Productive Talk #01: Procrastination

As I mentioned yesterday, today 43 Folders and The David Allen Company are happy to bring you the first in a series of wide-ranging conversations that David and I recently had about Getting Things Done.

So, let's kick things off with a goodie. Here's The David's take on that devil, Procrastination.

In this episode, David and Merlin talk about a very popular topic on 43 Folders -- procrastination. They discuss where procrastination comes from and how GTD can help get you back to cranking widgets. (13:21)

Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here:

Sample from 'Productive Talk: 43 Folders Meets David Allen'

Starting tomorrow (Tuesday), 43 Folders and the David Allen Company will be bringing you "_Productive Talk_," a joint podcast series featuring audio of conversations that David and I had during a recent visit near his offices in Ojai.

This was a lot of fun for me to do, especially since it gave me the chance to ask David many of the questions that you and I have both had about Getting Things Done -- so, as you might expect, there's a heavy focus on implementation and best practices, as well as how to troubleshoot problems in your own GTD system. Lot of good stuff that I think you'll enjoy and will learn from as much as I did.

Subscribers to the 43 Folders Podcast (subscribe now) will receive new episodes of "Productive Talk" automatically, although you can also just stop by either 43 Folders or The David Allen Company's site for all the latest web-based updates.

Tomorrow's inaugural episode is on procrastination, with more episodes coming once a week or so for the next few weeks.

Here's a little sample from an upcoming episode to give you a taste of what's coming:

If you're a fan of Getting Things Done, you're familiar with the Four Criteria Model for choosing tasks. It's where the rubber meets the road in GTD, because it's the way you decide, in the moment, how any one of those wonderful tasks you've been tracking in your big system actually gets done.

As common sense as it seems to GTD'ers, this model is one of the more controversial aspects of Getting Things Done for a simple reason: it posits that priority is not the only factor in deciding what to do at a given time. It's just one of four factors, which include, all told:

1. Context - Where are you? What tools are available? What are the limits and possibilities unique to this moment?
2. Time available - Do you have, for example, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, or 30 hours available to you right now? What tasks could you accomplish given the time you have?
3. Energy available - Are you full of energy, is your ass dragging, or are you somewhere in between? Which of the tasks on your list could you finish, given that energy level?
4. Priority - If you had access to all the tools, opportunities, time, and energy you needed, what's the most important or time-sensitive thing you could do right now?

When I'm helping coach people on getting it together, they're often puzzled by this seeming bit of new-agery -- partly, I suspect, because most of us have been conditioned all our lives to think that pre-ordained Priority stamps always trump everything, all the time, always, forever, in all cases, end of story. But is it true, reasonable, or even physically possible to always work this way? Can you will yourself into doing only your identified high-priority items anytime, all the time?

Nope, and I'll show you one reason why.

You tell me. What are your favorite sites about managing your money? Any places out there you think might especially appeal to 43 Folders readers? Feel free to toss in your favorite books on the matter, too.

GTD Connect [TechGTD]

Members of David Allen's GTD Connect membership program can login to hear a technology panel that David conducted with tech über-geek Eric Mack, DavidCo CTO Robert Peake, and myself down in Ojai a few weeks back.

We talk about all kinds of stuff related to tech in general, and how we use GTD and technology in particular. One nice thing you learn: Robert, who is the wildly gifted tech stud at DavidCo, is a big Mac user. Pretty cool.

Note that this is made available as part of the GTD Connect for-pay service, so I don't have a way to preview this for folks who aren't a member. But for Connectors who are joined up, I think you'll enjoy the conversation. It was a lot of fun to do.