Me and GTD

I first read the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen when it was published in 2001. Despite enjoying the book and the ideas therein, I didn’t actually implement them. When I began this blog and became aware of some of the blogs available with productivity ideas, I saw that this book has a huge following. So I decided it was time to take another look. Upon review, I see that there are a couple of things that I have difficulty with.

One is the complexity of the methods. While it sounds good in theory to corral and process all your stuff, when the rubber hits the road it makes me tired just to think about it. I think I’ll go lie down for awhile. When I wake up from my nap, I’ll talk about the other thing.

The other thing is the terminology. It just doesn’t speak to me. In the book “How to Get Organized Without Resorting to Arson,” Liz Franklin says “use your own verbs and no one else’s.” People have different work personalities and organizing styles. Some access visually, others are spatial or chronological. Our words should reflect how we access things. (Learn about your style at mizlizonbiz.com.)

Here are some words that I am more comfortable with:

Getting Things Done	Alternative Terminology
Collection buckets Waiting for Agendas Next actions Someday/maybe	Organizing tools Pending Discuss Action steps Idea file

Getting back to complexity:

 

Getting Things Done	Daily PlanIt
Calendared actions & information “Next Actions” lists A “Projects” list Project support material A “Waiting For” list Reference material A “Someday/Maybe” list	Calendar Master List Goal and Project Plans Goal and Project Plans Master List Follow-up System Weekly Plan Daily To-Do List Idea file

You may be thinking now: “Wait a minute…that right side is waaay more complex! But notice that the Daily PlanIt components include goal and project plans. In my view, this is a crucial difference. Since I believe that goals and productivity are like peanut butter and jelly, I make a sandwich that includes both ingredients. For me, it’s clearer to know where to put incoming tasks in this system, and easier to see the big picture.

My Sister Invented The Birthday Calculator

My sister is a smart cookie. She devised an Excel worksheet that calculates the ages of family members on their birthdays with a formula. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.) You too can have your very own birthday calculator. Simply enter the names of your own family and their birthdates in the appropriate places, and save the file to your computer. This also works for anniversary dates. Remember to change the year in January and you can amaze everyone with your knowledge.

GTD Gmail experiment update

It’s been a little over a week since I began the GTD Gmail Experiment.

I quickly discovered that I have great difficulty adjusting to the no folders email environment of Gmail. As my email was forwarded there, I experienced an overload of psychic baggage. I soon took off the forwarding from my other email account. I reasoned that I could forward email that is a task to the Gmail account, which excels at managing tasks.

I like to have one application that takes care of all my needs-it’s all about one stop shopping for me. In theory I could add calendar items to Yahoo, then sync to PDA, then export to the Gmail calendar. In actuality that’s too many steps and I don’t do it.

Despite it’s attractions, I won’t be able to fully use Gmail until these problems are resolved:

1. The option of folders for us folks who can’t adjust to life without them.
2. Calendar must be able to sync to PDA.
3. Add notepad.
4. Spam should auto-delete.

Another Update: The Download Squad has a great post about managing Gmail with Five Simple Rules for Keeping an Empty InBox.

It’s a sign

This message was sighted at a real church near me.

Amen.

What is Your Love Language?

Dr. Gary Chapman describes “The Five Love Languages” in his book:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

One love language speaks most clearly to us, and it may be a different one for your partner. Use the one that connects to communicate your love. At the Five Love Languages website, there is a 30-second assessment to determine your primary love language. The CD version of the book includes a booklet with 30 paired statements to develop a more detailed profile. An online version of this is at GreaterQuest.

Dr. Chapman’s new book, “The Five Languages of Apology” is now available. At http://garychapman.org you can listen to podcasts of his radio show, and find answers to frequently asked questions.

More Things To Do With Index Cards

Why Not?

Indexed is a blog made of index cards that often make me smile, created by someone with a quirky mind and sense of humor!

Booknotes on The Long Tail

I’ve been reading “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, a fascinating look at how the Internet is changing the world. Before the Internet, products were confined by constraints of the physical world that created scarcity economics, a world where only the big hits were accessible. But now an abundance of products can be offered digitally at low expense, providing a huge amount of choice that leads to small but still productive sales to niche markets. We’ve seen this happen with Amazon.com, the online bookseller, and Netflix, which delivers movies to your home. No longer bound by the cost and constraint of a building or a geographic location, they can offer far greater choice, and people buy some of all of it. The amount of choice could be overwhelming, except they offer information that helps consumers make decisions.

Yet they still deal with physical products. Music is the area that has really been changing, as it can exist in digital form. Same thing with podcasts, which are simply audio files, and video podcasts which include video, that you can download. (Booked.tv has a helpful explanation of the differences.) Among other things, I’ve been exploring the possiblities of podcasts by listening to presentations by Tony Robbins at TED Talks, and a podcast about podcasting at Grasshopper New Media (I thought the jokes were great, Chris!) Lifehack.org has a post that says David Allen will be presenting Best Kept Secrets for Personal and Team Productivity, on Tuesday, October 10, 2006 1:00-2:00 PM EDT. It’s pretty exciting to have free access (at least in some areas) to many excellent online learning options that are available to you at your convenience, and the only travel involved is the trip from your kitchen for coffee to your desk.

With a personal computer and minimal equipment, anyone can make a book, video, or audio file. Many choose to do so, and some real talent shows up. In the introduction to the book, the following statistics made me sit up and take notice: most of the fifty best-selling albums of all time were recorded in the seventies and eighties, and none of them in the past five years. Hollywood Box-office revenue was down by more than 6% in 2005, despite a growing population. The top-rated TV shows are also from the seventies and eighties, as TV viewers scatter to cable or satellite channels, or spend their time on the Internet instead. TV produces more content than any other media industry, but it is limited by a 24/7 window and the number of available channels. Only a tiny fraction of this is available to you, even if you record some of it.

With social bookmarking tools like del.ic.ious.com, it’s possible for anyone to organize sites using the tags they choose with an unlimited amount of words. It’s far different in the physical world where there is only one predetermined space to place an item. In a world of abundance, with the tools to find what we are looking for, the options are many and time is an ever more precious commodity.

Here’s the original article from October 2004 in Wired Magazine.

An Incredible FREE Resource

September is library card sign-up month, so here are 52 Ways to Use Your Library. Just remember to get those books back in time!

Listening Skills

“Studies show that we’re distracted or preoccupied during about 75 percent of our conversations.”

Have you really been listening lately? Increase your listening skills with these 7 Listening Techniques. Stop, Listen and Learn is the other half of the article by Robin Westen at Family Circle.

Help! I’m using GTD Gmail and I can’t stop!

I started experimenting with my new Google Gmail account (thanks to Andrew!) and I’m so fascinated I’ve been at it for hours! I immediately got the GTD Firefox extension, which to me is what makes it so cool. I had no difficulty importing my address book and calendar. I set it up to forward incoming email from my former email (I think) so I’ll see how that goes.

I love the way it integrates your tasks (via emailing yourself with filters you set up) and your calendar. I love the way you can print your agenda view and hipster pda, although ideally they would print together. I love the way I set up a context for Repeating Tasks that are easily changed back and forth from the Action context. Two big drawbacks: no notepad, and no automatic syncing to PDA, both of which are very important to me. So I won’t be giving up Yahoo anytime soon. Also quite annoying: spam does not auto-delete. I’ve gotten quite used to never looking at it.

I’ve still got a lot to learn, but for now it’s time to get up and stretch.