Their tips include:

Staying on top of your calendar — How best to deal with various party invitations, keeping your calendar blocked out for shopping and remembering to plan for prep time if you’re hosting a party.

Use your tickler file — You’ll have lots of date specific items coming your way; events, invitations, coupons, etc.

Simplify shopping — They suggest using a shared Google Doc to manage your shopping lists.  My wife and I use Google Wave for that, though in this case it works pretty much the same.  Good tip.

Weekly reviews — They’re always important, but this time of year they’re essential.  Don’t skip them!

All in all, it’s a great article.  Check it out, and then let us know of other tips you have for managing your life this time of year.

Post from: GTD Help

Using GTD to survive the holidays

My problem with Evernote on the previous iPhones (original and 3G) was the lackluster camera; it was nearly impossible to get a clear shot of a business card.  Now I can snap photos of business cards, receipts, etc in great quality with the iPhone and immediately push them to Evernote using the app.  Due to the clear quality, Evernote makes all of the text in those items searchable and it works very well.

Version 3.0 had a few uploading bugs in it, but the 3.0.1 release (came out yesterday, I think) solves those and it’s a great little app.  If you’ve got a new iPhone, this is certainly a must-have app!

Post from: GTD Help

Evernote 3.0 + iPhone 3GS = Perfection!

Some of the enhancements:

• Landscape view — turn your phone on its side to get a wide keyboard!
• Thumbnail view — turn your phone on its side in the notes view to get a neat thumbnail view to flip through everything.
• Sort your favorites
• Embedded browser — external links will launch in an embedded browser, to make it easy to get back into your notes after you’ve viewed the page
• A bunch of other improvements — most minor speed improvements and bug fixes.

If you are looking for a great tool to keep your notes organized on your iPhone, this is the one you way.  If you already have it, go upgrade!

Post from: GTD Help

Evernote version 2.0 for iPhone released

For my iPhone, I had previously been using the excellent (but not free) “SaiSuke” app to handle calendaring.  The problem was that you had to manually sync it, and it took a few minutes to sync every time, even over wi-fi.  The Google solution does it via “push” in the background, so you’re always up to date!

In my case, this works out great.  I use Nozbe to handle my actions, which is tied to my Google Calendar.  Any action that has a specific due date shows up in Google Calendar for that date.  Now those automatically sync to my phone.  It’s working very well so far.

A few links to help out for you iPhone users:

• How to get started
• How to choose which calendars to sync
• Known problems/limitations

The only issue I had is an iPhone limitation — you can only have ONE Exchange account on your phone, and this requires it.  In my case, my work e-mail was already connected via Exchange.  However, I didn’t sync calendar or contacts through it, so I switched it to IMAP and then install Google via Exchange.

Finally, here is a short video showing how it works:

Post from: GTD Help

New sync tool for Google Calendar and your phone

However, the problem is pretty obvious.  616 feeds generate a LOT of items every day.  Like most things GTD, the highest efficiency comes when you can get it to zero as often as possible.  The concept of “inbox zero” has been huge for me, and I’ve always tried to maintain “Reader zero” as well.  So how do I do it?

Skim. I know what kind of stuff I’m looking for, so I browse quickly.  When I’m on my computer, I can use the “j” key in Reader to jump to the next item.  I’ll burn through a lot of them pretty quickly.  Sites like Digg generate 99% garbage, but I keep it in there for the rare gems that come through.

Keep it at zero. This is critical.  It’s overwhelming to have 1000+ unread items, but it’s not so bad to have 150.  Try to zero it every chance you get.

Star important items. This follows the basic GTD itea of collect/process.  I don’t deal with any items while I’m going through the list.  I may read a few sentences to see if it’s worth digging into, but I don’t read any long entries while I’m clearing the list.  If an item is worth looking at later (blog spam to clean up, SEO idea to read about, idea for a blog entry to write) I tag it with a star in Google Reader.  Other RSS readers likely have similar options.  When I’m done, if time allows, I’ll start working through the starred items.  As I finish each item (read it, blog about it, whatever) I simply un-star it and it disappears.

Read on the go. The iPhone version of Reader is excellent.  It’s simple, but it gets the job done.  I can peruse items, star them, and mark them as read.  David Allen talks about trying to maximize the little blocks of space in your life, and this is a BIG way I do that.  By reading and starring items thoughout the day, I have less to dig through at night and I can start actually working on the items of interest.  Again, other readers and other phones will likely allow this to happen too, but I love the Reader/iPhone combo.

Using the “trends” feature in Reader (shown to the right), you can see how my reading pattern tends to go.  I get completely caught up first thing in the morning (between 6-7am), then just maintain throughout the day.  By the evening when I get to work, I have very little reading that needs to be done.  This allows me to actually work during my available work time — novel concept!

Any other tips for keeping up with your RSS deluge so you don’t get buried?

Post from: GTD Help

How I handle my 616 Google Reader feeds