Archive for the ‘Processing’ Category

Using GTD to survive the holidays

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

GTD Times has a nice article today about tips to survive the holidays using GTD.  This time of year gets very hectic for many people, and staying on top of your GTD system can help quite a bit.

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.

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Posted in Managing Information, Processing, Productivity | No Comments »

Get rid of your email folders

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

This tip might not work for everyone, but it has been great for me.  I use gmail for most of my e-mail, but I need to use Outlook at work.  For years, I had a complex series of nested folders in Outlook, along the lines of this:

  • Staff
    • Bill
    • Jane
    • Steve
  • Website
    • GoDaddy
    • Hosting
    • Problems
  • Programs
    • Adults
    • Children
    • Mission
  • …

And on, and on, and on.  Probably about 150 folders in all.  I was very proud of myself.

The problem was trying to keep myself at inbox zero.  Gmail makes it easy with their “archive” feature (and with cool things like “Send & Archive” in the labs section), but Outlook doesn’t do that.  Instead of quickly archiving an e-mail and moving on, I had to think about where it goes.  Does the one from Steve about the Missions part of the website go in “Steve”, “website” or “missions”?  I’d probably spend 10-15 seconds deciding where to file an e-mail, then drilling down to file it.  I get maybe 25 emails/day on this account, so that’s 25 emails x 15 seconds/each x 260 workdays in a year = 27 hours/year I spend just filing e-mails.  Brutal!

If you handle your inbox properly, you don’t need to fish for past e-mails very often — you just deal with them and move on.  I have Xobni installed, which makes the search process much faster when I need it, so that solves the search issue.

My solution? Treat it like gmail.  I now have a single folder called “archive” under my inbox.  When I’m done with an e-mail, I “archive” it.  Much faster and much easier.

How do you handle your folders in Outlook?

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Posted in E-mail, Efficiency, Processing | 3 Comments »

Scoble is learning how to Get Things Done

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Robert Scobe, a self-proclaimed “tech evangelist” (his Twitter account has nearly 60,000 followers) is climbing back onto the GTD wagon.  He’s played with it before, but seems to be giving it another good shot.

As always, Scoble has documented his time with Michael Dolan (a David Allen Co. coach) via video.  Here is a glimpse of what they did:

Scoble is running everything through Outlook, which is a popular way to manage GTD.  If he posts more videos on how he’s getting things running again, I’ll be sure to post them here.

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Posted in Efficiency, General, Processing, video | No Comments »

Don’t try to put everything into your GTD system

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

One of the mistakes I made early on was trying to put everything into my GTD system.  While I agree that you need to put 100% of your tasks/projects in it to make it work, I was trying hard to squeeze all of my reference data in there too.

The biggest problems were business cards and bills. When they land in my inbox, how do I deal with them in GTD-style?  The simple answer: I don’t.

Business cards never become a Next Action, nor do they get sorted in my filing cabinet.  When I have to process one, I simply add it to my Windows Address Book (which syncs with my iPhone), and put them in a particular desk drawer.  I could probably throw them away, but I like to keep them “just in case”.  Once the information is in my phone, I always have access to it and it’s a great place for that kind of reference material.

Another example are our bills.  While it would be ideal to take two minutes to pay each one when they arrive, that’s not always possible for financial reasons.

I considered listing them in my GTD system and then putting the bills in my file cabinet, but I decided against it.  I already have a nice bill-holding wooden thing on my desk, so I just continue to use it.  When new bills come in to my inbox, I open them and decide whether to pay it right then or not.  If I decide not to pay right away, I put them in the bill holder.  I’ve made it part of my weekly review to go through all of the bills in there, pay the ones that need to be paid, and at least be aware of the due dates for the others.

So that’s your tip for today.  Don’t stress about putting everything in your GTD system.  Just make sure you have a system in place to deal with everything to help yourself continue to have a “mind like water”.

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Posted in Bill Paying, Processing | No Comments »