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Jan 8, 2011
Mar 1, 2009
Chapter 9 - If it's on your mind, it's probably not getting done.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
(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
Feb 19, 2009
Chapter 7 - Priorities function only at the conscious level.
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!
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!
Feb 8, 2009
Chapter 6 - 2 Commitments in your head create stress and failure.
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.
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.
Feb 1, 2009
Chapter 5 - Infinite Opportunity is Utilized by Finite Possibility
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.
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.
Jan 25, 2009
Chapter 4 - Getting to Where You're Going Requires Knowing Where You Are.
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.
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.
Jan 18, 2009
Chapter 3 - Knowing your committments creates better choices of new ones.
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.
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.
Jan 14, 2009
Chapter 2 - You can only feel good about...
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.
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.
Jan 10, 2009
New year, new direction.
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!
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!
Jan 4, 2009
Ready for Anything!
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!
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!
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!
Nov 23, 2008
People who dump drive me crazy.
I am fairly certain that many of the people that I deal with on a day to day basis from outside my company are "dumpers". They are people who may themselves be working from lists, but all they are doing (in GTD context) is calling to leave a voicemail or an e-mail, and then move it to their @Waiting for lists.
And it isn't all of them, some of them have good intentions. But really, many a
re 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.
And it isn't all of them, some of them have good intentions. But really, many a
re just calling or e-mailing to then foist something back at you. Perhaps I'm tainted right now by reading Scott Adam's funny "The Dilbert Principle", which discusses this sort of "weasel" behaviour and how you can use it to your advantage. However, I'm trying to actually accomplish something, not just dump, and it seems that more and more people are trying to push things off of their own plates and onto the plates of other.If that wasn't enough, I am noticing that this is becoming a pretty major pre-occupation for most business interactions. It seems ridiculous to me. Just my $0.02, but I'm very tired of it happening all the time.
Nov 3, 2008
Myndology Notebook - Hacking Update
About two weeks ago, I posted about how I found a Myndology Junior Notebook and Myndology Index Notebook in my remote part of the earth. I was very happy to have found these, as I was wistful of the shipping cost, and now exchange rate, for the Levenger Circa notebooks. I gave a favourable initial impression of these notebooks, and to date that hasn't changed.
I did mention that I was going to do some hacking on these notebooks, and after a productive 10 minutes with my labeller, I'm happy to say that I've had terrific results for someone as un-crafty as I am. SWMBO, now she's crafty - and I will leave that to you as to how you want to interpret that.
I stayed up very late the first night I had this notebook, essentially reading a novel and doing a brain dump. Any thought and I jotted it down. I enjoyed the feeling of writing in it, and really enjoyed the quality of the paper.
Tabbed Dividers
So then, the next morning, I set out to tab the pages as I had outlined in my initial post. Very simply, I used 3M Post-It Rigid Index Tabs, and added the following "sections":
rmatted, 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 itself
was 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!
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).
rmatted, 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 itself
was just a friggin' notebook. However, the non-linearity of this one led me to change the way I looked at things. I don't know why it is different than, say, a 3-ring binder, or my old paper planner, but it just is. When I had one of the Franklin Covey planners, it was such wonderful paper that aside from writing appointments in it I was afraid to mark it up. I never used it very well, and certainly not for any note keeping. It was almost an affectation more than it was a planner. All the grand designs I had about keeping notes in the thing all went to pot.The Myndology products are happy to have you store them in a file folder. Just pull them out. You can write on them and toss them if you need to. There is a feeling of both flexibility and non-permanence about using it that makes my old spiral-bound notebook seem so dated. By the time I stopped using it I was basically using the spiral-bound as a voicemail log - very very inefficient. If I'm going to write, I want it to be efficient and practical for the way I want to work.
The amazing thing is that I fell into a trap with the old Blueline A9. They came with great labels that allowed you to tab the pages, record them in the index, and even archive the notebook itself. However, they are very linear, and even though the pages were perforated, I felt like I was somehow defiling it. Again, I know, it was JUST a friggin' notebook. It was the weirdest feeling, like I wanted to archive all this stuff. In fact, most of it I can just toss, but there the old, used ones sit, on my shelf - the information in them useless and outdated. Somehow, because the pages can be moved, sectioned, more easily removed for filing - somehow this notebook seems better, in every way.
Oh, and it is very comfortable to use if you are a left-hander like me.
Customer Service
I have been speaking with Myndology directly, mostly to let them know about the good success I've had with their products, and to make some suggstions about what I might like to see. They are really quite open and friendly folks, and responded fairly quickly. Because I am a nerd, I did send them to other sites to show what I was suggesting for their product, which they seemed to appreciate. Their products are really quite good, and you owe it to yourself to pick one up and give it a try!
Oct 27, 2008
GTD in chunks, and working from your lists.
I was doing a long overdue weekly review today, and a thought struck me about the whole process. It is really like going to the gym. When you do it regularly, you feel on top of the world. When you go back to it after a while, the first time feels great!
This weekly review was a "return to GTD" review. Lots of old stale stuff on the lists. Lots of amorphous stuff in @Action and @Waiting For email folders. In short, lots of crap to wade through. I didn't even touch my paper inbox, but once the review was complete, I worked dilligently prioritizing and making phone calls and getting my e-box to empty. Yay me. But it feels good, like returning to the gym after a hiatus does. You feel pumped. You feel like a produtivity stud.
Tomorrow, I'm probably going to have the same feeling. Less of a weekly review, more of a collection session, when I get all the paper stuff together and catalogued on my lists. Once all that is back up to date, I can start thinking clearly about what is a project, what isn't, and what really belongs on the Someday / Maybe list rather than on the @Action list.
It also got me to thinking about where I had lost the discipline. I had lost the whole part where you work from your lists, as if it had been optional to do that. I put a whole bunch of things on the list today. I hammered away and got many of them off, but no where near caught up. But I feel like I know where I'm going and that is a big part of the battle.
It leads me to think that returning to GTD is almost best done in stages. Your framework is there but it takes a huge review to bring it up to date. So, if it takes a huge review... Why not break it up? I did the electronic world today. Tomorrow - paper, which won't get stalled now because at least a portion of my decks are clear.
This weekly review was a "return to GTD" review. Lots of old stale stuff on the lists. Lots of amorphous stuff in @Action and @Waiting For email folders. In short, lots of crap to wade through. I didn't even touch my paper inbox, but once the review was complete, I worked dilligently prioritizing and making phone calls and getting my e-box to empty. Yay me. But it feels good, like returning to the gym after a hiatus does. You feel pumped. You feel like a produtivity stud.
Tomorrow, I'm probably going to have the same feeling. Less of a weekly review, more of a collection session, when I get all the paper stuff together and catalogued on my lists. Once all that is back up to date, I can start thinking clearly about what is a project, what isn't, and what really belongs on the Someday / Maybe list rather than on the @Action list.
It also got me to thinking about where I had lost the discipline. I had lost the whole part where you work from your lists, as if it had been optional to do that. I put a whole bunch of things on the list today. I hammered away and got many of them off, but no where near caught up. But I feel like I know where I'm going and that is a big part of the battle.
It leads me to think that returning to GTD is almost best done in stages. Your framework is there but it takes a huge review to bring it up to date. So, if it takes a huge review... Why not break it up? I did the electronic world today. Tomorrow - paper, which won't get stalled now because at least a portion of my decks are clear.
Oct 24, 2008
An In-Depth Review of Iambic's Agendus for the Blackberry
Something funny - whenever I go to actually post something here, I always think I should pretend I have a VAST number of readers - even though I know I get about 2 hits a day. For those plucky few who do come here sporadically - thank you very much. So, you (both) will be my "long time readers" from now on. Please identify yourselves in the comments section...
Longtime readers will know that I used Iambic's Agendus for my Palm T|E, long before I switched to Blackberry. I have now been pointed towards the Iambic website, becuase they have now launched Agendus for the Blackberry. Very cool, thinks I, and worthy of blogging about.
So, I whip over and download a copy last weekend - it's a free trial, after all, why not. Surprising to me, but the trial is apparently only a 10 day trial. Hurry up and test it out if you are going to, before you plunk your money down. Even if you don't get enough, it is only $19.95, so a good deal all 'round.
Overview
It has all the wonderful Agendus-y things I remember from my days on the Palm. First, and most importantly to me, this lays overtop of your existing applications. That means that it uses your Blackberry's built-in Calendar, Tasks, etc., and will sync seamlessly to your Exchange server, if that is your environment. It also means that it is very lightweight by comparison to some of the other programs that seem to insist on replacing those built in applications with new ones.
It has a very nice looking today screen. It has the great fonts and the tremendously flexible colour coding that Agendus had. I wasn't that big on the colour coding, really, but there you have it. What it doesn't have is the icon-laden stuff from the Palm version, but that's a Blackberry limitation, not a Palm limitation. None the less, as with all versions of Agendus, it looks great. And that is one of the biggest problems.
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 t
he 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:
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 t
he 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.
This to me is the single biggest limiting step to using Agendus. Nice though it is, you have to run the program at all times. I do run other things on my BB, so I would be exiting out all the darn time. If it had all the functionality and a theme, I would be sold, provided the could put my boss' birthday on the right day, and maybe work on the calendar navigation a bit. However, until then, I'm afraid that I won't be shelling out $19.95 anytime soon for the Blackberry version of Agendus.
As always, your mileage may vary. And on that point, it might be mine that is varying right now - if I am wrong and you want to show me how to get Agendus to be the default app, I would be happy to listen.
As an aside, I did send an e-mail to Agendus (through their website, the only way to do it) on the 18th of October, asking if there was a cross-platform discount on Agendus. I received a confirmation ticket and everything. I haven't received a response - which I have found unfortunately to be somewhat typical of Agendus. They respond well in their own forums during beta testing, but poorly afterwards. I will also keep you updated about any information I get from them regarding the cross-platform licencing.
All photographs were shamelessly linked from the Iambic website, and are © the fine folks at Iambic. They are linked to totally without their permission.
Oct 21, 2008
Myndology Notebook
I've just begun trying out a new notebook - the Myndology Journal (in the swish neon blue), and the Myndology Index (in the red). I got these because I had been interested in Levenger's Circa Notebooks, but when I tried to order from their site, the $12 or so starter pack was going to cost me $48 or so in shipping to the Frozen North of Canada. (WAKE UP, LEVENGER! We're a market the size of California, with 90% of us living within an hour of the border! Make it easy to buy from you and guess what - I will. Hose me, and I will rant about it on a blog!)
Anyway, I dropped by Stylus, a very cool fountain pen and ink store in Edmonton. I discovered it after becoming the proud owner of a set of Levenger True Writer pens, one fountain, one ballpoint, scooped from e-bay. Hmmm... an individual can figure out it costs only $8 to ship to Canada. Levenger, you listening yet? Stylus happens to be the local carrier of the Myndology products, which I discovered totally by accident. After paying $16, I walked out with the Journal and Index size. Very nice, if a little more than what our U.S. friends would pay. Still cheap to play with interesting technology.
Overall, the quality of the paper is great. It is better quality than my Blueline A9C, which I have used for several years. I'm not sure how I'm going to archive it, but then again, maybe the fact that the pages are removable, I will be better off trying to file the information than store it in a linear book that I'm too afraid to tear the pages out of. Maybe it was the fact that I was tabbing each month in the Blueline... and referring back to it. I want to start filing my notes properly, not linearly in a book I rarely reference.
The great thing about these is that the pages are removable - you can move them around, put them back in, etc. Look at this video from youtube:
This shows how easy it is. The other great thing is that for left-handers like me, this sort of notebook is actually very comfortable to write with. The rings aren't as harsh as an aluminum spiral of any type, and are definitely easier to write on the front / right side of the page than using a ring binder.
I plan on using the 3M Post-It Durable Index Tabs to organize it into different sections. Right now, it will be:
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.
Aug 30, 2008
New group at Yahoo! Groups
Hi everyone,
Just a quick note about a new group at Yahoo! Groups dedicated to GTD on your Blackberry. I got tired of waiting for someone to start one, so I started it myself.
You can go to the GTD Blackberry Group to sign up. It has only been registered since the beginning of August, and we already have 50 members and are growing.
Your input and creativity will be most welcomed! See you there!
Just a quick note about a new group at Yahoo! Groups dedicated to GTD on your Blackberry. I got tired of waiting for someone to start one, so I started it myself.
You can go to the GTD Blackberry Group to sign up. It has only been registered since the beginning of August, and we already have 50 members and are growing.
Your input and creativity will be most welcomed! See you there!
Aug 10, 2008
Getting unstuck!.
I have mentioned the I am re-reading GTD. I've finished the section that deals with mind maps, tc... The planning section. I like planning, but I have to admit that this section of the book makes my eyes glaze over. However, I do agree that once you have planned out/mapped out a big project and it is off your mind you feel really good.
I have determined that my slippage wan't as bad as I thoight, and I have only needed a nudge to get my system working again. Reading the book again has done this for me, as has making the decision to just work with some of the tools that I already have. I am certainly more relaxed thab I have been before, although I know I haven't done a total sweep yet. I just keep using my Blackberry and Next Action! 2.0 and it works!
One of the best things for me was getting rid of some contexts, including one called @Next Action. Talk about useless! More later!
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Aug 6, 2008
The bandwagon actually stopped to let me on.
Sometime around when I switched to Blogger 2.0, I changed the subtitle of the blog to "A Struggling GTD user". This could not be closer to the truth.
I have been away from the system for some time. Again. Does this at all sound familiar?
I've made a discovery that I'm sure I have blogged before - it's very akin to the fact that the Weekly Review is not a RAM Dump. Ready? Here is the revelation:
Getting Things Done requires a lot of cranking of widgets to implement before you can feel comfortable doing a weekly review.
This week, I just started to crank through, catalogue, and move on stuff. I started re-reading GTD (again!!! - anyone else get stuck having to go through th emiddle of the book, wading through the planning section?) to see if I can get through it this time. This inspired me, and I am very happy to advise that I am cranking through stuff at an amazing rate.
Very very happy happy!
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!
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