Editor’s Note:  This just came in from one of our contributors, Lynn O’Connor. When she sent it to me she suggested that this may sound too “commercial” for GTD times, but I felt like it was such a nice first-person account of what she experienced attending a RoadMap Seminar taught by David himself that I thought it would be of benefit to people who were curious about the experience and what someone who is very accomplished, incredibly articulate and already knowledgeable of GTD thought during the day.  Enjoy.

I just attended David Allen’s GTD RoadMap seminar –for the second time. The only other time I’ve taken a seminar twice was when I was preparing for the psychology licensing exam and I signed up for a preparatory statistics workshop twice. It probably wasn’t necessary but as a researcher I never regretted it, I think I learned more about running stats at that workshop than in any class I’d taken in college, on up, or more recently, in continuing education courses. So it goes with the RoadMap; I need a map of my work, of each of my projects, and lets face it, of my whole life, and the more often I get help with it, the better.

At some point during the afternoon Allen suggested that we were all
sitting there hypnotized, and that we would walk out thinking we were
going to do all these amazing organizational things in our lives, only to
have the ideas and inspiration disappear in a matter of hours. Maybe it
was hypnosis, but I got more work done in those eight hours than in the
whole week before. Here it is the next morning post-RoadMap, and its
still happening. I have my next action list, my “Emerging Task Planner”
where I can see it, and I’ve hit the ground running.

Allen is pure inspiration, a great teacher, and geez, he may not know me,
but he knows how to organize my time. At some point he asked us to
take two minutes and tackle anything we’d put on a list created earlier in
the day (we spent the whole day making lists, and since I love the process
of defining my work and making lists, it was permission to go play all
day. On one of those early morning lists I’d uncovered an area of anxiety,
something I should have been tending to but instead I’d been neglecting.
So when he said: “spend two minutes on one of the things” I jumped head
first into the thing I’d been neglecting, and wrote a plan for how to gain
“control” and maybe even “perspective” around it.

Most amazing, in only two minutes I wrote a concise, step by step plan
for tackling and running through this dreaded problem. It was easy. I am
sure I’ll find out more about why I’d been shelving it for over a month
now, as I begin to implement the 2-minute plan. But none of it is
monumental. In fact, when guided by Allen, we find out that nothing is
insurmountable. A day with David Allen is first and foremost fun, and its
almost a side benefit that each person attending -and there were many of
us-gets individualized, personalized, one-on-one coaching. Or that is
what it feels like. He’s a master entertainer, educator, coach, and all this
is wrapped around a remarkable brain.

David is humble; he can’t quite conceal his embarrassment at being
caught as creator of a life-changing program. Sometimes watching him I
think he doesn’t know what hit him, all this fabulous success, people like
me turning into groupies, while the largest funders in the world beg for
the chance to support him in whatever philanthropic things he might
want to do. He seems stunned by it all, and I suspect he has that sneaky
feeling that he doesn’t deserve it. But he does. Watching him perform for
eight hours is like witnessing a pure energy generator, wrapped up as a
normal person. Maybe he is, but then again maybe he isn’t. This guy is a
life-long learner, he is curious, inquisitive, and integrates everything into
his devotion to understanding how the mind works, and ultimately, how
we work whether its at play, in an office, or at home.

So what did I get out of yesterday? Exactly what I needed from the
smallest detail of my work-flow, to the big questions, like what am I
doing on the planet.

Allen started the day by illustrating three main Allen’esque principles of
how the mind works: The power of writing everything down, the power of
unconscious planning, and the power of two focused minutes. He asked
us take two minutes to write down -no editing-everything that had our
attention. This turned out to be one of many demonstrations of non-
conscious planning. It showed us that we knew exactly what we were
worrying about -what had our attention as he puts it-and that we could
do intensely focused tasks in exactly the amount of time we were given.

He demonstrated the power that comes with taking everything we’re
carrying around in our minds, and putting it on paper. When he asked us
to do something in one minute, or in 90 seconds, or two minutes, that’s
what we did. This illustrated how the human mind plans unconsciously,
and carries out these unconscious plans without knowing explicitly what
we are doing. It also demonstrates that we can do amazing things with
two minutes of focused attention. I had put off planning how to get
myself moving on this particular task all summer. It came into focus when
I wrote everything down.

If, early yesterday morning, on my way to the RoadMap, you had asked
me what had my attention, I wouldn’t have pointed out the particular
problem I was really worrying about. It was sitting in the background
worrying me outside of conscious awareness, distracting me, while I tried
to work on other projects. If you told me that in two focused minutes I
would be able to take the whole job and turn it into a step-by-step
project plan, a series of concrete “next actions” or tangible steps I needed
to take to get things rolling, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that is
exactly what happened. In the course of the day other unconscious
concerns came to the foreground, and were transformed into clear
project plans. I learned, once again, the power of writing an unedited list
of what has my attention, and the power of two minutes of focused
attention. Write a list, leave nothing out, and focus for two minutes may
be the essence of the GTD method.

We returned to our initial list of what had our attention, and were given
another minute (or 90 seconds, or even two minutes) to add to it, quite
appropriately because throughout the day, each exercise brought to mind
yet more things (problems) that had our attention, that we’d missed in
the first round. Allen calls this basic list construction a ‘mindsweep.” Now
as I have been following the GTD methodology for a year and a half, none
of this was entirely new. I do a mindsweep at least every few weeks if not
every week. But engaging in the Allen method of work with Allen himself
leading me through it, made the process itself more conscious. It was like
revisiting everything, to do this with Allen by my side. This is another
remarkable feature of a day with David Allen. It didn’t matter how many
people he was coaching all once, it felt like personalized instruction. He
was speaking to my work problems, he was teaching ME.

Always proceeding in an orderly manner, Allen illustrated the reliable
steps called for to move ahead in the process of organizing our work and
our lives, both mentally, and concretely. First is collection. The list of
everything that has our attention is, in essence, a process of mental
collection. In the office or at home, collection translates to gathering
absolutely everything into an inbox. When I first implemented GTD, right
after attending my first RoadMap seminar, I had so much stuff all over the
place that only my whole living room could provide the space needed for
everything, so my living room became my inbox.

The second step in the GTD method is to clarify everything collected,
whether the “stuff” is mental or physical. This means asking myself a few
simple questions: “What is this? Do I need to do something with this? How
do I label, define, categorize this?” Should I throw this away? Should I
pass this on to someone else to tend to it? Is this a piece of reference
material, I should know where to find easily?  Is this a next action in a
specific project or is this a project? If this is a next action that will take 2
minutes or less to carry out, I should carry it out immediately before I go
any further. Here we see the two-minute rule show up again.  A personal
note here -I think I may often fall apart at the level of clarification.

Instead of taking my time, I am rushing into the next phase of work, the
“organization” phase, where I figure out the specifics of what action I am
going to take, and sometimes this puts me into a state of panic.

Clarification, where I figure out what something is, is followed by
organization. Here, I determine exactly where to go with something, be it
physical or mental. I have a single item (derived from a collection of
“items” from a mindsweep, or derived from “stuff” put into my inbox, and
from taking a few minutes to clarify, I know what “it” is. Now I organize it
-it becomes a next action on my next action list, or it becomes a next
action related to a specific project on my project list. A project is
something that has more than one next action. If my “it” here is a
physical item, I decide if it goes into a project support file, or an archive
file (not easily accessible), or an immediate TO READ file, etc.

Organization sure makes things easy to think about, do, locate, review,
which is the step after organization. Reflect and review -before doing
something, I need to review it and reflect upon it. Here things are
presented in lists, so in essence, I am doubling back here to establish
that I made appropriate decisions earlier. Finally, my work having been
well defined, organized, and reviewed, I do. By the time I am “doing” I’ve
hopefully achieved a sense of “control and perspective.” And I really have.
To maintain a sense of peace, I have to review everything regularly. Its
recommended that we review our whole system every week. I don’t
exactly do that -instead I review my lists (including my calendar) every
few days, because they change daily. I have the hardest time routinely
collecting and clarifying. Meaning I am often in inbox trouble.

After taking us through the stages of work, applicable to any project or
series of next actions, Allen moved up the ladder, or what he calls the
vertical roadmap, from next actions to projects, to areas of focus, to
goals and objectives, to vision, to my ultimate purpose. This was a fast
incline, but it gave me just enough time to consider the larger life
purposes behind my work, including my work at implementing GTD. I
knew the first time I went to the Roadmap I ended up with some pretty
lofty ideas, but I couldn’t remember how, or what I ended up thinking. It
may be here that Allen had us hypnotized, because once again the clarity
I felt yesterday, has dimmed. So what did I decide was my ultimate
purpose?

Throughout all of these steps and stages of how we work, at almost every
point of closure or at the beginning, Allen discussed the use of the
concept of “outcome.” A next action has a “desired outcome,” a project
has a “desired outcome” likewise the process of collection, clarification,
organizing, reflecting and doing, and then, across the vertical levels of
functioning. Everything has a desired outcome, and this may be another
major principle of Allenesque (or GTD) working and living. To consciously
delineate the desired outcome at each step of the way, at any stage or
any level of operation, we have a desired outcome. Spelling this out,
making it clear and conscious, has, he tells us, a fantastic effect on the
outcome. He considers explanations for his observations found in
contemporary neuroscience.

It would be unlike me to report on a person, a movement, a meeting,
without any critical comments. Being true to nature, there is once aspect
to the GTD phenomenon that continues to bother me and that is the
commercialism that seems to be built around the David Allen message.
Several times during the RoadMap we were reminded by Allen himself, of
the sales pitch going on under and on top of the surface. The more
successful Davidco (the David Allen Company) gets, the more apparatus
they create and sell for a handsome profit. Everything from plastic file
folders to note taking wallets and Italian made file holders is for sale by
the David Allen whirlwind. We heard several embarrassed remarks about
how much he was selling his own products -and this mean tangible office
things (more stuff as he calls everything that clutters our desks), not at
all important to what Allen really has to sell, a method of overcoming
chaos in our lives, a method for how to get things done, laid out in
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity, that only costs $
9:00 on Amazon .

Allen reminds us that getting organized, developing a sense of control
and perspective, happens through the process of learning. We aren’t born
masters of work organization. There may be some magic in Allen’s
teaching, but there is nothing magical about his method of working. I am
so glad I went to my second RoadMap seminar, and I will certainly go
again the next time he’s in town. Hearing Allen run through his method
was different, having implemented and used it for a year and a half. I was
familiar with all the pieces, but somehow, he pulls it all together, and I
wouldn’t miss the opportunity to get that one-on-one coaching for
anything.

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Corporate Travel =  Sound of Piggy Bank Breaking

If you shudder when you pull up to the gas pump these days, or swallow hard before you tear open your utility bill every month image how your company’s controller must feel.  If you’re in a start-up or any small business and especially if you’re not cash-flow positive yet these times of soaring energy costs and economic uncertainty border on the downright terrifying.  Under such circumstances even the most financially stable enterprises are taking a hard look at expenses and trying to determine areas in which costs can be cut without reducing the quality of service or their future business prospects.

One area that is coming under the budget-crunch knife at nearly every company on the planet is travel.  Right now just about every aspect of travel has increased in price.  Airfares are skyrocketing and the new ancillary charges - since when did it become reasonable to charge passengers $50 for bringing along a single checked bag? What’s next?  Charging for inflight air?  Or perhaps pay toilets?  One thing is certain, flying is not only a hassle it’s also expensive.  From your CFO’s perspective anything that can help you avoid the cost and headache of another flight - and especially one overseas with the sinking dollar effectively doubling that cost - is going to be worthy of serious consideration.

Buy the Ticket, Ride the Ride…

The flip side to this is that some meetings really require that both parties see one another.  Sure, conference bridges are good and shared desktops like GoToMeeting are useful for certain things but sometimes you really need to look someone in the eye in order to move things ahead.  Traditionally that meant hopping on a plane and that usually meant at least a thousand bucks drawn down on the company coffers (and  lot more if more than one exec needed to travel or if the trip required crossing a continent or an ocean).  That’s a lot of expense for one short meeting. And until recently there was nothing that could be done about this but bite the bullet and break out the plastic.

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OmniFocus is a GTD inspired productivity application for Mac. When I visit the OmniFocus discussion boards, at fairly regular intervals someone will ask, “But why can’t you Omni guys incorporate a way to assign priority to action items?” and an argument promptly ensues. GTD folks try to explain why that just doesn’t make sense. Others work to advance the idea that rating the priority of action items is essential.

From the Getting Things Done perspective you don’t want to assign “priority” to action items on the front end for a couple of reasons. The first is that priority always depends on the constellation of situations at hand. From a GTD view you just can’t decide priority in a vacuum. To the question, “What is the priority?” the question that needs to be asked to answer it is “…the  priority in what context?” When you know more about the the given situation in the moment, the priority becomes clear.

When you do try to assign priority to action items on the front end, you’re apt to run into the following problem. As soon as a couple of variables shift, as they are guaranteed to do, it will alter the array of possibilities. So lots of the action items you have rated at given priority levels are going to change. And when they do, then you’re busy re-prioritizing all those items. You finish and brush the dust off your hands, breathing a sigh of relief. Then another change pops up and your priority labels are inaccurate all over again. I lived through doing this re-prioritizing hamster wheel in the early 90’s and ended up dropping the practice. Looking at the on the ground practice, GTD suggests that priority makes a lot more sense to assess when you know the complete context of the given moment.

What You Need to Know

So what details do you need to know? First, what is the context? Where are you, and what tools you have at your disposal? Examples are at the computer, @computer; at the computer and hooked up to internet service, @computer: online; talking with my spouse, @Erin in my case; at the hardware store, @cavernous box store, etc. Unlike priority, context is something that makes sense to decide on the front end. If you know you want an avocado, you likely know where you’re going to want to buy it. If you have an email to send, you know where you’re likely to send it from. So deciding the context of each item on the front end and writing them down makes sense. Here’s another reason.

As I’ll discuss further in an upcoming post, our brains just aren’t good at carrying around that kind information, or more accurately, they aren’t good at retrieving it when we want it. It either will clog up our psychic RAM and take up valuable processing space, or it will be relegated to long term memory. Unfortunately the way our cranial long term storage works depends on cues that may or may not come to mind at the moment we need them. So writing down next actions and the contexts we know we’ll do them in, or digitally recording them, will make the best use of how our brains work. This in turn will ensure that when we leave the grocery store, for instance, we’ll have all the things we need, not just the ones that happened to be triggered by internal and external (grocery store visual input) cues that happen onto our mental scene.

The other two variables you’ll want to take into account before deciding on priority are the time available, and energy available. One of the strengths of Getting Things Done is the way that it seizes all sorts of strange little windows of time, and distills those into moments of productivity. They’re usually moments that we wouldn’t get much out of in any case. Sitting waiting for Super Lube to finish up their signature service on my wagon doesn’t usually leave me with any rewarding sense of satisfaction. On the other hand if I have the gut sense that just sitting and being present in the moment as I wait for them to pronounce me ready for checkout is a priority, then I could go for that option. If I do go with getting something done, that is work that won’t need to be done later, leaving you that much closer to the GTD goal of “having nothing on your mind”.

Sift Out Context

So let’s put it all together. Rather than making our decisions about what to do based on predetermined priorities that are likely to change like specks in a kaleidoscope anyway, GTD suggests that we use four criteria to decide:

1. Context
2. Time available
3. Energy Available
4. Priority
Using all four requires looking at context in the moment—where we are and what tools we have—and assessing time and energy available on the fly. Only then are we able to use our brain’s strength, intuition, or gut if you prefer, to assess what the priority might be given the circumstances consisting of the prior three criteria in our list. I use context, time available, and energy available as a sieve to sift out what can be done in this weird little window of a few minutes. Only after I’ve looked at these three can I determine what is the priority for right now, the present moment.

Say I’m sitting in the shoe store waiting for the shoe salesman at 6:17. I’ve got my phone and my notepad with me with some notes from this afternoon’s meeting. I’m not going to listen voicemails because the salesman might come striding up and interrupt me in the middle of a message, and I’d just have to listen to it again later—time wasted. I open my email program on my phone and take a gander, and there’s that email I still need to respond to. I’m too fried to think about the details clearly now. The meeting this afternoon didn’t have anything urgent in it. Plus it will be more efficient to pull next actions out of my notes when I have a legal pad in front of me. Not very convenient to do here. I also could look over my calendar to review upcoming meetings and deadlines. I could do some minor deck clearing by deleting any emails that don’t contain any info I need to access or file. Based on intuition and the relatively similar priority. I decide to go with reviewing my calendar.

Going with Your Gut

Now these little windows are often easier to decide what to do with than larger swaths of time. But the small window of time serves as a nice example, keeping the process front and center. For some this post was review, which is often good in any case. For others this will clarify the nature of how GTD triangulates priority by using your brain’s crowning skill, on the ground intuition. So letting your gut lead you doesn’t have to mean that it’s been too long since you’ve been to the gym. Instead it can mean using your brain in a manner that enhances its strengths and shores up those areas it just does better with support, keeping you moving on the path toward effortless productivity.

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As you know, in implementing GTD a fair number of people are going to fall off the wagon before they experience the sustained payoffs of effortless productivity. What separates those who fizzle out from those who go the distance? From a cognitive science perspective, the answer is pretty straight forward. The people who succeed, whether or not they are aware they’re doing it, tap into the power of honoring how the mind actually functions.

I’ve heard David Allen use an insightful phrase about a specific GTD technique. I’m not sure if he’s used it to reference GTD as a whole (let me know in the comments if you know). But I certainly think it applies: “…it is both easier, and more difficult than you would expect.” A combination of ancient wisdom and modern experimental psychology gives us a fascinating view into why GTD is paradoxically both easier and more difficult than you’d expect. And it involves elephants and their riders. It can be challenging to entertain at first, but once you get the hang of it, it can help you implement GTD. It can also do the same with any other worthwhile set of skills that takes sustained effort to learn.

The Elephant and Rider

If you’ve ever resolved to do something, and really meant it, and then found yourself not following through despite your best intentions, you’re already familiar with how this works. We have a tendency to think of our mind as if it is a unified whole. But as Jonathan Haidt points out in his extraordinary book “The Happiness Hypothesis” , the ancients were ahead of their time in realizing that the mind is not unitary at all. And cognitive and social psychology have experimentally confirmed this early wisdom. Rather than unitary our minds are much more like a rider on an elephant. The rider is the conscious part of our mind, and he is quite small compared to the huge animal he rides; just as the conscious part of our mind is dwarfed the the majority of our mind that operates outside of conscious awareness.

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Editor’s Note:  I’ve been working with Julie Ireland, one of David’s GTD Coaches and the other day she had me read this article that David wrote on the Three Fold Nature of Work.  I found it so interesting and relevant that I wanted to share it with the readers of GTDtimes.  Some of you may have seen this already but regardless, it is worth reading again; a thirty second investment that can pay big dividends when you put these concepts into action in your daily life.

davidco.com © 1998 to 2006 The David Allen Company

Why do people complain that there’s no time to get work done?

Many times clients express frustration that they “can’t get any of their work done” because of the overwhelming
amount of interruptions, email, and other input that show up during the course of a normal day.  If you are ever in that frustrated state, it might help to understand the three-fold nature of what constitutes your “work.”

Why do people complain that there’s no time to get work done?

Many times clients express frustration that they “can’t get any of their work done” because of the overwhelming
amount of interruptions, email, and other input that show up during the course of a normal day.  If you are ever in
that frustrated state, it might help to understand the three-fold nature of what constitutes your “work.”

You are doing three things when you work:

(1) Doing pre-defined work.

This is what you would be doing all day if you got no input or interruptions of any sort.You would probably be working off the inventory of actions and projects that you came in with – work that you have  already determined needs doing.  The phone calls you need to make, the documents you need to draft, the ideas you need to outline on the project, etc.

(2) Doing work as it appears.

The phone rings, you take the call, and spend twenty minutes talking to a customer or a business colleague.  Your boss calls a half hour meeting to update you on a new development and get your input on it. You are doing the work as it shows up to be done.  You are actually defining your work rapidly in this case, and choosing to do the new stuff instead of any of the pre-determined activity.

(3) Defining work to be done.

This is processing your in-basket, your email, your meeting notes, etc. –taking in input and making decisions about what needs to be done about it.  You may do some quick actions as you define them, and you will probably be adding some more to your inventory of defined work.  So what?  (All this is common sense.)  Well, I have noticed that many people act as if (2) is some sort of burden to endure, and (3) is some irrelevant activity aside from their work.  I don’t get it.  It’s all the work.  Some is done when it
appears, and some is done when you choose to do it instead of what’s showing up.  And processing input is required to trust the inventory of pre-defined work.
How much of which kind of work to do when is the eternal dance of the workday.  You can’t really do more than one of them at a time, though you can get really fast with processing work while you’re on hold on the phone, and waiting for meetings to start.  There may be interruptions that are allowed that are not functional or valuable, but
managing those is just tactical to your definition of your job. It’s an eternal challenge of allocating limited resources (management) – it’s not an inherent problem.

Get used to it.

What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
- Aristotle

–

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Late last week I had the opportunity to interview Shai Berger, the CEO and Founder of a new company called Fonolo (Phone-Oh-Low) that I think you’re going to like as much as I do.  Fonolo solves a problem that we all have, is something that is almost universally hated and which we all thought, up until now, was an evil that simply must be endured.  The endless misery dished out at the hands of IVR systems all over the planet.

For those of you that haven’t heard the term IVR,  it’s an acronym for Interactive Voice Response - in other words it’s one of those pesky systems that answers your calls when you call just about any large company.  Usually you’re greeted with the statement, “please listen carefully as our menu options have changed…” or else (and especially if you’re calling from California) “If your language preference is English, please press one now. Si su preferencia de la lengua es español, ahora presione por favor dos.”
What follows is a list of options and the buttons you need to press in order to navigate to the place in their system where you can actually accomplish the task you had called to do in the first place.

Any adult in the modern world has spent countless frustrating hours, usually enhanced by some mind numbing muzak or even worse a promotional jingle on a repeating loop while attempting to get the help or service you needed when placing the call.  I don’t know what the total time lost to US workers each year is while we struggle through these IVRs but I’m certain the time loss would run into the hundreds of millions if not more.  But hey, there’s some good news.  Especially if you loathe IVR systems as much as I do then I think  Fonolo is going to be your new best friend.

The way it works is actually quite simple.  Instead of calling the company and entering IVR purgatory, you go to Fonolo and find the company in their index (they are adding new companies all the time - in fact, this is one of their competitive insulators, the number of IVR systems that they have already identified and mapped).  When you locate the company you want, you are presented with a visual map of the IVR system.

Simply scan down the map (an example of such a map is on the right) until you see the location where you need to go and click the button on that location.  Fonolo will now place a call, do the navigating and waiting for you and then ring your phone once it has reached the location in the IVR system that you had previously specified. No more grinding your teeth while listening to endless menus and muzak, no more wasted time when you could have been doing something more interesting or productive either.

The only thing that is going to be frustrating now is the wait while Fonolo indexes the millions of IVR systems that popluate our world.  You see, while the concept is simple and the UI is intuitive, the process behind the scenes is incredibly difficult.  Imagine the work required to identify each segment of every IVR, program a computer to enter the correct tones at the correct time and then to know when it has arrived at the desired location so it can call you.

Plus there’s the added burden for Fonolo of keeping current as companies modify their IVR systems as they grow and change.  This is an absolutely massive undertaking - not one for the faint of heart CEO that is for certain.

There are lots of ways that Fonolo can make money - most of which don’t include charging the end user - although don’t be surprised if Fonolo rolls out with some carriers and then those carriers promote the service in some white labeled format and charge you for the privilege of using something that the company is currently giving away for free.

I really like this concept.  It’s original, useful, well thought out and absolutely something that I will use myself.  It’s also the sort of thing that reminds me why I like writing about applications.  Even though there are so many companies creating software right now, there are still a ton of new and/or better ways of doing things that are just waiting for an enterprising individual with a vision and the desire to see it through.

Fonolo is just such a company - one you should definitely add to  your list of time saving tools that you have to check out.

1 Comment »

Nokia’s Sexiest Phone Ever

I’m still shaking my head in wonder at the new Nokia E71.  Is this really a phone by Nokia? This phone, which is barely thicker than the battery that powers it, is one of the all time sexiest phones I have ever seen.  Hardly the sort of device made by the company that is to phones what Russia is to tanks and assault rifles.

Don’t get my wrong.  I’m a die hard Nokia fan.  I have many, many Nokia phones and I use them every single day.  A least 8 of my lifetime top ten favorite devices have been Nokia phones but that doesn’t mean that I am so blinded by my Nokia gadget lust that I fail to see that Nokia usually makes phones more like tanks than like jewelry.  This is not in and of itself altogether a bad thing.  Nokia phones are by far the most durable, reliable and functional devices of their sort bar none.

But sexy?  That’s hardly  a word you see in conjunction with most Nokia devices.  Until now.

Did I mention that the E71 is thin?  How thin? It’s a bit difficult to measure something this thin but my guess is that it’s between 6 and 7 mm at the thickest point.  What’s amazing is that in spite of the svelte package this is as fully featured a device as Nokia has ever introduced.

Let me give you a quick rundown on the specifications:

Form

• Form: Candy bar with full keyboard
• Dimensions: 4.49 x 2.24 x 0.39 in
• Weight: 4.47 oz
• Full keyboard
• High quality QVGA display

Display and 3D

• Size: 2.36″
• Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA)
• Up to 16 million colors
• TFT active matrix (QVGA)
• Two customizable home screen modes

Connectors

• Micro-USB connector, full-speed
• 2.5 mm Nokia AV connector

Power

• Battery: BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Po standard battery
• Talk time:
  - GSM up to 10 h 30 min
  - WCDMA up to 4 h 30 min
• Standby time:
  - GSM up to 17 days
  - WCDMA up to 20 days
  - WLAN idle up to 6.9 days
• Music playback time (maximum): 18 h

Memory

• microSD memory card slot, hot swappable, max. 8 GB
• ~110 MB internal dynamic memory

A down-loadable PDF with the comprehensive specifications can be found here: nokia_e71_complete_specifications.pdf

As you no doubt noticed the device has GSM, Edge, UMTS, HSDPA, WiFi and a GPS radio.  It also has a huge battery - the same battery, in fact, that comes in the much larger N810 Internet Tablet so you can pretty well anticipate that this phone is going to have about the best battery life of any phone you’ve ever used.

What does it do?

Out of the box it has support for Microsoft exchange mail as well as for Blackberry mail, though for that you’ll have to pay a subscription fee to Rimm. Out of the box it also has the ability to auto-detect your network settings and configure your services automatically so no holding for hours while someone at your carrier tries to look up how to set up MMS on your handset, it just configures itself.

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Have you ever had the feeling of being lost & left wondering “Why am I doing what I’m doing?”, “Why am I in this Job?”, “What does all this mean?”, “Who am I, and what is my purpose?”.  In spite of all the achievements there is a feeling of emptiness.  This feeling usually comes when our actions are not aligned with our Life’s purpose.

Using the Horizons of Focus model, GTD helped me align my day to day actions to my life’s purpose, and in this post I’d like to talk about how you can do the same.

What is GTD at 50,000 ft?

The Horizons of Focus Model is basically the agreements that one has with his or herself at different Horizons. Each Horizon represents a different time-level & impact.  It’s a tool to know what your work is so that your priorities are clear. Take a look at Michael Dolan’s post for a more detailed description on the Horizons of Focus.

In David’s book 50,000 ft is defined as “This is the ‘big picture’ view. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? The primary purpose for anything provides the core definition of what its ‘word’ really is. It is the ultimate job description.”

In other words, your agreements at 50,000 ft. are the description of your life’s purpose.

How to Find Your Life’s Purpose?

Sometimes I wish we were born with an instruction manual outlining our purpose, life would be so much easier, but then again life wouldn’t be so interesting if we had all the answers!  I like to define Life’s purpose in a two-fold manner. The first is one’s Inner Purpose, and the second is one’s Outer-Purpose.

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David Allen starts the RoadMap seminar: “GTD is all about the lazy way of getting things done”.

That got me thinking. Getting things done - that means everything done. Yes even the wash. Done. Getting the wash-IN basket to empty can be done in 2 minutes. Each stage in the process need not take longer - be that collecting or processing, organizing, doing or reviewing.

Doing the wash, even big piles of it which comes with living with 3 kids, takes me (us) a couple of minutes at each stage.  The piles grow (quickly) everyday, especially with children. Mostly things just get dumped on the floor. I find things in the oddest places too, like a left sock under the car seat or a sweater next to the sofa and a hat on the kitchen table.

A visiting friend once pointed out “this house is lived in!”.

Collection is a continuous and daily task. Everything gets to the wash-in basket - and it never takes more than 2 minutes to get to done.

Process - organize and color code “What is this?” Processing the wash-in basket gets done quickly. Involving the children can make this a really fun task. It also takes the mystery out of what happens to my dirty trousers, and gives understanding to the question: “where is my favorite shirt?” Or a clean set of underwear.

• COLLECT - all the socks and dirty stuff
• PROCESS - sort and colour code, one at a time
• ORGANIZE - machine or hand wash? Dryer or hang it up?
• REVIEW - fold or iron, keep it or pass stuff on
• DO - putting it back, one thing at a time!

Like Michael Sliwinski mentioned in his recent post on GTDtimes, doing things, like the wash, is all about the 2 minute rule.

Delegate it.  I delegate tasks for the children. In fact they organize their own lists of who does what each week (more on lists in another posting). Collecting and putting away the wash for example are great habits to foster.

Learning by doing: In a situation where learning by doing sometimes means  not doing anything, I recently shared the experience of not having any clean underwear with my son. This came came about when the collection step was missed. Puzzled as I had done all the wash, dried it and folded most things - I helped see where the problem was. Sure enough several discrete piles were discovered. None had been placed in the wash-IN basket. After reviewing this “awakening” together and agreeing who does what in the process of doing the wash my son had a better understanding of how “not doing” resulted in a result also - though not the desired result to be sure.

Having fun.  Of course with kids, making things fun - even something boring like the wash is key to engaging their minds and making the lessons stick.  By incorporating the principles of GTD into doing the wash with my kids  we see that this chore can be done 2 minutes at a time and we can even have fun in the process.

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We all strive to make everything easier-to-use, more accessible, etc.
We strongly believe that if all of our applications and all of the tools we use on the daily basis are properly optimized, we can get more done and have everything accomplished.

This is true in 80% of the cases…
I couldn’t agree more – I love it when everything goes more easily and automatically. Actually I’m always coming up with ideas on how to make certain aspects of my life “more automatic” to make sure I’m not doing the same boring stuff over and over again.

But in 20% of the cases… I’m trying to complicate my life… on purpose.
I know this sounds weird. It struck me the other day upon a conversation with a fellow GTD-er Testeq that as strange as this may sound, this is actually a good thing to do.
So why would I want to complicate my life if I can get stuff done the easy way? Why would I do something manually if I can have it done automatically or semi-automatically for me?

The answer: to fight temptation… and reduce procrastination.
Let me give you an example. I love blogs and RSS feeds which let me read great up-to-date information from many sources across the web in one place. To read RSS feeds, I used to use a great plug-in for Firefox called “Sage”.

Sage works really great, just press “CTRL+Z” and your RSS feeds appear on the left side of your Firefox browser and once you click on the feed that you want to read, you can see all of the feed’s content right there in the browser. Neat.

The problem… I would turn on “Sage” too often… and instead of actually browsing for the stuff I needed for my work, I’d happily turn “left” to check how the feeds are going and if there is some new interesting info that has been published…

When this “habit” of checking feeds turned into a temptation I couldn’t resist, I decided to put an end to it. I removed all of my feeds from Sage and copied them to my Google Reader account.

Now when I want to read the feeds, I need to explicitly log in to my Google Reader account and start reading… and since I’m not logged in to my Google account for most of my day, this takes several steps to do.

A “Tempting” habit turned into a conscious decision…
Now, instead of “clicking and checking what’s up” I need to decide: “OK, now I’m going to log in to my Reader account and read the feeds for 30 minutes”. After that I’ll log out and won’t be reading them any more.

You can apply the very same thing to email. If you use Gmail like I do - just log in to your Google Account only when you want to check your email. Decide to check your email. Once you’ve processed your email, log out and continue with your next action on your Next Actions list.

Conclusion: focus on your next actions and help yourself resist temptation.
So there you have it. I’ve made my life a little more complicated, but then again, I don’t get distracted all that much anymore. When I want to read my feeds, I log in to my Google Reader account – once I’ve read them, I log out. When I want to process my email, I log in to my Google Mail account and also log out once I’m done. However to make sure I know what to do next, I’m always logged in to my Nozbe Account to see my list of “Next Actions”.

How do you fight your distractions? Do you complicate your life as well?
Please do let me know in the comments what your daily temptations and distractions are and how you fight them. I’ll be happy to learn from you!

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