Nov 23, 2008

People who dump drive me crazy.

I am fairly certain that many of the people that I deal with on a day to day basis from outside my company are "dumpers". They are people who may themselves be working from lists, but all they are doing (in GTD context) is calling to leave a voicemail or an e-mail, and then move it to their @Waiting for lists.

And it isn't all of them, some of them have good intentions. But really, many are just calling or e-mailing to then foist something back at you. Perhaps I'm tainted right now by reading Scott Adam's funny "The Dilbert Principle", which discusses this sort of "weasel" behaviour and how you can use it to your advantage. However, I'm trying to actually accomplish something, not just dump, and it seems that more and more people are trying to push things off of their own plates and onto the plates of other.

If that wasn't enough, I am noticing that this is becoming a pretty major pre-occupation for most business interactions. It seems ridiculous to me. Just my $0.02, but I'm very tired of it happening all the time.

Nov 3, 2008

Myndology Notebook - Hacking Update

About two weeks ago, I posted about how I found a Myndology Junior Notebook and Myndology Index Notebook in my remote part of the earth. I was very happy to have found these, as I was wistful of the shipping cost, and now exchange rate, for the Levenger Circa notebooks. I gave a favourable initial impression of these notebooks, and to date that hasn't changed.

I did mention that I was going to do some hacking on these notebooks, and after a productive 10 minutes with my labeller, I'm happy to say that I've had terrific results for someone as un-crafty as I am. SWMBO, now she's crafty - and I will leave that to you as to how you want to interpret that.

I stayed up very late the first night I had this notebook, essentially reading a novel and doing a brain dump. Any thought and I jotted it down. I enjoyed the feeling of writing in it, and really enjoyed the quality of the paper.

Tabbed Dividers


So then, the next morning, I set out to tab the pages as I had outlined in my initial post. Very simply, I used 3M Post-It Rigid Index Tabs, and added the following "sections":

  • Calls - for voicemails to be returned or put into my system when I'm on the road
  • Tasks - for capture from meetings, or random thoughts where the notebook is handy.
  • File Notes - for notes on my "defined work" from meetings, etc.
  • Projects - mind mapping and thinking on paper.
  • B.G. - separate tasks for an organization I am involved with.
  • WR Ch - my handwritten weekly review checklist (frankly, easier to use than my Splashshopper Checklist).
To get these tabs formatted, I set my label maker to the smallest sized font, and printed them out in a single tape with three spaces between each word. I then printed a second copy, to have one for each side, in case the notebook happened to be upside down. Not so dumb, me.

These tabs have worked famously. Unfortunately, due to operator error, I was often turning to a tab and then writing on the page for the next one, so in the principle of KISS, I slapped a label from my label maker on the front of each page. Works like a charm as a divider now, and it was cheap. This was probably $0.50 that will last for a very long time, if I keep with this notebook system. No hours on the internet searching, no finding the perfect, no spending another $15 at the Levenger store for no reason... this just plain works for me. Yay me for keeping it so simple!


The Advantage over spiral-bound and three-ring

Let me go no further before I say this: yep, I get it, it's just a friggin' notebook. The funny thing about all this is that it showed me how ineffectively I was using my current notebook. Which itselfwas just a friggin' notebook. However, the non-linearity of this one led me to change the way I looked at things. I don't know why it is different than, say, a 3-ring binder, or my old paper planner, but it just is. When I had one of the Franklin Covey planners, it was such wonderful paper that aside from writing appointments in it I was afraid to mark it up. I never used it very well, and certainly not for any note keeping. It was almost an affectation more than it was a planner. All the grand designs I had about keeping notes in the thing all went to pot.

The Myndology products are happy to have you store them in a file folder. Just pull them out. You can write on them and toss them if you need to. There is a feeling of both flexibility and non-permanence about using it that makes my old spiral-bound notebook seem so dated. By the time I stopped using it I was basically using the spiral-bound as a voicemail log - very very inefficient. If I'm going to write, I want it to be efficient and practical for the way I want to work.

The amazing thing is that I fell into a trap with the old Blueline A9. They came with great labels that allowed you to tab the pages, record them in the index, and even archive the notebook itself. However, they are very linear, and even though the pages were perforated, I felt like I was somehow defiling it. Again, I know, it was JUST a friggin' notebook. It was the weirdest feeling, like I wanted to archive all this stuff. In fact, most of it I can just toss, but there the old, used ones sit, on my shelf - the information in them useless and outdated. Somehow, because the pages can be moved, sectioned, more easily removed for filing - somehow this notebook seems better, in every way.

Oh, and it is very comfortable to use if you are a left-hander like me.

Customer Service


I have been speaking with Myndology directly, mostly to let them know about the good success I've had with their products, and to make some suggstions about what I might like to see. They are really quite open and friendly folks, and responded fairly quickly. Because I am a nerd, I did send them to other sites to show what I was suggesting for their product, which they seemed to appreciate. Their products are really quite good, and you owe it to yourself to pick one up and give it a try!

Oct 27, 2008

GTD in chunks, and working from your lists.

I was doing a long overdue weekly review today, and a thought struck me about the whole process. It is really like going to the gym. When you do it regularly, you feel on top of the world. When you go back to it after a while, the first time feels great!

This weekly review was a "return to GTD" review. Lots of old stale stuff on the lists. Lots of amorphous stuff in @Action and @Waiting For email folders. In short, lots of crap to wade through. I didn't even touch my paper inbox, but once the review was complete, I worked dilligently prioritizing and making phone calls and getting my e-box to empty. Yay me. But it feels good, like returning to the gym after a hiatus does. You feel pumped. You feel like a produtivity stud.

Tomorrow, I'm probably going to have the same feeling. Less of a weekly review, more of a collection session, when I get all the paper stuff together and catalogued on my lists. Once all that is back up to date, I can start thinking clearly about what is a project, what isn't, and what really belongs on the Someday / Maybe list rather than on the @Action list.

It also got me to thinking about where I had lost the discipline. I had lost the whole part where you work from your lists, as if it had been optional to do that. I put a whole bunch of things on the list today. I hammered away and got many of them off, but no where near caught up. But I feel like I know where I'm going and that is a big part of the battle.

It leads me to think that returning to GTD is almost best done in stages. Your framework is there but it takes a huge review to bring it up to date. So, if it takes a huge review... Why not break it up? I did the electronic world today. Tomorrow - paper, which won't get stalled now because at least a portion of my decks are clear.

Oct 24, 2008

An In-Depth Review of Iambic's Agendus for the Blackberry

Something funny - whenever I go to actually post something here, I always think I should pretend I have a VAST number of readers - even though I know I get about 2 hits a day. For those plucky few who do come here sporadically - thank you very much. So, you (both) will be my "long time readers" from now on. Please identify yourselves in the comments section...

Longtime readers will know that I used Iambic's Agendus for my Palm T|E, long before I switched to Blackberry. I have now been pointed towards the Iambic website, becuase they have now launched Agendus for the Blackberry. Very cool, thinks I, and worthy of blogging about.

So, I whip over and download a copy last weekend - it's a free trial, after all, why not. Surprising to me, but the trial is apparently only a 10 day trial. Hurry up and test it out if you are going to, before you plunk your money down. Even if you don't get enough, it is only $19.95, so a good deal all 'round.

Overview

It has all the wonderful Agendus-y things I remember from my days on the Palm. First, and most importantly to me, this lays overtop of your existing applications. That means that it uses your Blackberry's built-in Calendar, Tasks, etc., and will sync seamlessly to your Exchange server, if that is your environment. It also means that it is very lightweight by comparison to some of the other programs that seem to insist on replacing those built in applications with new ones.

It has a very nice looking today screen. It has the great fonts and the tremendously flexible colour coding that Agendus had. I wasn't that big on the colour coding, really, but there you have it. What it doesn't have is the icon-laden stuff from the Palm version, but that's a Blackberry limitation, not a Palm limitation. None the less, as with all versions of Agendus, it looks great. And that is one of the biggest problems.



Today Screen


The today screen, which you can see here, is very nice - it looks great. It puts everything together in one solid view, and includes a weather forecast, a quote of the day, and a "This Day in History" item. These three worked intermittently through the trial, but they are really frippery anyway, and aside from the weather (for which I use the excellent Weather Network application) I don't necessarily see the need for them anyway. I don't have the tasks showing on my copy, but you can see that they fall under the calendar. You can user-select the number of items to show in each section (I went for 4 for the test), and your colour preferences certainly transfer over. One thing that I cannot fathom about the today view is that there is no way to send a new e-mail from the today view. In fact, the only way to get to the BB e-mail application is to select an e-mail from your list of Recent Messages, which doesn't jive for me - if you have no new ones because your In-Box is at zero....?

Calendar



The calendar is a nice clean interface, which looks great. Navigating around, however, is somewhat difficult. First off, I have a recurring appointment coming for Monday - it is an annual, and happens every year on that day, because it is my boss' birthday. That doesn't show up until Tuesday. Pardon? That is a poor move, isn't it. When you open it, it shows the date as the 27th, but in every calendar view, it shows up as a full-day event, not busy, on the 28th. That doesn't help. Also, manouvering around the calendar is somewhat difficult. Frankly, the BB interface for the Calendar is very slick to work in if you have one of the Blackberrys with a trackball rather than the trackwheel. If you want to go to, say, next week, you just hold down the ALT key and scroll the ball to the right. Well, in Agendus, you have to pull up the menu, an then select view, and then scroll to Next Week (which is bizzarly UNDER the selection for Previous Week), and then click it. Way too fiddly to move forward one day or one week, or whatever. The daily and weekly views look great, but I'm not sure they are more user friendly than the built-in application, which should be the whole goal.


Contacts

The contacts, again, look great. You can do all the standard things like call them, e-mail them, edit their details, assign categories, and now assign colours. Great! You can also link a contact to a meeting, which is something I did always love about Agendus. It doesn't have the history of the contact (meetings, calls, etc.,) that you might expect if you are a former Agendus user, but again that was mere frippery and occasionally useful to me. True road-based salesmen are currently stampeding to my door to attack me at this point. But the contacts do look really good, don't they? I espeically like the contact-card style view, to the left, which has the name and compay front and centre, with the person's title just below. It puts the emphasis where it should be - on the people, not on the 67 different numbers at which you can reach them, not to mention their 45 e-mail addresses and the PIN addresses... it makes the whole thing very much more human, and seems a simple enough modification that RIM should consider something like that for the contact display for their next OS update. It is a really nice way to actually view the contacts, and is actually easier on my (really they shouldn't be but they are) aging eyes.


Tasks

This being YAGTDB (Yet Another GTD Blog), the review could not possibly be complete without looking at the task view. There it is, to the right. Look at the pretty colours. The organization by colour is all "Category" (Context) driven, so for all the true GTD'ers out there, if you can memorize what 15 colours mean, then this little puppy is the program you've been waiting for. If I was able to think to that level of organization I doubt I would be looking at GTD in the first place, but to each their own. Here is a program you can get lost in and do as much endless hacking as you want, seemingly just with colours alone!

My Opinion...

I found Agendus to be quite a nice piece of software. Very familiar and "old home week" to me, and I'm sure that if I installed the Outlook component that I would be working in that oh-so-familiar environment that I liked on my Palm. I will point out that this is Iambic's first kick at the software, and that it did crash on my a couple of times - once trying to add a contact to a meeting, another time just out of apparent randomness. That, I'm sure, will be found and dealt with.

The main problem that I see is that Agendus looks great. That is what it does. It looks great, but it doesn't necessarily help me in my day-to-day striving to just do stuff. In fact, the program leaves me with a couple of things that, truly, I don't understand. Iambic is a pretty intelligent company. They develop for many platforms, including the Symbian (a phone OS), Windows Mobile (which does have phone-enabled PDAs), Palm (makers of the Treo phone-enabled PDA) and now the Blackberry. You would think that they had a mechanism to tell you:

"PSST!!! HEY!!! WHEN I WAS ON VIBRATE WHEN YOU WERE IN THAT MEETING? YOU MISSED A CALL!!! PS - the call was from Bob".

No, no such luck. That would be smart, but it isn't there! I'm astounded that it doesn't tell you that. And while we are on the subject of things to be astounded by, I naturally looked around for reviews. At the time of writing this, I think this is the most comprehensive review of Agendus for the BB that there is on the 'net. One that I did read was Matthew Miller over at ZDNet. He points out that the software "adjusts for your selected theme". Not sure how. I know it keeps the SMS messages out of my inbox, like I ask my theme to do. But aside from that? When I booted up my Palm, Agendus is what showed there. When I reach for my BB, it isn't Agendus. It is still the "Today Plus" theme. The part I scratch my head about is that it CAN'T BE AGENDUS BECAUSE AGENDUS DOESN'T COME WITH A THEME TO HELP IT, IT IS JUST THE SOFTWARE.

This to me is the single biggest limiting step to using Agendus. Nice though it is, you have to run the program at all times. I do run other things on my BB, so I would be exiting out all the darn time. If it had all the functionality and a theme, I would be sold, provided the could put my boss' birthday on the right day, and maybe work on the calendar navigation a bit. However, until then, I'm afraid that I won't be shelling out $19.95 anytime soon for the Blackberry version of Agendus.

As always, your mileage may vary. And on that point, it might be mine that is varying right now - if I am wrong and you want to show me how to get Agendus to be the default app, I would be happy to listen.

As an aside, I did send an e-mail to Agendus (through their website, the only way to do it) on the 18th of October, asking if there was a cross-platform discount on Agendus. I received a confirmation ticket and everything. I haven't received a response - which I have found unfortunately to be somewhat typical of Agendus. They respond well in their own forums during beta testing, but poorly afterwards. I will also keep you updated about any information I get from them regarding the cross-platform licencing.

All photographs were shamelessly linked from the Iambic website, and are © the fine folks at Iambic. They are linked to totally without their permission.

Oct 21, 2008

Myndology Notebook

I've just begun trying out a new notebook - the Myndology Journal (in the swish neon blue), and the Myndology Index (in the red). I got these because I had been interested in Levenger's Circa Notebooks, but when I tried to order from their site, the $12 or so starter pack was going to cost me $48 or so in shipping to the Frozen North of Canada. (WAKE UP, LEVENGER! We're a market the size of California, with 90% of us living within an hour of the border! Make it easy to buy from you and guess what - I will. Hose me, and I will rant about it on a blog!)

Anyway, I dropped by Stylus, a very cool fountain pen and ink store in Edmonton. I discovered it after becoming the proud owner of a set of Levenger True Writer pens, one fountain, one ballpoint, scooped from e-bay. Hmmm... an individual can figure out it costs only $8 to ship to Canada. Levenger, you listening yet? Stylus happens to be the local carrier of the Myndology products, which I discovered totally by accident. After paying $16, I walked out with the Journal and Index size. Very nice, if a little more than what our U.S. friends would pay. Still cheap to play with interesting technology.

Overall, the quality of the paper is great. It is better quality than my Blueline A9C, which I have used for several years. I'm not sure how I'm going to archive it, but then again, maybe the fact that the pages are removable, I will be better off trying to file the information than store it in a linear book that I'm too afraid to tear the pages out of. Maybe it was the fact that I was tabbing each month in the Blueline... and referring back to it. I want to start filing my notes properly, not linearly in a book I rarely reference.

The great thing about these is that the pages are removable - you can move them around, put them back in, etc. Look at this video from youtube:



This shows how easy it is. The other great thing is that for left-handers like me, this sort of notebook is actually very comfortable to write with. The rings aren't as harsh as an aluminum spiral of any type, and are definitely easier to write on the front / right side of the page than using a ring binder.

I plan on using the 3M Post-It Durable Index Tabs to organize it into different sections. Right now, it will be:

  1. A call sheet - voicemails to return.
  2. Tasks - things I need to get into my task list.
  3. Notes - the notes I take all the time.
  4. Projects
  5. A separate section for an organization I'm involved with.
It will be interesting to see how the use of this notebook evolves. I'm quite looking forward to putting it through it's paces.

Aug 30, 2008

New group at Yahoo! Groups

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note about a new group at Yahoo! Groups dedicated to GTD on your Blackberry. I got tired of waiting for someone to start one, so I started it myself.

You can go to the GTD Blackberry Group to sign up. It has only been registered since the beginning of August, and we already have 50 members and are growing.

Your input and creativity will be most welcomed! See you there!

Aug 10, 2008

Getting unstuck!.

I have mentioned the I am re-reading GTD. I've finished the section that deals with mind maps, tc... The planning section. I like planning, but I have to admit that this section of the book makes my eyes glaze over. However, I do agree that once you have planned out/mapped out a big project and it is off your mind you feel really good.

I have determined that my slippage wan't as bad as I thoight, and I have only needed a nudge to get my system working again. Reading the book again has done this for me, as has making the decision to just work with some of the tools that I already have. I am certainly more relaxed thab I have been before, although I know I haven't done a total sweep yet. I just keep using my Blackberry and Next Action! 2.0 and it works!

One of the best things for me was getting rid of some contexts, including one called @Next Action. Talk about useless! More later!

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Aug 6, 2008

The bandwagon actually stopped to let me on.

Sometime around when I switched to Blogger 2.0, I changed the subtitle of the blog to "A Struggling GTD user". This could not be closer to the truth.

I have been away from the system for some time. Again. Does this at all sound familiar?

I've made a discovery that I'm sure I have blogged before - it's very akin to the fact that the Weekly Review is not a RAM Dump. Ready? Here is the revelation:

Getting Things Done requires a lot of cranking of widgets to implement before you can feel comfortable doing a weekly review.

This week, I just started to crank through, catalogue, and move on stuff. I started re-reading GTD (again!!! - anyone else get stuck having to go through th emiddle of the book, wading through the planning section?) to see if I can get through it this time. This inspired me, and I am very happy to advise that I am cranking through stuff at an amazing rate.

Very very happy happy!

Aug 4, 2008

Splashshopper and GTD

I have been searching, ever since I got my first Blackberry 20 months ago, for a checklist program so that I could port my Palm Weekly Review checklist over to my Blackberry. Then I finally got smart.

I purchased Splashwallet from Splashdata, Inc. a while back, with Splashshopper included. This is, at the heart, a checklist program. I really don't know that I will ever use it as a shopping list, although I have (mostly to play) , and it is handy as all get out. But it is basically a big checklist manager.

Wait. That's what I was looking for! Below, my Splashshopper template. Give it a try, and enjoy!

GTD Weekly Review.vsh

Apr 26, 2008

This new Blackberry is wicked cool.

I honestly cannot put this thing down. It is fantastic. The form factor, the keyboard, the trackball, the pure *functionality*, all of them make this magic.

I have found that David Allen's thought - of organizing by wanting to "play" with your gadget - is coming true in this case. I find my GTDing is way more effective with this Blackberry.

Part of it, I think, has to do with how clean the interface is instead of the jumble of icons that the old Blackberry 8700 was. Probably my fault, as after a while I stopped looking for new themes. But now it seems like this one was made just for me.

Highly recommended as an upgrade.

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Apr 24, 2008

And the winner is...

Not us in Canada's snowy climes, we're the losers. I was boasting a couple of weeks ago about how warm it was. Now, back to sub-freezing temps with over a foot of snow last weekend. Total dreck, and golf season pushed back another 10 days. At least.

I did resolve the Blackberry dilemma, and got an 8830 World Edition. Let me tell you, this thing ROCKS. Anyone that has an older model Blackberry with a trackwheel really owes it to themselves to upgrade. The little trackball is way more practical.

How so? It's more intuitive than the wheel - you will find you stop reaching for the wheel very quickly. No holding the ALT key to move left or right either. Which brings me to the greatest thing I've seen on a Blackberry - a theme. Of all things.

It's the "Today Plus" theme (available over the air at mobile.blackberry.com). This gives all the benefits of the "Today" theme and the "Zen" theme together. Full review here, but it makes the BB so extremely useful. I love this one more than the last, and I really did like the last.

So, since I have this new unit - does it help? It does. I'm doing a lot more GTD because I'm doing a lot more playing with my BB and with Nextaction! And since the device and the theme work together to save me time, it is not as hard entering a new next action on the Blackberry.

Both are highly recommended. This is truly a great unit.

Apr 12, 2008

New Blackberry dilemma - 88xx or 83xx Curve

My carrier called me yesterday - 18 months into my 3 year contract -
and offered to upgrade me gratis.

Now the dilemma. I can take my pick of devices - do I pick the 8330
Curve, or the 8830? I have trouble deciding.

Spring weather

Spring has finally hit my nothern clime. 18C today, and with a sick
child we haven't gone out. SWIMBO has been out all day. I will take
progeny #1 out later.

This week will test my ability to hold it together. Frankly, I'm being pulled in many directions. I'm going into my office tonight to try and make sense of it all and see if I can get the system back on track.

Mar 9, 2008

Truly Cranking Widgets

Every once in a while - say every 6 to 8 weeks - I need some time in the office on a weekend. It's really tough with SWMBO and the children, and all the demands, to do that during the day. So, sometimes I will make the treck to the office of a Saturday night, grab a fine coffee (my drug of choice) on the way, and head in at 8 or 9 on a Saturday night.

Let me suggest to you that you don't do this the night Daylight Savings Time begins. Trust me.

I did this very thing last night, getting PILES of stuff done and out of my way. Truly, it was relieving to get so much stuff done. I did the proverbial cranking of widgets from about 9 to about 1 am, and it was liberating. So why can't I do it at work?

In fact, I have been. I've been very much "in the zone" at work, and have had a remarkable ability to concentrate and throw all of my energy back at my job. It's been fun, it's been powerful, and I'm ploughing through stuff.

When GTD talks about the energy available (which has been a huge discussion at the Yahoo! GTD Group of late), it means just that - what your mood is, how much you are willing to throw at it, and how much you are willing to commit to it. Lately it's been fantastic for me. I think many people "fall off the wagon" as much because of their energy level/mood as because they are trying to find the elusive single, magical, perfect GTD system.

Trust me - it is much easier to just plough through things when you have the energy and inclination - no matter what time of day that strikes. Even the Saturday night before Daylight Savings Time begins.


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Mar 8, 2008

The importance of defining "WORK"

I have had a really interesting experience this week - the ability to work, solid, with little interruption and some free blocks where I was able to really WORK on stuff. It was wonderful. It was amazing what you could get done in 20 minutes, let alone two. My physical inbox is empty. My @action lists are whittled. My e-mail inbox is nearly empty, but I will be blowing through that tomorrow.

All in all - it was nice to have the system reaffirmed, even when you are not near a full implementation -which is where I am at right now.

What I did like about this week was being able to define the different types of work I do - working on our core business, working on sales and marketing, working on being an employer - all of which is my "real work" but at various times, some feels more like "real work" than others. Those times are usually when I'm doing other less interesting work and am wanting to move on to the other stuff. However, I was able to blend it all together this week - it felt truly relieving.


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Feb 23, 2008

Moving away from GTD?

I read a lot of stuff online, like just about everyone that is interested in GTD. The blogosphere, the web forums, the mailing lists, etc., etc. One trend that I have noticed is that GTD may be losing some popularity with folks - almost like it has "jumped the shark".

Specifically, it seems that people are moving off of GTD. They've found something else - often "Do it Tomorrow", which I have not read. And I find it funny. I've seen a lot of posts in various spots where people who claim to have ADD (jokingly and otherwise) have found GTD to be the saviour. Now they are moving on. Hmm...

What about you - are you moving on? Found something that helps you more? Let me know what you're thinking and doing now - I'd be curious how many dedicated folks are moving on, and whether part of it is the lack of structure that so many need leads to (you guessed it) endless farting around.

Index Cards - Results!

Well, after over 90 days of using both a Levenger Pocket Briefcase and some generic horizontal index cards on my desktop, I love them. I write on them, toss them, process them - they are a total success.

Highly recommended.