First of all, thank you to the many intelligent and mature people who have taken my recent posts in the spirit they were intended. I’ve received some great comments and email from people who are definitely in the same boat as I: that GTD, for us, doesn’t necessarily answer or incorporate some of the longer-term goals and visions that we need to keep our focus on the bigger picture. It seems that many people have also been using GTD for day-to-day tasks, and Covey for overall goal planning. A very interesting mix, and as many have pointed out, they are certainly not mutually exclusive.
So here’s a question for those folks who are already implementing (or even thinking about) such a system, and especially those people who have some familiarity with using paper-based planners: do you have any suggestions for forms that are “best of breed”, that incorporate Covey without dropping GTD, and vice-versa? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below, or drop me email (as usual, you’ll see my email at the base of the menu on the right). I’m in the midst of creating some new forms for my DIY Planner v.2, and any ideas regarding this approach to planning would be much appreciated.
About a year ago Jeff Kirvin looked at integrating Covey’s top-down approach with David Allen’s bottom-up approach. You can find his post at Writing on Your Palm
Still looking for that solution / approach – and will keep trying ’til I find it. In the diet world, I think the perfect balance is what’s found in the Zone Diet (and I’ve tried Atkins, high carb/low fat, and all the rest).
I think GTD in isolation is kinda like Atkins – it works great, but is hard to maintain when you hang around with a bunch of people that don’t eat that way.
I’m looking to sprinkle in some of the Covey elements because I think that will help me coexist better with the non-GTD world. I haven’t found a great system that makes it automatic, but I believe it exists. Now where is it…?
Thanks for getting the thoughts going on this.
You could take a look at the Time/system International forms. These look like they could be helpful to people building a paper planner.
You may want to check out weblog of Steve Pavlina, at http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog. His blog and his website is about personal growth and latests blog entries deal mostly with life purpose. It is very interesting reading.
You might want to look in the Life Balance program. I’m finding that it provides a way of merging GtD with an emphasis on making sure that I’m working on tasks that are driving me towards accomplishing life goals. I run it on both my notebook and PDA. You can find it at http://www.llamagraphics.com/
Thanks to those folks who have mentioned Life Balance. (This is also the program that Jeff Kirvin speaks about in the “Writing On Your Palm” article mentioned above, although I do believe he’s moved on since then.)
I have tried the trial version several times in the past, and I thought it was quite good. There is also a “manual” and template available from the ubiquitous Ratz that covers his implementation of GTD: you can find this in the downloads and forums. I’ve watched the evolution of his processes over the years, and I was mildly amused to see his GTD methodology slowly being morphed back into the regular way of using the program. (This is less a failing of Ratz, and more a strength of the amazing job that Llama Graphics have done on both the software and its underlying philosophy.)
That being said, I didn’t use the program enough to warrant purchasing it. It’s probably the closest thing to “GTD meets Covey” available on the Palm, but for some reason, it just didn’t resonate with me. I think it has to do with the fact that the Palm became less important to me, and the fact that the desktop application was neither efficient enough for my uses, nor “webOS” friendly (that is, the data wasn’t available on all the computers I used daily, including Linux boxes).
However, if you’re a Palm person, I highly recommend trying LifeBalance out. It might be exactly what you’re looking for.