GTD ideas found in old TMI book- where does it come from?

[Dreamjuggler]

Curious:

I found a text in an old Time Management International Book (1980) and realized that some of the GTD categories are listed in this book as well.

The desk system in TMI is as follows:

Now
Soon
Archive (move it to the archive-->easy in DAs system)
Read
Delegate
Waiting for

Even the word Project can be found there.

Do you know any details how DA developped his system? Any ideas about the age of GTD?

Just curious-

Reto

 

[Busydave]

I would say that these categories are more or less universal in any knowledge work context. “Now; Soon; Archive; Read; Delegate; Waiting for” are what managers do.

David Allen has incorporated these in a broad approach that catches every other eventuality as well.

Towards the end of the Getting Things Done book, he gives some background as to how the seeds of his system germinated.

I think the heart of his system is de-cluttering the mind so that it can do Knowledge work properly.

Dave

 

[stargazer_rick]

Here is a copy of a post that David made to another discussion forum back in February:

To give a brief (very) history:

1981 - I became a facilitator of Insight Seminars
1981-83 - developed my own consulting practice (a mentor, D. Acheson,
taught be the "next action" concept")
1983 - Joined Insight staff, created Insight Consulting Group (with
Russ Bishop)
1983 - Insight acquired U.S. rights to Time/Design from Denmark and
became the first English-language distributor, used as tool in the
Managing Accelerated Productivity seminar I developed for Lockheed,
then offered publicly
1985 - 1990 - sold Time/Design to Skip Sagar, who then sold it back
to Danish group in the U.S., who then sold to Southworth Corp. in
Mass. Meanwhile I/we were doing all the seminars around the book, in
an alliance with the Time/Design distributor
1990-1994 - In partnership with Southworth-Time/Design, providing all
the seminars while they solely marketed the planner.
1994 onward - Time/Design decided they wanted to offer "light" and
cheaper version of our training to corporate clients, so they took
our outline and used their own trainers. (Not a nice thing to do,
from our perspective) For a year they then hired me to do their
seminars for them, but stopped that when they decided to use their
own trainer in-house.
1995 - stopped using any specific planner or system in the seminar,
as most people had a tool already and needed to focus on the thought
process
1995 - 1997 - my two partners (Russell Bishop and Sally McGee)went
into somewhat different directions, I bought out the whole consulting
and training business and Kathryn and I created it again as David
Allen Company.

David