photo credit: gideonstrauss
Me and Ali have written a lot about GTD in earlier blog posts. We’ve covered a bit of what GTD is all about, How GTD is made my traveling easier thanks to a Travel Checklist, How a Tickler file is used in GTD and also about a spiritual aspect of GTD. In this post I’ll cover how you can start learning about GTD and then eventually in a phase like manner begin implementing it. You will not know all about GTD by the end, but you can use this post to guide you to the various resources that would cover the basics of GTD enough to get you up and running.

So how does GTD Work?
The whole concept of GTD, revolves around the fact that we are most productive, most efficient, when we are relaxed. Similarly we are least productive, least efficient, when we are stressed. Look back at your life. When were you able to conduct a successful negotiation of a purchase of vegetables, your salary, or the buying of piece of property. Was it when you were frustrated and bothered or was it when you were Mr. Cool. It’s the same for every thing that we attempt to do. We get the most done, when we are calm, relaxed and focussed. Athletes call it ‘the zone’ and time disappears when in the zone. Being relaxed doesn’t being in-attentive, infact you’re super alert, in total control, and simultaneously not-stressed about a single thing. The question is how to get back to that state once you’ve fallen off? Well, that’s where GTD comes in.

I’ve truly had fantastic teachers throughout my life. Right throughout school, through religious school, during my association with Toastmasters, at my first job at KPMG all in Dubai and right now in Bangalore I’m extremely fortunate to have got highly intelligent, most sincere and extremely dedicated personalities giving their best to me. Issac Newton had once written, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” How beautifully put. I feel just the same. If I’m anything today, it’s because of God, my family and my teachers.

Looking back, here are a few additional skills that I’m really glad I picked apart from formal education. Many of the below skills have had significant positive impacts, some have even been life-changing.

1. GTD
Regular readers would’ve noticed that we regularly write about GTD on this blog. That’s because GTD is a truly phenomenal system that would greatly improve the performance of anybody. Be it a school going child, an office-going executive or a house-wife.

photo credit: hawkexpress

We don’t much of have a culture either at home and at our community to listen to music, so that sort of forces me and Ali to dig deep and keep looking for alternate sources of entertainment or education that we can indulge in when commuting from home to office. We were delighted when there was the explosion of podcasts on the internet. Those who may not be familiar with the term, a podcast is simply the internet but delivered on Audio. And you have podcasts on huge number of topics, be it from religion/spirituality, politics, documentaries, or Classic Story Telling. To hear podcasts all you need is an mp3 player, which may not be an ipod. Infact, a huge number of mobile phones these days have built in mp3 players, so to hear a podcast on the go, all you need to do is download it to your pc and then download that podcast into your phone. It’s really not that difficult, but you’ve got to do it once to experience it’s simplicity. Sure, but it still doesn’t beat having an ipod, as that makes downloading, syncing and listening to podcasts even easier.

Not bad eh? Click here to see the no smoking sign that I had spotted at Pizza hut.

We’ve (me and Ali) recently been hearing the podcasts of Oprah and Eckhart’s webcast discussion of “A New Earth”. These webcasts are a chapter by chapter discussion of Eckhart’s latest book A New Earth. I must say that I finding it fascinating. I’m currently in the middle of Chapter 2 of the podcast series. Eckhart is always a pleasure to listen to and Oprah…well she provides good comic-relief now and then. I do hope to join the webcast in one of the forthcoming sessions. Meanwhile, pickup the book or do hear these podcasts, when you get the chance.

Where we first got to know this stuff
We were introduced to the subject by Kahlil Jaffer’s series of lectures entitled “End of Negative Suffering”. What he basically says in the series of lectures is that yes that we are human and having this material form we are bound to go through hunger, sickness ie physical suffering. But we need not endure anger, jealousy, resentment, depression ie emotional/negative suffering. Infact we are not designed to do so.

Out of the 154 or so blogs that I’ve subscribed to in my NetVibes page, there are four that are distinct Star Bloggers in my books. What makes them more exclusive than others is that, these bloggers write for the passion of writing. They don’t care about comments, or even if someone’s reading their posts or not. And probably that’s the reason why almost each of their posts are a refereshing treat.

Arsalan Zaidi’s Blog Posts
Arsalan’s posts have been on management, software projects he’s worked upon & even on Steve Irwin. Each of them are written with such depth and wit (a highly winning combo) that even if it’s on something that I have no idea about, I’m compelled to finish reading it. His posts have this aura of spontaneity yet they’re so intense that Ali has wondered, that does Arsalan just hash out his article and hits publish as soon as he finishes his first draft, or does he spend painful time, ensuring his metaphors sound just right and his adjectives fit perfectly. As soon as either of us spot a new post by Arsalan, me and Ali shoot of a mail to each other that his latest post is also a must-read.