{"id":8476,"date":"2008-03-18T05:20:07","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T13:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gtdtimes.com\/2008\/03\/18\/natural-born-gtders-and-their-habits-are-you-one-of-the-few\/"},"modified":"2021-05-23T17:23:27","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T00:23:27","slug":"natural-born-gtd-fans-and-their-habits-are-you-one-of-the-few","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2008\/03\/natural-born-gtd-fans-and-their-habits-are-you-one-of-the-few\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Born GTD fans and their habits: are you one of the few?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Community Contribution by Michael Sliwinski<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the years that I\u2019ve been learning and mastering GTD I\u2019ve stumbled across many great individuals who taught me a lot about how to implement GTD in my personal and business life.<\/p>\n

Some of them have been exposed to GTD since the day the book was published and have gradually become black belts\u2026 and there are others who have never heard of GTD or \u201cGetting Things Done\u201d but if you have a look at the way they work \u2013 it\u2019s incredible to see how they follow the book\u2019s advice without ever reading it. I call them: natural born implementers of GTD.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who are natural born implementers of GTD? To understand that let\u2019s get back to the question: \u201cwhat is GTD?\u201d To me, GTD is not just a set of methods, it\u2019s more like a set of habits. Powerful habits. n order to be successful in implementing GTD in your life, you\u2019ll need to develop a series of habits:
\n\u2022 habit of putting all of your thoughts into your inbox and not keeping them forever on your mind
\n\u2022 habit of processing your inbox and deciding what to do with each item
\n\u2022 habit of managing projects and putting all of the project-related stuff where it belongs
\n\u2022 habit of \u201ccranking widgets\u201d \u2013 getting things done without thinking too much about your system
\n\u2022 habit of weekly review and re-organizing your actions for the next week
\n\u2022 habit of extracting \u201cnext actions\u201d from a pile of to-dos in your projects
\n\u2022 habit of not putting everything into your calendar\u2026 just the time-specific meetings and actions
\n\u2026and you\u2019ll discover more of these as you read the book by David Allen.
\nNow, much to my surprise, they are people who \u201cget\u201d these habits\u2026 they have never read the GTD book, never learned any theory about time-management or project-management \u2013 they just intuitively know that this is the way to go and they are just doing that every day. They even don\u2019t have any sophisticated systems for this, they use good-old pen and paper, old-school calendars and whatever applications they have pre-installed on their computers. But these tools don\u2019t matter. The key to their success is the fact that they know the \u201chabits\u201d it takes to get things done and are just following these every single day.<\/p>\n


\nThe first natural born implementer of GTD \u2013 Luis.<\/strong>
\nJust after I\u2019ve read the GTD book, I started doing business with a guy named Luis who is to this day one of my business partners and a great friend. I remember I was greatly impressed by the concepts from the book by David Allen but what really struck me is that after a week of working with Luis I found out that he is following his daily habits in the same way David Allen describes it. I set down and talked to him about GTD and he was surprised there is such a thing as GTD. When asked about his daily habits, he just said it was so obvious that he never gave too much thought to it.<\/p>\n

He just knew he had to make his actions list in the morning (\u201cNext Actions\u201d), he had to revise his projects and tasks every Monday morning (\u201cWeekly Review\u201d), he had to jot down all the stuff there was to do and later make sure to process it and attach it to a particular project (\u201cInbox processing\u201d) and he had to spend his day with his list to make sure everything he had planned has been done (\u201ccranking widgets\u201d). No rocket science, he said, just a way to get stuff done and move along. He just had his regular habits and mastered them. I didn\u2019t. And what he said there wasn\u2019t all that obvious to me at the time. The same thing happened when I met my future wife and discovered she\u2019d been following similar habits and getting tons of stuff done\u2026 and neither has she ever heard of GTD before.<\/p>\n

They are natural born implementers of GTD \u2013 to them GTD is just obvious. I guess David Allen feels the same way.<\/strong>
\nHabits are not that \u201cobvious\u201d though. I had to \u201cdiscover\u201d all of these \u201cobvious\u201d techniques and learn my habits. Really study them, learn, fail and try again. And again. And again. And boy it wasn\u2019t all that easy. These natural born implementers of GTD make it look easy. It\u2019s not. Maintaining good habits is a tedious task. Sometimes we feel too lazy to remember them, we try to talk ourselves out of them or simply unconsciously find ways to avoid them.<\/p>\n

We tend to get flooded with lots of information and let ourselves be carried away by the pace of work and accumulate stuff to never find the time for the habits of processing, organizing, reviewing…This is why some of us (me!) need tools to help us. We need the tools to help us remember about our habits and guide us how to perform these habits. We sure will be covering some of there on the GTD Times blog. They range from simple pen and paper, calendars, computer based applications, web-based applications, you name it.<\/p>\n

I developed my own web application to help me remember about my habits and boy it helped me a lot \u2013 I finally had my projects, to-dos, notes, files\u2026 etc. in one system and could easily choose next actions for each day. I\u2019ve initially used it only by myself for more than a year or so\u2026 but later decided to show it to the world and now there are thousands of busy professionals from all over the world getting more done thanks to my web application.<\/p>\n

Are you a natural-born implementer of GTD?<\/strong>
\nIf you are \u2013 congratulations. However, chances are you\u2019re like me so you need a way to develop your habits and a way to keep you on top of them. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll find the book by David Allen a great read and if you have already read it, find your tools for the job and create a perfect habits-empowering system that will help you get things done and live a happy life. Feel free to post about your system in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Community Contribution by Michael Sliwinski Over the years that I\u2019ve been learning and mastering GTD I\u2019ve stumbled across many great individuals who taught me a lot about how to implement GTD in my personal and business life. Some of them have been exposed to GTD since the day the book was published and have … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Natural Born GTD fans and their habits: are you one of the few?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22,745,29,742,122,134,135],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNatural Born GTDers and their habits: are you one of the few?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"GTD Times Contributor, Michael Siliwinski introduces us to the idea of the "natural born GTDer"\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2008\/03\/natural-born-gtd-fans-and-their-habits-are-you-one-of-the-few\/\" 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