Today’s guest post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint 

I first learned GTD from a 7th grade teacher who instructed me to write down my daily homework on a simple piece of paper.  I was to track my assignments and then check them off as I completed my work. Not a bad system for a middle schooler, especially since my 7th grade teacher hadn’t heard of David Allen, much less a weekly review or mind dump.

Since becoming a teacher myself, I’ve taught this same system many times over.  Write down one task at a time.  When you are finished with it, cross it out.  Keep your little piece of paper with you wherever you go.  While many students want to go out and purchase something more hip than a piece of lined paper, simple is good and very GTDish.

My advice to helping young people practice GTD:

• Encourage super-simple systems. Avoid PDA’s and Blackberry devices and stick to a simple notepad and pencil.
• Preach, one thing at a time. Especially during homework time or when your child would rather be doing something else, the ONAT (one thing at a time) rule still applies.
• Reward list making.  Kids are great at making Christmas lists and wouldn’t David Allen approve of getting something out of your head and onto paper?  Cultivate this skill throughout the year.

HD BizBlog has a new sponsor, and I have been using their service for three weeks now. My wife has taken a new job in Maine, requiring our relocation from North Carolina. She moved up to Maine two weeks ahead of me, in order to start working and look for a place to live.

We have been using the Wrike.com service in order to keep each other appraised of the apartment search, and update the “database” that we were compiling. It has worked very well, we have found a spot, and will be moving in on the 8th of November.

Check out the ad at the top of the sidebar, and let me know if you have used this service, you can log into the forum and post a reply on the Wrike topic.

A full review and evaluation is forthcoming. Thank you for your patience during this move.

This is the second in an ongoing series of interviews with influential productivity and new media thought-leaders. The first was with Ryan Rasmussen, Emerging Media Specialist at Levenger.

Today we will get to know a little more about Dave Seah of DaveSeah.com:Better Living Through New Media

I had a few questions for Dave, that he was kind enough to answer. Let’s begin with a quote from About Dave Seah:

I like writing about things that empower and inspire people, covering topics such as design, development, becoming productive, and the business of being a freelancer. You can find information about my design offerings on the Working with Dave page!

I have been a reader of Dave’s blog for longer than I have been a blogger myself, and I am a big fan of his Printable CEO series. These Time Management forms were one of the things that inspired me to create my own GTD Calendar. The following questions and answers should shed a little more light on this very interesting writer/designer.

Where did you grow up?

The first nine years of my life were spent in rural New Jersey, in a small town named Perrineville where Dad was the local Presbyterian minister for Monmouth County. The next nine years were spent in Taipei, Taiwan, where I went to Taipei American School and utterly failed to absorb any of the language or culture of the island.

What type of work experience led you to blogging and designing? Just how did you get to where you are?

I’ve sort of followed opportunities as they’ve presented themselves until just a few years ago. Very broadly, the career path has been engineering, interactive design, video game development, management, graphic design, and now writing/design consulting.

Tell us about your Education:

My undergraduate and masters degrees are in Electrical Engineering (emphasis on digital computers, because I suck at math). Facing a career in engineering, I realized that I had gone astray; I wanted to really make stuff that PEOPLE interacted with, so I went and got my MFA in Computer Graphics Design, then went into the video game industry.

How do your interests work into your life?

Just about anything related to storytelling and experience-making in all its forms. This covers writing, filmmaking, animation, video game development, illustration, magic performance, graphic design, music composition…I can’t do a lot of this, but I read up on it and try to incorporate those insights into my design work. I find the psychology of experience very interesting too, and this gets into design, teaching, education, ergonomics and human factors, personality typing, etc. I am also fascinated by artifacts that are shaped by years of human need and experience: watches, guns, furniture making…basically, any kind of specialized gear and any kind of methodology that has arisen to use that gear effectively.

Do you have any hobbies?

Hm. I don’t really have any…I have a lot of interests, but I can incorporate almost all of it into my work. Pistol shooting is probably the closest thing to a non-work related activity, though there are of course methodologies from that discipline that I can see being applicable to other areas. I also have been getting into the gym recently, and am finding that this is a nice way to clear the head while engaging in conversation with my own body. I’ve slowly started to get more into physical activities because of this.

What was the last book that you read?
Fiction:

“Squids will be Squids”, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. It’s an awesome children’s picture book that is written in a smart, funny, and strangely-wise “Aesop’s Fables” manner. Just awesome in terms of both design and illustration.

“The Crystal City”, by Orson Scott Card, the last book in the “Tales of Alvin Maker” series of alternative colonial America. While I like most of OSC’s material (particular “Ender’s Game” and “Ender’s Shadow”), this series is close to my heart because I like the elements of “plain hardworking folk with a knack for magic” and the sense of calling that Alvin is pursuing. In some ways, it echoes my own journey to figure out what the heck I want to make, and how to do it.

Non-fiction:

“Bless Your Heart, Tramp”, by Celia Rivenbank, a self-described “tarnished southern belle” that I would describe as a cross between humorist Dave Barry and blogger Heather Armstrong. Another book that my sister turned me on to.

What is your most important accomplishment?

Corny as it sounds, my blog means the most to me. It’s the first time I’ve done something that was 100% me that people have come across and liked enough to say so. I’m also happy that I’ve helped a few people solve a problem for themselves, or just helped them feel a little less alone in their troubles because I’ve shared my thoughts on them. This means more to me than just about anything.

What is your next big goal?

To be completely mobile and self-sufficient by 2010, with awesome people to work with.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

In a nice café somewhere in the world, with friends and comrades nearby, continuing to build our community of mobile butt-kickers, writers, and consultants.

Who/what was your inspiration to start blogging?

It was actually being confused about what I wanted to do. I had a zillion interests and even more opportunities, but I didn’t know which one was “the right one”. So I started blogging to figure out what I was actually interested in, with the idea of eventually converging on something on which I could base an expert consultancy or design practice. Every time I wrote something, I put it in a category if one existed. If there was no category that really fit, I would make up a new one. After a few months of this, I could see the general shape of my interests. I had no idea that it would be about “productivity”, though this is just one facet of the whole “empowerment” and “pursuit of happiness” theme that I tend to follow.

Dave and I had a very interesting conversation about trust and it’s use as currency. Read about the importance of trust in the web 2.0 economy.

• Life.
• Work.
• Friends.
• Family.
• Neighbors.

These relationships are the foundation of our total reality. Our values determine how these relationships grow and flourish, or wither and die. It can be very easy to compromise your values, especially when we get into stressful or fast-paced situations. It is important to maintain your mental and spiritual health by keeping an eye on what kinds of choices we are making. Cutting corners, or compromising my guiding principles, in order to solve problems or avoid conflict has, in my own experience, come back to bite me later.

Your lifestyle can leave you vulnerable to situations that lead to compromising your values: simple, everyday actions and choices that you do not give much thought to. I would like to share some lessons that I have learned to reduce these temptations, eliminate “drama” form my life, and make it easier for me to maintain my principles and values.

1. Be Careful About What You See - “The eyes are the window to the soul“. An old expression, but an important one. Most of your information absorption is visual, so you need to be aware of what you are taking in. Keep it positive! Television and movies, while generally meant to entertain, can also subtly influence the kind of information that you get in a negative fashion. News and Politics in particular, can suffer from interesting biases on television, and “Reality TV” in all of its notorious forms is purely designed to feed on scandal. None of this is good for your mind or your values.
2. Be Careful About What You Hear - The types of music that you listen to, the radio programs, and the language of the people around you can have an influence on your values. There is nothing wrong with walking away from a conversation that has taken an ugly turn.
3. Be Careful About What You Think - You are your own greatest critic. If you think and believe that you cannot do something, achieve some goal, you are very likely to be correct. If you are careful with your thinking, and avoid the mental traps of self-guilt and doubt, you can do anything that you put your mind to. Your values should be a guide to success, not an obstacle that you try to skirt around by cheating on principles.
4. Be Careful About What You Say - The language and vocabulary that you use with the people in your life is so important. Not that you need to speak to your children as if they were employees, but you need to be mindful of the impact that the words you use have on others. Show the people that you speak to that you value them and their input. How you say something can be even more important that what you are saying.
5. Be Careful of How You Feel - The world of emotion can be a dangerous one. Anger, depression, and guilt can lead you down the road to compromising your values. Keeping perspective, and using your emotions in a positive way, will have a tremendous effect on your life and your relationships. Do not be afraid to ask for help when you need it. And sometimes when you think that you don’t! You can go to a friend, a parent, your pastor or priest when your feelings are overwhelming you. Taking a small step like that now can save you from compromising your values later.
6. Be Careful of Where You Go - My father once told me, “You can’t be arrested for getting in a bar fight, if you don’t hang out in bars.” Heh. Good advice. Where you go and who you associate with will often present you with values-based choices to be made. If you do not put yourself in a bad situation, you will be much less likely to be able to make a choice against your values.

What do you say? Have you been in a situation where the “better” choice was to back down on your principles? When it can be easier to “go along so you can get along“? What did you do?