Kona's Dad

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Chapter 9 - If it's on your mind, it's probably not getting done.

2009-03-01T22:08:00.002-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

This chapter, more than anything else, outlines the true definition of what the "Getting Things Done" methodology is about - clearing your head. I do mini-mind sweeps all the time - mostly in my head, and not writing them down, which is silly.

I have spent the first few weeks of 2009 REALLY working on capturing everything and putting it in my system. I've done that pretty well, but I've slipped - here is a great reminder of what happens. The idea of buy milk / buy a company REALLY hits home for me - there is no line between business and personal, but my mind still wants to.

The chapter was kind enough to have me write down the two things I have to do tomorrow morning - put the recycles at the curb and ensure I take the car seats out of the car so they can go in my wife's van. Now written down, and I will see it on the "put it in front of the door method": it's on the coffee maker.

Review of Pocketday

2009-03-01T10:00:00.003-07:00

I had some time off recently, and was staying around the house, so I had a chance to play with Pocketday, which bills itself as "The Ultimate Today Screen for your Blackberry". This is a nifty little tool that, while interesting, didn't suit my needs.

Pocketday's power is in the "Today" level of screen. It is a nice clean interface, and provides a good snapshot of standard "top level" vital Blackberry stuff: battery remaining, signal strenght, time, date. The default puts a Google search bar at the top of the screen, which is very handy, and links to Google mobile. All the remaining sections are configurable for the order they appear in, their colour, etc.

You have access to your missed calls, unread email and text messages, memos, appointments, tasks, weather, stocks, clocks, news, etc. The weather, stocks and news are all configurable, and the number of tasks, e-mails, upcoming appointments, etc., are configurable.

Pocketday has one great feature, which I used to try it out - it lets you create a task from an e-mail, just like I can on my desktop. Works as advertised. A real plus!

There were two main drawbacks to Pocketday. Pocketday and the BB's SMS messaging don't interact as well as Pocketday and the BB's e-mail do. When you read an SMS message, it doesn't mark it read on the BB. You have to go to the message list on the BB to do that, which means exiting out of Pocketday. Everytime I got one, I had to go into the SMS application and mark it as read. Really, quite an annoyance.

The other thing is the interface. It is a very nice looking interface for a Palm from 2000. We've all grown up now, and garish clashing colours that you set yourself don't really cut it any more.

A nice application, but I'm giving it a pass. YMMV.

Chapter 8 - Closing Open Loops Releases Energy.

2009-03-01T09:58:00.004-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

(Hello folks! Sorry that this is exactly a WEEK late. Chapter 9 will come through later tonight. Anyone else have any comments on this one?)

For anyone that has ever listened to the GTD Fast CD's, do you remember the part when David Allen says "Have you ever cleaned a garage?" It is wistful. I've done that, cleaned a garage, a basement, a closet - and felt great after. This is precisely what he is talking about doing in this chapter.

Tackling the big projects gives you a mental lift, the "sense of accomplishment", which gives you a huge mental boost. It provides a fantastic feeling of freedom, and in David Allen's mind, it unlocks some creativity.

I'm not so sure of that, but then I've neglected to write down each idea that I get while I'm cleaning my garage, so who am I to judge? Now excuse me, I've got a basement to clean...

By the way....

This chapter has 3 of my all-time favourite quotes in it, especially Edison's and Fr. D'Souza. Fr. D'Souza's, especially, hit home - the feeling of "if only I do before I start" or "if only I have before I begin". Remember: Carpe Diem

Chapter 7 - Priorities function only at the conscious level.

2009-02-19T20:21:00.003-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

This chapter is ringing very true to me right now. The last 10 or so weeks, I have managed to avoid the "blow up" stage, but I've also let my weekly reviews slip. I will be doing one tomorrow afternoon.

However, it is a lot of people around me that seem to be letting things slide until they do blow up that are really eating at me - mostly because I hear the brunt of it. (I'm now hoping that no one in my office is on this list). It is a very non-productive state, and when you are one of the few that feels like you are in a productive state, capturing everything, then things tend to be more noticeable around you.

There are many many things that are not in my system right now, but I'm trying to get them all in. I'm also trying to get things OUT. I have a context that specifically deals with some of my work, and it needs to be ploughed through. It will be a good weekend project, I think. It will certainly help me get some clarity back in my context lists.

Out of curiousity - is anyone else reading? Anyone else following? I've found this is much easier to do when divorced from my weekly review, because I don't feel like reading the 3 page chapters is an after thought. If you are, please comment!

Chapter 6 - 2 Commitments in your head create stress and failure.

2009-02-08T21:25:00.001-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

While this one is, like Chapter 5, somewhat of a rehash of the basic
tenets of GTD, this one I like because it does talk about the conflict
with trying to remember 2 things - just 2 bloody little things! - on
your way to the office, or wherever. One, probably. Two - neither.
It reinforces that the system must be worked by getting your mind
clear and, more importantly, DECIDING on the next action.

I also find it interesting that there is a quote from John-Roger,
David Allen's spiritual leader. I suppose it had to be included, but
Mr. Allen really is part - and a leader - of an odd religious group.

Chapter 5 - Infinite Opportunity is Utilized by Finite Possibility

2009-02-01T21:55:00.004-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

I admit that this chapter makes me a skeptic. This one clearly shows that the 52 chapters of the book were drawn from the GTD Connections newsletter, or the rough equivalent from the time, and were likely before the book. They are, truly, a 60 second rehash of GTD.

However, one of the by-the-ways got me. Have a got a checklist of my job description? No.

Have I ever had one? No.

Do I have one for each of my life's area of focus? No.

Hmmm... good finish to a snoozer article. I think I have some work to do.

Chapter 4 - Getting to Where You're Going Requires Knowing Where You Are.

2009-01-25T22:58:00.003-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

Reading this chapter gives me a clarification of the purpose of the weekly review, and the idea of the levels (ie: runway, 10,000 feet, etc.). If you read into that that this chapter is somewhat repetitive - yeah, I kind of think it is, but in a good way.

I have it in my weekly review checklist that, on the first weekly review of the month, I am to review my goals. Really, anything above runway (tasks) and 10,000 (projects) is a long-term goal. So it is nice to have this one coming up a week before I will be doing that
review.

There are so many things that I need to look at, hard, both personally and professionally. And I need to do it all the time, not just more often. I need to nudge and push them along. I think that is the point - if we don't know what we are doing at the most basic level, how do we expect to push things along to achieve what we want in the long run.

Chapter 3 - Knowing your committments creates better choices of new ones.

2009-01-18T22:28:00.004-07:00

As part of the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, I'm leading the charge to read a chapter a week of Ready for Anything. I will be posting my submissions to the group here.

Reading this chapter really helped crystalize how things have been going for me. I've done weekly reviews the last three weeks, and another one is to be done tomorrow morning. I do have a sense of anxiety about the fact that my e-mail wasn't clear on Friday, and neither was my inbox.

It was amazing though - Friday I spend clearing some old junk out of our offices, to make room for folks who need the space. It was really satisfying, but took most of the workday. It is as satisfying as cleaning a garage. And the whole time, I knew it was the RIGHT thing to be doing. I knew my other committments, and this was one of my projects and it was the right time to undertake it. It allowed me to clearly think through some of the things.

I have most of my committments, if not all of them, tracked in my trusted system - for work anyway. One of the "by the way" questions was where do I need more structure. I need it in my home. I need to really set GTD up in my house somehow, and stick to it the way I stick
to it at work.

Chapter 2 - You can only feel good about...

2009-01-14T22:41:00.002-07:00

Unlike what is discussed in this chapter - the brain dump - I've done my brain dump in little chunks over the past month. Even that has helped to get my mind clear.

I find the discussion about checking which one you want to do next the most interesting part of this chapter. This week I am working on my second-largest challenge after the weekly review, which is actually WORKING from my lists. It is a terrible problem for me, as I often
write it down and still work from my head. Very rarely do I "review all of [my] options of what to do and make the best choices" - I'm working intuitively on work I know I have to do, but not often from my lists.

I try and do a minor brain dump during my weekly reviews, but it doesn't always work that way. I'm going to shortly be pasting the trigger word list from the book (it's on one of my lists) into my notebook so that I can get at it right beside my Weekly Review Checklist.

As to the by-the-ways, I'm using Outlook 2000. Sometime in the spring, I put in a vb script that creates a task from an e-mail. It gives the task the name "Follow up on:" and then tacks on the subject from the e-mail. All very slick. Except I was just clicking and saving, and the tasks were unweildy because a) there were many, and b) I wasn't giving them names that meant ANYTHING to me. I weeded a TON of those out this week, and will have a nice tidy to-do list by the end of this week.

You know, when I'm hoping to do another Weekly Review.

New year, new direction.

2009-01-10T16:33:00.005-07:00

The new year always fills me with some kind of excitement. Planning (sometimes for the first time, really, in months), being creative, being filled with energy - nearly overwhelming. The new year is always a fun time.

This week, I managed to do some planning last weekend, including goal setting and cleaning up. I was coming off two weeks of vacation. When I got to the office on Monday, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it wasn't a gong show. I cleaned up, I did some organizing, and having done a mini weekly review on Sunday, I hoped to do another Wednesday.

The week flew by. I got stuff done. I didn't do a WR on Wednesday, like I hoped. But I got some minor projects completed, lots of tasks done, and was even in training for a full day on Thursday. Never did I get overwhelmed (maybe because so much of my staff was in training throughout the week), never did I get overworked. I had relaxed control.

I did do a Weekly Review, Friday afternoon. I did a thorough one. Sometime last year I put a VBScript into Outlook 2000 that lets me make a tast from an e-mail, and I had lots of those there that were stale, outdated or done, but poorly named. Weeded 'em all out. I weeded out old stale phone calls. If they need me, they will call back, but I know I had returned many of those. I got a lot of stuff out of there that had started to rot. I worked through two e-mail folders - on for Next Actions, one for Waiting Fors - that was holding stuff that may or may not be on the lists, and put it on the list, or deleted what was done.

It took a long time on Friday, but I did it. Then, I started to plow through them. My calls list was too long, as was my follow ups and waiting fors. Oh my, I felt so good knocking them off. And I did get more creative. And when I got home, I felt like it was ok to be home, that nothing needed to be done this weekend from the office end of things.

Just like the post below, it is true - cleaning up does create new directions.

By the way - I heard a little suggestion about using Baroque music as a way to shut out the background noise during the weekly review. I loaded some onto a CD (you kids should look up what those are), along with several other instrumental albums including the iconic Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, and it was remarkably calming and useful during the weekly review. I recommend it!

Ready for Anything!

2009-01-04T22:33:00.007-07:00

I have always tried to make a chapter of "Ready for Anything" a part of my weekly review. There are 52 chapters. Huh, there are 52 weeks. Maybe this goes together?

As a reinvention of my GTD Self, I lead the charge to read a chapter a week on the Ready for Anything Yahoo! Group, and I will be posting my posts to the group here.

Cleaning up Creates New Directions

Here I go and get everyone hyped up, and what happens? No post from me! I've been doing my weekly review and my build up, so here's what I got from this chapter.

Really, this is about the importance of the weekly review. I will spare everyone the too-oft repeated "if you aren't doing the weekly review..." admonishment. Most of us aren't doing it every week. Doing one once in a while deserves a pat on the back. I'm not "black belt" and am fine with that.

I weeded out my list tonight, even killing some categories that I had, which were frankly stupid. I didn't need separate projects lists, I just needed one. I definitely only needed one Someday/Maybe list! (Don't even ask.) So I managed to get current - sort of.

Tomorrow I go back to my office for the first time since December 19th. It will be busy - catching up, sorting through my physical inbox, as my e-mail box is clean as of tonight. Fortunately I have some staff development going on with many of my staff members, and
that will occupy most of them for the day, so I will get some ability to get things caught up and into my system.

I'm going to peg Wednesday afternoon to do another weekly review, once I've got all the new work stuff in. I hope I stick to that. What I did really take from this, and the most powerful part I have found, is something I already do - when I have no idea what to do or where to
turn, when I'm feeling totally ineffective, I pick up the first thing in front of my nose and I deal with it. I concentrate on dealing with it, and it gets done. Then the next. After a few, I'm productive as anything.

As to the "By the Way" questions, it was good to pull back a touch and think about the areas where I do need to do some cleaning up - areas where I have outstanding projects that I haven't recorded, that sort of thing. (I don't intend to treat this as a book report, so I'm not
telling where these are! .) It also helped me to clarify which the next one to tackle is.

As to "what can I forgive" - a little bit hokey, I always figured, but then again, there is always something I can forgive too.

Have a great week!

People who dump drive me crazy.

2008-11-23T18:04:00.003-07:00

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.

Myndology Notebook - Hacking Update

2008-11-03T21:37:00.017-07:00

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!

GTD in chunks, and working from your lists.

2008-10-27T21:13:00.002-06:00

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.

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

2008-10-24T22:26:00.012-06:00

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.

Myndology Notebook

2008-10-21T20:45:00.006-06:00

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:

A call sheet - voicemails to return.
Tasks - things I need to get into my task list.
Notes - the notes I take all the time.
Projects
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.

New group at Yahoo! Groups

2008-08-30T15:00:00.004-06:00

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!

Getting unstuck!.

2008-08-10T22:15:00.002-06:00

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

The bandwagon actually stopped to let me on.

2008-08-06T22:33:00.003-06:00

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!

Splashshopper and GTD

2008-08-04T23:08:00.002-06:00

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

This new Blackberry is wicked cool.

2008-04-26T09:07:00.002-06:00

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

And the winner is...

2008-04-24T23:34:00.002-06:00

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.

New Blackberry dilemma - 88xx or 83xx Curve

2008-04-12T17:24:00.001-06:00

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

2008-04-12T17:17:00.002-06:00

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.

Truly Cranking Widgets

2008-03-09T15:07:00.002-06:00

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.

Technorati Tags: GTD, Energy, Mood, Daylight Savings Time, Coffee

The importance of defining "WORK"

2008-03-08T00:04:00.002-07:00

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.

Technorati Tags: GTD, Work, Inbox

Moving away from GTD?

2008-02-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-02-23T17:11:00.001-07:00

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.

Index Cards

2007-11-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I decided I needed to add another tweak to my far-from-perfect GTD system, so a couple of weeks ago I bought a cheap index card box and some basic ruled index cards. I thought I could use them, while at my desk to, you know, capture stuff.

This has changed the way I capture things. I have a notebook that I keep meeting notes, calls I need to make in the car (as in, clearing my voicemail), notes from some phone calls, etc. I'm hesitant to ever tear pages out of it. It's chronological and I've got a list of what is where, and it works for me. But this 3x5 index stuff is the greatest!

I can't believe how much easier life is - no more having to try and put it in my system immediately - I just jot, throw it in the inbox, and poof. It gets in there! I should have listened to all of the hipster PDA guys from 43 Folders a long time ago.

I've even gone so far as to purchase a Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase. I will let you know how it works out with that item as a helper. (I will warn any other Canucks, though - the folks at Levenger want $40 for the item, plus $33 for the shipping. Candian Dollar be darned - I've purchased one off of e-bay, and it was shipped for 9 bucks. I don't get my choice of colours or the nifty monograming, but hey - I can get my initials put on it once I have it, if I choose.)

Have a great week!

Activewords and Anagram - getting [F]unc-y

2007-10-12T11:33:00.000-06:00

I don't believe I've ever blogged about these two programs before, but I can tell you that Activewords and Anagram are two of the greatest programs I have ever used, and they save you a pile of time.

Activewords has been described (I don't know by who... one of those miscellaneous things I read on the web...) as "the scripting software that Microsoft should have included with Windows, instead of VBScript". Who knows, maybe I said that. This program rocks, though.

Very simply, it scripts keystrokes and lets you save a TON of time. Use Outlook? You can have canned replies that automagically forward responses by typing a word (ANYWHERE!!!!) and hitting F8. Want to send a generic thank-you e-mail in reply to one you received? Set up he script with the full text of the message so that it hits R, puts the text in, and then hits S. Call it "thanks". Then type thanks (ANYWHERE!!!!!) and hit F8. BANG! Surf to your favourite website, run any program, open your My Documents folder - whatever you want to do - without touching your mouse. Need to have a technical term replaced with a single keystroke? No problem. Hard to describe, but the developer gives you 60 days to try it, and you owe it to yourself to try it. The developer is also very responsive. I have been using ActiveWords for about a year, but had to install it on a new computer. Buzz e-mailed me after got my new key, and asked if I wanted an industry-specific wordbase they had developed for my industry. He sent it immediately, and it works like a charm - jut like the rest of the program.

It also has a nifty feature - the productivity feature. Fill in your typing speed and your rate per hour, and AW will tell you how much money it has saved you. Right now, I've saved $130.33. And I've had it installed for 2 weeks. Tres cool.

The other program is Anagram, which I used both when I had a Palm and now that I have a BlackBerry using Exchange. This program rocks. Highlight an addess in an e-mail and hit your command key (mine is F12, but it defaults to hitting +C twice) and it's in your contacts. Someone e-mails you an appointment time, highlight it and hit your trigger, and *bang* it goes into your calendar. Same for tasks, etc. It works with all sorts of PIMs and it is so cheap and so handy, you just have to try it.

Overwhelmed by outdated lists.

2007-10-07T11:10:00.000-06:00

I have been struggling t get back onto Getting Things Done for a long time. One of the things that was blocking me effectively was a lack of weekly reviews, which lead to crippling and disorganzied Next Action lists that had not been pruned, weeded, de-duplicated - but it was overwhelming. There was a particular client where I had multiple tasks, and they were in fact no longer a client. The tasks had all been done.

The frustration level was very high, and I resolved just to plow through them and, in place of a weekly review, get rid of everythng that was old or outdated or duplicated. Then I realized - that is a good deal of what the weekly review is about. The action has caused me to feel less numbed by my previous inaction.

So there it is - GTD is about ACTION. Getting Things Done is descriptive not of a system, but of the actions that you pursue.

The Weekly Review ISN'T a RAM Dump

2007-09-16T09:52:00.000-06:00

I have a huge psychic blockage when it comes to the weekly review. I can't stand to think about it because so many times, when I think of doing one, I think it has to be a full RAM dump - mostly because it has been so long since I've done a WR.

I just did, basically, a weekly review. It took me 10 minutes. Was it comprehensive? No. Did I cover everything? No. Did I get some junk off my lists? Yes, and it feels great. I've done a partial. When I get a few minutes this afternoon, I will go through my @Action e-mail folder and categorize all of those - there's only about 100. That will make my life a lot more manageable.

NextAction! for Blackberry 2.0 - The Falcon

2007-09-16T09:20:00.000-06:00

Hello, everyone,

I've recently downloaded the new version of NextAction for Blackberry 2.0, called the Falcon. Apparently, it has taken off - who knew. This version is packed with a bunch of new features that make it a lot more user friendly than the previous version. The new features include:

Enhanced native support for new BlackBerry® models
Performance: Significant performance boost; can handle thousands of tasks
Reliability: Passed the longest beta test we ever made; highly stable; ensures data consistency
Desktop compatibility: Contexts and projects synchronize to all desktop applications; compatible with programs like Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Act!, Novell Groupwise, iCal, Entourage, etc.
On-Device Compatiblity: Coexists with other task applications; no interference; works seamless with internal task application
Notes: Full task note support
Enhanced usability: Easier, more intuitive and faster usage; improved productivity
Project support: Projects (identified by a “p:” prefix) are handled according to GTD
Localization: Available in the following languages: English, German and Chinese
Added user requests: Hide completed tasks; full project support; several minor bugs (thanks a lot to you!) removed

I bolded my biggest beef with the old version - if you had a call to make and had the phone number in an e-mail attached as a note (as an example) you could see it - but you couldn't attach notes within the application.

Like most people, I used this for scanning of my lists - not for actual capture. However, a great portable tool. Well recommended.

There is an interesting discussion about the program at the Davidco forums. Enjoy!

Success by obstinance

2007-08-07T22:02:00.000-06:00

Let me say this: SUCCESS! I managed to do a weekly review today. It took a long time, and I had to get rid of some stuff left over from bad habits (read laziness) that meant I was really tied up most of this morning. Plus, I didn't block everything out - I still dealt with staff, some phone calls, etc.

I had an epiphany though while I was doing my review. The weekly review itself had become "stuck", to use David Allen's term, stuck by the fact that I was essentially trying to do a RAM dump at the same time as the review. Once I moved off from that, things flew.

I'm still all backwards about how I GTD - my blurring of the collection/Weekly Review/processing stages has probably delayed everything. However, I'm now getting into the full swing of things.

And for anyone interested, my stupidity/laziness from above was putting in tasks without setting a category, trusting that I will do that as I do the Weekly Review. 100 things to categorize in Lookout before I can get the WR done. Simple thing to do, but it takes time.

Things conspire against me...

2007-08-02T18:40:00.001-06:00

You would thing that, booking a time on the Friday afternoon of a (Canadian) long weekend - a time when I *should* be golfing - would be perfect for a relaxed, productive weekly review. Not so much.

An influx of production work - enough that I cannot delegate it all - means that I'm pressed into service on front-end production business. That's ok, I don't mind - but now I am having to look at when to do the WR. I've been out of the office so much lately that I'm currently planning to do it tomorrow morning, so I can clear our my inbox and move things along at the same time.

Wish me luck - I will post again if I've been successful.

KD mobile

David Allen Interview / New David Allen book

2007-08-02T10:46:00.001-06:00

I saw a post about this on the Yahoo GTD group (link at right), and subsequently ran across it on a Google search. It's a good interview, showing David Allen's own tools, and is upfront about MSIA, Insight, the lack of scientific evidence for GTD, the abundance of empirical evidence for GTD, and the geek-factor that we all know is there. Worth reading.

It even confirms a new book will be published in 2008.

Link:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/07/01/100117066/index.htm

KD Mobile

Universal Capture Tools - Only one?

2007-08-02T06:47:00.000-06:00

I'm getting active on my blog again. That must mean I'm getting active in GTD again. That's a very good thing, as even though I've lamented in many posts that I haven't done a Weekly Review yet (which means, as we all know, that "I'm Not Doing GTD!"), I'm starting to feel like I've gained a little bit of control - perhaps just a little.

That also means that my interest in GTD has peaked, and much of my on-line time wasting is used to read blogs and websites, and search for stuff that is GTD related. I'll give you an example. I'm starting to thing about improving my capture of "stuff", especially when I'm mobile. I've read dozens of people online raving about their Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase, and have searched for them everywhere. Being in Canada - no retail, so only over the web. I'm loathe to fork out $40USD for a 3X5 card holder, even though I know the president of my old firm had one and it was quite a neat thing. There must be something similar, right? Can't find anything. Levenger's reputation is huge, so why would I fight it?

Then my father-in-law came to visit, a dyed-in-the-wool geologist, and he had this Rite-In-The-Rain top-spiral 3"X5" notebook, which quite frankly looks like it will suit my needs. I have used those cheap 3"x5" notebooks before, where the covers get torn because they are flimsy cardboard, etc. This has a durable plastic cover, and looks like it could withstand a beating. Hey, check the whole site out - they have military application notebooks, even one that's totally waterproof. Neat stuff.

So, now what do I do? 4 bucks for a tough notebook, or $40 for a sexy note card holder. Who knows. I'll probably just keep up what I'm doing, even though it seems like there are times when I'm not capturing stuff.

However, why do I need one? I use a Blackberry 8703e (87XX in BB speak) as my UCD and my carry-around organizing system. The unit is very slick, does everything very well, and is only lacking a couple of things. For example - I'd love to be able to make a new task from an e-mail. Anyone that can help me with that, please post! That said, I don't use it for capture much, mostly for reviewing, and I'm terrible for using it with my lists. I've got NextAction for Blackberry (or see the link to the right), but am not using it effectively. I've not really sat down with it to give it a good whirl, but I'm going to start doing just that. There are many posts on the David Allen Company website that I'm following, and I'm hoping that will give me a guide. Once I've got it working, I'll post more about the software. It looks to be a great implementation though.

So I have this great thing on my hip, but I still want a notebook or somthing else to write on. Perhaps I'm de-volving and need a feather quill as well? Who knows. More later.

Digital Recorders - another nifty gadget.

2007-08-02T06:04:00.001-06:00

David Allen has long talked about carrying a small dictaphone (I believe the first one he was using was a tape unit) with you to record thoughts in a car, while walking - anywhere the universal capture device doesn't quite work. Because of the nature of my business, I've been using a dictaphone for years to prepare reports and letters, usually to tapes of varying sizes.

My company has recently switched to an all-digital system, and look out! These things are great. The unit is the Olympus DS-4000 recorder (and for those that care, the transcription units are the Olympus AS-4000 Transcription Kits, which obviously are all software based). The recordings are crips and clear, way better than anything that was ever achieved on tape, and the folks who do the transcriptions love them. We use them to record dictation, conversations, pretty much anything.

The unit comes with 5 default folders, labelled "A" through "E". Normally, the units are plugged in via USB or their cradle, and everything automatically downloads into the software, then is uploaded into the FTP site where our transcription experts take their work. I've modified mine so that only items dictated in the "A" folder automatically download - things in "B"-"E" don't (I only use A and B anyway). This means that, as I'm driving along, I can record item after item in B, download them to the software, and then play each back as I transcribe it into a task in my Next Action lists.

Each folder can hold 199 seperate recordings (I might get 25 on a trip to work if I have the radio off the whole way and the juices are flowing), which is quite a lot. We get 5 hours of high-resolution recording time (11 hours of low res) out of a 32MB xD picture card, which is plenty - but the cards are swappable, so you could use whatever size you wanted up to 1GB to get tons of recording time, although I'm not sure you will ever need it, unless you are a student recording a full day's worth of lectures.

The unit is very intuitive to use, and does not require a great deal of training if you have used a slide-switch dictaphone before. (For what it is worth, slide-switch units are so intuitive that I'm not sure why anyone would even consider a push button unit except for the slight reduction in cost). Once you are used to the basic features, you can learn about stitching recordings together, selectively deleting sections, etc. - although if most of your recording is to capture NAs, then how much stitching of 3 second recordings are you going to do?

They record in a format called Digital Speech Standard, or DSS (.dss file extensions). These are playable by the desktop software, which can also be used to easily export them as .WAV files to be burned to a CD.

These units are definitely not cheap. As this is a professional grade voice recorder, they go for about $450.00 USD. Mine was provided by my firm, as we standardized on them, but the truth is they are worth every penny. Ours came with a great leather (pleather?) case that gives a nice up-scale feel to them. They are highly recommended.

Incremental progress

2007-07-31T10:40:00.000-06:00

It's been month since the last post, and the month has been incredibly busy. Between vacations, family visiting and some personal difficulties, I've managed to get my system round about to being in order. It's not quite there, but it's getting better.

No weekly review yet, although I think Friday afternoon will be a splendid time for one. So, I've marked it on my calendar. Friday, August 3rd, at 2:30 pm. I will be doing a weekly review. Hopefully by 4:30 pm, I can post that I've done a weekly review.

Working as hard, and as sporadically, at the "collection" phase as I could, digging out of a hole of "other work", and dealing with a serious family issue have all lead me to - wait for it - put off the weekly review. It's amazing to me how many times I can put it off as I have got some other pressing fire to put out. However, I've got everything together that I need to do it, so Friday it is.

Progress? What Progress?

2007-06-30T07:21:00.000-06:00

I have made a concerted effort, I truly have. I have whittled down the list of things I need to do. But I have still not managed to get a true weekly review done. It's getting a bit frustrating. I was with my boss this week, and used the old analogy of trying to "drink from a firehose" to describe how my job was going. Fortunately he understands.

I'm trying. Tuesday morning (Monday is the Canada Day holiday, and Canada is 140 years old tomorrow....) I intend to clear the decks and do a whole bunch of stuff to get towards a weekly review. I've been doing a dump, a collection, all sorts of various parts of GTD, but have not cohesively put it all together.

Eagle-eyes will note that I'm re-reading GTD. I've just started. I want to get back to where I was about a year ago, where I was doing my reviews regularly, had time to plan, etc., etc. That will take me about 3 weeks, I figure. Starting Tuesday. This time I promise.

Now raise your hand if you're in the same boat I am, so that I know I'm not the only one.

Getting Things Done - without a Weekly Review

2007-05-30T23:02:00.001-06:00

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

2007-05-20T22:49:00.000-06:00

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...

2007-05-12T16:35:00.000-06:00

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...

2007-05-12T15:41:00.000-06:00

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

2007-05-12T10:13:00.000-06:00

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

2007-05-11T18:35:00.000-06:00

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.....

2007-05-11T17:43:00.001-06:00

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...

2007-05-11T17:27:00.000-06:00

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.

Returning from a Hiatus

2007-04-06T11:11:00.000-06:00

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus for the last quarter or so. Since starting a new job before the New Year, I haven’t posted here, and my apologies. The truth be told, I’ve kind of been swept up trying to drink from the firehose of my new job, and have sort of fallen off the GTD bandwagon. Time to pick that back up.

One thing I need to mention is that I’ve now switched (irrevocably) away from my old Palm Tungsten E to a RIM Blackberry 8703e (from Telus Mobility) (aka “the crackberry”). Man, these things are truly addictive. E-mail, scheduling, tasks, phone, contacts all rolled into one. Plus, my company has a full Exchange implementation, with Over-The-Air (OTA) synchronization, so if I put an appointment into my calendar (or add a task, or change a phone number) on my crackberry, it automagically syncs to my Exchange server. Plus it has EVDO-speed web access, and a ton of other great stuff. And it just works and has never needed to be reset. It is wicked cool. SWMBO already hates it.

I’ve found some software and stuff for this, and will be talking about implementing GTD on a crackberry more and more as time goes on. However, at the end of the day, I’m going to use my blog to go back to what I started it for – support on my journey through GTD. I’ll review some software and stuff along the way, and will ensure that us BB addicts that are using GTD have a place to talk. I hear the bandwagon coming, so it’s time for me to jump back on.

Technorati tags: gtd getting+things+done blackberry

GTD a Cult?

2006-11-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

I have, once again, fallen off the GTD wagon. There is a reason for this – one that has taken me six weeks or so to resolve. I haven’t been at forums, websites, or anything GTD related for about 6 weeks. I haven’t done a weekly review in six weeks, and it shows (I will get back to this later). I haven’t blogged about GTD in six weeks. There is a reason for it all.

Over the past couple of months, I have found out something out (thanks to some anonymous forum posters) about David Allen and most of the employees at The David Allen Company (if not the intent of GTD itself) that is kind of creepy. I have sat on this for weeks before blogging about it, however, it affected my performance and my implementation of GTD.

It is this: David Allen is a member of a somewhat fringe religion called The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA, pronounced messiah!). If you really want to find them, you can follow the link from David’s comments on his now defunct blog. They believe that the guy that leads them, who goes only by the name John-Roger, is called the “Mystical Traveler”, and that he is in line with Jesus and Moses. Reading the stuff available on the web, it is evident that this is not a mainstream religion. I have even mentioned in previous postings that I have “drunk the ‘Kool-Aid’”, and it weirds me out a little.

I had originally started this post about a month ago, and had a long and at this point I had a long diatribe about how I found all this out, links to various forum postings and pieces of information, and other such stuff. I’ve thought about it for weeks, and my answer is as follows – stuff it. Who cares what David’s religion is? Who cares what he believes? He has given us a system that does as advertised – increases our productivity. I’ve decided to put it out of my head, use what I can, and dump the rest.

That said, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I did cancel my GTD Connect membership. I was a little worried about how the money would be used, sure, but at the end of the day I didn’t get $50USD value out of the thing. So I cancelled, and they were gracious about it and wished me well in my future GTD endeavours.

Getting Things Done is a great system for personal productivity, and irrespective of how David Allen got his experiences and developed the program, he has chosen to share it with the rest of us. Take what you need, leave what you don’t – and leave his personal choices out of it. Just get on with getting things accomplished.

I really encourage some discussion about this issue. It caught some peoples' attention at the Davidco Forums when it was first brought up. There is no denying that David is a member of MSIA, but what does that have to do with GTD? It bugged me for too long, so I'm going to move on and ignore it, while still using GTD. Your mileage may vary.

Technorati tags: gtd , gtd+cult , David+Allen , Weekly+Review

Using Agendas and GTD

2006-10-14T07:50:00.000-06:00

Also known as: Getting Things Done By Pushing Upwards

There have been a number of questions lately on both the GTD Forums and the Yahoo e-mail group about how to use the Agendas (or @Agendas  for the Outlook users out there) category.  I have been using the Agendas category for about a year now, and I think I’ve got this down to a way that works for me.  Your mileage may vary.

This is something that is suggested in David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” , but it seems to stymie many people.  The idea is that you keep a list of the people you communicate with regularly, and thereby keep a list of what you need to talk to them about – those pending things that other people have agreed to, that need to follow-up on and cover in future conversations with different people, that you need approval on, etc.

I’ve found that the Palm format, and Palm Desktop, is very flexible to dealing with Agendas.  All I’ve done is made a separate category under my tasks list for Agendas, in which I list each person I deal with regularly – either someone I task things down to, or someone I’m waiting for approval from before moving on.  I use the note section of the individual person’s “task” to act as the agenda, and record what it is I need to speak to them about or what I’m waiting for from them.  When I have them on the phone or in my office, I reach for the laptop or grab my Palm, and ensure that we are covering everything.

It is remarkably effective.  I have far fewer of those moments where I hang up the phone and immediately think of three other things I meant to talkd to them about.  Being outside of our head office and therefore away from our executive core, I can make a record of what needs to be discussed or what I am waiting for their approval on.

This is really helping me “push things upwards”, ensuring that no timelines get missed, that directions discussed don’t get pushed aside – to ensure that our business is going forward in a tangible, dramatic way.  It is such a small, but dramatic, tool, and one that anyone can benefit from using.  This is how I’ve implemented it – I would appreciate anyone’s comments on how they have done the same.

As an aside, during some of the discussions I’ve learned that there is some functionality in the Palm Desktop software that isn’t in Outlook – namely, the ability to have different categories for each “application” – Calendar, Tasks, Memos, etc.  I have always used Palm Desktop, so I could not understand the constant need for people to put @ in front of their categories - @ being a context delimiter.  There was no need, in my mind, to have @Agendas, or @Someday/Maybe.  I always read those as “At Someday/Maybe”.  It turns out that Outllook only has one set of categories that are global for all of the portions of the program – Calendar, Tasks, etc.  So the @ symbol helps them to be sorted to the top of the list.  Now my confusion is resolved.

Technorati Tags:gtd. agendas+gtd, outlook+gtd, palm+desktop, responsiblity+tracking, palm
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GTD Connect - Final Thoughts

2006-10-08T09:00:00.000-06:00

I have decided that Connect is not worth it. Not yet anyway. I was very excited about Connect, but taking an objective 2-month look at it, using nearly every day, I don’t think that in the long run it is worth my money at this point. Of course, as always: your mileage may vary

There is not a lot of new material, although there is some. There are interviews with various GTD “luminaries”, folks who are in high-profile positions and use GTD. There are some additional, and sporadically participated in, forums. Certinaly, the public forums are much busier. However, here are my main reasons for leaving:

1. Most of the content is old, although it is not stale.

Once you have downloaded the PDFs and podcasts, and once you have posted in a couple of forums, there isn’t a lot there that is new. A lot of what is there for download is from the 9-or-so month beta period. Once you’ve caught up, well, there isn’t much left to do on the site.

2. New content isn’t posted as frequently as $48.00USD would lead you to expect.

For that price, I was expecting new major content every week (podcasts, etc.), and new minor content (articles) every day or two. You would think that there would be at least something new every week. It seems like there is something perhaps every 4-5 weeks – new interviews with a “luminary”, new TechGTD interviews with a “luminary” from the high-tech world, etc. However, these come at intervals that are far apart from what one would expect for $48USD per month.

3. Truly, $48USD per year would be a reasonable amount for what I have seen at Connect.

The idea of Connect is great. The reality is that, as an early adopter, you are like anything, paying for being on the leading edge by having to make some stuff up as you go along – like making up that there is a lot in Connect for your $48. As I said above, there are new podcasts every 4-5 weeks, but if you look at Merlin Mann's 43 Folders Podcast and The Cranky Middle Manager, you get that now, if not more often, and you get it free. Everything else is on the site is kind of fluffy.

4. GTD Connect doesn’t seem to have a focus on what it is trying to do.

Clearly, GTD Connect is trying to ensure that folks who want a way to reach out and speak to the folks at The David Allen Company have a way to do so. They are trying to ensure that you have a way to reach David, and trying to ensure that those who feel they need to avail themselves of some kind of contact below a coaching level can do so. To be fair to both sides in this debate, they are also trying to ensure that Davidco has a pretty steady stream of income – which is just fine in my opinion, as Allen and his folks have every right to make money off of his ideas. Hell, the book has sold several hundred thousand copies, so he’s kind of done that already, but this is for the select few that want more. Good for them for doing it.

The problem is that Connect doesn’t seem to have an idea about what it really wants to do. It wants to reach out to folks, but is using a shotgun approach – new articles (which used to be free newsletter articles from Davidco), new podcasts (which were never available before, admittedly) interviews, etc., etc. But nothing that really gives a feeling of focus – something I think everyone that uses GTD is really, truly looking for.

Because of these reasons, I’d decided to lapse my membership. Perhaps in a year or so I will get wistful, think it was a great idea, and join again to see what it is like, but probably not. There just isn’t enough in there for me. As with anything, your mileage may vary.

Technorati Tags:gtd, gtd+connect, connect, davidco, david+allen, productivity
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Scanning your contacts list.

2006-10-01T12:04:00.000-06:00

For nearly a year, I've had a remarkable piece of technology that not enough people know about - the Cardscan Business Card Scanner (Cardscan was formerly called Corex). They have a variety of products, including an updated version of their software since I bought my unit. However, in comparison to the other products on the market, the Cardscan scanner (no matter the flavour) is outstanding.

I started out wanting to get what I figured was over 300 contacts into my Palm Tungsten E. Impatient as I am, I went out to Staples and picked up the Targus Mini Business Card Scanner. I found that the scanner unit worked fine, but the kicker – the software – was lacking, at best. The software was very poor on recognition, very slow, and while it did transfer to Palm Desktop well, the OCR was very low – perhaps 65% accuracy.

Frustrated, I started to think there must be something better out there, so I downloaded a copy of Cardscan’s v6.x software for demo, from their website. The accuracy was astounding when compared side-by-side with the Targus software (Newsoft Inc.’s Presto! Bizcard 5 – just as well, as the use of “Biz” is a scourge in itself). I immediately ordered the Cardscan Executive (note that the link shows the new version), and it arrived soon enough. What a great combination of hardware and software.

The colour scanner is fast, efficient, and rarely has a problem – usually with thicker cards. The cards feed in landscape mode, making scanning quick, and you can scan multiple cards at a time (I normally do up to 20) before it starts the recognition processing. While this can take a while due to the complexity, it is certainly quick enough – I normally do the scanning when on a conference call or when I am also processing something mindless.

To put it to the test, I recently brought it to a conference where our company received over 200 cards to process. It made very short work of them. For the next one, I would like to try Cardscan’s Lead Qualifier, which is designed for use at trade shows like the one I was at.

I would be very wary of anything that bundles with the Newsoft Inc. software. However, the Cardscan products are wonderful pieces of software and hardware technology, and are highly recommended.

Technorati Tags:cardscan, business+card+scanner, palm, palm+desktop, contacts
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GTD Connect

2006-09-10T09:05:00.000-06:00

I recently took the plunge, and became a member of GTD Connect, the David Allen Company’s pay-for-service program that David calls a “club”. I figured for one month, I could try it and see what it was like. There’s a lot of opinion out there about it, including on Eric Mack’s blog and on the Yahoo Groups GTD Lists, among others, but I thought I would drop in my $0.02 here.

I think David has a great idea with GTD Connect for those that are higher-level achievers, or have less time to search around the various bloused websites out there. There’s also a lot of interest from struggling GTD’ers like me, many of whom are concerned about the price of GTD Connect.

They’ve put together a very good package of audio, video, and forums where you can meet other GTD practitioners and share your victories. There is a great deal of content that is only available to Connect members – audio interviews, cool videos, etc. The question is – is it worth it? Well, yes and no. The cost is kind of high, and there aren’t all that many members out of the gate, so it is hard to tell the value of the forums. But the original David Allen Company forums are accessible through the Connect site. The audio and video, though, are great – I’ve downloaded several onto myMP3 player, and listen to them often.

So, is it worth it? It really depends on who you are. Many people have suggested that $48 is too high; just as many like a “high barrier to entry”. I spend less each month on my gym membership. I spend less each month on many things. Did I get $48 in value out of this? You bet. But because GTD Connect has just launched, I don’t know that I will over the next few months, now that I have accessed all the back content. After January, though, I believe it will be more than worth it as David Allen Co. get more stuff up there, and more members are participating.

That said, I think I will renew for a second month, giving it a full 60 days. The David Allen Company has put a tremendous amount of work into GTD Connect, and they should be proud – but they should focus on maintaining that and building up their content.

As to the price – would I like it cheaper? Yes. If I need to give connect up, will I? Yes. But if it were ½ the price it is now, I’d consider it very hard. However, David and his staff have to eat too. There are lots of folks that have pointed out that David Allen has given a lot of folks a lot of information for not much – 2 books, the website, the forums, and the e-mail lists and other associated things that have been spawned as a result. Connect is a way for him and his company to add value to those who choose to join. The problem is, we all want to be members of Connect. My wife and I jokingly refer to David as my personal cult leader, but I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and I’m not going back. And we all want to be there, but we all can’t afford it. So be it, but I don’t begrudge David Allen Co. for doing it. As the Chinese proverb says (and I’m paraphrasing) “Grow, even if slowly, or you will whither and die.”

They’ve done a good job, there is lots of value – but you really have to try it for yourself to see if you get the worth out of it that others do.

----

I’ve had a lot of comments to my post about hacking GTD, both here and here. After I wrote that post, I began my trial of GTD Connect. Interestingly, one of the interviews available through Connect is with Mark Orchant, and during that interview he laments the same sort of endless hacking of GTD. It was interesting to hear that I am not alone in this.

Technorati tags:gtd, getting+things+done, hack+gtd, gtd+hacking, gtd+connect

Two new books

2006-08-27T08:30:00.000-06:00

I was on vacation recently, doing a little recharging and unhooking, and read two fascinating books - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell, and Love is the Killer App: How to Win Friends and Influence Business, by Tim Sanders. Gladwell, a former columnist with the New Yorker, wrote a fascinating tome based on the idea that, like viruses, fads, crime rate reduction, restarurant popularity – choose the latest thing creating a buzz – all have a reason, a single point in time where they exploded, where they became "sticky", and he has dubbed this the Tipping Point. This was a really fascinating read, and it will take some time for me to fully digest it.

The other book that I mentioned, Love is the Killer App, is a book I picked up on a whim after attending a leadership telecast in the spring. While I have to admit I am not a fan of Sanders’ writing style, his insistence on using words like “biz” and “lovecat” to sound hip, and his invention of new words like “bizlove”, I think the content that Sanders includes is worth the read. He is very focused on reading within and without your core business – general reference, marketing and advertising, anything you can get your hands on. But after digesting it and absorbing it, he insists that you try and apply it – something I am very often guilty of. He also suggests that you not just apply it – evangelize it. Preach about it. Refer it to friends and business colleagues.

I have done this recently with both Getting Things Done and The Tipping Point, referring these to business associates and friends and family. For me, it is a bit of going out on a limb, however Sanders is right – it really does force you to internalize what you’ve read and use it properly when you are trying to tell someone about the book. Good stuff in both of these.

Technorati Tags:gtd, business+books, tipping+point, love+is+the+killer+app
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Stop your infernal hacking of GTD!

2006-08-06T10:11:00.000-06:00

I’ve participated on mailing lists (see links to the side), and David Allen’s own forum. I’ve read blogs, and I’ve read responses. I’ve seen people refer someone, with good intent, to different software packages. I’ve seen posts on how people have found the perfect application after 100 milliseconds of looking around it’s menus, and seen other posts about how TuboCalendar3000 will have GTD features or things that will have “transference” to GTD. I’ve seen people dismiss out of hand something that works for someone else, because they believe the program they use is the best.

I’ve seen Moleskine notebooks, Hipster PDAs, Palms and Treos, Windows Mobile Devices, and everything in between, from the simple to the elegant. I’ve seen excitement spawned by the latest GTD-related software at SourceForge, or from XYZ company, or from Joe in his basement McGyver-ing something from VB, Java, some string and a peach pit. All this has lead me to a conclusion:

WE ARE ALL WASTING TOO MUCH TIME HACKING OUR SYSTEM TO GET THINGS DONE, AND NOT ACTUALLY GETTING ANYTHING DONE.

Consider this a challenge, a manifesto, a rant, but please consider what I am saying here. I’ve experienced it. I’ve experienced the backlash that accompanies the posts about not wanting to try the latest and greatest version of Shadow Plan, or My Life Organized, or the aforementioned TurboCalendarTaskListandBreakfastCooker 3000.

It is time to confess, I am a PV (Plain Vanilla – I’ve even seen someone refer to Plain Chocolate, an update on Plain Vanilla, as if it is a Plain Vanilla 2.0) Palm user, using a Tungsten E and Palm Desktop. I will also tell you that I am a recovering Agendus user, and I stopped using it because of performance issues. I do not work in the technical or sciences field, but I am a real user of GTD on a day-in-day-out basis. (I have my Green Belt, thanks, despite what I thought in a previous post). I am happy with my system and it works for me. This is what everyone should strive for – something that works for them. I have no argument with that.

However, every day when I read a forum or read my e-mail lists, I read about someone who has found the latest and greatest software, or has been using MLO and has developed the XYZ Template (not sure if MLO has templates, I’m sure someone will chime in and tell me how it actually works…), or is resurrecting some long-dead program on their Apple IIe to see how it works with GTD, and to see if they can hack the Palm to sync with it, or there is some new program that seems GTD-ish and they are going to press the developer to include some GTD hooks. All the other GTD'ers then chime in with advice on how to set XYZ up, or how to go through a complex syncing to get it to sync with ANOTHER program, or a comment about how they tried it, but chose another program, and the poster should too.... It is all just so much window-dressing. It is all so time-wasting. It is what one poster on one of the forums called Productivity Limbo - a phrase that I really like. I’ve been there, I got the t-shirt – and trust me, you don’t want it.

I was at a point about a year ago, when I was en-route to work and recording voice memos to myself for later processing, when I screamed into my phone that I should stop farting (not the words I used) around with various software for my Palm, pick something, and use it. I did settle on Agendus for about a year, until 3 months ago, when the aforementioned speed problems made me stop. I kept that voice memo around for about a month to remind me to stop the constant treadmill of downloading and trying, downloading and trying.

If you have been on this cycle, think of this: how much time have you wasted importing all your todos/appointments/checklists/whatever into each system you’ve tried? How much time trying to seamlessly transfer data from one desktop program to another? How much time farting around, and calling it “Hacking the GTD system?”.

If you have found something like Bonsai or MLO or whatever, and have been using it for sometime, and that is your system, then great for you. But if you are like many that I see that are flitting from one system to the other, to the other, to the other….. I have some news for you:

THERE IS NO PERFECT GTD SYSTEM! It is dependent on the user using it, regularly, as their trusted system.

By all means, try something. But do it slowly and deliberately. Use something for a period of at least weeks if not months before you determine there is no way that you can integrate it into your system and be happy. Then, slowly, as if you are beta-testing, try out something new.

Good luck to you all, but remember – as you go on your quest, make sure that you are doing something on your way there, otherwise it is all for naught.

P.S. - Whether you agree with this post, or disagree with it, please leave a comment. I'm interested to see if other people feel this way, or if everyone thinks I'm out to lunch.

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2006-08-06T09:41:00.000-06:00

A tired (and slightly overexposed) Kona.

The week of living GTDly…

2006-06-29T17:42:00.000-06:00

This week has been a great week.  I’ve just got back from 2 weeks of almost non-stop traveling, having spent 3 days of the past 10 actually in the office.  I have achieved so much, and done so much that is on my lists, it has been phenomenal and restored and refreshed my belief in “Getting Things Done”.

I have been whacking away at things.  I know where nearly everything is, I know nearly everything that needs to be done… I’m busy, but I have for three days had a mind like water.

In my internet travels, I came across this valuable little list at the David Allen Forums, which helps you judge where you are in your journey on GTD:

GTD/READY TO TEST FOR YOUR BELT?

Lately some rather sophisticated people have asked me what I initially thought was a rather unsophisticated question: “How do I know what belt I’m at?” In other words, in the martial art of workflow, they wanted to know how well they were doing – how far they were from earning the coveted black belt in the Getting Things Done school of self management. One, a senior engineer, said, “David, you keep referring to ‘black belt’ and several of the attributes it signifies. There must be some way to determine how far along we might be in that continuum.” Though he excused his curiosity in the matter to his system-oriented mindset, I realized he had a good point. When I studied karate, the belt rankings were highly useful as milestones, often motivating me to keep going when I would hit plateaus in my training during which I wasn’t very aware of my progress. As I went from white to green to brown belt rankings over the course of four years, I could sense the next level up as a reachable step, when black belt would seem too elusive a goal.
So for those of you who may share that interest in some kind of marker for determining your rank, I’ll proffer a set of characteristics for the belts.

White Belt

You’ve recognized the art of workflow management as something to get personally better at. White belt is actually a rank to be proud of – it means you’ve begun, which puts you ahead of those who are not conscious of, or not interested in, improving your game. You’ve had a taste of what it’s like to clear the decks, with perhaps a Mind Sweep and an initial gathering of things that have your attention in your work area and maybe at home as well. You’ve become more conscious of your in-basket as a place to toss still unprocessed stuff. You’re writing things down a little more than you previously did, a little more consistently. You’ve made a stab at setting up some sort of list-management tool and structure.

Green Belt

You’ve got some lists that you use regularly, and you’re comfortable with your system for some basic things. A self-management tool is with you most of the time. You’ve tasted the thrill of zero in your e-mail in-basket a few times. You’ve set up a workable paper-based filing system, and have a labeler you use yourself. You’ve purged and organized at least one major “black hole” storage area at work or at home. You’ve actually done one relatively thorough Weekly Review and tasted the accompanying on-top-and-in-charge feeling. You’ve started to swear by the Two-Minute Rule. You’ve got some sort of portable note-taking device you’re actually using now and then. You try to convince people around you how cool all this stuff is and that they should do it too. “What are we trying to accomplish?” and “What’s the next action?” are creeping into your operational vocabulary with others at work.

Brown Belt

You don’t hesitate to write things down, even when old-fashioned people around you aren’t. You no longer need a reminder to get your head empty regularly. You’re doing “Monthly Weekly Reviews.” Home and office are equally under control. “List maker” is no longer a pejorative. No notes are left on legal pads. E-mail is a zero at least once a week. Processing your paper in-basket is actually fun, most of the time. You have a “Projects” list that is probably 75% complete and current. In the dentist’s office, you have your own reading material. You’ve stopped interrupting people around you for non-emergency communications, choosing e-mail or notes into their in-baskets instead. You’re feeling comfortable with a big list of undone actions. You’ve set up a Someday/Maybe list and have moved items there from your Projects lists, and vice-versa. You don’t share your labeler. All paper-based reference that won’t stand up by itself is in your files, and you actually like to file stuff. You’re somewhat intolerant of those who don’t exercise the same best practices. You’ve started some good checklists. You know what to do with almost everything. Your next-action lists are actually next actions, not small sub-projects. A majority of your focus is thinking about your stuff instead of of it. “What are we trying to accomplish?” and “What’s the next action?” are creeping into your operational vocabulary with others at home.

Black Belt

You have to look at your Calls list to know whom you have to call. You trust your intuitive prioritizing all day long. You can’t stand not doing a complete Weekly Review, and you’re operationally squeaky clean at least every couple of weeks. Your review time regularly takes you down constructive rabbit trails of creative thinking, decision-making, and idea generation. You no longer complain about lack of quality thinking time. You can leave a mountain of stuff in your in-basket and still have a good time, confident it’s all in a trusted system and will get tackled soon enough. You’re using speed keys instead of your mouse. You create useful temporary checklists on a whim. You’re willing to tackle thinking about any project or situation on call. All of your reference files have been reviewed within the last year. Your systems are completely accessible, functional and intact as you move from location to location. Others are highly sensitive to what they bring into your environment. There is little distinction between work and personal – there’s simply a positive focus on whatever you’re doing. You know how (and do) get yourself totally back into control by yourself, when you’ve slipped much longer than you’re comfortable with. You don’t need to convince anyone about the methodology – you’re usually not thinking about it, merely using it. You’ve stopped complaining about e-mail. You’ve lost only a couple of receipts this year. Friends no longer want you to see inside their offices or cars.

Black belt – 2nd Degree

Time has disappeared, most of the time. You often move fast, but you’re seldom busy. When you’re playing with the dog, you’re not thinking about any of the big stuff – you’ve already thought about it. You know what every key in your desk drawer is for.

That’s a nice little test.  Right now, I feel like a Brown Belt.  That’s a good feeling having been away from so much.  I still have  a ton of work to do at the house, but if the office is clear that helps me relax about the house…

The Yahoo Groups and the David Allen Co. Forums

2006-03-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Yahoo Groups and the David Allen Co. Forums

I’ve mentioned a few times the Yahoo Groups, listed at the side, that are user-based groups that support other users of “Getting Things Done”.  I’ve also mentioned the forums at the David Allen Company’s website.  These are both wonderful sources of information for other GTD’ers.

There are three Yahoo! Groups – the Getting Things Done group, the GTD Palm group for Palm-OS users that have implemented GTD, and the Ready for Anything group, who review and analyze David Allen’s other book by the same name, with a chapter-a-week emphasis.  I heartily recommend each one of these groups, and I think they are frankly an outstanding resource for real-world reviews of software products that have been tried as implementations of GTD, advice and tips, support when you get bogged down, and general camaraderie.  Similarly, the forums at the David Allen Company’s website are outstanding resources as well, drawing in users of other products, including the David Allen Company’s own Outlook Plug-In for Getting Things Done.

I am sometimes amazed when I realize that some of the groups have over 1700 registered members.  Not all of the members are active – in fact, many of them aren’t, and are just lurking.  But they are there, and we’re all hoping they are getting something out of the discussions on the boards.  If you’re interested, c’mon by and give it a lurk.

What a bear of a week that was... and another tearing around the corner...

2006-02-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

We had three new people start with our office at once, and by extension that meant that they absorbed a lot of my time this past week.  I welcome that, as new people mean growth, rather than stagnation.  However, it comes at a time when we are also moving offices, and I will need to be on a business trip at the end of next week, and busy for the next few weeks.  It reminds me of a great quote that I first read in David Allen’s “Ready for Anything” (see the link to the side):

“For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life.  But there was always some obstacle in the way.  Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid.  Then life would begin.  At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
                              -  Fr. Alfred D’Souza

That statement has summed up how I’ve lead myself for the last few years, until GTD.  Since I got hooked, I’ve been very good at actually getting things done.  Last week, however, I felt like the old me, being crushed under the weight of everything that is coming at me, and “waiting until…” all the stuff coming at me was done.  It was just easier to do that.  It was also easy to say, on Friday afternoon, “Ah, nothing got done this week.  Move on to the next.  We’ll deal with it Monday.”

Only Monday is a landslide waiting to happen.  We’re moving offices on Tuesday, so there is last minute packing, arranging, removing, etc., etc.  There will also be the “We need a new…”, and the “We broke our old…”.  Stuff, all stuff, but stuff to be managed in a short time window to keep everyone happy.

Now, on reflection, real life is in fact what I make it, what I deem it to be (thanks for the inspiration, Father).  I can go in tomorrow, get some solid work done for about 2 hours first thing in the morning, pack, and then deal with the rest when I can deal with the rest.  It isn’t rocket science – far from it.  It’s Getting Things Done.  It’s getting things organized.

One of the nice bits about the move is the purge, which I never did complete per the book.  I’m hoping that the purge instinct will be very strong, and that we will as a group shed and shred some stuff.

Wish me luck.  I know I’ll need it, but I also know that I will have way more control over this week, versus last week.

The Weekly Review

2006-02-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

The Weekly Review – The Heart of “Getting Things Done”

I admit it.  I am right now a closet runway planner.  I am only looking at GTD from a runway level, and the 10,000 foot level – very rarely higher.

10,000 feet feels different than I thought it would – it feels like getting through the week, and all I am doing is checking off to-dos that I’ve done.  Then again, that is a good thing, although I could check them off when I did them and that would be even better.  But there is more to it than that – there is a ton of self management that is involved in that process.  It gives me a feeling of being in control, of deciding, what I am doing next.  It makes me feel like nothing is slipping through the cracks, and that is terribly important.

One of the keys that I’ve found to ensuring that nothing is slipping is taking notes throughout the day.  Most people I know would freak to find out I was “taking notes on them” but that isn’t the principle.  It lets me process my notes from the previous day and ensure that nothing is slipping.  It lets me keep a record, so that I know what I have committed to – childish, but if I haven’t written it down, it’s like my mind doesn’t think it exists.  I’ve heard lots of people rave over Moleskine notebooks – heck I even bought my wife one for Christmas, and she loves it.  However, I’ve found a great, cheap notebook that does the trick, and you can find something for your needs too.  If you have to know, mine is the Blueline A9C, a steal for about 8 bucks Canadian, and from a Canadian company too.  Reviewing my notes from the week prior during my weekly review or the first thing on the first morning in the office really helps me to stay focused on that runway and 10,000 foot level.

Now if I can just get myself to soar a little bit higher….

2006-02-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Ahh... right where he prefers to be, and with a snack too!

Actually, I'm feeling kind of harried...

2006-02-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

This has been one of those crazy, hectic times where you wonder where the day goes.  By the end of it, you’re just happy that it’s over, and that you’ve managed to accomplish something.  However, these are the times that show exactly how effective GTD can be.

I admit (sorry, SWMBO) that I left work late tonight – in a bid to ensure that I had emptied all of my in-baskets.  I am going to be super-busy tomorrow, the continuation of a 2.5 week trend, so I prioritized those few tasks that I must do tomorrow morning, to ensure they get done before I head off on my merry, busy way.  I will once again be in and out of the office.  But this is where GTD shines.

On my Palm Tungsten E handheld, my lists are with me.  I can make my calls, I can hammer away at other tasks – anything that doesn’t need my computer or my office, I can do while I’m in my car.  All because I have my lists.  I’ve also started to take a page from Michael Hyatt in his blog article Working Smart: Recovering the Lost Art of Note-Taking, although this only reinforces something I never did under the Covey system – the Daily Record of Events.  Within my notes I also record all of my voicemail messages, with this notebook becoming an indispensable part of my “trusted system”.

The thing is, GTD doesn’t make these periods any less busy.  But it does make them much more manageable and much less stressful.

Trying to achieve balance

2006-02-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted.

It has been fairly intense lately – not insane, but intense.  I’ve had to determine what my priorities are.  Maybe my priority should be shorter blog posts.  ;->

In any event, it’s been since the middle of last month since I’ve blogged.  I’m still buzzing out on doing weekly reviews (although I’m trying them on Monday mornings now), and still loving the fact that I am getting things done.  I am on top of my workload, have delegated major projects without micro-managing, and am also trying to organize an office move at the same time.  I still love the pace, but I’m try9ing to find enough balance where I can include blogging once or twice a week.

I’ve been trying hard to achieve a lot of balance.  I’ve cut down on the mindless reading that I’ve done online, and have focused on just a few sites that I scan every day or two.  I’ve cleaned up my page here, and it should do nicely for the next while.  I’ve really focused on my family, and creating a hard edge regarding my work and home balance.

This will actually be much easier once we move offices as well, as my commute will be much more sensible.  But until then, I will be busy planning, reviewing, working, and generally trying to get things done.  Pardon the pun!

2006-02-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

This one might be Kona's biggest log. Ever.

A long time between posts, and a lot of progress

2006-01-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

A long time between posts, and a lot of progress.

It’s been before Christmas since I’ve posted, so Happy New Year.  It’s been a great year for me so far, and if this is a sign of things to come, bring it on!  I have to say that making the decision that GTD was “right for me” has been one of the greatest gifts I have ever given myself.  Not only did I find a system that I can implement, understand, and not feel guilty about, it is simple, allows (allows?  Encourages!) the use of gadgets, and lets me sleep well at night.

I’ve taken to calling David Allen “my cult leader”.  I read a lot of GTD blogs, and I will update list shortly.  SWMBO has even started to read GTD, although she admits that the first section of the book is kind of hard to wade through.  Not like the molasses of wading through The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but still wading.  (I have to admit, I’ve read the book three times, and I think Getting Things Done should have the first and second sections switched around.)  But at least she is reading it.  I’ve recommended it to a co-worker in another of our branch offices, and even one of our clients who has noticed “something” different about the way I’ve been working.

My inboxes?  Still clear.  My desk?  Still uncluttered, except for the working stuff I keep all over.  I know that I should change, but I’m using 3 wire baskets, side by side, as my “In”, “Out”, and “Pending” buckets.  I like it, they work for me.  (Sometimes, my in-basket has to take 3 inch thick files, so I need a sturdy, deep one.)  My files?  The new ones are all labeled thanks to my Brother P-touch 1280; the rest of the files will be taken care of during our upcoming office move.

I’ve managed a couple of weekly reviews, however, only at the runway level.  They seem rushed, like I’m trying to find out how they work.  It seems like all I’m doing is making sure that everything that should be on my lists is there, and everything that has been done has actually been checked off.  I’m sure that I haven’t got everything on my list yet – I have 95 taks, including 12 projects, but I’m working on it.  I will keep at the weekly review, and try to put more and more into them – goals, long range planning.  I’m likely to change when I do them – maybe Sunday evening at my dining room tab le just isn’t the right time or place.  The thing is – I really have a good feeling about what I’m doing, irrespective of the weekly review.

So I’ll keep at it.  I’m really quite satisfied with how things are going.  I’m quite happy with where my priorities have moved to – and that’s probably why.

The "busy" season

2005-12-23T01:27:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by saying that once I figure out what is going on with the picture, I'll get it fixed. (See below - it's a great shot, you will have to trust me!)

It's the time of year that I never plan for well enough. We always go away for the holidays, as we have family both back east and out west, so getting ready to go away, especially at work, is hectic. Shopping this year was easy and done early. Shipping was done not-too-early, but was cheap. I can't figure out from Canada Post if the delivery of both items was made, but oh well.

I managed not just to un-stick a major project, but to work on it for about 5 hours yesterday. That got it to the point where I could hand it up the food chain for approval, which was like a monkey off my back. It meant I had to do a proposal tonight, while on vacation, but the thing is done. Handed off to one of our support folks for printing.

I'm through to Chapter 10 in my re-read of GTD. I fully expect to finish the book before Christmas, and also have "Ready for Anything" with me, which is perfect - 52 chapters, 52 weeks in a year.

I won't be posting much over the coming few days, but I will still do so occasionally. Have a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2006.

2005-12-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Kona, asnooze.

Busy day

2005-12-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

Today, SWMBO flew to the We(s)t Coast in order to visit with her Mom and Dad. I'm joining her in a few days, which will give me a little r&r - I haven't really had any time off since our youngest was born in July. I'm looking forward to it.

Today started by taking them to the airport, which in itself is always a bit frustrating with two little kids. We did it, but not without some needless stressing out on my part. Hopefully, SWMBO will forgive me . However, that was just the start to a fairly crazy day. Sent off the Christmas cards, went to the bank to get the cash for the staff Christmas bonuses, then off to a holiday lunch - just plain busy. But - and here is the important part - I whittle through my inbox today until it was clear. I dealt with my e-mail inbox today, until it was clear. And I left my desk clear before I walked out the door. It feels great to walk into a neat office every day, and I am already feeling more in control.

I told SWMBO that I was having a love affair with my label maker. She laughed, but gave me a look that said she thought that there might be more truth than fiction in the joke. Ah, let her figure it out. I am in love with it, but I'm not obsessive about it - much. Just don't ask to borrow it.

The word of the day is "Purge".

2005-12-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

The word of the day is “PURGE”

So today, I have been very very productive on the purging and shredding front.  There was another guy in the office today, and he nicknamed me “Enron”.  I have filed files, created labels with my label maker, and shredded junk that I should never have kept in the first place.  It feels great.

My twinboxes (my e-mail inbox and my physical inbox) are both clear.  I am looking around deciding on what to do next.  Getting prepared to do some major work on some major things.  Getting some of my energy back by knowing where stuff is.  It feels outstanding.

I’ve mentioned before Stephanie Winston’s The Organized Executive, which has a similar purge to David Allen’s in Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, the difference being that Winston’s strategy on the purge is to do it in chunks.  Recover an area of desktop real estate, and then move on.  It seems to meld well with Allen’s system, even though he bemoans doing it in chunks as something to be done “only if you have to”.  I totally understand his logic and reasoning, but I’m trying to do it a slightly different way.

Speaking of different ways, GTD has leant itself to “hacks” of all kinds.  Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders has documented several of them, including how to implement it using a notebook, a bunch of 3x5 index cards and a binder clip, etc., etc.  The site is well worth spending a good piece of time on.

I’m getting things ready to take some work home on my major project, trying to get un-stuck.  Ugh.  I’m going to use the 10x2x5 hack, if I can, and I’ll hopefully get to the point where I’ve been able to get it unstuck and successfully sent off.

I’m now tidying things up, getting ready to leave the office and head home.  I’ve worked every day since December 5th, and SWMBO is rightfully frustrated.  The holidays are close at hand, so I will be around a lot then.  Rest and renewal, and maybe a drink or two - I’m looking forward to it.

My e-mail Inbox is Empty!

2005-12-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

My e-mail Inbox is Empty!

I can’t remember the last time I had an empty Outlook Inbox.  That inbox has been a ball-and-chain to me for a considerable period of time.  And now it is empty!

I also have an empty inbox on my desk.  Having kept that desk inbox empty for a week, by processing my stuff, has made me feel really good.  I only emergency scanned once, on Friday, when I was in to pick up my stuff and leave for the day after having been out on appointments since 11 am.  That, for me, is a minor miracle.  I used to only emergency scan.  More progress.

For many reasons, my implementation of GTD is unfortunately breaking David Allen’s convention of doing it all in one swell foop.  I am doing it in chunks, which I know he disagrees with.  However, in her book The Organized Executive, Stephanie Winston urged folks to work on one piece of real estate, until that was clear.  Then work on another.  Translating that into GTD parlance, put all the stuff on your desk into “in”, and process it.  Then put all of the stuff on your credenza into “in”.  Process that.  Tackle one surface at a time.

I think that I can actually get to a full implementation of GTD this way, as I’m really being driven by the thought of GTD right now.  I think the blog is helping to keep it forefront in my mind, even though I’m sure no one is reading it.  However, over time I hope some folks will stumble across it.  (If you are reading, please drop me a comment).

I’d especially like to hear from folks who have implemented GTD in chunks, if there is anyone out there.  I’d like to feel less like the lone wolf in the wilderness.  I’d also to know about any of the pitfalls that you stumbled on.

So far, this is working for me, as I do only have so much time to devote to this at this time of the year, and that time always comes in chunks.  It also has the New Year’s feeling of rest and renewal, so I feel very productive when I’m doing it, and feel good when I get a large chunk done.  We’ll see how well it goes – the unfortunate thing is that it will take me until after the holidays to complete, and I have to hope I don’t lose my drive for this during the downtime.  A re-read of GTD will hopefully cure me of that.

Imagine, a clean e-mail in-box.  It’s now almost as if I am waiting for someone to e-mail me so that I can process it!

Let your GTD slide

2005-12-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

Today was a day filled with frustration. I had such high hopes – I even went a new route to the office that was suggested by a friend, and saved 10 minutes. How wonderful!

On arrival, our receptionist’s computer was dead, and I had to swap it for one of our spares, thank heaven we have them. Frustrating to lose time you had planned to spend doing other things, especially when the Christmas Crunch is looming. However, we got the problem resolved, and I spent the day essentially putting out fires, or trying to feel like I was being more productive. I did manage to process my "in".

SWMBO has long been searching for the "perfect" planner or notebook to jot her thoughts. After my reading several blogs on GTD (including Michael Hyatt's, which I've posted a permanent link to), I've read many people rave about the Moleskine (pronounced mole-ah-skein-ah) notebook. I found them at Notables, a gifty-type stationary store, and $15.00 I had another gift for my wife. I'll secretly have a good look to see what everyone is fussing about...

Personally, I've chosen a made-in-canada option - the Blueline A9 notebook. Great notebook, spiral bound, able to take a beating (it would seem), and perforated pages. The only thing missing is a built-in ribbon / bookmark, but I'm sure I will live with it. $8.95 at Grand and Toy. I am needing to admit, though, that for the luxury of it, I am sorely tempted with another Canaadian offering - one of the Pierre Belvedere notebooks (right below the Moleskine). Leather-look, perforated pages and a bookmark. Very nice looking, but at $17.95, I'm sticking with my Blueline A9.

FWIW, this relates because of an article I read at Michael Hyatt's site. He's right - I've only started taking notes on everything for a week, and alreadyd I've found them useful to refer to.

Tomorrow will be better.

Task lists and label makers

2005-12-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

Well, over the past three days, I was very successful in working through my task list. Naturally, I didn't get all of them done, but I did make progress on a big project that had been stuck, and got it moved. I whacked through a bunch of "Next Actions", hacked through my in-basket on both days, and felt like I got a lot accomplished in a short time. Too many out-of-office meetings the last two days means that I haven't had the chance to really move on stuff, but I've been keeping the incoming stuff under control. I'm very happy with where I am, but hope to make some larger breakthroughs soon, maybe this weekend.

In fact, I think that may be what keeps me motivated. I keep working, hoping that immediately before I feel the "mind like water", I have a "EUREKA!" moment. It's coming. I already feel like the rushing river has at least turned into a small lake, with defined edges. Yes, the wind ripples the water a lot, and the currents can still pull you under, but at least they aren't constantly visibile in a rushing torrent that threatens to pull me under. I consider that real progress.

I took David Allen's advice (surprise) on another issue - a labeller. Well, I sort of took his advice, I didn't buy the optional AC adapter that is the same price as the labeller that I got (*blink*). Admittedly, the unit I bought had a $30 inducement in the form of a mail-in rebate. I decided on the Brother P-Touch PT-1280, which has the rebate on it until December 31st, 2005. I had put off a buying decision for a bit, as I thoguht the best/easiest/quickest/most practical solution would have been a computer-based printer such as the PT-1500PC or the Dymo Labelwriter 330 Turbo. I think my PT-1280 is a wonder. It's right beside me in my desk drawer. It doesn't require that my laptop is up and running. It doesn't take up a USB port. I just pull it out, tap out the label on the QWERTY keyboard, hit Print, and cut the label. Done. I'm going to buy one of the PC connected ones for our receptionist, who has a desktop, but this little Brother unit is outstanding - any handheld is. 6 'AAA' batteries is a little much, but we'll see how long they last before I complain. The thing just works.

Now, here's the kicker. I have, so far, printed ONE LABEL. That's how effective this thing seems to be. It won me over immediately. I completedly understand why David Allen has recommend it in his book and recommend that you don't share.

I should mention something about Staples - they have a great online system for registering for "mail-in" rebates. You go online, follow the instructions, enter the information from the receipt, and you're done. Outstanding of them to make the wait the hardest part of the whole process.

December 10, 2005 - The Start

2005-12-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

So, I've started to re-read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" , which is an outstanding book, but needs you to take the first action before you see any results. I wasn't successful at implementing anything the first time around, so what do I figure will make the difference this time?

Well, to start with, I want to do it. I often purchase a book to read when I have downtime at home, and "alonetime" - that precious commodity when I'm on my one, such as having lunch when I'm on the road, when I'm on a plane, or in a hotel room. I purchased GTD about 2 years ago, and have never followed through with the implementation. Wanting to do it is the key here.

The other part of this is that I've been using a Palm for about 9 months now, and love it. I had a Palm III back in the late 1990s. It met its final demize in about 2000, when it had a fatal collision in the overhead bin on a flight back to Vancouver. Having a new Palm Tungsten E is a dream - it is still simple, no connectivity to distract me (although the darn games available now do the trick...), and it just works.

I have been using Agendus for Palm OS and Agendus for Windows - Palm Desktop Edition (they also have an Outlook integrated edition) for the past several months, and have been happy with them. In fact, I cannot recommend the program highly enough, although there are the typical development errors that are getting patched over time. I'm in a bit of a quandry, though, as my corporate environment runs Outlook over Citrix, which is neat, but difficult to integrate to. (I've resolved to getting all my contacts into the Palm Desktop, then firing them to Citrix via a vCard file.) So I need to use two programs - one for tasks and scheduling, and one for e-mail. So, I will also be trying to integrate GTD with Agendus - something not many people seem to have tried.

Now that the GTD bug has bitten again, and harder this time, I have begun to set up my GTD system. I came into my office today (Saturday) and processed my 3 in baskets. I converted one of them to a "pending bucket", and logged anything that I wasn't going to do right then. I purged the purgeable. I did the less-than-two-minute tasks. I haven't categorized the tasks, or set up my Outlook mail folders, or anything else yet - it will all come in time. I hope to have the task list framework completed by tomorrow, in time to do my first "Weekly Review". I'm getting ahead of where I am in the book, but really does it matter - as long as you're being proactive about it, I don't think so.

Wish me luck! I'll update my progress every couple of days!