This coming Sunday is my last Iron Heroes session for the year. Yes, its only just the beginning of December, but as my gaming group does each year, we take a hiatus from our gaming during the busy holiday season. It is a time honored tradition in our gaming group, dating back to some time in the mid-90’s. It is a time that has some mixed emotions: relief, inspiration, and a little anxiety. It is also a time to slow down and take stock of my campaign and do some much needed future planning.

In today’s article, I will discuss how to put your game on a holiday hiatus, what to do with your time off, and how to come back from hiatus when its all over.

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This is the second in a series of articles designed to look at how to ease into the GTD system, using some simple tools and the essence of the GTD method. Last week, we discussed Getting Control Of Your Inputs. This week, we look at “processing requests,” the art of being asked to do something and quickly determining what to do with it. Processing is the engine that drives the GTD system. A GTD master can look at an incoming request and in seconds know if it should be put on a to do list, handed off to someone, or done right away. In this article we will talk about how to process requests from your inputs, and extend the system that we set up in the last article.

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In the craziness of the Holiday Weekend, this post was due to run on Friday, but was not able to be posted in time. Nevertheless it is presented for your review.

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In keeping with the season, I wanted to come up with a list of things that I am thankful for in my gaming life. It’s not that I am not thankful for all the other things in my life: family, career, friends, but seeing that it is Friday, I wanted to keep this post focused on gaming. In general, I am thankful for being a gamer, as gaming has been a great way for me to meet friends, socialize, and keep my mind sharp. This year, I am thankful for the following gaming things….

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A very busy holiday weekend. Besides having my Parents in town, this weekend is also the weekend we celebrate my Son’s birthday. He turned 3 this weekend, and we had a modest party for him at the house, but despite its size, it was a very loud and messy party. Add to that a number of house projects my Dad and I were working on, and you get one crazy and very full weekend.

If you were keeping score, you may have noticed that the Friday post did not run. It was written, but my Editor, who was coordinating a Thanksgiving Dinner and a Toddler’s Birthday party had her hands full, and something had to slide. So later today, that post will run.

This week is a writing week for my Iron Heroes game so the posts will be lighter. Wednesday will be the second part of my GTD series, were we will talk about Processing your ToDo lists. Friday, I will talk about Campaign Hiatus’ and techniques for putting a Hiatus into your campaign, and how to get your game started after the Hiatus.

So make sure you come by this week.

A lot of people read the Getting Things Done (GTD) book and like the concepts that are presented but are at a loss as to how to get started. In GTD, David Allen does not espouse a specific system of productivity but rather provides guidelines for how to execute a system that you need to create. The biggest issue I hear from friends and family who have read the GTD books is that there is too much going on in their lives right now to get a system started, making GTD a great idea but too hard to put into pratice.

Unless you are a C-level executive and can afford someone from Davidco to come over and coach you through the conversion, getting started with GTD can be a formitable barrier. In the next four Wednesday posts, I will lead you through one way to get started with GTD by taking the essential GTD principles and presenting a simple system you can use right away to start putting them into practice.  This simple system is not “true GTD,” but rather a short -cut to help you get started.  As you master each small part, you should read the GTD book and upgrade your GTD system.

In this first post, we are going to tackle getting control of your inputs, those things that are coming at you that you need to get done that are keeping you from getting your system developed.

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A busy weekend in preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Spent the vast majority of the weekend working on getting things done around the house.  I did spend some time working on trying to get Encoded Designs hooked up to my Facebook account, using the Wordbook application.  That is going slowly, and I am waiting for some help to come in from the author of Wordbook.  Hopefully that will be up and running soon.

No gaming this weekend, we are off this week, and we are off next week from any gaming.   We pick back up in December for a single session of Iron Heroes and then one of Spenser’s Dresden campaign, before we call it quits for the year.

This week on Wednesday, I am kicking off a 4 part series on getting started with GTD.   These articles will discuss a way to get started with GTD, especially if you have not been able to figure out how to get started.  On Friday, keeping with the season, I will be posting a gaming article, on the things I am thankful for this year.   So make sure you stop on by during this week.