David Allen releases The Ultimate GTD Workflow Map, designed by XPLANE

The David Allen Company: “If you ever feel like you need to get more in control or regain your focus, here is the ultimate guide for getting and staying on your game. The set of productivity best practices which David Allen has researched and synthesized over the last three decades are brought all together into one stunning visual display — the GTD Workflow Map. It’s a rich compilation of the key steps for gathering, clarifying, organizing, and reviewing everything you need to track and manage, as well as an explanation of all of the factors that you must take into account in determining priorities.”

“I spent more than two years crafting and fine-tuning the map, ensuring that it would thoroughly and accurately describe the essential elements of time- and self-management,” says David, “It’s as simple as I could get it, while still embodying the subtleties and complexities that have to be factored in, to make it real and useful. And the visual representation we’ve come up with I think is a highly effective way to make something this meaningful really clear.”

The poster was created by XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Visit www.xplane.com to learn more about how XPLANE clarifies complex business issues through visual collaboration.

Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

I fully support this:

Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.

project management lingo

“I lurk on this great email list of project managers called PMClinic; it’s full of smart people who share war stories of (mostly software development) projects. It’s hosted by Scott Berkun (yes, him again) and each week one of the list members posts a challenging project scenario and the non-lurkers chime in with ideas and suggestions.

This week’s starter topic was a bit different though. The subject line was ‘Is there Project Management Lingo?’ and there are about 60 some-odd responses…”

Oliver Burkeman on why everything takes longer than you think

“Hofstadter’s law, conceived by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, goes like this: any task you’re planning to complete will always take longer than expected – even when Hofstadter’s law is taken into account. Even if you know a project will overrun, and build that knowledge into your planning, it’ll simply overrun your new estimated finish time, too, Hofstadter says. We chronically underestimate the time things take: that’s why Sydney Opera House opened 10 years later than scheduled, and why the new Wembley stadium opened last year, not in 2003, 2005 or 2006, each of which had been, at various points, the predicted completion date. It’s also why the list-makers among us get up each day and make to-do lists that by the same evening will seem laughable, even insane.”

The Top 50 Productivity Blogs Of The Year

“If you have ever looked back at the previous day / week / month and realized that you didn’t get as much done as you wanted to then you might want to look at your productivity and make some improvements. Making better use of your time can help grow your business, make you happier, give you more income, and allow for more time to yourself and your family. The following list represents the top 50 blogs on productivity from around the Internet. Reading through them will help give you the tools to make your life and business more productive and allow you to reap the benefits. Enjoy!”

Congrat to XPLANE founder Dave Gray for making the list!

Optimize for now!

“One of the easiest ways to shoot down good ideas, interesting policies, or worthwhile experiments is by injecting the assumption that whatever you’re doing needs to last forever and ever. Which means that the concept has to scale from 5 people to 5,000 or from 100,000 users to 100 million. That’s a terrible way to get from those 5 people to 5,000 or reach those 100 million users.”

6 Guidelines for Setting Effective Goals

“Effective goals are written. Many of us daydream about the things we would like to accomplish. But before we can achieve those dreams we must pick up a pen and write down the things that we most want to achieve. Once your goal is committed to paper, it becomes concrete. When you write out a goal, you give it life. You actually see what you’re thinking. You have a target to aim for … something that takes shape and grows legs. Your goal is no longer just a dream, it has now been given a sense of reality. Writing down your goals is always the first step toward achieving them. Goals not written down fall victim to the ‘out of sight … out of mind’ phenomenon!”

How David Allen mastered getting things done

“David Allen sits in his small office in a cottage behind his house in Ojai, Calif., talking business with a visitor. Suddenly he stops. “That reminds me,” he says. He scribbles the words ‘bird feed’ on a piece of blank notebook paper and tosses it into his inbox. It’s an ordinary moment in an ordinary day. But for Allen and his legion of followers, it holds the key to salvation. He has emptied his mind of a nagging task, placed it into a trusted system for processing, and casually returned to his conversation.”

Still failing, still learning

“This post officially announces that my side project (originally named cause & effect and later named certitude) is over. For those of you who weren’t subjected to one of my enthusiastic rants, here was my Graham Question: Can we predict the outcome of a software development project with objective observation? …So I set out to write a piece of software that, pure and simple, would look at a software development project and show you a traffic light: a green light would mean that the project looks like it’s on track, a yellow light would mean that the project needed help, and a red light would mean that there is no hope… So how and why did I fail?”

WhoDoes

“WhoDoes is a fresh and intuitive web-based project management system. WhoDoes is designed to assist you and your team in planning projects of different complexity, from the small project to the biggest one. With WhoDoes you can manage your activities and share information with your team, whether you are in the same office or distributed all over the World.”