GTD Phase 5: Do, Part III

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Originally published 6 Apr 2006

[Note: this is the final phase of the GTD process, as outlined in Chapter 2 of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (aff) by David Allen]

Doing

Ah, yes, DOING. The precursor to DONE. As in Getting Things DONE.

(I also believe that the GTD methods also allow you to take a guilt-free break, but that’s for another post)

David Allen presents three models to use to determine what to do at any given point. I’ll be hones: the first through this book I blew through this section, because part of it reminded me too much of the “roles” of Seven Habits, which I had used to overwhelm myself a few years ago. This time through the book, though, I’m really considering it, and I’ve drawn some conclusions about each method.

I am tackling this last phase in three parts, mainly because I found that my notes on the total were too much for one post. So I will address each of the methodologies presented in this phase separately.

Method 3: The Six Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work

Here are the levels David Allen presents:

• 50,000 feet: life
• 40,000 feet: three to five year goals
• 30,000 feet: one to two year goals
• 20,000 feet: areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: current projects
• Runway: Next actions

This was the part that gave me the most problems when I went through the book the first time. In fact, it was this part that caused me to skip over the last step, DO.

This section really reminded me of the roles of the 7 Habits. I had dutifully digested the 7 Habits back in 1992, and wrote up my roles. There were a lot - more than I ever considered. For example, as the product of a large extended family, I added cousin and niece to my roles, even there was no one in the extended family I was close to and contact had been limited to letters at the holidays.

With my roles in place, I tried to do things in each of the roles every week. What ended up happening is that I spent a lot of time doing things that never would have been on my radar before reading 7 habits, and neglecting other important things because there were in a role with another project and got bumped in the name of balance.

But I digress…

I don’t have any problem with the runway and 10,000 feet - after all, those are covered by the first 4 phases of GTD. But what about above that? I can’t honestly say that I’ve made it beyond the 20,000 mark - I had such a hard time with this that I haven’t gotten beyond it.

So what are areas of responsibility? David Allen says “key areas within which you want to achieve results and maintain standards.” Great. That’s explicit (NOT!) This is followed by a short list of examples.

I am going to save my areas of responsibility for another post so that this one doesn’t get terribly long.