MY EPIPHANY MOMENT<\/strong>
\nA friend had given me the GTD book which piqued my interest and I had met various people who were GTD ‘evangelists’. When the opportunity came to attend a one day seminar with Todd Brown at Next Action Associates, I jumped at it. I arrived with a lot on my mind and wondering if I could really give up a day of my precious time to do this and not surprisingly feeling quite stressed. In reality, I couldn’t really afford not to. I very much enjoyed the seminar and it got me thinking about what I do and don’t do and how the future could look. I also met some interesting people.<\/p>\nI started implementing the ideas with partial success. What really made the difference, though, was actually working on a one-to-one coaching basis with Ed Lamont and various others. I have an iPad, and found after trying a few systems that what worked best for me was the Nozbe tool – the beauty is that you can have the same system synced on both the desktop and iPad. Great for capturing those thoughts as they arise and ticking a few things off the list when waiting for a train\/plane.<\/p>\n
I started by filing all old paper documents in my in tray into separate files which I kept close to hand as I thought the information was more important than it really was. Most of the files I never looked at again so I am in the process of binning them. I then started working through my personal filing cabinet at home which had never been cleared out. I found the whole process very therapeutic and it made me reconsider what we file and keep and why.<\/p>\n
In my first few months of Weekly Reviews I stuck to two hours but never got to the bottom of my in tray or inbox. But as I did it I realised that the time to do a lot of the processing was as it came in, and slowly but surely by repeating it weekly, the trays started emptying and my stress levels went down. One of my discoveries working with Nozbe was that I became good at capturing the ideas but less good at actually doing them. The more I use it the better the balance. The other benefit of GTD is becoming more reflective, so I am planning sales account campaigns, meetings and calls using iMindmap software. Not surprisingly, by spending more time planning the results end up better! On the personal side I have made a start on my pre-digital photographs which were all catalogued but not stuck in any albums. With three young kids, I had quite a backlog! I have also taken up golf.<\/p>\n
HOW LIFE HAS NOW CHANGED<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>
\nI am in the middle of a number of major projects at work and home: launching a new website, integrating a new database, building a new team that is expanding into Europe, training for a ski marathon and about to embark on a major house renovation.<\/p>\nI currently have about 100 projects and try and complete projects before starting others. I find real value in doing the Weekly Review to check everything is on track. So the trays and inbox get to zero, I feel a greater sense of perspective and control, and sleep better.<\/p>\n
I can thoroughly recommend the GTD approach to all who want to achieve more with less stress!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James McBrien is Managing Director of Clearwater Advisers Ltd. Clearwater specialises in showing talented individuals how to be great communicators. We show people how to be natural when under pressure. As well as running individual and group coaching programmes we also help prepare management teams for IPOs and trade sales. We have developed a unique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":19160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_eb_attr":"","gtp_columnspro_styling":"{}","gtp_paragraph_styling":"{}","gtp_heading_styling":"{}","gtp_spacer_styling":"{}","gtp_video_styling":"{}","gtp_group_styling":"{}","gtp_cover_styling":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,309,310,313,319,311,323,312,318,320],"tags":[155,330,51,53,1454,58,1455,124,293,93,349],"yst_prominent_words":[1456,1460,1457,1463,1462,874,787,1461,885,621,1491,647,1458,1305,453,910,960,645,536,793],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19159"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}