"A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done" - Dwight D Eisenhower

While I consulted at large financial firms in the US, one thing that amazed me was the number of consultants in organizations. Growing up in India and working for Indian companies, my mind refused to accept that this made economic sense. Imagine the consultants taking home twice what an employee would be paid. In India, it used to be pretty simple. Hire a programmer if you need to develop software. Then hire a manager to manage the programmer. Building on like this, many companies had huge IT departments. In fact, some years ago, all the large companies had their own IT subsidiary. ALIT (nw HTMT), Ramco Systems, SRIT and even the public sector like Bharat Electronics used that model and started their own IT companies. What is wrong with that model? Does it not make sense to backward integrate?

My experience in the US and elsewhere has shown me why it is not. For a simple reason. Focus on the Core Business. Big banks are big for a reason. They do what they know best, well. And that is banking, not IT or Marketing. Big manufacturers are profitable for the same reason. They use professionals to deliver what they need to run their business well. Which explains why the consulting market is so big out there. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why there are more startups in the US compared to the rest of the world. It is easy to get professionals provide the services while you concentrate on nurturing your dream. The message is to FOCUS on your goal.

"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them." - Pablo Picasso

Most of us know how difficult it is to focus. Our minds tend to wander and we get interrupted every few minutes. You will be inundated with emails, phone calls and SMSes. How do you focus on your business at hand? Everyone has a different method of dealing with this issue. Some tie knots in their handkerchiefs. This used to work when the world was a little less technologically advanced. Nowadays, everyone wants to own a PDA or a phone that doubles up as a PDA. The idea is that they can quickly make notes to themselves and manage appointments digitally. But does it work? Can technology really assist us in this conquest of tasks? Or do we get hijacked by the technology so much that we are slaves to the devices and get fewer things done than before?

One method that has gained great popularity these days is called GTD, short for Getting Things Done. This process, methodology, idea is what David Allen preaches. David, from California, published a book in 2001 called "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity"  Since then, there have been many more products that use GTD and have helped thousands of people across the globe. There is a subscription website, one day seminar, corporate training session, wallets, plastic folders, outlook plugin and a plethora of websites that provides loads of information on GTD.

David Allen created a book out of pure common sense and paper. No really, he thinks the best thing to do if you want to get stuff done, is to write them down. And sort and prioritize these tasks. Sounds like plain common sense to me. But just like other great ideas that are simple, many of us would not have thought of simple solutions before. Here is a graphical representation of the workflow in GTD. 

According to David, people who embrace this method will be able to manage their day-to-day tasks easily and remain stress-free. GTD's credo is "Mind like water". Sounds like a Zen thing, doesn't it?

There are many websites that can give you greater insight into GTD such as http://www.minezone.org/wiki/MVance/GettingThingsDone .

http://www.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2007/02/20070206-gtd-workflow.gif

I found the following online resources very useful in helping increase my productivity in general, with or without GTD.

* Lifehack (www.lifehack.org ) is a blog that provides a host of hacks, tips and tricks to get things done quickly. A variety of tricks to automate tasks, increase productivity and organize stuff is what makes this site very useful. The posts have been organized into Productivity, Communication, Lifestyle, Money, Management and Technology sections. Each section has a bunch of very useful tips and tricks like managing productivity using gmail as a productivity tool, how to communicate effectively with less words, how to reduce paper clutter and so on.

* 43 Folders (www.43folders.com ) is a website that is about "personal productivity, life hacks and simple ways to make your life easier". The section on GTD is quite comprehensive and can easily help you get started with GTD. Besides GTD, there is a lot of useful tools and tips to make your chores easier on your nerves.

* David Allen's official GTD website at www.davidco.com . Though this is the commercial website for GTD from the creators themselves, there are loads of good info on getting the maximum out of GTD. Look at their "Tips and Tools" section for some simple, yet effective tools that make you go "Why didn't I think of that sooner?".

* SimpleGTD.com is an online application for GTD users. If you dig GTD and would like to try it out and see if it makes sense to you, you should try this application. Very straightforward and clean interface makes it easy to quickly manage your to-dos online.

* Last, but not the least. My favorite, paper based productivity tool called the "Printable CEO series" by David Seah (www.davidseah.com ). See my blog on BusinessGyan.com title "Personal CEO". It is a very nice paper based set of tools that will allow you to manage your tasks and the time spent on each project/task. David's website has detailed guide for all of his tools. The latest tool is an online offering of his Emergent Task Timer. Check it out at http://davidseah.com/tools/ett/alpha/ . Nice tool to track what you are doing everyday, and it has standalone versions for PC and Mac apart from the URL mentioned above. One of the coolest things about PCEO, is that it emphasizes tasks you have completed/done and not just the project plan.

Printable CEO demonstrates some very lucid thinking by David. Although he has written it with an aim to help the consultants and freelancers, a lot of people can derive its benefits once the series is used correctly. These are a series of worksheets he has designed, they look very impressive and at the same time, are very easy to use.

Printable CEO (PCEO) part 1 is the Concrete Goals tracker. It helps you identify the really important goals that need to be achieved and track their progress at a macro level. It is quite popular, and many tools have been developed based on it. Look at Web Based Tracking Tool (http://roughunderbelly.com) for example.

PCEO part II is the Task Progress Tracker. This allows you to track the progress of a task from inception through completion. This divides your time into 15 minute chunks and assumes you do not need more than 4 hours to finish a task. As you proceed, you are expected to fill out the bubbles and mark it complete when done. Many times, we find that the task suddenly changes course and becomes very tough compared to our original estimate. You can increase the level of difficult in the TPT for such tasks.

PCEO part III is the Emergent Task Timer. It is the converse of the Task Progress Tracker. In the TPT, you track progress of a particular task. IN the Emergent Task Timer, you will be able to track your time on unplanned tasks. This can give you a fair idea of where your time is being spent. In fact, I think that ETT should be the first form for anyone who wants to bring about discipline in their time management skills. It is like writing everything down everything that you eat to understand your eating habits before you start a diet. The ETT can be used online as well. David has created Flash version that will sit in your browser keeping track of time for you. As an added bonus, you can activate a chime every 15 minutes to keep you alerted to the fact that you are still working. 

Venkat Mangudi is an Open Source Evangelist and Strategy Consultant based in Bangalore. After having worked across Europe, Asia and the US, Venkat returned home to set up a consulting firm called quite unimaginatively, Venkat Mangudi  Consulting (www.venkatmangudi.com). He can be reached at venkat@ venkatmangudi.com

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