Black Belt Productivity

Jason Womack of the Jason Womack Company is one of the most respected names in personal productivity. Jason, as most of you know, is also a champion of Getting Things Done. He was a presenter for the David Allen Company for several years. These days, he coaches individuals and companies in enhancing workplace performance by implementing best practices in the workplace.

Jason also is a triathlete with a passion for helping others achieve their fitness goals.

Today, we publish Jason’s thoughts on GTD and metrics.

The original question that kicked off this discussion was submitted by Mayra.

I have never been very big on metrics. It really has nothing to do with whether I like metrics or not. Where I typically have an issue with metrics is that most companies, especially large corporations, fall into the trap of establishing metrics that measure things for the sake of measuring things. We measure, but most of the time, we measure stuff that does not tell us anything. Metrics are useless if they do not provide information to the user that helps them determine if they are accomplishing their goals. But more often than not, we measure things and then are at a loss as to what they tell us about our performance.

Today we would like to welcome in Frank Meeuwsen, creator of whatsthenextaction.com. Frank is based in the Netherlands, and is trying to get David Allen to take his Roadmap seminar across the pond. All it seems that he needs is guarantee that a room full of people will go and see it. So contact Frank if you want to take a little vacation and learn from the David at the same time.

Thanks to Frank for writing for us. It seems that we may have broke his writing back. We are most appreciative of him for taking the time to write for us.

We would like to welcome Patricia Burroughs, aka pooks, to the Black Belt Series. She is an screenwriter, and a GTD advocate. She is very active in the GTD community and gives how artists can implement GTD as well as anyone.

Many thanks for her submission.

- Michael

Hi, I’m Pooks and I have GTD.

This is a good thing, honest. I wish I had a stronger dose of it, but I’m hoping it will creep its way under my skin and into the kind of addiction that will further counteract those other initials that define me: ADD & ENFP.

John is the creator of MyPalmLife, a Palm-centric website that is “3 guys talking about palm OS PDA’s, what they do with them, what software they find useful on them and what things they find interesting on other sites.”

Our thanks goes out to John for contributing to our little blog.

- Michael

How has GTD changed my life?

* what your state of affairs was like pre-GTD:

Working as a construction industry project manager and cost consultant for the last 19+ years I had to develop many coping strategies in order to get my job done at a level at least approaching competence.

Black Belt Productivity would like to welcome in Allen Hall, Graduate Student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and blogger at searching4arcadia. He brings us the perspective of a student who has implemented GTD. There is a lot of talk about who GTD is good for profession-wise. We are trying to bring views from a number of professions that have successfully implemented GTD.

We thank Allen for his post, and we look forward to see more from him in the future.

- Michael

What state of affairs was like pre-GTD?

This week, we welcome in Matt Cornell, of Matt’s Idea Blog. Matt has taken the enviable task of turning his love of GTD into a possible second career as a Productivity Coach by earning a (self-defined) Master’s Degree in Personal Productivity.

We are excited that he agreed to write for us (as we are with all of our Black Belts).

- Michael

GTD: Space + awareness = *major* action

Introduction

How GTD has Changed GTD Wannabe’s Life

I’ve been experimenting with David Allen’s Getting Things done for about 9 months now. I still consider myself a novice, hence the GTD Wannabe moniker that I use. I’m most definitely stuck at the runway level still, but that’s okay with me. I’m at a point in my life where I inherently know my longer-term plan, i.e., finish PhD in two years or less, get job, re-evaluate goals then. So, this essay is a collection of ramblings on how GTD has changed my life, from a wannabe, runway-level, 9-month-in practitioner. Hopefully there will a nugget or two in here for you gentle readers.

This is the first entry of our Black Belt Series. The topic for this first series was “How has GTD changed my life?” The series is going to run every Wednesday (that we have a submission available). Please leave comments or send Jason and I emails with comments.

We are going to start off with bsag, developer of Tracks and author of her own blog, but she’s a girl. Both Jason and I are users of Tracks. I think that it is the best web-based implementation for GTD that is available.

- Michael

From bsag…

Jason and I are trying to provide some really great GTD^® content to the blogosphere. One way that we decided to do that is through inviting some of the established blogophiles to write for us throughout the year. We have finally settled on the first topic.

How has Getting Things Done^® Changed Your Life?

We have secured 9 GTD^® blog authors and software developers (Black Belts, if you will) to write in this first series. They are (in no particular order):

1. Emory Lundberg (http://kvet.ch)
2. Matt Cornell, of Matt’s Idea Blog