Living by Design

I've been long fascinated with David Allen and his " Getting Things Done " methodology. David has spent the last 20 years coaching executives on how to get their lives organized and more productive. Life in the information age requires the dual skill set of coping with an overwhelming amount of incoming data and managing a large volume of critical activity. A quote from the book sums up the challenge: A paradox has emerged in this new millennium: people have enhanced quality of life, but at the same time they are adding to their stress levels by taking on more than they have resources to handle. David's methodology, abbreviated as GTD, involves the following disciplines: collect everything explicitly, outside of your head process your inbox quickly, regularly and thoroughly decide outcomes and the next actions every time you review new information do quick actions immediately delegate, schedule or defer tasks to appropriate contexts break complex tasks into projects d...

Chaotic Behaviour When faced with complexity, many organizations and individuals resort to primal behavior. The queasiness of being out of control often generates these symptoms: Baby Throwing (along with the bath water). Wholesale abandonment of what was not working along with what was starting to work. The greater the sense of panic, the more frenetic the thrashing between various strategic initiatives. Each of these cycles is often accompanied with a fresh crop of executive managers. Paralysis. Lack of confidence in decision-making. A despair-ridden death march as profit margins slowly vaporize and innovative opportunities flit by ungrasped. Fascism. Charismatic leaders riding the waves of popular paranoia for personal benefit for questionable agendas. The shifting sands of complexity provide poor footholds for accountability and objective measurement. Cynicism . Change fatigue and the inability to connect with meaningful purpose often rapidly diffuses a creative workfo...