Whether it’s a new role, team, or project, transitions can throw your focus off. GTD® provides you with a step-by-step method to capture your thoughts, clarify priorities, and organize your next actions so you can feel grounded once again.
Here are 3 tips and tricks to stay grounded during transitions:
1. Start with a Mind Sweep
Transitions can bring a flood of thoughts, tasks, and small details that all demand your attention simultaneously. A mind sweep helps move everything out of your head and into a trusted system.
Quick Wins:
- Grab paper or your favorite app and write down everything on your mind, from small tasks to major projects.
- Mark tasks that take two minutes or less for immediate action.
- Identify larger projects or sub-projects that need unpacking with the Natural Planning Model.
- Use symbols or colors to indicate urgency, importance, or category.
💡 Tip: During a transition, a coach can guide you through a mind sweep and help ensure nothing critical gets missed.
🎥 Related Video: How to Use GTD When You’re in a Work Transition
2. Clarify What’s Actionable
Once captured, decide what deserves your attention. GTD’s next-action focus helps you move from feeling overwhelmed to making tangible progress.
Quick Wins:
- Break unclear projects into discrete next actions using the Natural Planning Model (purpose, vision, brainstorming, organizing, next actions).
- Ensure every task starts with a clear verb so you know exactly what to do.
- Decide what you will do now, schedule, delegate, or defer.
- Group related actions to tackle them efficiently.
💡 Tip: One-on-one coaching can provide perspective and help you prioritize when everything seems urgent, especially during transitions.
Here are two examples of this in action demonstrated by our GTD coaches:
👉: Natural Planning Model Part 2: Julie’s Project Walkthrough
👉: Natural Planning Model Part 3: Mary’s Project Walkthrough
3. Organize into a Trusted System
During a transition, tasks can feel scattered. Consider organizing your next actions by where they sit in the lifecycle of a project. This guides you what to do next and which projects need the most attention.
Lifecycle Categories:
- Ideas & Opportunities: Potential projects or tasks that are not yet actionable.
- Planning: Defined outcomes, next actions, and sub-projects.
- Execution: Tasks ready to act on immediately with clear next actions.
- Review & Reflect: Projects requiring progress checks or adjustments.
- Archived/Reference: Completed projects or reference material for later.
Quick Wins:
- Assign every task to a lifecycle stage after mind sweeping and clarifying to see where your attention and energy are needed most.
- Review Planning and Review & Reflect stages weekly to decide what to tackle next.
- Slot new priorities into the correct stage as they arise to keep your system flexible.
💡 Coaching Tip: A GTD coach can help you define stages, break projects into actionable steps, and build a workflow that adapts to changing roles and responsibilities.
Quote of the Week
“This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.” – Kerry Gleeson
Every day, someone begins their GTD journey. You can be the one to introduce them by sharing this newsletter with them.
Cheers,
GTD Focus
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