Tim Noyce Advies

My first contact with GTD was reading the “Two Minute Exercise” in a coaching document I found. I did it and felt instantly lighter and easier in my mind, rather like the things they promise you on late-night telelvision but at no charge. The file credited David Allen and Getting Things Done so I went to www.davidco.com and never looked back. At the risk of sounding like late-night television: take two minutes and try it!

All you need to do is to take a blank sheet of paper and write at the top anything that is seriously on your mind and taking up (too much) mental space. Take a moment to test how you feel about it (probably anxious) then write in the next paragraph an entirely positive outcome for it, such that it would no longer be a problem for you, in the past tense.

Now, imagine that you have nothing to do for the rest of your life but to go get that positive outcome and write down the very next concrete thing you would need to do: phone Fred, surf up accounting software, buy a hammer!

I ran through this with a collegue and she came up with:

On Mind: Don’t know my lines for the amateur theatre production I am in in three weeks”

Wonderful Outcome: “I know my lines perfectly”

Next Action… She started with “learn my lines”, so I challenged that with “how would you do that, if you could do that right now?”, which got her to admit that she needed to practice with a one of the other actors, which meant she needed an appointment, which meant she needed to make the call and YES she did know the phone number. So we wrote down “Call Fred 55667788 to make an appointment to learn the lines”. That got her unstuck, she made the call and was confident on stage three weeks later. This is a capable, organized and intelligen woman with a normal problem, but that bit of “common sense” got her unstuck enough to be successful.