On November 1st, me and 5 of my co-workers attended a FranklinCovey seminar called Focus : Achieving Your Highest Priorities. I have read about the FranklinCovey methodologies multiple times and even have the CD series called Focus : Achieving Your Highest Priorities. Since I’m also rather proficient with David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodologies, I wasn’t expecting to get much out of this. Our facilitator, Bruce Oberle, challenged us to try it for 21 days, and I’m really glad I did. I feel like I’m getting even more done now, and I’m getting more of the right things done now.

I had tried and failed at the Covey system several times in the past. The primary tool in this system is The Productivity Pyramid. This is a theoretical four-level pyramid. From bottom to top, the levels are: Identitify Values, Set Goals, Plan Weekly, and Plan Daily. I think that I had failed at this in the past because there was just so much clutter at what David Allen calls the runway and 10,000-foot levels. With that now all well under control, I have the clarity that is necessary to use the Productivity Pyramid.

I attribute the rest of my success with the new methodologies to the hands-on use of a FranklinCovey Planning System. Yes, they gave us an actual paper system with binders and all the planning pages. In class we saw examples of how to use the system and we also started writing things in our own planning pages. Although I knew that I wouldn’t actually use the paper planner, I did realize that I needed to find a way to implement parts of this system electronically. I chose to use a highly customized configuration of the GTD TiddlyWiki–goodbye DateBk5 on my Palm for task management.

My weekly review has become a weekly review and plan time and it has undergone a major makeover as well. As I was doing my weekly review and plan today, I realized that I hadn’t made a blog posting in nearly 4 months. I’ve set a priority for this week to write about my new system and how it’s working for me. I hope you find the posts this week very empowering.