Q&A: Getting Things Done

 

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By Tim Danton

Posted on 29 May 2009 at 17:23

We speak to David Allen, the man who knows a thing or two about getting things done

It's a testimony to the ongoing scourge of information overload that, eight years after its release, David Allen's Getting Things Done is still on the Amazon bestseller list.

Allen's philosophy demands that workers keep an entirely empty inbox and deal with emails immediately – provided it doesn't take longer than two minutes.

Q In terms of technology, what's the biggest obstacle to people working effectively?

A Out of sight, out of mind. I've got a lot of very sophisticated GTDers who are going back to paper right now, as it makes them more conscious. You can get so numbed into just whipping stuff into your computer and sticking it on to a list that you never look at. The technology still doesn't really map to the way your brain maps. You'd much rather walk into a room and see your life all around the walls. It would be a lot easier [if I was to] say: "Hey, I'm sorry, you now have three minutes to figure out what you need to do for the rest of today given everything in your life." You with a computer and me with the stuff on the wall, I win.

Q Where do devices such as the BlackBerry fit into your scheme? Are they a hindrance or a help?

A It depends. To a large degree, BlackBerrys are simply a little louder chain to yank, so [you] don't miss really important email. I don't have a BlackBerry. I get my email empty every day or two, so what the heck, people know how to get me. If you're using a BlackBerry simply as an email cellphone, so you can take advantage of little windows of time, then I say okay. But the problem is that probably half of the emails I get have URL links and other things that I want to do real quickly right then, that I could do in a couple of seconds if I had the power of my PC or my laptop available to me.

To a large degree BlackBerrys are irrelevant

So, to a large degree BlackBerrys are irrelevant, and another way to avoid getting your life clean and starting from a zero basis every 24 hours. But you see a lot of high-powered executives who've been given these BlackBerrys, and have been told they need them. A To a large extent, high-powered executives need that kind of power to bully through the crap that they let pile up in their lives.

Q So for an executive who now has to handle voicemail, a BlackBerry, a huge volume of email – has technology made their life better or worse than it was 20 years ago?

A For a very high-powered executive this truly has never been an issue – they just hire people to filter. If you're one or two levels down the food chain, you don't have that luxury. You're having to spin a lot of very important plates and keep them all spinning at the same time, so both your hunger for and inability to get rid of potentially relevant information has actually multiplied exponentially.

That's where my stuff has hit such a nerve, because really it just says: "Look guys, you're gonna have to get really fast at filtering this stuff as it comes in, and not just let it lie fallow without executive decisions being made about it." It's still going to take you an hour a day just to keep current with the new stuff coming in, and that's if you're really good at decision making, and really good at keyboard skills. If you're not making executive decisions and you're still typing fewer than 40 words-per-minute then I'm sorry, grow up!"