Tim Noyce Advies

Today I experienced one of the great benefits of GTD: It is a wonderful cure for panic. A major project I am running ran into heavy weather yesterday and after a day of firefighting and chasing down resources I found myself at the close of play with a whole stack of issues and a panicy feeling that I was just spinning my wheels…Fortunately my long bike-ride home took the edge off the stress and my beloved wife recharged my batteries with wine and sushi. After rather a restless night I went back into work determined to get a grip, and GTD gave me the tools I needed. I was able to boil the cloud of misery down into five major issues with concrete projects and actions. That gave the other parties direction and enough grip to get moving on the problems. At the end of the day we had control, clear outcomes and sharply defined Next Actions. My best moment was when the senior IT manager who was lending power to my solution-finding meeting said “we shouldn’t really need to you help us make this analysis”. We did not miraculously solve everything, but we are moving strongly forward on every front, which is a wonderfully powerful feeling.

If you want to control other people, first control yourself.

Abu Bakr