A Miracle Lasts Only 3 Days

Some things in life happens fast. You have to get up, grab the opportunity and be happy for it, because that kind of opportunity will not be there again soon. Maybe never.

It goes for people you encounter and you really feel like talking to them because otherwise you won’t have any other chance, or it goes for things you really want to do. Like I did a few months ago when I did paragliding for the first time in my life, or get a tattoo, also for the first time in my life. These things are so unexpected, yet so compelling and fulfilling, that you just can’t oppose them.

Well, the thing I’m gonna write about today is one of those things.

The Scoop

Let’s take the top notch, hottest, most popular 22 personal development authors, put together their most interesting products, bundle them at an incredibly low price (and by incredibly low price I mean an insanely low price), but only keep this going on for 72 hours. Basically, that’s the scoop. The place where you can find this is called Only72.com. If you’re the type of person that really knows what he wants from life, just go ahead, grab the bundle and thank me later.

But if you feel like reading more about this, just relax and keep reading. I have a nice story about you.

The Subtle And Almost Invisible Reward Of Doing Things Constantly

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you must have recognized this paragraph title. It’s for a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago. Back then I was writing how driving my car day in and day out made me a much more than average driver (or, in other words, a very good one).

But that goes also for writing, not only for driving. Two and a half years ago, when I started this blog, I made a commitment to keep writing for it no matter what. There were a lot of bad times during those two and a half years. Yet I stayed on course, took the shift on the face and just kept on writing.

And, today, I am incredibly proud about what’s happening. Some of my products are going on this very bundle along with products of people I was looking up to with amazement just a few years back. People like Leo Babauta, the creator of one of the most popular blogs on the planet, Zen Habits. Or people like Charlie Gilkey, a true voice in productivity and life and work balance. Or people like Jonathan Mead, who’s courses are already famous all over the internet. Or… But I’d better stop right here.

And I’m gonna let YOU see what’s in this unbelievable offer. You be the judge of this opportunity. It may be that you are having the exact feelings I had when I first did paragliding, in New Zealand, a couple of months ago: uncertainty, confusion, worry, excitement and even fear. Fear that what you’re going to get won’t meet your expectation. But believe me, once your foot will stop reaching the ground and you’ll be flying, none of those feelings will matter anymore. You will even forget that you had them.

So go ahead, dive in this huge promotion (yes, it’s actually valid for only 72 hours) and use these books and courses to start flying on your own.

A miracle lasts only 3 days. So, get your goodie! $1087 goods for only $97!

iAdd version 1.3 Live In AppStore

After only 5 days of waiting, iAdd version 1.3 is live in AppStore. As I already wrote, this version features a complete redesign of the iPad version and a lot of small usability improvements, as well as numerous bug fixes. If you don’t know what iAdd is, I will briefly tell you that it’s my iOS implementation of my own Assess – Decide – Do framework. If you want to know more about the framework, feel free to visit its (brand new) homepage at Assess-Decide-Do. And if you want to know more about iAdd, the app, of course, there’s a site for that too, iAdd.

They say an image is worth a thousand words, so, as I planned to write a few thousands words blog post today, I will only share a few screenshots.

Oh, and one more thing: the book that started all is now available on Kindle. That means you can read it on your iPhone, on your iPad, on your Mac, or even on your Android powered device. In short, pretty much everywhere. And, to make things even spicier, the Kindle version is only 9.99 USD, compared with the regular price of 27 USD. Here’s a screenshot of what the ebook looks like on my iPad, using the Kindle app for iPad.

You can get the Kindle version of Natural Productivity: Assess, Decide, Do for your Kindle by clicking here.

Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity

More than a year ago, I was traveling to Thailand. It was my first trip to South-East Asia. I clearly remember the colors, the smells, the images and the overall excitement mixed with curiosity. I had an incredible time during that trip. I don’t know if it was the visual shock or the cultural difference, the jetlag or my raw food diet (at that time) fact is, at some point during that trip, I had a sort of a revelation. It came in the form of three words: Assess – Decide – Do.

During the trip, those words repeatedly came into my mind until I realized they were my unconscious response to a lot of questions. How do you get up in the morning? How do I get to that place I want to visit? How do I get to the airport? How do I manage to write the blog posts I planned to write on this trip? All those questions stacked up somewhere in a darker corner of my mind, until they got a sudden and unexpected response. Assess, Decide, Do. While my conscious mind was busy absorbing all the fresh experiences, my unconscious mind had to come up with an answer to all those questions.

During that trip, I started to follow that short sequence of activities more and more, hour after hour, each and every day. I started to calm down and assess what I want to do, then decide if, when and where I want to do that, and then do it. I practically started to slice up my reaction to outside stimuli following this pattern. First assess, then decide, then do. Somehow, it seemed to work. The events were flowing down easily, I was focusing exactly on what I wanted to focus, while still maintaining a high degree of awareness. As I told you, I still remember the colors, the smells and even the noises.

After I got home, I put those words apart. There were things that needed to be done, bills to pay, meetings to attend to and so on. But somehow, the words kept popping out in my head. And somehow, I started to apply that sequence to other parts of my life. I started with work. In a matter of days, I started to experience a smooth flow and a surprising increase in my productivity. I said surprising because I’m not a lazy person. And then tried to apply it in my personal life. And then in my relationships. The more I practiced it, the better I became at. Eventually, I took this to a whole new and bigger level. After a few months of trials and errors, I was sure that I was into something really good. And by lack of any other name, I named this a “life management framework”.

What’s This Ebook About?

After I realized that I finally discovered something, I started to write about it. There were a few articles on the blog, all of them very well received. I started to incorporate feedback from my readers in it and also started to share these ideas with my friends. Basically, everybody who was exposed to the ideas seemed to “click” with the approach. At some point, when all the structure of the framework was clear, I started to build an app for it. Exactly, an iPhone app. There must be an app for everything, right?

During the app building process, I applied the same framework rules: I assessed, I decided than I did what seemed to be necessary to move the app forward. It took me roughly 30 days to build that app, without any prior knowledge of Objective C. It took me roughly 30 days to build that app, without any prior knowledge of Objective C. (No, this was not a mistake, I deliberately wrote that twice. Just to get it right.)

Now, the app is in the AppStore for more than 2 months, the latest version syncs your data with Dropbox, there is also an iPad version and so on. It may look like I started a business on this idea and to a certain degree, that’s right. But this perception of business will have to stop at the level of employees, though, because I don’t have any. I did everything by myself. Everything. The app, the blog, the promotion. Everything. Oh, and in the process, I had to handle the reconnection with my 13 year old son, I had to take care of my 4 year old daughter and also manage the separation details from my ex-wife. Just in case you’re thinking I had nothing else to do than to write on the blog, on the ebook or write Objective C code.

And still, every morning when I look in the mirror I see a healthy man, doing what he loves to do and enjoying a life of balance and fulfillment. This is what this ebook is about.

Let’s Get Practical Here

Now, if you made it till here, you must need some real life data, not some motivational stories. You’re right. I have what you need.

The ebook is structured in 3 levels: the conceptual one, the practical exercises and the tutorial for the iPhone/iPad app.

You start by learning from a very high perspective what Assess, Decide, Do means, how your being is acting on each realm and how you can identify your life imbalances using only the 3 aforementioned realms This will sound more like what I write on my blog on a regular basis. Many chapters are sharing large parts with the articles already published.

Then, in the second part, you take the framework to a real life ride. You start to apply it to relationships, to personal crisis management or to strategies for dealing with interruptions. This is the practical stuff. Once you have the concepts clear, you start to apply them to various areas of your day to day life.

And finally, in the 3rd part, you actually see, screenshot by screenshot, how to use iAdd for iPhone. This is the “tutorial” part of the ebook. I felt like a practical section was not enough. I needed something very “in your face”. Step by step. That’s what the third part is.

That’s it. This is the ebook.

I said it before, I will say it again: I suck at writing long, boring and deceiving sales pages. I simply can’t afford to insult your intelligence with all kind of cheap incentives, when I know that you know better than me if you need this ebook.

What Others Are Saying About It

As you may already know, the ebook was on pre-order for 48 hours on my blog. Since I wanted to have some feed-back, I kindly asked some of the people who read it to give me some impressions. These are real people, with real blogs and real lives. And, to my surprise (well, not quite ) they gave me feedback for both the ebook and the app.

Ian Peatey – QuantumLearning.pl

You will like the book if you:

• want to know how Dragos is so damn productive
• want a method to help you get productive yourself
• want to know how Dragos is so damn laid back AND productive at the same time.

You will be wasting your money if you:

• hate Dragos and wish him to live in poverty for the rest of his days
• are perfectly content with both your productivity and level of laid-back-ness.

Lyman Reed – LymanReed.com (iTunes feedback)

iAdd is an excellent app if you want to get out of the “add things to a list and then cross them off” world of productivity. It incorporates much from the GTD world (such as Contexts), but really shines in the area where GTD leaves off – where we assess what’s important to us and make decisions based on what we want to do.

The app is based on Dragos Roua’s Assess-Decide-Do framework – without an understanding of this framework, it could easily be mistaken for just another to do list with what seem like some extra useless steps. I strongly suggest that the user takes the time to learn the framework (links are in the app) to get the most from it.

It’s now my go-to iPhone app for productivity, especially when it comes to using the Assess realm for idea collection. It may even have convinced me that purchasing an iPad would be worth it – unless of course Dragos is planning on creating a version for Windows.  Or even better, a Google Chrome extension (hint, hint…)

Eric – EdenJournal.com

Assess Decide Do is a revolutionary way of approaching Life Management.  It’s more than managing productivity, it’s a framework to underlie day to day decision management.  Assess Decide Do clearly organizes the pre-decision, the decision, and the post decision (or doing.)   Decision making can be a challenge, but Dragos makes it easier by creating a process that allows for all the information gathering to happen first, and then the decision follows a simple go/no-go format.  I have struggled with many forms of organization, and I despise task lists.  Assess Decide Do is a great alternative to the task list, and is really a much more comprehensive solution to organize my life.  It really is a Life Management Framework.

Ruben Berenguel MostlyMaths.net

When I read about the ADD framework in Dragos’ blog, or about the iADD application, I wasn’t impressed. Maybe it was not the correct time, or I just didn’t get it at the moment. Then, I was offered to review the ebook, and reading chapter 3 opened my eyes. I definitely needed to buy that app: it was my workflow. Said and done, I bought it a few hours ago and can’t stop thinking about how much attention to usefulness Dragos put in it. If you have found other to-do apps useless, this is for you.

Pat Flynn – SmartPassiveIncome.com (iTunes feedback)

I agree with one of the other commenters. This really helps take the GTD mindset to a whole new productivity level. Understanding which tasks are most important to us is key, and I’m really glad I have an app to help me with this now, because I often lose my way throughout the day. Thank you!

***

The ebook is only 27 USD and you can buy it by clicking here.

I do hope it will give you at least a fraction of the benefits I had from creating it.

Pre-order Now Natural Productivity – 48 Hours Until Official Launch

Today I’m extremely happy to announce that my latest ebook, called “Assess – Decide – Do: Natural productivity” will be available on this very blog starting Friday, September 17, from 7 AM.. Which is exactly in 48 hours. This is one of my oldest projects and it’s the kind of stuff that grows organically, without too much noise, but with the unmissable feeling of a strong, solid foundation.

Now I have a confession to make. I suck at sales pages. I just do. You know the type of sales pages I’m talking about, a long sausage filled up with cheap incentives and literally breathing the underlying assumption that you, the one who’s supposed to buy that product, are an absolute idiot, responding like a Pavlovian dog to all kind of “verified” buying techniques. I just can’t write those types of sales pages.

What I can do though, is to give you all the information you need, so you can make your own decision. Here are some things you will learn from this ebook.

• What is a life management framework.
• What’s the difference between traditional productivity and natural productivity.
• How to transform a deadline into a liveline.
• How to incorporate procrastination on your own working routine, rather than fight it.
• How to identify the root of your life imbalances, using the 3 stages Assess, Decide and Do.
• How to eliminate the guilt of “not doing enough” while still doing more than you think you can do.
• How to create your own life management framework, based on what you will read. Because you are unique and you need an unique way of managing your life.

In the last part of the ebook, after you have incorporated the base concepts, you will have something to work with, literally in your hands, and that is a tutorial for my iPhone / iPad app inspired by Assess – Decide – Do, iAdd [iTunes link]. iAdd is a 100% compatible implementation of the framework (you will learn in the ebook how can you subclass the main framework and add your own techniques to it) and it was built applying the very concepts described in the ebook, in only 30 days, without any prior knowledge of Objective C.

The ebook contains more than 160 pages written and reviewed during the last year. Its main structure is also split into 3, going from top to the bottom, from abstract to concrete, from concept to implementation. It’s by far the most comprehensive and complete product I’ve built since I start blogging, 2 years ago. And I mean it.

As for the price, I hesitated a lot until I decided to set it at 27 USD. Ebooks in this range are usually selling at 47 USD and up, but I decided to lower the entry point. I do believe the concepts in this ebook are useful, I really do. And so I want to make it available to as many people as possible. Talking about the price, I do have something special for you.

The Special Offer

I’m not going to write a long sausage of cheap selling crap, but I do have a special offer for you. Yes, for you, the long time reader of this blog, the one who stayed behind the lines, never commenting, but always consuming the content, and sometimes sending me a short email like “thanks, Dragos, that helped”. I know you’re out there and this one is for you. You helped me get through this and I want to let you know that I’m listening and I want to give something back.

Until Friday, September 17th, 7 AM, Bucharest time, you can get the ebook at 20 USD, instead of the normal price of 27 USD. That’s 25% off. That’s the least I can do. So, just click on the link below and write down the following code in the shopping cart:

buy now with PayPal

promo code: WakeUpEarly

No spaces, no commas, just three words into one. Your package will be discounted. Please be aware that this discount will expire on Friday, at 7 AM Bucharest time. After that, the promo code won’t work anymore and you could only get the ebook at its normal price.

Wait, There’s More

For the first 30 buyers, I have prepared a promo code for the iAdd app, which will let you have it, basically, for free. A promo code in the AppStore is just like a 100% discount code: you get the app at no cost. So, you will have the full package: the ebook (at a discounted price) and the app to actually implement the entire workflow.

I would have very much loved to give you more promo codes, but there’s a limit of 50 made by apple, and the first 20 went off like crazy (in fact, I had to turn down a few requests, specifically to keep this batch for you). So, if you bought the ebook, come back here and leave a comment. Use the email address you used to buy the book so I can check out the sale. I will send you at the same email address the promo code. Please be aware that those promo codes are available for the US iTunes store only (that’s a limitation imposed by Apple).

Again, please understand that I cannot give more than 30 codes, but if you move rather quickly, you can make it to the first 30. Oh, here’s how quick can you move, you don’t even need to scroll up, just click here (I copied the link for your convenience )

buy now with PayPal

That’s it. The clock it ticking.

The Death Of The Deadline As We Know It

I was a big fan of deadlines. Chasing them. Crossing them off of my todo list. Striving to meet them. Spending countless hours just to prepare myself for this date with my deadline. Oh, the feeling of pride when I was there in time to make it. The inner power and fulfillment… Yes, that was a very interesting experience.

I’m not into deadlines anymore but I do remember the feeling of satisfaction I got from crossing my deadlines off. I still enjoy doing things, I’m just not into deadlines anymore. As simple as it seems, this is a fundamental difference.

The Word

Have you ever really thought what is the meaning of the word “deadline”? It has the word “death” in it. Never wondered why? Because a deadline is a line of death. Once you meet that line, you kill the task. You take its life away. You conquered it. You extended your presence onto its territory, occupied it and now you have the right to eliminate it from your system. That’s a highly motivating psychology. Also, it’s a very disempowering one.

Thinking in terms of “death” lines will make you assimilate the end of a task with its death. Doing things will mean kill one task after another. Slashing tasks over a to do list has this feeling of power: I killed 32 enemies today, I feel good. Tasks are not your enemy. Nobody is, in fact. You just pretend that they are, so you can use the “warrior” resources you already have deep down in your ancestral behavior. The pressure of doing more and more exalted our warrior style way over the safety level.

We position ourselves as conquerors of our own task land. What lies in front of our work day is a field filled with enemies that have to be eliminated. Every day is a battle. Many productivity techniques are using this subliminal approach. What you have to do is a burden. You have to take it away, to overcome it, to eliminate it. The more you eliminate, the better you’ll feel. Train yourself to become better at killing tasks.

At a certain level, this psychology is, as I already said, very motivating. Fighting for our survival is deeply wired in our unconscious memory. This is why we find it easy to understand this approach. Fear of our own death will push us to kill the “other”. And the “other” in this case, is clearly written on our daily to do list. If we don’t kill “them”, they will kill us, so we’d better jump off of our beds, rush into the subway and take position in our daily trenches, suitably camouflaged as desks.

But the downside of this approach, its disempowering part is that, by transforming your tasks into your personal enemies, you’ll eventually become so good at deadlines that life itself will look as a deadline. You’ll rush towards the biggest deadlines of all: your own death. Deadline by deadline, task killed by task killed, you’re going to eventually cross the final episode off of your to do list with great satisfaction. The ultimate project management victory: I crossed off my own death today.

For A Liveline Philosophy

Forget deadlines. Instead let’s have livelines. A liveline is different from a deadline in that it creates a new starting point. The point where you start something on the foundation you just finished, something alive. You restart the movement.

In Assess – Decide – Do, your tasks will always generate a new cycle. You’re not spending time only in Do. You’re also spending time in Assess or in Decide. Each time you finish a task in Do, you will have to feed your Assess realm with the results. You will evaluate feed-back. In this respect, a project is never “finished” in ADD. The graphical representation of a project in Assess – Decide – Do will look more like a spiral than like a Gantt diagram. I agree it’s a little difficult to understand this concept, especially if you’re coming from a long traditional task management experience.

A liveline will never ask you to cross a task over. You always have the possibility to re-start the liveline by sending it back to Decide, and, from there, back to Assess. A liveline will be met only if all its initial stages (Assess and Decide, namely) are completed and fulfilled. And every liveline will generate in turn several ideas, lessons or potential tasks.

A liveline means we’re taking the “death” out of the deadline. We’re taking the pressure out, we’re taking the urge of finishing it so we can get back to our regular life. Because there will be no dichotomy between what you “have” to do and your regular life. It will all take place in the same time/space continuum.

I hear you loud and clear: what about commitments? What about promises? What about our corporate life where we have to finish tasks before competition, otherwise we’re out of business? Well, if you do established a certain end date to a task, keep it. It means you Assessed it right and you also took the right Decision about it. If you spent enough time in those two realms, nothing can go wrong.

Every Do imbalance is in fact a liability you carry on from the previous realms. If you can’t finish a task in the specified time and space constraints, it means something went wrong on the Assess and Decide realms. Completing a task is not a function of the Do, is also a function of Assess and Decide. Until you won’t realize that, it will be really difficult to understand the benefits of the Assess – Decide – Do framework.

How about “unexpected” events? Let’s say you did your best in Assess to anticipate every possible outcome and you properly allocated time and space resources in Decide.And still, some catastrophe happened. A power outage 2 hours before the client presentation or a traffic jam which delayed your presence at that important meeting. Well, things are happening. It doesn’t mean you’re off track. Back to Assess.

In a traditional approach, you would consider the undone task a liability. In the best case, you would have tried to reschedule or postpone. Meaning you would still keep yourself in the Do realm. Stuck on the deadline. And for as long as you’re stuck in the same mindset, the problem will never disappear.

Take a leap of faith. Go out. Make a lateral step. Transform that deadline into a liveline. A liveline will give you flexibility not only at the action level, but also at the perception level. Start assessing what went “wrong” and see what could you’ve done better. There are many reasons for what you can’t really Do a thing. Keeping yourself only in Do will hide those details, will lock you in the Do box. You can’t see the real picture if you’re not taking time to assess.

Perhaps the presentation wasn’t ready. Perhaps the client wasn’t ready to receive your message. Perhaps the meeting wasn’t very good for your career. There are so many things you should ponder about what’s happening around you and still, because you’re pressuring on Do, you skip them. Or you avoid them consciously because they won’t “help” you in any way.

Inject Some Life Into That Deadline

And make it a liveline. By now, you should have understand that there is a little bit of a word game here: dead versus alive. I deliberately pushed the comparison a little bit. Of course you will commit to doing things in Assess – Decide – Do too. Of course you will do the best to meet your own expectations, at least. What’s different, though, from the traditional productivity approach, is an unprecedented degree of flexibility.

In a traditional approach, if something went wrong, you would at best re-schedule and try to refill the Do realm with that task. Or lose it all together. In Assess- Decide – Do, you will reintroduce the task into your Assess realm. Of course you can just Re-Decide it, and in many day by day circumstances, that would be the expected reaction, but you also have another realm to work with, Assess.

I will avoid using a term like “planning” when it comes to Assess. You do much more than planning. You evaluate, you imagine, you wait, you dream about it, you play with the task as in a dream world. The degree of flexibility offered by the mere idea that you can be productive while Assessing is incredible.

And finally, one of the most important benefits of this bouncing back and forth is the organic rearrangement of your activity. Projects, tasks and events will start to fall into their places. The initial feeling will be one of melting, of losing control. But after this rather scary period, another feeling will come into place: the feeling of flow. There is an inner capacity of natural order, of simple flow from one project to another.

The deadline carries with it a threat. If you won’t do it, something or somebody must die. In 99,99% of the cases, the task will die, and you will actually kill it. But a liveline will not have any threat associated. It’s like “doing nothing” and yet “doing it”. A good deal of resistance to implementing Assess – Decide – Do will come, ironically, from the fact that you associate “doing” things with pressure. And when you’re not feeling pressure you’re going to feel like you’re doing nothing. If there’s no deadline it means there’s nothing to do, right? Wrong. you can do things in the absence of a deadline, just by knowing that the results of your work will not get lost in a to do planner, but they’ll be part of a bigger, flexible system that you can work with. I know, you associated doing with pressure. But no, with a liveline there is no pressure. And you can still do things.

Now, I hear you for the final question: are one going to do more using Assess – Decide – Do than using any other productivity framework? My answer to this question will always be: “more” is not automatically “better”. The consumerist obsession put a lot of weight on “more”. If you live in the deprivation of only one realm, spending your entire life in the Do realm, “more” becomes important. “More” is a way of measuring what you’re Doing. But once you get out of the prison of Doing, spending time in Assess and Decide, “more” will lose its meaning as a measurement tool. It will be only a choice, an assessment. I can Do more today, or I can spend more time Deciding or Assessing.

***

Ok, this was a teaser. What you just read is just a chapter from my upcoming ebook: “Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity”. The ebook will be launched this Friday, on September 17th, but you will be able to pre-order it at a significant discount starting this Wednesday. Many concepts you read in this article and seemed a little foggy will come to life by reading the entire ebook. It’s a 150 pages text, grouped in 3 main parts. The last one is a very thorough guide of iAdd for iPhone, the app which puts the power of this framework literally in your hand.

If you’re a blogger, your audience is revolving around productivity or lifestyle design and you feel like reviewing the ebook, you can have a chance to get a copy of it for free, as long as you commit to review it on your blog. It doesn’t have to be a positive review, just an honest one. I’ve done this before with other ebooks I wrote and I was positively surprised by the results. After the ebook launch, next week, I will also do a round up of the reviews and post links to the blogs who published them. So, you’re not only getting the ebook for free, you also get a link back to your blog from quite a popular site. So, if you’re into it, just hit me up with an email in which you’re telling me your blog address, a few words about yourself and why would you like to review it. You should also tell me if you want to become an affiliate (you may include affiliate links in your review, if you want).

Other than that, I’m really looking forward to this Friday, September 17th, this is one of the most interesting livelines I’ve set up lately .

Natural Productivity – Introducing iAdd for iPhone

I’m really excited as I write this: iAdd for iPhone is live on the App Store [and that's an iTunes link for the impatient one]. It’s been a long journey, but I’m finally there.

Why is this so important for me? Why is this not just another product launch in the day to day routine of launching products? Because this is what you’re supposed to do if you’re running (even a very small) software company, right? You’re releasing products.

Well, iAdd is special. iAdd is part of a bigger personal breakthrough. If you’re just an iPhone app junkie (which means we’re sharing a big common interest here) go ahead and click on the iTunes link, buy the app, (it’s only 2.99 USD) and start using it. It will change your life.

But if you’re a little bit curious about how I came up with this productivity app, take 7 to 10 minutes off from your regular duties and start reading, I promise it won’t take more than that.

Being A Productivity Junkie

I had my share of GTD from its early days, back in 2005-2006. I was fascinated by the system, excited by its promise (“mind like water”) and extremely enthusiast by the actual implementation. I started to GTD in 2006 and I was an evangelist until 2008. But at some point, something started to feel a little bit wrong.

I was still doing incredibly more “stuff” than before using GTD and I also was pretty balanced when it came to personal / professional life. But then again, something was out of sync with the bigger picture. In a few months I had to admit that I was over GTD. Precisely, over the GTD hype. Just click on that link and you’ll find out more about what I kept and what I threw out form my GTD experiment.

This was the beginning of a long and somehow confusing process. There were many situations in which I needed the power of GTD, but then again there were situations in which GTD as a framework seemed inflexible and downright awkward. I fell off the GTD wagon and didn’t embarked on a new train.

Even more, the whole productivity thing started to feel artificial and unnatural. That was the time when I discovered what I still call the productivity trap. Just read the article and you’ll know what I mean.

Natural Productivity – What The Frack Is This?

Sometimes more than a year ago, during one of my trips to Thailand, I suddenly discovered something so simple, yet so powerful, that left me puzzled for a few weeks. Please stop smiling and don’t even think to write some smart comments about what people are usually discovering in Thailand, because I know what you mean . Right now I’m talking about productivity, ok?

So, I discovered that we’re not always in the same state. We, as human beings, are not designed only to get things done. We’re not made only to Do. We’re also made to Assess our environment and to Decide whether or not we’re going to do something. Some of you may say that this is a very simple discovery. And they’ll be perfectly right, by the way. I told you it was something really, really simple.

A few weeks later, my own life management workflow, called Assess – Decide – Do was ready. From that point, several approaches were made, including ADD for programming and ADD for relationships. Feel free to dig into these articles if you wanna know more about the framework.

Right now, just for the sake of the presentation, I will rehash some of the concepts, just to give you a short heads up:

Assessment is the state in which you analyze, compare, learn and store your experiences.

Decision is the state in which you project your next reality. You’re coming to this stage after finishing an assessment session completely.

Doing is the state in which you’re using focus to create your next reality. You’re doing only after you have a clear decision to follow.

Each of these states are maintained by your focus and you’re shifting from one state to another by being in flow.

Flow is not a measurable concept although we can refer to it as bigger, lower or we can define some quality of it. Flow is usually perceived as your capacity of enjoying and alignment with your current context. Most of what we call joy, happiness or exhilaration is in one way or another a variation of a great flow we’re experiencing.

If focus will be the main tool for creating your reality we may refer to the flow as the master glue for keeping the pieces together. A healthy flow will allow you to go from a complete assessment to an atomic decision and that will lead to a totally immersed activity of doing.

Well, that’s what I call natural productivity.

iAdd WorkFlow

Now back to the iPhone app. How do you implement this workflow using the iPhone app?

First of all, the app only has 3 tabs, each one corresponding to a specific realm. They’re even named like that: “Assess”, “Decide” and “Do”. Also, each tab has an icon which will intuitively let you know what you’re allowed to do in that specific realm.

Assess has a “+” sign as an icon, meaning that’s the place where you add stuff to your plate. This is where you overload your system with data. The theme color is red, which means: “stop and empty your brain” before moving further.

Decide has a “?” sign as an icon, meaning that’s the place where you decide if, when and where are you going to perform a certain task or to attend to a specific event. The theme color of this realm is orange, which means: “pay attention and be prepared”.

Do has a “-” sign as an icon, meaning that’s the place where you actually take out stuff from your system, by doing it. You cross of things as you do them. The theme color of this realm is green, which means: “you’re good to go”.

Pretty simple, right? Exactly, that’s the ideas behind the whole framework. Now, what happens after you add something to the system, after you’re using your “+”?

Well, you can edit that piece of information, right in the Assess realm, choosing what type of info is: task, idea, event or project.

Once you’re ready, you can either send it to Decide, in case you wanna decide when and where are you going to do it, either assign it to a collection, meaning you’re going to decide about it later.

Once in the Decide realm, all you have to do is to set a date, a place (most of the time you’re going to use a previously defined Context for the place) and a priority. After you assigned that, you’re ready to send it to Do. You won’t be able to send a task without a due date. Simply because a task without a due date is a task upon you didn’t decided yet.

From here, you can either do that task, and delete it after that, either skip it, in which case the task will appear as overdue. Only if the task is overdue, you can start the reverse process, sending the task back to Decide and from Decide to Assess, if you want. Most of the time you will only send it back to Decide, to assign a new due date.

That’s all there is to it. Really.

Before launching it I used the app for more than 2 months. One thing I noticed is that my overall state was significantly steadier than before using it. Not too much inner pressure for doing certain things, not too much anxiety. I still had a lot to do during those 2 months. And I’m a really focused guy and I do like to do my stuff, so it wasn’t about me becoming lazy. It really had something to do with the way I structured my activities. I won’t say that iAdd for iPhone will completely eliminate anxiety from your life, but it will certainly give you a much steadier structure. Why?

Tasks in Assess aren’t going to be done. Not yet. And that’s ok. You don’t really have to. Even more, they’re not even tasks, until you “sign a contract” to do them. They’re just things you’re assessing. You can modify them, you can even delete them, you can store them in a collection for further reference.

In Decide, you set the context and time for a certain task. At that moment, the piece of information from Assess becomes an actionable entity. A task or an event. You’re not assessing it anymore, you’re making a decision. But that’s all there is to it, only a decision. Until you actually send it to the Do realm, the task can stay in the Decide realm for as long as you’re comfortable with.

And in Do, you don’t have to focus on how or why (it’s been done in Assess), nor on when and when (it’s been done in Decide), all you have to do is… well, doing it.

This approach fits really well in your daily routine. You may have hours (or even days) in which you love to be a doer. Focus on the Do and start crossing off tasks. Sometimes, you’re in a planning mood. Just go in Decide and start allocate tasks and events to specific contexts and days. You don’t have to do them, just sign the contract that you’re going to do them at some point. And sometimes you’re just brainstorming (that’s the professional term for daydreaming, by the way). That too is perfectly ok. You are allowed to do this. Just write it down in the Assess realm and enjoy the process. You may turn those ideas into projects later if you really want to.

The Upcoming Ebook On ADD

But wait. There’s more. While I was working on all of these ADD related tasks (like the blog posts above, the app, etc) I realized there’s need for an organized way to put all these concepts together.

So, I started to write an ebook which will deal exclusively with this ADD framework. I’m over half way to it, and I expect it to be ready in a few weeks. I don’t know the exact date (I’m still assessing it), but I’m confident that it will be ready soon. Confident enough to give you a small teaser here, that is.

You may even consider this a soft pre-launch. I know there’s quite a hype on the blogs lately with these soft launches. Well, now I have mine too.

iAdd On The App Store

Now, that was really all about the app. You can go to the App Store now, by clicking this link and buy it. 2.99 USD is a really small price to be paid for putting your life together. Wow, sometimes I feel like the worst salesman in the world, you know?

The price will stay at 2.99 USD for a while, but as I will roll out the next features (because there is a roadmap which will include a lot of amazingly interesting features, and I mean it) well, as I will roll out these features, I may shift it up a little. I’m not sure yet, I’m still assessing it, so when I’ll make a decision about it, you’ll know.

Until then, enjoy it.