What a day - Buzz, TKD, DIY/hPDA, & GTD

This was a remarkable day for me, primarily because I was surprised by a number of "seeds" (which I've been slowly planting) that sprouted up a bit. I wanted to mention a few of them, then tip my hat to David Allen's ideas on project planning, esp. the power of envisioning wild success.


Buzz

I read two great summaries of David Allen's new RoadMap seminar, both of which mentioned a "paper clip" exercise. From buzznovation: GTD...the Road Map...San Jose:

At the end of the day, David had us do a dazzling exercise with thread and a paper clip...you have got to see it.

(Buzz Bruggeman has a ton of great quotes, too many to list here. If you're interested, please check them out. Then read the book, get the CDs, and/or attend the seminar.) I then had the privilege of talking with him about the exercise (an apparently dramatic demonstration of the power of thoughts influencing reality), and a range of other topics, including:

• NASA's challenge of incorporating change (I worked there for five years, not too far away from his company's location),
  
• his very cool ActiveWords program, which Allen apparently loves (more on ActiveWords in a later post),
  
• Tablet PCs (I have a Toshiba Portege 3500 that Microsoft generously granted me for research into Personal Information Management),
  
• GTD (of course!),
  
• some of his upcoming products and ideas, and
  
• a few of the interesting conferences that he's presenting at or attending.
  

Our conversation reinforced an observation I made earlier: the depth and quality of Allen's supporters out there is very impressive. I think this speaks both for David Allen himself and the system (movement?) he's created. Great stuff.


TKD

In the "GTD turned my life around" category, I've started Tae Kwon Do (a Korean martial art) after a twenty year hiatus, and I took my yellow belt test last Friday. Today the Sa Bum Nim (teacher) handed out our belts. I was a first degree black belt in the 80s, but "reset" to white belt this time around, but I was really pleased when she put the (low ranking) yellow belt on me. (More in a later entry on being a beginner again, especially with TKD and GTD.)


DIY/hPDA

Last week I had the honor of early access to Douglas Johnston's new D*I*Y Planner site. As I wrote about earlier, the D*I*Y Planner Hipster (including the PDA Edition) is very cool, and was my first analog list manager tool. Johnston was very kind (he called me a blogger with depth and breadth - which made my day). However, today I received this thoughtful email from him:

Did you see your quote used in the Boston Globe, my friend?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/09/11/to_the_planner_born/ [link]

all my best,
dj

This was very satisfying.


Wrap Up

What ties all of this together for me is Allen's project planning step of visualizing wild success. His ideas on visualization were new to me (I have an engineering and science background), and I've been enjoying the challenge of adopting them for my new projects (both professional and personal), especially my exploration into coaching GTD. To that end I've been creating mind maps and writing news stories and journal articles set in the future, all of which are extremely flattering (surprised?) about my very wild success. Today gave me a taste of the power of this idea. Thanks go to Buzz Bruggeman, Douglas Johnston, and David Allen.

Comments

[tal]

congratulations on your yellow belt in taekwondo!!1

tal
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