Index Cards

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

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.

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

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

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

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...

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

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?

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

Standing still in a blur / NextAction! for Blackberry

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

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

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



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

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

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

A blog of my day...

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

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

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

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

Monitoring progress...

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

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

The new Blogger

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

Fun stuff.

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

Accomplishment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hitching a ride on a runaway train...

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

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

Wish me luck.

Returning from a Hiatus

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