A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I enjoyed a regular "refresher" to get re-connected with David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. At the time, my touchstone was to listen to David's 8-CD series, "Getting Things Done Fast," which was a recording of one of his live seminars. I later found that my copy of this wonderful program is quite rare, and they have been out of print for at least 2.5 years. That's a shame, since the program was a great resource. I've loaned it out to a few close friends, but that doesn't scale very well.
You are no longer out of luck
I've got good news, though. I recently ordered a copy of a new offering from David and the gang - it's called "GTDLive!" and it is a 10-CD recording of a live seminar that David conducted about GTD. At $395 US, it's not cheap but it is...
- cheaper than going to a live seminar;
- better than the old GTD Fast set since it comes with a bit more material and a set of laminated GTD templates;
- reusable on-demand, any time you need a refresher.
I just finished listening to this over the course of my daily commutes (it took over a week to get through it all - there is a lot here), and it was a shot in the arm to get me back on the wagon with some of the GTD habits I've been neglecting.
Check it out - and you, too, can have David Allen talking to you with the push of a button.
P.S. GTD Connect members get a pretty good discount on this program.
[Updated]
P.P.S. If you already have the original GTD Fast set, I don't think this one is worth the extra cash since they are very similar in the fundamentals of GTD. However, if you don't have the old one I think you'll love this new GTDLive! set.
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You may not have noticed it since I 'pre-wrote' some posts here that went live automatically, but last week I was on a 200-mile horse trek with my son and a bunch of other folks. It was an awesome learning experience, with no phone, no email, no electricity, etc.
There was pletny of time to work hard, reflect, enjoy the scenery, and recharge on that trip. There was also a ton of new things to learn.
I had the chance to share a few insights from that trip in this month's "Rapid Fire Learning" roundup at Joyful Jubilant Learning (JJL). Click through to JJL find out what I learned, and please share your top 5 learnings for June in the comments of that post.
Read MoreThe other day, I was on a conference call with Cliff Atkinson (author of Beyond Bullet Points) who was training a group of folks on How to Create Your Graphics LIVE on a Tablet PC, Whiteboard or Piece of Paper (one of his weekly e-Lessons). One of the tips he gave us to get better at ad-hoc presentations was to read Dan Roam's book, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.
Seth Godin's review (see the diagram at right , from the dust jacket of the book) says it all. This is a very interesting book, and I've already applied some of the concepts from the book to improve a couple of whiteboarding sessions at the office.
The gist of it is to use drawings instead of dry slides or wordy diatribes to explain your ideas. Instead, engage the audience by creating simple diagrams to illustrate your points. The big problem I have: coming up with good graphics to illustrate my point. I am finding that a) practice helps, and b) if I am planning to do a talk, part of that planning should include brainstorming how I can tell the story better with pictures, and deciding which pictures to use.
The book is full of examples, along with techniques to help you come up with visual methods to present various topics and problems in a compelling way. For example, you'll find chapters on:
- Pictures that solve a Who / What problem
- Pictures that solve a How Much problem
- Pictures that solve a Where problem
- Pictures that solve a When problem
- Pictures that solve a How problem
- Pictures that solve a Why problem
And even if you don't choose to do everything in pictures, you'll find techniques that will help you structure and simplify your message for greater effectiveness.
This book isn't just for people who do presentations all the time. I bet you'll find that the skills you'll develop by studying and applying the approach in this book will dramatically increase your effectiveness in meetings, and improve your ability to "sell" your ideas to others.
Read More[Note: This post previously announced this seminar - now it tells you how to access the archive]
This morning, I saw an online seminar by Cliff Atkinson (author of Beyond Bullet Points) called: Creating a 15-Minute Presentation in 1-Hour. It is a very useful walk-through of the process from start-to-finish, and illustrates the concepts from Cliff's book very effectively.
You can access the content by clicking the link above (may require a free registration at Microsoft Office Online).
Take advantage of this Freebie if you have any interest in improving your presentation creation skillz.
Cliff's seminars never disappoint - I'm a member of his Beyond Bullet Points (BBP) community, and it is worth the price of admission - he does weekly e-Lessons on various topics, including soliciting topics from volunteers in the BBP community. He actually creates presentations with the volunteers, based on their topic - cool stuff.
Related items
Read MoreLast week, I posted about some excellent analysis by Tim Ferriss ("You wouldn't like me when I'm unproductive...") comparing the "fighting styles" of various productivity gurus. If you aren't familiar with Tim's work, he is the author of "The 4 Hour Work Week," which is chock full of ideas to change you life. It certainly changed my mental models in a significant way.
Anyway, browsing around Tim's blog, I stumbled across his Flickr photostream where I saw the photo at right. It depicts a set of operating guidelines he developed while working with a department in a Fortune 500 company.
I really like this concept, and my colleague Matt and I are just beginning to experiment with our own variations of this approach. If you break down what's on the board, it has an excellent set of guidance embedded in it:
- Throttle back on email. Don't check it constantly, and don't do work email away from work.
- Focus on a few specific, high value activities per day.
- Record your results - and if you're on a team, let the team know what you're doing (I love that they are using a Wiki for that).
- Minimize unproductive chatting.
- Focus on one thing at a time and avoid the overhead of multitasking. (My buddy Gene and I use the analogy that even though an air traffic controller has lots of planes queuing up, each one should only land one plane at a time.)
- Get out on time. I think this has a good psychological effect for driving better focus, and helps prevent tasks from expanding to consume all the available time.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes with our experiment. I don't know if I can go quite as "purist" as what's on this board. For example, given how my work is structured, it's unlikely that I'll totally eliminate all after-hours email in the near future, but I can certainly do less of it.
Even so, I definitely think establishing some operating guidelines like these will help me and the others on my team.
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