Getting Things Done - without a Weekly Review

Nope, this is not something I'm going to recommend. It's just that this week, all I have done is put out fires. I need a month of Sundays and I will feel caught up, but I figure with the next few days I can put my head above water. Perhaps.

How do others out there manage when they let their weeks get away from them?

Standing still in a blur / NextAction! for Blackberry

Well, last Sunday to today has been a blur. I really got a lot accomplished on Sunday, but it's been a whirlwind since then.

We've had a VERY busy crunch at work, and so I've had to roll up my sleeves with the rest of our producers and start working assignments. I've got too many things on the go, too many balls in the air, and I'm starting to feel very overwhelmed.

Once again, the week went by without a WR. I let everything get away from me very quickly, and then was working from another city towards the end of the week. Ah well. This week, being a short week, is going to be tough, but I'm determined to get through one WR. Just one.



Onto another note - integrating GTD with the Blackberry. One of the big challenges is the way the Blackberry handles tasks. The BB's task function is frankly terrible - it stinks. It lists all the tasks, but it does not let you sort anything by categories. That's where NextAction! for Blackberry comes in. It lets you view your Outlook tasks by contexts, it lets you select which category labels on the BB and Outlook you want to show up in NextAction!, and it just plain works really well.

I only have two complaints. You have to add tasks either in Outlook or in the BB task applet, you can't add them through NextAction!. That's actually OK for me, as I use the computer to do my WR (when I do one!), but to add a task on the go you have to put it into the Task applet. Frankly, I throw them in, don't categorize them right away, and process them during my review - unless it's a phone call. The other complaint is that it doesn't let you read the items that are in the notes for your tasks - so my solution to using "agendas" does get a little buggered on my BB, as I can't read the agenda items I have for each person. However, in general it works. I recommend it in the absence of anything else for the Blackberry.

For really early (and stable) software, though, this one is quite good.

A blog of my day...

How exciting. I've cleaned. I've washed walls and prepped to paint. I've taken care of my children, who are very active. And I've blogged. Not that the blogging takes more than about 4 minutes at a time, when you're just blogging about the mundane.

Instinctively, I know what I am doing. I can remember an article (that I can no longer find) about David Allen taking a morning and pruning a pine tree on his property, because it needed doing. Just like cleaning out the garage, it felt good. I'm primed, and ready to patch and then paint. I'm ready to cook dinner. Most of all, Muppet#2 and I are ready for Muppet#1 to wake up and have a snack, so that we can go out and work on the yard for a bit.

Tonight, I plan on watching a movie with SWMBO, then pulling out the laptop and GTDing while I watch some late night television. I think the GTD will win. It will be part of my brain dump.

Ever get the feeling you're doing a brain dump because you are so overwhelmed? That's kind of what it seems like for me right now. Ah well, I will get through it - I just have to worry, after all I've taken a new job within the past few months, and I am putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform...

Monitoring progress...

Today have managed to do a number of things, but i the majority none of them have been in realspace - they've all been online. I've added stuff to my blog, I've looked for new widgets, I've played with Sitemeter (click the Sitemeter logo at the bottom to get the stats for this page - very revealing). I've done some cleaning, but there is more to do, so off I go to do it. I've planned to do some of it while a great radio program is on - Terry O'Reilly and the Age of Persuasion, which is a show on CBC about advertising and, in it's own way, consumerism. However, I'm hacking away at things that need doing, so here I go again, and off to do some more.

However, it's a GTD Sin: no list, just intuitive gut-level know it needs to be done stuff.

The new Blogger

So, as I've mentioned, I've converted my blog to the new Blogger 2.0 (or whatever it is called), as the old one was dead. This has given me greater control over how things look, a (frankly) nicer template which required very little editing, the ability to move page elements quickly and easily, and at long last: tagging (or in blogger-speak, labelling). So, I've now labelled (tagged) all of my posts - which wasn't that bad, considering how easy the tools are, and how few posts I really have on the blog.

Fun stuff.

Working on GTD again this AM, getting a bunch of stuff done around the house.

Accomplishment

Well, if I'm going to have blog and post things to the world, I may as well post my success.

After my last "I'm going to start right now" post, I managed to: convert my blog to Blogger 2.0, change the layout, find the photos, etc., etc. Not a good use of time.

However, I have also managed to clear off my desk. I've made a task of those files I need to work on (my own portion of the system, and it works just fine. I've packed up some work and my personal recorder to take home so that I can begin to work tonight.

Now I am out to dinner with a colleague, and I will hopefully go home, get inspired, and actually start a mind dump tonight. It could be fun!

Plus, I'm re-reading "Getting Things Done", as you can see from the recently added list on the right. Along with a few others. What can I say, I'm a bit scatter brained.

One more reason the Blackberry is so darn cool.....

Ok, so this is primarily YABGTDB (Yet Another Bloody GTD Blog), and I have previously railed against the constant farting around that people seem to do with the GTD system. Fine. However, Google is certainly embracing the BB movement pretty wholeheartedly.

Google has released a few apps for the BB, including Google Maps and most importantly for GTD'ers, GMail. I don't really use GMail all that much, but I know there are a lot of GTD'ers that are trying to use nothing but the Google apps. Having it so mobile should help them out. There is no BB program to sync the unit's calendar with Google Calendar, but I'm sure that is coming. (How long until Google acquires Open Office and integrates it's suite of apps into an Outlook-type program?)

One last thing - I blogged this on my Blackberry. Using my Gmail account. Really, quite useful. A blog as a ubiquitous capture tool anyone? A whole new meaning to 5ives (http://www.5ives.com).

Hitching a ride on a runaway train...

This has got to be the worst implementation of GTD since the book has been published. Since the previous post, I've been nearly blinded by what I have to do. Staffing changes, holidays, working in other offices, an influx of new business... everything has been working against me. And what have I decided to do? Blog of course. This is the type of thing that I frankly railed against in a previous post, but here I am succumbing to it myself.

So, that being said - here I go! No more procrastination, I'm going to implement GTD AGAIN starting right now.

Wish me luck.