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July 2005
I'll never forget my last day as a first-class midshipman. Our commanding officer called each of us up to the front of the battalion for a hearty handshake and a farewell gift from the unit. Upon returning to my seat, I opened the small box and found a personalized 3x5 leather organizer inside. It was my first exposure to the "Day-Timer" time management system. I was hooked. Since then, I've been perpetually fascinated by the promise of being fully organized -- no great idea goes undocumented, no task lost, no contact forgotten. In the unending pursuit of this elusive goal, I have endured countless new technologies, at least seven habits of only moderately successful people, and countless New Years' resolutions. The ugly truth was that I suffered the chronic, and sometimes fatal, Type-A malady of being worried that I had forgotten something important, perhaps to be lost forever in the abyss of unchecked to-do items.
Six months and two Palm Pilots ago, I ran across a book that helped me see a great, and frankly obvious, truth -- that the source of my anxiety was simply that I didn't have an absolutely fail-proof system of capturing the countless tasks, projects, and follow-up items that I generated each week. Sure, I was using to-do lists and keeping notes but doing so without consistency and any systematic review processes: notes were taken but rarely reviewed, some tasks were written down while others were in my head -- a virtual maelstrom of stuff and resultant stress. The talisman I discovered (while reading an alpha-geek blog, of course) was David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001). This truly remarkable book, known by insiders as GTD, has sold over 200,000 copies, spawned thousands of blog entries including one of its own, and a robust seminar and speaking business for Mr. Allen. Like many of the most powerful and enduring business books, his prescriptive methods are as powerful as they are simple to learn and use.
Collecting. Essentially, at the heart of GTD is a system by which all the "stuff" on your radar screen is systematically collected, reviewed and processed. The first order of business is to develop a holistic "in-basket" that captures all your incomplete action items including email, voicemail, physical mail, notes, ideas, and the like. The idea here is to consolidate all your outstanding items into a single system -- with the ultimate goal of getting it out of your mental RAM and into a retrievable "in-basket." You're likely to find accomplishing this first step quite liberating as it puts an end to open-ended loops and uncaptured to-dos.
Organizing. Allen advocates that you quickly determine if each in-basket item is actionable. If it isn't, great. It should immediately be put into one of three buckets: trash, reference (useful info that might be used later) or incubate (items that may require action in the future). If it is actionable, determine the next action required to move the task to completion. The "next action" list truly is the next generation "to-do" tickler.
Quick processing. Allen further argues that each of those key "next action" steps be reviewed through the lens of "Do it, Delegate it, or Defer it." If it can be done in two minutes or less, just get it done. Should you give it to someone else to accomplish? If so, delegate it and add it to your "waiting items" list. If neither of the two applies, it stays on the "next action" list for future processing.
Review. The key to making this program successful is a regular, systematic review of your waiting and next action lists. For me, I review both nearly every morning. This is your opportunity to reevaluate, triage, and update each item. It's crucial that you get yourself into this routine of reviewing these lists. This simple system of religiously capturing and reviewing is at the heart of GTD (and theoretically all superior time management systems).
This is obviously a greatly oversimplified overview of the GTD gospel. There are many ways to skin this cat but I've seen (and experienced) this system work wonders -- and with great consistency. I hope you'll consider adding the purchase of Getting Things Done to your next-action list -- you won't be sorry.
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© 2005 Christopher Michel. All opinions expressed in this article
are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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Chris is President of Military Advantage, the nation's largest military and veteran membership organization. Through Military.com, the company connects over 4 million members to the lifelong benefits of military service and provides public and private sector clients efficient access to the military market. Members trust Military.com for career, education and financial services. Founded in 1999, Military Advantage has raised over $30 million from leading investors and strategic partners, including A&E Television Networks. In 2004, Military Advantage was acquired by Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MNST).
Prior to founding Military Advantage, Chris was a strategy consultant assisting companies in the airline, entertainment, and financial services industries.
Chris also served as a Naval Flight Officer in the United States Navy. While on active duty, Chris flew as a P-3 Navigator, Tactical Coordinator and Mission Commander in support of maritime interdiction operations in the Red Sea, NATO enforcement operations in the Adriatic, and counter-narcotics missions in Central America. Following his operational tour, Chris worked in the Pentagon as Aide to the Chief of the Naval Reserve.
An advocate for servicemembers and Veterans, Chris is a frequent speaker and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week, Financial Times, and others. He is also a regular guest on CNN and other national radio and TV programs. In addition, he writes the monthly "Charting your Course" column for U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine and is working on his first book to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2005. He is an elected Director of the U.S. Naval Institute, a Trustee of the U.S. Naval Institute Foundation and a past Director of the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation and the USS Arizona Memorial Fund.
Chris earned his commission from the NROTC program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was named a Distinguished Naval Graduate. He also holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Chris
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