GTD’s David Allen and Disaster Recovery Planning

By ajohnson April 24, 2008 @ 8:43 am

If you’re like most IT executives who are relying on tape backup as the crux of your disaster recovery strategy, you may agree, it’s not much of a strategy at all.  And perhaps you are left wondering late at night, “How are we going to keep the email up and running in the event of fill in the blank?”  Soon after what seems to be a passing thought, those OTHER fires consume much of your time.  Where DO those fires and crises come from anyway?

“Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment.  Then ignored, they cause the next fires and crises,” writes Getting Things Done author David Allen. Mr. Allen wrote a great piece in a recent issue of the Huffington Post entitled “The Curse of the Eternally Urgent.”  His tips are relevant to anyone who maybe putting something off for tomorrow instead of completing the task/project today.  Sound like someone you know?

After chatting with a few IT guys, I’m starting to understand how putting off disaster recovery planning is easy to do. Especially when you’re working at a growing company and those pesky fires appear.  You know what worked in the beginning (i.e. tapes), won’t work today.  But take Mr. Allen’s advice and complete the project in a series of action items. “I think you’ll find that many big and important projects have a two-minute-or-less next action on them. You can move several big and important projects forward, and feel better about making progress, by doing a few two-minute-or-less next actions,” writes Allen.

Before you rush off to design the perfect disaster recovery plan (or better yet, outsource it to experts like Simply Continuous), read Mr. Allen’s article.