What's the next action

Explain GTD in 30 minutes

25 02 07 - 11:00 - Bookmark this post

I am asked to explain GTD and personal productivity to my co-workers this week in 30 minutes. Coming friday I will present a bullet-less Powerpoint (maybe in Pecha Kucha style?) to share some knowledge to the people around me what GTD is and why it could matter. I can do this by myself but I would like to ask my valued readers: "What would you think is important enough in GTD to keep it in the 30-minute mark?"

I already have the following subjects in mind

• 5 Phases (ofcourse)
• Mind like water (maybe...)
• From runway to 50,000 ft.
• The two most important questions: What is the successfull outcome and what is the next action?
• Some talk about high/mid/low tech organizing gear
• How to do a Weekly Review

What are your thoughts? I already feel that 30 minutes might be a bit short so I have to make choices. Perhaps just focus on the 5 phases and runway-50,000 ft.? Or go in-depth on one of the phases? Let me know in the comments!

Imho, tell them to get it all out of their heads!
Martijn - 25 02 07 - 14:51

GTD in short – great idea.
The most important part to me:
1. as Martijn above says: write it down – out of your head.
2. What is the desired outcome? – write it down – and What is the next step? – write it down.
4. Getting started: 5 phases and weekly review
4. Every next step has his best environment – telephone, Mac, being on the road, waiting for a.s.o
5. In brief: Weekly review

Explanations on technical stuff seem not so important to me and the thoughts von “runway – 50.000 ft.” may be announced, but as a starter one does not understand what GTD can do on your life… If I remember first time working GTD, I was fully overwhelmed by the many tasks and by tracking a next step from “waiting for” (waiting for Paul’s call) to moving it to “Mac” for writing something to “on the road” for taking it to the postbox… ufff.

Cheers, Monika
Monika - 25 02 07 - 17:03

Also:

1. Do not get hung up on all of the tools out there — stick with a tool set until completely sure that is what you want.
2. There is the discipline of ‘keeping organized’ through the GTD methodology, but the methodology means nothing if we don’t DO something once we’ve processed everything into our trusted systems.
3. “Trusted System” is an important phrase. A lot of people are afraid of putting everything down because they might lose it…

Hope this helps.
Scot Herrick - 25 02 07 - 17:18

I wouldn’t focus too much on the higher levels – a beginner will get more use out of the runway level stuff.

Most important concepts: write everything down, trusted system, hard landscape, next action, context, someday/maybe, waiting for.
GTD Wannabe - 25 02 07 - 20:56

Don’t know if you’ve done it yet, but keep it very, very short. That’s not enough time to cover all you listed, IMHO.

I did one a while back – give me a call if you want to chat about it.

Good luck!
Matthew Cornell - 25 02 07 - 21:26

30 minutes isn’t very long at all. Especially once you get started about something that you are very passionate about. I’m teaching a class at church about “How to Protect Your Children on the Internet.” I had some questions at the end of last week about browser cookies, so I thought that I would spend 5 minutes this week explaining what cookies are and how they are used. 50 minutes later I was finished and couldn’t believe that I had only covered one very small topic.

Tomorrow I’ll be delivering a speech to my Toastmasters group. It’s 5-7 minutes and I’m only going to focus on capturing our thoughts. It seems to be one of the smallest and most basic of GTD disciplines that I can share in that short of a time.

Anyway, that’s enough background from me—back to your question. :o) If I had only 30 minutes, I would focus only on defining what a next action is, how to determine what the next action is on a particular project. David does a great job of this early on in the GTD Fast CDs, if you have access to them. The nice thing about this approach is that you can ask them to let you know some of the projects that they are working on and you can walk them through the process. They will get to see the process (defining a successful outcome, defining the next action, parking that next action on an appropriate list, and realizing that they can relax now because they can’t move forward on it while in the meeting) and will have something that they can immediately begin applying.

In a short time frame, I think if you give them too much, it may turn them off. Give them just a taste that they can begin applying now, and they will come back for more. To use a drug analogy, you’re moving from simply ‘using’ GTD, to becoming a ‘pusher’! Good luck!
Ricky Spears - 26 02 07 - 03:32

I Just ran across this gem again it explains the “five stages of managing workflow collect, process, organize, review, and do.” Keeping that in mind, reading the book again, and listening to the series of podcasts on 43folders, especially the one about cranking widgets, has helped me.

The one minute (workflow) manager

Productive Talk #01: Procrastination
JohnV - 26 02 07 - 12:47

I don’t think I’d bother with the runway to 50,000 foot at such an early stage.

I think the main things to concentrate on are the benefits of the system – why should they be interested in taking GTD up, what will it mean to them? How will it imporve their life/productivity/sanity etc?

I’d also talk briefly about the initial collection phase/brain dump, that way people have something they can do without going to deeply into the system.

Afterall, if you get people interested you can always follow it up with another session or 1-to-1’s later.

Good Luck!
Katy - 26 02 07 - 14:42

I recently gave a 30-minute talk on handling stuff for law school seniors using Keynote (Mac) in non-bulleted form. You’re welcome to a PP copy if you want to see how someone else approached the subject.
Tom - 27 02 07 - 14:30