Thursday, September 1, 2011

014 The GTD Monthly Review

In this episode of the Black Belt Project Podcast, I discuss the GTD monthly review and also spend some time talking about the GTD altitudes. I recommend that in addition to the weekly reviews, each month you do a monthly review. During this monthly review you will move up to the 20,000 foot level which is the areas of focus. I define areas of focus as broader projects that require more than one project to complete whereas projects are things that require more than one next action.

In the case of the Black Belt Project, I consider my areas of focus to be the belts as I have defined them. As I move on, those areas of focus will become more clarified. For example, when it comes to belt called work, I am responsible for sales which requires a number of projects to complete it. For now though, I haven't taken it down that deep yet here on the site.

I also spend some time talking about identifying projects for your areas of focus as well as talk about how to get down to the hard part which is the actually doing of your tasks.

As always, I am a big believer in progressive resistance to slowly add tasks to challenge your mental toughness and make it stronger. I do that in two ways.

The first is to study and break down your day into a series of checklist that define what done looks like for you. Then, work through those checklist until you find where you get stuck most of the time. Next, make it your goal to improve by at least one task and then repeat. You'll find that you will get to the point where it is easier to get further down your list as you get stronger.

The other thing I suggest is to work on thirty day challenges for adding things. Previously, I had accomplished several other thirty day challenges like giving up diet coke, giving up fried food and continuing them after the thirty days and then adding another one. I failed to complete my last thirty challenge which was get up a 6am every day so for this month, I added a different thirty day challenge which was to walk every day.

I hope you enjoy this podcast. Let me know if you have any questions. If you are not a member of the black belt project, I encourage you to join now.