control with your current actionable commitments, you’ll resist focused planning. An unconscious pushback occurs. As you begin to apply these methods, however, you may find that they free up enormous creative and constructive thinking. If you have systems and habits ready to leverage your ideas, your productivity can expand exponentially.

  The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster.

  —Rosabeth Moss Cantor

  In chapter 3, I covered in some detail the five phases of project planning that take something from the idea stage into physical reality.

  You need to set up systems and tricks that get you to think about your projects and situations more frequently, more easily, and in more depth.

  What follows is a compilation of practical tips and techniques to facilitate the natural, informal planning processes I recommend. Although these suggestions are all based on common sense, they’re not followed nearly as frequently as they could be. Put them to use whenever and as often as you can, instead of saving up your thinking for big formal meetings.

  Which Projects Should You Be Planning?

  Most of the outcomes you have identified for your “Projects” list will not need any kind of front-end planning, other than the sort you do in your head, quickly and naturally, to come up with a next action on them. The only planning needed for “Get car inspected,” for example, would be to decide to check the phone book for the nearest inspection location and call and set up a time.

  There are two types of projects, however, that deserve at least some sort of planning activity: (1) those that still have your attention even after you’ve determined their next actions, and (2) those about
which potentially useful ideas and supportive detail just show up.

  The first type—the projects that you know have other things about them that must be decided on and organized—will need a more detailed approach than just identifying a next action. For these you’ll need a more specific application of one or more of the other four phases of the natural planning model: purpose and principles, vision/outcome, brainstorming, and/or organizing.

  The second type—the projects for which ideas just show up, ad hoc, on a beach or in a car or in a meeting—need to have an appropriate place into which these associated ideas can be captured. Then they can reside there for later use as needed.

  Projects That Need Next Actions About Planning

  There are probably a few projects you can think of right now, off the top of your head, that you know you want to get more objectified, fleshed out, and under control. Perhaps you have an important meeting coming up and you know you have to prepare an agenda and materials for it. Or you’ve just inherited the job of coordinating the annual associates’ conference, and you’ve got to get it organized as soon as possible so you can start delegating significant pieces. Or you’ve got to clarify a job description for a new position on your team to give to Human Resources. If you haven’t done it already, get a next action now that will start the planning process for each of these, and put it on the appropriate action list. Then proceed with further planning steps.

  Typical Planning Steps

  The most common types of planning-oriented actions will be your own brainstorming and organizing, setting up meetings, and gathering information.

  Brainstorming Some of the projects that have your attention right now will require you to do your own free-form thinking; this is especially true of those for which you were not clear about what the next action would be when you made that decision. These should all have a next action, such as “Draft ideas re X.”

  You need to decide where and how you want to do that action, in order to know which action list to put it on. Do you do this kind of thinking best on a computer, or by hand-writing your thoughts on paper? I may choose either medium, depending on what my intuition tells me. For me this next action would go either on my “At Computer” list or on “Anywhere” (because I can draw mind-maps wherever I am, as long as I have pen and paper).

  Organizing You may have some projects for which you have already collected notes and miscellaneous support materials, and you just need to sort through them and get them into a more structured form. In this case, your next action would likely be “Organize Project X notes.” If you have to be in your office to do that (because that’s where the files are, and you don’t want to carry them around), that action should go on your “At Office” action list. If you’re carrying the project notes around with you in a folder, or in a portable organizer or on a laptop, then the “Organize . . . ” action would go on an “Anywhere” or “Misc.” action list if you’re going to do it by hand, or on “At Computer” if you’re going to use a word processor, outliner, or project-planning software.

  One of the greatest blocks to organizational productivity is the lack of decision by a senior person about the necessity of a meeting, and with whom, to move an important issue forward.

  Setting Up Meetings Often, progress will be made on project thinking when you set up a meeting with the people you’d like to have involved in the brainstorming. That usually means sending an e-mail to the whole group or to an assistant to get it calendared, or making a phone call to the first person to nail down a time.

  Gathering Information Sometimes the next task on project thinking is to gather more data. Maybe you need to talk to someone to get his or her input (“Call Bill re his thoughts on the managers’ meeting”). Or you need to look through the files you just inherited from last year’s conference (“Review Associate Conference archive files”). Or you want to surf the Web to get a sense of what’s happening “out there” on a new topic you’re exploring (“R&D search firms for sales executives”).

  Random Project Thinking

  Don’t lose any ideas about projects that could potentially be useful. Many times you’ll think of something you don’t want to forget when you’re a place that has nothing to do with the project. You’re driving to the store, for example, and you think of a great way that you might want to start off the next staff meeting. Or you’re stirring the spaghetti sauce in the kitchen and it occurs to you that you might want to give out nice tote bags to participants in the upcoming conference. Or you’re watching the evening news when you suddenly remember another key person you might want to include in the advisory council you’re putting together.

  If these aren’t specifically next actions that can go directly on your action lists, you’ll still need to capture and organize them somewhere that makes sense. Of course the most critical tools for ensuring that nothing gets lost is your collection system—your in-basket, pad, and paper (or equivalents) at work and at home, and in a portable version (an index card) while you’re out and about. You need to hold all your ideas until you later decide what to do with them.

  Tools and Structures That Support Project Thinking

  No matter at what level project ideas show up, it’s great to have good tools always close at hand for capturing them as they occur. Once they’ve been captured, it’s useful to have access to them whenever you need to refer to them.

  Thinking Tools

  One of the great secrets to getting ideas and increasing your productivity is utilizing the function-follows-form phenomenon—great tools can trigger good thinking. (I’ve come up with some of my most productive thoughts when playing with my Palm organizer in an airport, waiting for a flight!)

  Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish.

  —Ovid

  If you aren’t writing anything down, it’s extremely difficult to stay focused on anything for more than a few minutes, especially if you’re by yourself. But when you utilize physical tools to keep your thinking anchored, you can stay engaged constructively for hours.

  Writing Instruments

  Keep good writing tools around all the time so you never have any unconscious resistance to thinking due to not having anything to capture it with. If I don’t have something to write with, I can sense that I’m not as comfortable letting myself think about projects and situations.

  Function often follows form. Give yourself a context for capturing thoughts, and thoughts will occur that you don’t yet know you have.

  Conversely, I have done some great thinking and planning at times just because I wanted to use my nice-looking, smooth-writing ballpoint pen! You may not be inspired by cool gear like I am, but if you are, do yourself a favor and invest in quality writing tools.

  I also suggest that you keep nice ballpoint pens at the stations where you’re likely to want to take notes—particularly near the phones around your house.

  Paper and Pads

  In addition to writing tools, you should always have functional pads of paper close at hand. Legal pads work well because you can easily tear off pages with ideas and notes and toss them into your in-basket until you get a chance to process them. Also you will often want to keep some of your informal mind-maps, and you can put those separate pieces of paper in appropriate file folders without having to rewrite them.

  Where is your closest pad? Keep it closer.

  Easels and Whiteboards

  If you have room for them, whiteboards and/or easel pads are very functional thinking tools to use from time to time. They give you plenty of space on which to jot down ideas, and it can be useful to keep them up in front of you for while, as you incubate on a topic. Whiteboards are great to have on a wall in your office and in meeting rooms, and the bigger the better. If you have children, I recommend that you install one in their bedrooms (I wish I’d grown up with the encouragement to have as many ideas as I could!). Be sure to keep plenty of fresh markers on hand; it’
s frustrating to want to start writing on a whiteboard and find that all the markers are dry and useless.

  How do I know

  what I think, until

  I hear what I say?

  —E. M. Forster

  Whenever two or more people are gathered for a meeting, someone should start writing somewhere where the other(s) can see. Even if you erase your thoughts after a few minutes, just the act of writing them down facilitates a constructive thinking process like nothing else. (I’ve found it immensely helpful at times to draw informal diagrams and notes on paper tablecloths, place mats, or even napkins in restaurants, if I didn’t have my own pad of paper at hand.)

  The Computer

  Many times I like to think on my laptop, in my word processor. There are so many things I might want to do later on with my thinking, and it feels terrific to already have it in some digital form for later editing and cutting and pasting into various other applications. Once I’ve booted up and the screen is ready in front of me, I find that thinking just automatically starts to happen. This is another good reason to ensure that your typing and keyboard skills are sufficient to make engaging with the computer at least easy, if not downright fun.

  Leverage your computer as a think station.