Getting Free
One of the reasons the GTD (Getting Things Done) approach can be so empowering comes down to a simple, primal dynamic: When something is named, it is known; and when it is known, its hold on us is released. When things we have allowed into our inner or outer world are appropriately and accurately identified, we feel curiously freed from them. It's all about clarifying what things mean to us and sorting them in our world appropriately.
Do you have any projects that you haven't identified as projects yet? Got anything you've been thinking that needs clarification, resolution, or looking into, that you don't have on a Projects list yet, that you look at regularly to keep actions moving toward? What are you telling yourselves as a team or organization you should be doing, but is not identified in any way except a gnawing sense of anxiety that you're not there yet?
Do you have piles of things around your office or your house that have unidentified agreements sitting within them? Is this to read, toss, or file? Are there things that you think you need to be moving on but you haven't defined what "moving" looks like physically or visibly yet (the Next Action)?
If you do have things that still need to be identified, then there is good news for you-there is potential energy and freedom embedded there that is available to you if you name them! If you don't, well, it's just the opposite. Do you have binders on your shelves with no labels on the spines? Use a labeler to identify them visually on the outside, and notice the subtle but very perceptible increase in your relaxation when you walk into the space in which they're stored.
The problem is that most people have never fully gotten to the place where everything is really categorized appropriately, according to all the different types and amounts of agreements with themselves. You won't know how much restriction you are actually working under, until you get rid of it, and see how different you feel.
Sit down and do a Mind Sweep-by yourself, with your team, with your organization. Then decide your outcomes and Next Actions on all of that. See what's holding you back simply because it hasn't been identified.
"The truth that sets us free is often the one we don't want to hear."
-unknown
About David
David Allen is widely recognized as the world's leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. His twenty-five-year pioneering research and coaching to corporate managers and CEOs of some of America's most prestigious corporations and...