8:53 AM: It’s incredibly exciting, sitting at the GTD summit in the front row. On my right, David Allen’s Time Keeper sits with her stop watch, getting ready for the event.
8:55 AM: David walks onto the stage and welcomes everyone. Wonders aloud, what’s the best way to share his spin on the world with us. "GTD" was published during the dot bomb…"Making It All Work" was published during the sub-prime crisis…David promised to warn us before his next book!
9ish: Guy Kawasaki joins David in a lively discussion…map to follow shortly.
9:35 AM: Keynote wraps up. Here’s the map.
9:35 AM to 10:25 AM: Getting Things Done 2.0 Panel is kicking off right now! At the table, David Allen, Guy Kawasaki, Jim Fallows, Major General Randy Fulhart, Marshall Goldsmith, and Paul Saff.
9:53 AM: Guy Kawasaki’s speechless (well, sort of) after seeing Major General Randy Fulhart’s touching presentation and best use of ‘stock photography’ that he’s ever seen. Guy has his check book out and wants to take the airforce public!
10:06 AM: Uh oh, battery is running out and no plugs in sight! Marshall Goldsmith ran a great exercise where we became peer coaches to the people next to us and asked our partners to call us every night for the next year and they’d ask us a series of yes/no, 1-10 ranking questions like, "Did I learn something new today?", "Was I generous today?", "Did I talk to my children today?", etc… The trouble isn’t understanding, it’s execution. Updated map.
10:09 AM: Next up, Jim Fallows…I value in GTD: How it scales, you can get back on the wagon if you fall off, clarity, it combines the highest levels (spirituality, thinking) with practicality (43 folders, labels, etc…). The real message of GTD…the parts that make us most human often depend on these practical things (e.g. 43 folders, etc…).
10:28: AM: Guy Kawasaki debates with Paul. How do you separate the signal from the noise?
Panel closed! Updated map!
11:00 AM: David tweeted that he’s changing clothes in his room as the Self Management as Strategy panel kicks in.
11:35 AM: Leadership Mapped Out! Battery update…I’m pretending to be ‘the press’ now and charging up. Should learn from Jim Fallows and have extra batteries! Yes, I’ve added that to my GTD system 🙂
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Coming soon…Lunch, some time at the Mindjet booth and the GTD coaching session – "Getting Email to Zero". Yes, it can be done!
1:30 PM: Ok, just back after some great chats with Meg Edwards about GTD and raising children. How do you deal with children that don’t respond well when you ask them to ‘get things done’? If explaining or showing the consequences doesn’t work, try elevating the discussion to higher levels in the horizon. Meg’s advice was to explain that her role as a parent was to ‘teach’ certain things to her children and she asked her child for support in that process in making her a good parent. She explained this to a GTD buddy of mine, Drew, who I met at a Chicago training over a year ago. For Drew, this meant explaining to his child the values in their household and they needed to live in a shared space and everyone needs to take care of it together.
2:00 PM: Missing my GTD session but having a great conversation with Wendy Mack, the daughter of eProductivity founder, Eric Mack. Wendy was explaining to me how she applies GTD to her school work, her robotics’ projects. She’s also a HUGE fan of mind mapping and I’ve asked her to help write a future blog here on MindManager for School work. I look forward to her future post! And world, look out for Wendy and her twin sister Amy!
2:24 PM: Jumped into a GTD Coaching session on the Natural Planning model…All of this can be mapped out with MindManager:
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Purpose / guiding principles (Why are we doing this?)
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Mission / vision / goals / successful outcome (What would wild success look, sound, or feel like?)
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Brainstorming (How would we accomplish it?)
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Organizing (identify components, subcomponents, sequences, events, and/or priorities; what must occur and in what order? When do we do these things?)
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What are your next actions (Where do we start?)
GTD Presenter Danny Bader building a Mind Map with the help of the audience participation.
3:14 PM: GTD Coaches Chris McIntyre and James Stevenson teach a packed room how to REALLY use Microsoft Outlook. Great ways to transform your email app into a productivity tool.
3:29 PM: Below, you see Chris begging us to use GTD…no, Chris was showing how to customize Outlook to make it work for you instead of making you do all the work!
3:40 PM: Making it Up and Making it Happen! Moderator Bruce Somers introduces some super sharp serial entrepreneurs Frode Odegard (who met Mindjet for lunch yesterday), Buzz Bruggeman, John de Souza, and Peter Gallant.
Buzz shares that for entrepreneurs, it’s not whether your plan will change, it’s when it will change. It’s discipline and focus that separates success from failure.
Off to the book signing, Mindjet table, shoot a video for David Allen & co and the GTD Connect mixer. What a day.
Stay tuned, more tomorrow!
About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter.