I know that one of David’s catch phrases is “Make it up. Make it happen.” Here is how David first uses the phrase on the GTD…Fast CDs in context:

50 years ago 80 percent of our workforce made its living by simply making and moving things. You show up, you’ve got a bunch of unmade, unmoved things. Its real clear how to spend your day…The good news is…unmade things and unmoved things define your work for you. The bad news is 90 percent of us show up for work these days and don’t know what to do. In other words, we have to make it up, and make it happen—and there’s nobody on your team. Have you noticed? I don’t care how good a team your on, and I’m sure many of you are on good ones. Have you noticed that there’s nobody on your personal team when you walk out of that team meeting going, “OK, David, now what are you going to do out of that conversation, and which one of those big bullet points did you inherit, and therefore what are you going to do about that?” Know what I mean? There’s nobody following you along while they’re trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do out of all that…You have to define what you are trying to do and you have to define how to get there.

Sometimes I think it would be nice if I had a personal coach that followed me around every second of every day and advise me of what I need to do next. My personal coach would keep me apprised of things that I needed to look out for. My personal coach would strategize and plan. Having a personal coach that I trusted entirely would allow me to simply do.

But obviously, no one can have a personal coach with them every second of every day, and if we did, life would get quite boring and we would essentially become a slave to the coach. So, the next best thing is that we coach ourselves.

Did you happen to notice during the Super Bowl that the coaches weren’t wearing pads and helmets? They weren’t on the field making the plays and moving the ball? Even football is a game of unmade, unmoved things. What were the coaches doing? The coaches were trying to figure out the best way for the people on their team to move the ball across the goal line. The coach instructed the players which plays to make, and the players worked the plays and moved the ball.

Productivity in our own life is much the same way. The difference is that we are not only the coach, but we are the quarterback, running back, center, tight end, tackle, safety, and every other position on the field. We’re not going to be as effective as we could be if we try to be coach and receiver at the same time. In order for the ball to get to the receiver, the coach must have already figured out how the receiver is going to get open, and how the line is going to protect the quarterback so he can get to the best possible spot to throw the ball to the receiver (and a billion other variables). The coaching must be separate from the playing; and it must be done first.

That’s what the Getting Things Done methodologies provide for us—self coaching tools. When we come out of the meeting we need to sit down for a few minutes, put on our coach’s hat, and strategize and plan how our ‘team’ will move against what has just come our way. Once we figure that out, we can write down those items on our projects list and our next actions list (i.e. the playbook). At this point it is up to the team to move the ball. So then we put on our cleats, pads, and helmet and start running the plays (i.e. doing next actions) that we defined for ourselves when we were in the position of coach.

There may be nobody else on our team, but we do have a great team of one. Using the GTD tools and methods, we can win this game!

By the way, when I did a Google search for the phrase “Make it up. Make it happen.” I found this article by David Allen” which had never read before. It’s well worth spending some time reading.