efficiency_focus_control_sm.jpg

efficiency_focus_control_sm.jpg

I met with Mike Salomon, CEO of Sherpa Performance Guides, last week. Mike takes a bunch of the Getting Things Done practices and combines them with kaizen and the Himalayan Sherpa tradition of guiding to create an incredibly valuable workflow process. He’s worked with top executives of dozens of high profile companies to help them get a handle on their productivity (and mindfulness).

My conversation with Mike reinvigorated my first run at GTD from a year ago. I had stayed with it for a couple months, but slowly let things pile up, finally dropping it altogether. New projects, new role, new office space—a great time for a new start!

One of the key elements of Mike’s system (and GTD) is to completely process your inboxes—email and physical—daily. (Merlin Mann gave an awesome talk to Google engineers about getting to “Inbox Zero.”) By the end of Monday my inboxes were empty, with everything processed. I actually feel relieved to have those empty boxes. Tuesday: empty again.