A GTD Renaissance

When I started this blog in 2006, its original title was Lines from Lee. It was a Seinfeldesque blog: it didn’t have a definite subject. My main purpose was to learn the mechanics of blogging so that if Mayo Clinic ever decided to start a blog I would know how to do it.

In the earliest days I focused on live-blogging conferences, essentially publishing my notes from various presentations.

I soon saw a connection between blogging and another passion I had developed: Getting Things Done (a.k.a. GTD). This 2002 New York Times bestselling book by David Allen had been revolutionary for me personally, and I also appreciated the online community that had embraced it. Through my blog I explored how blogging technology was compatible with GTD. It gave me a lot of blogging material, and a chance to explore connections between two of my new-found passions.

I even worked GTD into the title of my blog, calling it PR, New Media and GTD: Lines from Lee.

A fateful presentation led to the renaming of this blog to Social Media University, Global (SMUG) and a focus that aligned with my evolving role at Mayo Clinic, as I began to focus more on social media and less on traditional media relations.

So GTD was out of the blog’s title even as the methodology continued to help me navigate my fast-changing work environment, and also to create capacity for exploration of “new media” opportunities.

For the last decade I’ve gone through cycles of stronger GTD implementation followed by relapses. I’ve found that I’m at my best when I’m consistently following GTD best practices.

Last February a colleague and fellow GTD practitioner suggested it would be good to have a speaker on GTD for our Communications Division retreat in August. That led me to do a little exploring, and I found that VitalSmarts had licensed the intellectual property from David Allen for in-person public GTD training courses in the U.S., as well as for “train the trainer’ education.

So in late April I took the GTD one-day course, followed by two days of training so I could be certified to facilitate the course for Mayo Clinic staff, and I completed that certification by teaching it several times to more than 100 Mayo colleagues.



In our fast-paced world that only seems to be speeding up, I’ve found the principles of GTD make the difference between surviving and truly having the psychic bandwidth to see and seize opportunities.

This one-day training course is particularly helpful because it gets you into applying the methodology in real time, even as you’re learning it.

As you’re looking to make the most of 2019, I’d encourage you to at least get the updated version of the book, and also to consider the full-day course. If you’d like to explore the concepts further, check out my GTD tag archives.

Have you implemented GTD? What has been your experience with it?

Using Buffer to Extend Your Twitter Presence

If you’re like most busy people (and like me) you probably grab small slices of time to engage in your social media accounts.

As a result, you may find yourself posting three or four tweets in relatively rapid succession, which can have two negative effects:

  1. People who happen to check Twitter around that time might unfollow you because they think you’re spamming, or
  2. Others who miss your five-minute outburst won’t see your post at all.

Buffer provides an easy, elegant solution to both potential problems.

Of course you can use Tweetdeck to schedule some of your tweets into the future, but with each tweet you need to decide the day and time you want it to be published, which is an extra step.

The nice thing about Buffer is that you can set a schedule of publishing slots once, and then when you add a new tweet it just goes into the queue.

Here’s the schedule I set up:

When I run across a post I’d like to tweet, I can just add to my queue, and it will be published in the next available slot. Any spontaneous tweets I post outside of Buffer will fill in gaps among the 2-4 regularly scheduled ones.

With the free Basic account you can have up to 10 posts in the queue. For most people that’s probably enough. I upgraded to Pro to increase the limit to 100.

Buffer works with other platforms besides Twitter

In conjunction with a curated source of content like our Mayo Clinic Champions newsfeed or the one we have on the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network, Buffer can make it easy to have a solid presence on Twitter in just a few minutes a week.

 

The Productivity Power of a Comma

If you’ve ever had to participate in a telephone conference call on your mobile phone, especially while on the go, you may have experienced the frustration of entering security codes to gain access to the call.

I’m probably on at least a dozen of these calls each week, and typically the calendar invitation has an 800 number to call, along with a notation that after dialing that number the participants need to enter a 6-9 digit access code.

So the invitation often looks something like this:

Call: 866-555-1212 Access Code: 1783256#

Clicking to dial the phone number on my calendar app is simple enough, but then I find myself flipping back and forth between the phone and the calendar app to remember and enter the access code before time expires.

I’ve been unsuccessful in this more than once, delaying the start of meetings, which of course wastes the time of everyone on the call as we’re waiting to get started.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this problem.

Here’s a tip I got from Greg Matthews in a meeting last week that can solve it. His invitation followed this format:

Mobile 1-click dial-in (USA): 8665551212,1783256#

The comma between the phone number and the access code is the key. With one click on a mobile phone, it enables all of the non-host participants to join the call without having to fumble for the access code.

Can we all adopt this convention, please?

Email Flood Relief

81st Ave Oakland flooding
81st Ave Oakland flooding (Photo credit: mr. nightshade)

In the New York Times Bits blog, Nick Bilton has a thought-provoking piece called Disruptions: Looking for Relief from a Flood of Email.

He confesses filing email bankruptcy to get out from a mountain of 46,315 unread emails, and explores some reasons behind the phenomenon of email overload and burnout. He also highlights one creative (and less extreme than bankruptcy) solution:

Some people have come up with their own solutions to the problems email presents. Luis Suarez, lead social business enabler for IBM, decided to take on his inbox several years ago, and by all accounts seems to have won.

He said he had moved most of his communication to public and social platforms. When people contact Mr. Suarez by email, unaware that he is not a fan of that route, he scans their email signature for a social network they use and then responds in a public forum, whether on Twitter, Google Plus or LinkedIn. This way, he says, he can deal with several messages at once.

Over the last few years, he has managed to get his inbox down by 98 percent. He rarely uses email anymore.

“If email was invented today, it probably would not have survived as a technology,” Mr. Suarez said. “Social and public sites are much more efficient.”

I agree that social networks can be much more efficient, but taking email contents to public forums needs to be done with care and consultation. For example, sometimes I get questions by email, and I ask the sender if it’s OK to answer in public on SMUG or elsewhere. That makes the answers more accessible to others who may have the same questions, and also invites others to share their perspectives, which may be better than mine. But going public without permission is bad form, as I see it.

I also would recommend David Allen’s Getting Things Done for some good thoughts on avoiding the need for email bankruptcy. And while I have some basic disagreements with Timothy Ferriss

in The 4-Hour Workweek as it relates to the purpose and meaning of work, he does have some good tips on managing the email beast.

What do you think? How have you managed (or not) the rising tide of emails?

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A Tale of Two Daves

Two guys named Dave have had life-changing impact on me, and I recently noticed several similarities in their approaches to life.

David AllenDavid Allen is the Guru of GTD (or Getting Things Done), and reading his book by that name eight years ago made a huge difference in my approach to dealing with the potentially bewildering blizzard of “stuff” that knowledge workers must manage just to stay afloat. Much of the early content in this blog (in the pre-SMUG days) was about David Allen’s practical tips, and I have no doubt that the psychic space he helped me create gave me the breathing room so I could approach the opportunities presented by the social media revolution with creativity instead of just being overwhelmed.

Dave RamseyDave Ramsey, about whom I have written here , helped to give our family some financial breathing space with his old-fashioned teaching about budgets, avoiding debt and getting control of spending. You may have heard him on the radio (which is where I first encountered him), and he’s also written a best-seller called The Total Money Makeover.

Here are some of the similarities I’ve noted between the two Daves.

Start small and win little victories. With Dave Ramsey it’s his Baby Steps, creating a mini-emergency fund so the next unexpected bill doesn’t force you to get out the plastic, and using the debt snowball to build momentum. With David Allen it’s getting the email inbox to empty.

Follow some simple rules that put you ahead of 95 percent of the world. David Allen has the two-minute rule: if the needed action to get any “stuff” you’re reviewing from its current state to the desired state is less than two minutes, do it right away instead of putting it on a list for later follow-up. With Dave Ramsey it’s developing a family budget and using an envelope system for spending in various categories. Both Daves say those little things help create momentum that provides motivation to persevere.

Review Progress Periodically. David Allen says the Weekly Review is the key to winning at the game of work and the business of life. Dave Ramsey’s plan calls for a monthly assessment of how actual spending aligned with the plan…and with income.

Scream with Delight Upon Reaching Milestones. Dave Ramsey has his Debt-Free Fridays, in which his listeners who have paid off the last of their debts (or everything but their house mortgages) call to tell their story and then scream into the phone: “WE’RE DEBT FREEEEEEEE!!!!” at which time Ramsey plays Mel Gibson’s “FREEEEDOMMMMM!!!!” shout from Braveheart. David Allen doesn’t have a public ceremony like that, but GTDers feel similar euphoria when they get their email inboxes to zero.

Don’t let failures and imperfections discourage you from the journey. It’s been several years since I first encountered the two Daves, and I would have expected more progress and consistency than I’ve achieved. But even imperfect application has enabled me to accomplish much more than I otherwise would have. And just this morning, I had the opportunity to scream…

“MY INBOX IS EMPTYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!”

Are you familiar with the two Daves? How have they helped you?