Category Archives: Death to clutter!

Perfect GTD Desk +2: Desktopia Redux

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D3M 5585

See also: The Perfect GTD Desk +1

See also The Abomination of Deskolation Redeemed 

See also: The Perfect GTD Desk

Introduction:

Perfect GTD desk +1 has been refactored once again.  The above action shot displays several changes:

  • The monitor arm has switched ends of the desk
  • The cable access door in the Ikea Galant Conference Table has been filled in with wood
  • Gave up on mounting the Fujitsu ScanSnap on the monitor arm.  It was cool to look at, but even cool stuff is clutter when you are trying to get work done.  So I resurrected a shipping box and mounted both the ScanSnap and the Brother label printer on the box.  So far so good, the box has not interacted with the chair legs.  
  • Screwed the chair mat to the floor in the correct location with 4 2″ drywall screws.  *Bam* no more wandering chair mat!!!
  • A 15.5″ semi-circle has been cut out of the center front of the conference table. 
  • To create a 15.5″ radius, the conference table was slid forward until the back edge of the desk was flush with the Galant support frame.  
  • I also slid the conference table surface to the right until the left edge of the work surface became flush with the left side of the Galant support frame.  Here’s an action shot of the top left corner of the desk:
  • D3M 5586

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Power adapter moved from underneath the work surface to Galant table legs.  With diagonally crossing cable ties it was simple to mount the power adapter and then slide it around to readjust it.
  • A cordless remote control light switch was added (mid right hand of the back of the iMac) controlling the keyboard light, the floor lamp over the desk, and the floor lamp in the corner of the office. 
  • The “un-drawer” was shifted left and canted at a diagonal angle from lower left hand corner of the desk, to upper right hand corner.  This removes the un-drawer from constant collisions with knees.  
  • The purpose of the undrawer is to hold all the items that need to be at hand, but that clutter up the desk surface.  I have stapler, tape dispenser, utility knife, a 10 port USB hub, flash light, and my Plantronic USB headset (wireless headsets suck!).  
  • Action shots:
  • D3M 5589
  • D3M 5590

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • USB and power were added to the right hand end of the desk (form the semi-circle side of the desk).  While I wanted usb and power plugs available, I need them to be out of sight, and they can’t be mounted under the surface without cables working their way out with gravity.  So I turned both poet and USB adapters 90 degrees and mounted them with cable ties and cable tie anchors.
  • Action shot: 
  • D3M 5587 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results: 

When I sit at my desk now, I’m in the semi-circle and can rest both elbows on the work surface at all times.  I can also reach a much larger proportion of the work surface.  I especially noticed the altered surface to volume ratio of the desk when I wiped it down with Windex to shoot the pictures in this blog post.  Standing in the semi-circle it is easy to wipe down the entire surface of the table.  

When people try the desk out, the first word that comes out of their mouths is “Game changer!” and then “I’m going to do this to my desk!”  

The monitor arm now swings the iMac completely out of the way of the desk.  Action shot: 

D3M 5591

 And when sitting at the desk, it looks like this: 

D3M 5584

 

How To Section: 

I started with this configuration: 

D3M 5567

This worked OK, except that it began to bug me that the cable access door in the work surface did not do anything.  If a feature is not doing work then it is clutter by definition.  So I stripped the monitor arm off the desk, removed the power outlet and the IKEA cable management baskets, and then the un-drawer which you can just see peeking out under the work surface by the red mouse.  

Then I detached the work surface, and laid under the desk sliding the surface to different places and then seeing how it *felt* from beneath and above the desk.  I had the idea to slide the desk forward and to the right to maximize the work surface overhang.  

Next I started drawing curves on the surface of the desk.  Because it is a whiteboard, I was able to draw, look, erase, redraw, and play with the shape in my mind.  I like the idea of reshaping the desk with bulbous organic curves at the corners like this: 

NewImageSource: Modenus.com

But, I was too chicken to cut very much out of the desk.  Because desks are experience goods, you can’t think your way to what you will love.  You have to generate and test.  So I decided to start simply with a semi-circle cut out.  Starting out the project looked like this (mr. batik supervising):

D3M 5576

 

 

D3M 5578

I decided to cut the cable access door plug from the semi circle and marked it with whiteboard marker.  Then I drew a 15.5″ radius semi-circle from the measured center of the front edge of the work surface.  Then cutting began with a jig saw and after the semicircle was cut out, I hustled the iMac back on to the left side of the desk this time.  I don’t know why I tried the left side of the desk.  Just happened that way.  At this point the project looked like this  

D3M 5580

Once I re-mounted the iMac on the monitor arm, I was delighted to see that shifting the work surface forward created an opening between the desk and the wall, that allows the iMac to swing behind the far edge of the work surface.  This leaves the work surface completely clear for jotting down ideas, spreading out 3×5 cards, etc.  I like the additional openness of this configuration over where I started from.  Gratifying to contemplate. 

At this point I cut a grommet hole out of the semi circle and then used steel straps to mount the cable access door plug and grommet hole plug from the under side of the desk.  Action shot (sorry it is blurry): 

D3M 5592

Then I filled in all the gaps around the plugs with white plastic wood which I was very delighted to discover at HomeDepot.com.  Much sanding and re-filling and re-sanding ensued. And once I got the work surface to be “not terrible” I moved on to finishing the edge the jig saw cut.  

I was surprised at how easily iron-on melamine edging went on.  Get a clothes iron, cut the length of edging you need, then slowly iron the melamine edge on to the work surface.  Took about 30 minutes from start to cleaned up.  And I’m very delighted with how the edging is staying attached.  

Partial component list for desk: 

 

Idea I Kno now, but did not Kno yesterday

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NewImage

Source: http://lyndagrattonfutureofwork.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a6a171f6970c0133f64ea424970b-pi

See also yesterday’s post about Kno.com

Introduction:

In addition to allowing students/professors a context in which to catalyze the communion of kindred minds, Kno.com allows teams to do the same thing.  The team market is probably bigger than the text market by an order of magnitude (schools have students for educational life which for college is 4 years, work environments have people for their entire working lives which is about 40 years, thus a factor of 10).  

So what?

I remember reading in POST CAPITALIST SOCIETY (I *think*) about Drucker’s consulting clients going through his books page by page looking for tools that they could apply.  I’ve shared this idea with entrepreneurs who vehemently scoffed … on the way to crashing and burning.  Yes, it seems unlikely that a team could sit around a conference table and go through INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP say.  But Kno.com means that people don’t have to meet synchronously to share ideas.  Books can be downloaded to iPads, then read and marked up during travel, and then once back on the internet *foom* re-synchronized.  

Young whipper snappers could enter an entire back of envelope business plan into a book.  I once had a student who wrote a business plan and then gave a paper copy of the plan to his company president.  At a key point in the plan Mike inserted a $100 bill with a post it note on it that said “If you’d like to have about 30,000 more of these, keep reading!”  

What other uses for Kno.com in GTD and business?

  • Kno.com could sell businesses a subscription service to electronically share strategic documents requiring communion of kindred minds to make work.  The service could be a VPN within a business.  I wonder if SAP or Oracle would be interested in buying this document/thought linking capability?  
  • Kno.com could provide a back end linking service to connect from Kno.com markups in books and company documents, to Evernote, OneNote, OmniFocus, Remember the Milk, etc. I’m always writing notes to myself for raw materials to lecture on as I re-read my texts.  If I could simply access my Kno.com text markups while in PowerPoint, it would be a time saver for me.   
  • Books are reference materials, annotations of books being swept into Evernote (the world’s most perfect reference system) would be a huge win for me personally.  *Note* this blog post comes to you from an office with 5,000 books surrounding the author.  :-) 

Stay tuned!!!

I’m still early in my digestion of what Kno.com means.  I’m sure there will be more to come as I figure out how to run my GTD system pipes backwards with Kno.com.  

bill meade 

 

Perfect GTD desk +1

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Introduction:

Confession:

I’ve been holding out on http://RestartGTD.com.  :-(

I’ve been working since April 2012 on a successor to my “The Perfect GETTING THINGS DONE (GTD) Desk” post (which is the most read post on this blog).  1.5 years after we moved to the Portland area, Beth and I bought a house which allowed significant expansion of the good enough home office desk.  

As a sufferer of chronic rhinosinusitis, I’ve found the need to keep facial tissues close at hand.  In fact, VERY close at hand as tissues go from box, to my face, to the trash in one choreographed motion.  So in the new house I have a GTD trash can.

And

my desk work surface is expanded from a merely “big” desk into an “Ikea conference table” sized desk that is 77″x43″.  I bought yet another Innovative 7500-HD-1500 monitor arm to hold up my 27″ iMac i5. I know that $260 for an arm seems exorbitant, but getting the computer off the desk is the best money you can spend in taking back your desk.  

Also, if you’ve got a wall that you are facing when you work, you can get a monitor arm for $30 that will be great for giving you back your desk.  

Anyway, to be optimal, I should have gone to IKEA and bought a conference table surface for $65 in the “as is section” but, I did not realize that the components I needed for my upgrade of ”The Perfect GETTING THINGS DONE (GTD) Desk” would be available in the as-is department.  So, instead of saving 35%, I bought the full price $229 brand new white GALANT conference table (instead of the $65 as is white conference table).  I bought new adjustable Galant A-legs for $15 each, but in thinking about it I could have gotten away with buying 2 new fixed length Galant A-legs for $10 each and then 2 adjustable legs. 

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Driver’s eye-view of the Perfect GTD desk +1 

OK Bill, what is behind the monitor? 

Screenshot 12 19 12 5 35 PM

Well, as usual, there is a lot going on behind the iMac.  I’ve used cable ties to attach a 3-tier paper tray to the Innovative hd monitor arm.  *Note* because the iMac and paper tray are hanging off the monitor arm, there is an angle that I had to compensate for with the paper tray.  Why? Because if you can’t get the paper tray approximately level, then you’ll have paper splashing on to your work surface.  = Unpleasant.  Here is a shot of the angle compensating cable tie.  

And the indispensable ScanSnap S1500 rests on the base of the monitor arm. It is visible, but not when I’m looking at 3×5 cards on my desk.  

Screenshot 12 19 12 5 46 PM

OK, what is going on under the desk 

Excellent question!  Here is a macro shot of the under side of the desk: 

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Once again I’ve availed myself of IKEA to provide pseudo drawer space as well as plain Signum cable management (US$10).  The Galant cable management tray (US$5) works as a static drawer.  Desk tools that conventionally clutter up desk surfaces are verboten in my conception of the perfect GTD desk.  So, I mounted the Galant cable tray a bit back from the front of the desk (to avoid hitting it with my knees), but still in easy raeachability. 

In addition to microfiber cloth, stapler, and tape dispenser which are immediately available, I also keep a pocket knife and an eraser readily at hand.  

Crayons?  You think Crayons are cool?  

Well, in short, … I don’t know what to think about crayons.  Crayons come with memories, fun, and … crayon mess:

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Source: MissionMission.org

which … I’d forgotten about since I was 5.  But, still, writing on an IKEA conference table with Crayons™ is a great option if you are into crayons.  They come off with Scotch-Brite No SCRATCH sponges and Windex.   

Screenshot 12 20 12 11 34 AM

Crayon mind mapping
(about moving ERP into b-education)
48 years after giving up crayons! 

I felt giddy playing with crayons as a 53 year old!  The crappy wax mess that falls off the crayons, the problem of sharpening a crayon, the inevitable anger resulting from trying to sharpen a crayon in a pencil sharpener, the flash back to the 64 crayon set that had a sharpener in it (At least until you broke the first crayon off).  I found myself thinking about all the downsides of crayons as a dumb smile came over my face and I created a complex mind map that felt “just a little bit permanent.”  

Buy crayons, write on your IKEA conference table, undo all the art formerly-known-as-damage, with a Scotch-Brite pad and Windex.  Fondly remember the voice of your mom yelling at you about using crayon on the table/wall/sibling.  You own the conference table, you can do with it whatever you want!!  Fun memories! 

Improvements

First and foremost, except for legs, you can make-do in building your desk by shopping the AS-IS department at IKEA.  This will peel about 35% off the total cost.  

Second: grommet management.  Move the grommets away from where you will work most at your desk.  For me that is working at the computer.  And, place Signum cable grommets out of sight if you can.  You can’t control where the cable runs are, but you can control the wires between cable runs and move them out of sight.  

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Third: Find a work surface that does not have a pre-cut grommet in it.  I like the simplicity of IKEA parts, but I was forced to remove the monitor arm and re-place it through the steel support deck, because the particle board of the surface was not able to carry the 50 pound load of the monitor arm and items hanging from it.  

Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you for 2012!!!

So we are just almost exactly at 1 year into http:restartgtd.com and about 130,000 page views.  The blog really started with the ”The Perfect GETTING THINGS DONE (GTD) Desk” post which Lifehacker kindly picked up, and we are about at the end of the year with this Perfect GTD desk +1 post.  I’d like to thank everyone who has read, everyone who has commented, and especially everyone who has emailed back channel to bill@basicip.com this year.  I’ve had a blast opening my GTD kimono.  And it has been fun sharing the GTD love and enthusiasm with you.  

May this year bring a happier, more robust recovery, and smarter GTD thinking than any year going before.  You guys reading this rock.  Let me know how I can help in 2013! 

bill meade 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Musings on eighth grade organizing …

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Source: http://blog.coasterradio.com 

Introduction:

THE NEW YORK TIMES has a curious article: Working From Home, Without Sideshows, today.  

 Work OR Home?

From a GTD perspective, this OR dichotomy *feels* odd.  The GTD perspective on where to work is not an OR.  GTD is AND.  As in, how do I work at the office, and at home, and on the way between office and home, and when I’m at any phone, and when I’m at any computer, and …  Which is to say, all the places in our lives and moving among them, are interruptions to work that we must pre-organize our GTD selves in order to work around, in, over, under, and through.  

Now while I feel like a robot for looking at the world as a place to work rather than play, GTD has allowed me to feel less stress and live with increased happiness, because I am in harmony with my American cultural programming to work, work, work.  But more sanely, GTD has allowed me to sneak fun into my work in many new ways, so GTD has an impish rebellion component as well as the Protestant Work Ethic component.  

StettsonHillsSchool8th.png

Source: Stetson Hills School

Work or Home, todo list, checking off todo list, the NYT article is written from what I have come to see as the “eighth grade school of productivity”.  

  • Make an outline of the work you need to do.  
  • Letter the projects in capitals, 
  • then break down the projects into sub-steps 
  • and number them.  
  • Underneath the numbers use lower-case letters, etc.  

This “work is accomplished by sitting along and developing documents” paradigm was the crowning achievement of my eighth grade year at John A Hannah middle school in East Lansing Michigan.  

Screenshot 12 16 12 12 42 PM

Microsoft Word = Eighth Grade Thinking With Unlimited Money Pushing From Behind
*Note: the outlining in Word has never worked* 

Home offices then are most productive when optimized for the eight grade approach to work: 

  • Separate space to work that “sets a tone that says ‘work happens here.’ -Angie Mattson
  • Rules with significant others to prevent interruptions -Angie Mattson
  • Organized work space “If your work space is cluttered, your mind is cluttered” -Janet Bernstein 
  • “Your desk … should only have the essentials you need….”-Janet Bernstein
  • “Don’t work in pajamas or sweats…” -Janet Bernstein
  • “Build the kind of accountability found in traditional offices” -Jason Henham
  • “Create a to-do list for the day and cross each task off as you do it.” -David Smith 

But, … but … but … 

While I adhere to most of the above bullet points, the idea that a grown person’s organization can be improved by re-voicing the eighth grade perspective on productivity and adding new bullet items, is bogus.  When working adults talk about productivity by going back to the eight grade productivity model, we don’t learn.   

How can you say that?  

Because one of the fun things I’ve learned about Getting Things Done by helping people get started with GTD and Get restarted with GTD, is that school teachers are very disorganized.  

DisorganizedTeacher.png

Source: After Kutscher & Moran

Not out in the open, but in inner mental lives, and most aggravatingly for GTD parents, in organizing infrastructure.  Now, before you launch the flame to bill@basicip.com, let me say, “thou teachers do protest too much”.  I’m actually not in the ballpark of criticizing teachers with this comment.  Instead, I’m replaying comments of my public school teaching clients.  Many public school teachers have abominations of deskolation organizing infrastructures.  

And I think this outside of the cup neatness vs. inside the cup chaos is part an parcel of the eighth grade organization model that is the default organization taught in US schools.  

Think about it, the reason that GTD was different when you were first exposed to it, was that it was not an 8th grade step-by-step process, or a list of platitudes to crank up self-control.  Instead, GTD is a system.  A system plus a workflow template that works end-to-end.  Even more in that David Allen has refined GTD over decades, with hundreds of users.  

Another contrast between 8th grade organizing and the real world is given by looking at what eighth grade organization training did not provide: 

  • An organized infrastructure for doing knowledge work that is larger than 1 notebook
  • Something along the line of David Allen’s “trusted system” 
  • A-Z filing 
  • Capturing all sources of important documents 
  • Paper
  • MS Office documents 
  • Web pages
  • eMail 
  • Illustrations 
  • How to think with paper
  • working out ideas via draft after draft of writing, vs, working out ideas with meta-writing tools like: 
  • Given a set of facts, create a powerpoint in 2 hours to present the story of the facts, as coherently as possible
  • Fill in gaps with assumptions, and document each assumption
  • How to take an organization for a project, and then evaluate what is missing and what is un-necessary
  • How to apply common sense in the face of “groupthink” and “Abeline paradox” pressures in groups
  • How to distinguish important knowledge gaps from trivial gaps 
  • How to think for oneself about what is necessary and what would be “nice to have” 
  • How to do “raiding party” research to fill in important gaps
  • How to confront fear of criticism in a group, think for oneself, and then opportunistically obtain information
  • How to divide up research across a team
  • Matching people with passions
  • Helping team members get over paralysis through analysis 
  • Using the network of all team members to find “hot” information

Enough Musings What Was Cool in the NYT piece? 

The links in the article were very interesting in a GTD-way.  In particular I liked Janet Bernstein’s web site questionnaire: 

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“Clutter words” like: overwhelmed, frustrated, procrastinate, embarrassed, lack of organization, stepping stone their way across the questionnaire.  

I thought it was Fun-ronic (fun+ironic) that the organizers had broken/empty links in their web sites on the big day of a NYT article.  This is a goof that I would make!  Sign of genius! 
 

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Source:  http://yourorganizedguide.com/ 

Screenshot 12 16 12 4 49 PMSource: http://www.slate-consulting.com/lovingly-brutal/ 

 

Hope this was enjoy able! 

bill meade  

 

On In box to-do lists and over engineered organization

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Introduction: 

I came across a provocative post by Paul Kortman on Boomerang, an add-in for Gmail that facilitates using your email in-box as a todo list.  The “boomerang” idea is that you can:

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Source: Boomerang

In his post, Kortman talks principally about using boomerang’s 2nd feature above, sending email away to return to your inbox at a later time.  Like, … a “snooze” alarm for items that can’t be acted on immediately.  

Here is what Boomerang looks like when you install it (see Appendix A below for installation instructions): 

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What is the GTD angle? 

That Boomerang is yet another tool.  Something to experiment with to prototyping more efficient ways of working.  

What should my email look like? 

Good question.  The orthodox GTD answer would be to be regularly getting to in-box zero.  I find myself however, gradually drifting further and further from inbox zero (right now I’m at inbox 536) without feeling stressed or becoming preoccupied with what is in my inbox.  

The actual next actions list that I’m using is not kept in email, it is kept in my OmniFocus inbox in: Vacation, Today, This Week, This Month, Eventually buckets:

Screenshot 11 21 12 10 45 AM

 Since adopting this organization scheme from Salvatore antirez Sanfilippo my email box has become something of a ….

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Source: Apartment Therapy

Yes, my email has become a junk drawer.  And the strange thing is, I don’t feel bad in a “clutter” way about it.  I pass into and out of my email all day, put the stuff that matters into my Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Eventually buckets (Vacation exists this week because I have it off school and have out-of-routine things I’d like to get done). 

Heresy! 

Maybe, but, I don’t think so.  In the cause of being “just organized enough” I’ve let my inbox go to seed.  I’m getting everything done, I’m experiencing mind like water, I’ve just reached the point where keeping the inbox empty, *feels* like drone work.  

Heresy!

Maybe.  But email imposes so much overhead.  What overhead?  Well, for example, when you reply to an email, 99% chance that the email you replied to should drop itself into the @Read folder. Right?  But that does not happen.  We have to manually rake back through the inbox and waste motions tracking down and filing messages.  What is worse is that when someone replies to your reply, the entire message thread will pop itself back into the inbox.  Bother.  

More and more, I’m beginning to think that Google is on to something with search.  :-)  That I’ll be better off just searching the junk drawer for the items I know are in it, rather wasting effort on over-engineered organization.  The distinction between @Read and Inbox is loosing its difference to my mind.  

The acid test: 

For me, the acid test of newly configured organizing tools is whether they feel like clutter.  And my junk drawer inbox does not feel like clutter.  I’m not preoccupied with it because I’ve raked out the important stuff and stuck it in Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Eventually buckets.  

All the action in my inbox takes place at the top, and I find myself not really caring about how long the stack of messages is.  Where before GTD I panicked at lots of email messages, today I don’t,  I know I’ve got all the essentials covered.  And I hate wasting time organizing just to look organized.  A junk drawer inbox works, … for me.  And, I’m going to say “This is OK.”  

I may try Boomerang, but I’m an oldster, I like having my email on all my computers safely in IMAP.  I’d have to switch to Gmail on line if I fell in love with Boomerang.  We’ll see if that happens.  

bill meade 

APPENDIX A: HOW TO INSTALL BOOMERANG In Chrome

Step 1: Open your browser and log in to your Gmail account 

Step 2: Go to \Chrome\Preferences\Extensions and click on “Get more extensions” 

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Step 3: Type “boomerang” into the search box and then click the “+ ADD TO CHROME” button to the right of boomerang.

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Step 4: Then click the “Add” button in the lower right hand corner 

Step 5: Go back to the tab where your Gmail is open, and click “refresh” 

You should now have Boomerang working.  Click compose and look for the Boomerang line at the very bottom of the message (on the new compose dialog in Gmail).  Click here for Boomerang help.  

 

Evernote VS DropBox a GTD Perspective

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Source: Flickr.com

Introduction:

“Which should I use, Evernote or Dropbox?”  

This is a frequent question for me.  Which you should use, or whether you need to use both, is a question of degrees of freedom that you need to do your work efficiently AND effectively.

What is a degree of freedom?

I learned about degrees of freedom as a 20 something college graduate who was discovering computers for the first time.  I had a friend, Glen Kuhn who was teaching me about mainframe computers, at the same time as the Bell+Howell division I was working in was flailing unsuccessfully with microcomputers.   

About a month into learning about mainframes, I asked “Which is better, a microcomputer, a mini computer, or a mainframe.”  To which Glen replied, “That all depends on what kind of power your need.  Do you need rotational power?  Or, do you need something else.”  I had that “I recognize this is an interesting analytical distinction feeling,” at the same time as my brain hurt from trying to understand what a degree of freedom was. 

Trying to understand degrees of freedom stayed with me until several years later in graduate school, I discovered M.J. French’s LUMINOUS book Invention and Evolution.

French’s illustration from page 95 brings the idea of a degree of freedom into sharp focus:

Mjfrenchdegreeoffreedom01

 Source: Invention and Evolution, p. 95

A degree of freedom may seem simple from the outside, but they are not.  Degrees of freedom are often counter intuitive, like pulling the string on part (b) of the above diagram causing the wheel to roll up the incline and wind string on to the axle.  

But it gets better!!!!  

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Source: Flickr

Degrees of freedom also “nest” in sequences like Matryoshka dolls.   

Another M.J. French explanation of this idea is the human arm.  The shoulder is a ball joint and has 3 degrees of freedom. The elbow is two degrees of freedom (one bend to allow wrist to move from straight arm back to chest, a second that allows a twist so that the hand can turn things over).  This gives 5 degrees of freedom.  The wrist can bend back and forward, and also in a fly-casting motion, which brings us to 7 degrees of freedom.  The fingers can bend down and back, and also sideways to spread the hand wide (2 DOF x 5 fingers = 10).  So we are at 17 degrees of freedom to the knuckles.  Then the fingers + 8 2nd and 3rd knuckles within the fingers. This brings us to 25 degrees of freedom.  The general pattern in animals is to have a 3 degree of freedom joint, at the body, then a two, and then 1 degree of freedom joints as the limb travels away from the body (see French p. 98-100)

So what? 

Well, degrees of freedom like the human arm has, are important because they allow the arm to do work.  The nesting of 3-2-1 degrees of freedom is what gives humans the potential for great manipulative skill.  

So what’s the connection to GTD? 

The connection to GTD is that trusted systems also have nested degrees of freedom.  

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Source: Flickr

In fact, the nesting order of degrees of freedom are a large part of why GTD is a continuous improvement discipline.  We can’t really simulate in our minds the best set of tools, the best nesting order of the tools.  We can’t think our way to the globally optimal GTD system for ourselves.  

So, we prototype, we test, we exploit serendipity, and over time we stumble towards greater efficiency and effectiveness using the GTD architecture.  When David Allen says “the tools don’t matter” what I hear him saying is that “the lower degree of freedom tools don’t matter as longs as you’ve got the higher degree of freedom tools I teach, working well.”  

Give me an example!

Ok, when I read GTD I keep getting hit by the root-level many-degree-of-freedom tools. For example: 

  • Next actions.  Distilling the nub of what needs to happen, is like a 3 degree of freedom joint.  We can then stuff next actions into our two degree of freedom manila folders or OmniFocus databases, or Evernote.  Whatever.  Next actions are high degree of freedom architectural features that allow us manipulative skill to make our days efficient and effective. 
  • Reference filing. Getting your paper stuff into Evernote, is also like a three degree of freedom joint.  Once you have your reference archive in an easily searchable form, you discover: (a) that you can find ANYTHING in 60 seconds, and (b) that organizing stuff is a waste of time.  Google is right, don’t organize, search!  
  • Project filing. Distilling what projects you are working on down to a file (manilla or electronic) is a high degree of freedom intervention.  If you are lucky to be mentored by a GTD black belt as I was with Ian Watson, s/he will tell you “keep your project files separate from your reference files.”   
  • One idea one piece of paper.  Perhaps the most important degree of freedom-providing intervention for me.  One idea, one piece of paper gives your thoughts modularity.  Allows them to go to the correct project, or to multiple projects.  Allows you not to forget them over time.  And allows your conscious and subconscious to collaborate in chewing over an idea.  
  • Weekly review.  Again, like the idea modularity of one idea, one piece of paper, weekly reviews provide your work a lot of degrees of freedom.  Refreshing on your projects replaces trying to predict (impossible) what the real deadlines are.  Refreshing prevents worry.  Refreshing allows sleep.  Refreshing allows calmness when you are overloaded with work.  

What does this have to do with Dropbox and/or Evernote?  

Everything!  Think of Dropbox as a screwdriver, and Evernote as a hammer.  Now everyone knows that you can use a screwdriver as a crude form of hammer.  Not a great hammer, the degrees of freedom of a screwdriver are too different from a hammer for it to work very well.  And the same is true with hammers working as screwdrivers.  You could probably remove some screws with the point of a claw hammer.  But, it is probably better to go and get a screwdriver.  

Now the key question: Would your rather use a screwdriver, or … a hammer?  

**TILT** 

ComplementaryDOF01

Source: After EK&FamilyBookReview

Of course, we instinctively know that we need both tools in our toolbox.  Why? Because they have complementary degrees of freedom! We also need pliers in the tool box, and and power tools (which tend to be lower degrees of freedom than manual tools).  

So what? 

Well, the “should I use Dropbox or Evernote” question boils down to “What degrees of freedom do you need to support your GTD work?”  And to the end of helping you figure this out, I’ve made a personal assessment of the degrees of freedom of Dropbox and Evernote and entered the data in the table below.  

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Source: billmeade please email bill@basicip.com with corrections, comments, and additions! 
Excel source here.  

ComplementaryDOF02Source: Bill Meade’s moodling
please email bill@basicip.com if you would
like to correct, comment, or contest
my 1.0 degrees of freedom above

Source: After EK&FamilyBookReview

BUT … BUT …? 

I suspect for most GTDers, the answer will be “choose both.”  I’ve had a pro subscription to Evernote for 4 years.  Evernote actually predates my walk with GTD.  And, I’m skating along with DropBox’s free account.  I’ve recommended DropBox with affiliate links so many times that I’ve got just short of 20 GB.  So, I’m working to keep only active project files on DropBox to avoid spending money. 

Which service to start with, to push GTD forward fastest? 

I’m a fanboy of both, but I’m more of a fanboy for Evernote when I get this question.  As I have stated repeatedly, I think Evernote is the GTD tool that will pull you back on the GTD wagon when you fall of.   If you can just get the first 500 pages scanned into Evernote (12.5 minutes with a ScanSnap iX500) then a gravitational attractor to GTD flow, begins.  It will not be long before you are scanning stuff in automatically without having to hypnotize yourself.  Another benefit of Evernote is that you don’t need to purge your files to avoid filling up your office.  

DropBox is great for lots of projects where the information is inside electronic files (Again, a lower degree of freedom tool).  So, your mileage may vary on my advice. 

Deer in headlights

Source: Purchased from Shutterstock

I’m a deer in headlights: Which one to start? 

Flip a coin and pick one.  Give yourself one two or three months with the one you pick first, before you try and pick the second service.  One is enough things to change at once.  

There is no downside to picking either service.  Just do it! 


bill meade 

p.s., I’d like to thank Concordia University – Portland’s Cohort23 for discussing and assisting in the above degree of freedom argument.  








2012 Fall Semester: How the smart student will organize – Part 1 Get Infrastructure

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Source: CollegeMagazine.com 

“Professor Meade, how should I get GTD organized for school this year?” What follows in the rest of this post, is my default advice for freshmen coming to college this fall.    

Step 1: Get a laptop computer …

… with at least a 500 gigabyte hard drive.  A new hard drive is surprisingly inexpensive ($64 for 500 GB and $75 for 750 GB on Amazon as I write this) so think about adding a new hard drive to your existing laptop, or if you buy a used laptop, upgrading the hard drive.  

If you have no money you still have options:

  • Option 1: Start your laptop quest at your local version of Portland’s FREEGEEK.ORG.  Since you don’t have cash, you can trade time working for FreeGeek.org, for a computer.  
  • Option 2: Ask around family and friends for a laptop that is “too good to throw out, but not good enough that anyone is using it” and then put Linux Mint on it.  
  • What is Linux?  A free operating system with a free clone of Microsoft Office 1997, and a large free software library.  This is the no-money-down-gtd operating system and software system.  
  • Why Linux Mint and not one of the other Linuxes?  Because Linux Mint has all the drivers you need from the start, no hassles to get your DVDs to play.  
If you have some money then you can: 
  • Option 1: Buy a laptop at FreeGeek.org.  You can get a good enough laptop for about $180.
  • Option 2: Shop a Goodwill store in Lake Oswego OR and pick up a pretty nice laptop without hard drive (see above links to buy a big new shiny hard drive) and then install Linux Mint.  My students inform me that the Lake Oswego store has tons of laptops without hard drives.  
  • Option 3: Go to Walmart and buy a cheap Netbook for $250.  I *think* you will find that the used laptop is a better value than a new netbook.  But your mileage may vary.  I don’t have a preference between Windows 7, Mac OS X, or Linux, I use them all.  The Mac has been the least work for me, that that is what I use for my laptop. 
  • Option 4: Check out laptop prices at local retailers like Staples, Office Max, Best Buy.  Do this on-line so you don’t have to deal with pushy sales people.  Compare local retail to Amazon.com laptop prices for PCs and Macs.   
If you have more money and want more performance:
  • Macintosh options I think look good: 
  • If you want to buy a new Mac, the cheapest way I’ve found is to go to Apple’s online store and look for refurbished computers.  These will be one to three generations older than current models.  But … they are often much cheaper than new.  If you live in a city with an Apple store, buying a refurb is low risk because if you have a problem, you can schedule an appointment at the genius bar, go in, and have the Mac Geniuses fix it.  If you are worried about having long term support, you can buy an Apple extended service plan and a refurbished computer for less than the purchase price of a new mac alone. 
  • If you must have a new Mac, then look around.  Portland’s Best Buy (13″ Macbook Pro for $1139) and Amazon (13″ Macbook Pro for $1,140) both often sell Macs for less than the educational price for Macs bought directly from Apple, although for the 13″ Macbook Pro, the lowest price is currently from Apple ($1,099).  
  • Windows options I think look good: 
    • Ultrabooks are a great value. Instead of buying an iPad and a laptop for school, or an iPad, a laptop, and a Kindle device, just get an ultrabook.  These are from $800 to $1,500 in price, they weigh about 3 pounds, and you can carry an ultrabook in a backpack without pulling your shoulder off.  Ultrabooks are also a great place to start if you want to have a wicked fast Linux machine.  *Note* I have not installed any Linuxes on any Ultrabooks, but it seems like this would be a cool thing to do.  

    Step 2: Do not spend money on Microsoft Office or Anti Virus.  

    Your college will have a “no-additional-cost” copy of Office and AV software waiting for you when you get there.  First thing that happens after you get your login to the campus network is that you’ll be able to download Office over the network and install it on your laptop.  *Handy Hint* when installing over the campus network, don’t use wireless, plug your laptop in with a good old fashioned ethernet cable.  10x faster.  Also, the campus wireless will be so clogged with other students installing Office wireless will take for.ever!  

    Step 3: Install your software platform for this semester:

    You will need to create accounts for all of these services except FireFox and the office suites.  So the process is: install software, create account, validate account (via email) and then link account to each of the programs.  After you have installed all these tools, go back to their respective web sites, and take the tours they offer.  This will only make your brain hurt, but, the process of sprouting organizing roots is fertilized by brain pain!  So, lean into the brain pain, but don’t worry when you don’t understand everything at once.  The roots are growing….  
     

    Step 4: Get a copy of David Allen’s GETTING THINGS DONE and read THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS ONLY.  

    After they make it through the first three chapters, students usually want to read the entire book, but I advise against this.  David Allen documents a process in chapters 4 through 13 that 100% cuts you over to GTD in 3 days.

    When students attempt to implement the 3-day-cut to GTD, they run out of root system, and like the seed that fell on the hard ground, get fried as life burns down their attempts to improve.  Getting organized is hard work, and is filled with setbacks.  The setbacks are why I titled this blog “restart” gtd.  Like exercising, doing GTD is restarting GTD once life has taken you off track.  

    This is normal.  So, what readers of GTD need is acknowledge that change will take time, that implementing GTD is an exercise in experimenting with tools.  So, a more pragmatic way to get started is to read, absorb what you can, then pick one tool to experiment with in moving your brain into the GTD groove.  

    My current formula for students is to have them read chapters 1, 2, and 3, and ask themselves, “How does it make sense for me to start growing some organizing roots?”  So, read 3 chapters, and think about how they apply to you.

    Step 5: Start classes and let GTD percolate.  Give yourself a month before coming back to GTD.  

    Your subconscious will be working on understanding GTD, understanding school, and figuring out how to bring the two together.  So, don’t force yourself to implement anything in GTD, just let time work for you as you compost the David Allen model.  

    Step 6: Finish building your GTD 1.0 infrastructure

    In addition to the above infrastructure, you need a study area.  If you have space for a desk, that is a great study area, but most students don’t have space for a desk, so instead, find a conference room, or table, or study carrel where you are comfortable and can work.  Think of this place as home base for your work.  

    Next, get a briefcase desk organized.  You may want to check out my restart GTD post on my briefcase desk.  But the goal here is to consolidate everything you need to do your college work in your briefcase.  Think of your briefcase as a “station” that you can do all of your homework at.  Everything you need to do homework, should be in the station:

    • Blank 3×5 cards (20) and 8.5×11 paper (10)
    • One in-box manilla folder to gather ideas as you work
    • Foam ear plugs to block out noise.  You can also use in-ear headphones, but listening to music costs you about 10% of your productivity while studying, so foam is more efficient.  
    • 2 pens and/or pencils as you prefer 
    • Space in briefcase to hold your laptop and power adapter 
    • Microfiber cloth to keep your device screens clean 

     In the next installment of GTD for students I’ll introduce the idea of articulating GTD, which takes a GTD process and builds a system for that process.  For example, GTD’s “one idea, one piece of paper” can be implemented with 8.5×11 paper or 3×5 paper or 4×6 paper, or with an electronic note.  Articulating is the process of thinking about how you could implement GTD processes, and then picking one articulation of that process.  

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The RestartGTD guide to reading

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    NewImage

    Source: The Economist.com

    Late addition!!!

    Thanks to a reader comment, my memory was jogged and I remembered a GREAT article on the future of the book by Raymond Kurzweil in Library Journal January 1992.  The article is about technology life cycles (Precursor, Invention, Development, Maturity, False Pretenders, and Obsolescence, highly recommended!), but it illustrates technology phases using books.   There are three articles in the series, you can find the other two from the above article.

    Introduction

    “Ohhhhhhh, I get  it!  … I read therefore I am.” That is what my UM-St. Louis student Jim (how would you like some kook-aid) Jones said as he walked into my office for the first time.  I am a reader: a voracious and omnivorous reader.   My three sons are readers (all three finished the Hobbit and Trilogy as eight year olds). So, I think it is in the genes.

    I have always loved books.  As an undergraduate I made a decision that my office decor would always be made up of books and book shelves.  For thirty five years of adult life, I have read and read and read.  I believe reading will continue while I have any cognitive functions intact.  However …

    Books now look like clutter to me.  :-(

    The floor plan of my 14′ x 12′ office is simple.  Clear desk at the west end of the room.  And bookshelves along all the other sides.  So, I’m now shadowed by three walls of … it pains me to say … clutter.

    This post is part one of the RestartGTD approach to reading.

    How I am reading today?

    Here is the story.

    The short answer is: Kindle.  No not the Kindle device.  Kindle for Mac.

    When I landed the job teaching at Concordia University – Portland in 2010, I bought and iPad and a Kindle DX (2nd generation).  I figured that by January of 2011 that most of the faculty and students would be using Kindle to read text books and pretty much everything else.

    Wrong.

    When I arrived, I was surprised to see that students, though they use texting for interacting with all their friends, loved email.  This was a pleasant surprise because email is my Milieu, my most preferred form of communication.  But, it was a negative omen for iPads and Kindle devices.

    Students loved email, but 1 in the first year of my teaching, had an iPad.  Ninety percent of students have either an Android smart phone, or an iPhone.  Very few have a Nook or a Kindle.  Those who had these devices were using them only for reading with their eyes.  The best thing about a Kindle device for me was being able to listen to books being read while commuting.  So, if you have a Kindle device, google how to make it talk to you.

    So, here I sit broken hearted …

    Not to worry!  Having a Kindle DX and an iPad with the Kindle software, was a stepping stone.  I initially would read on the DX.  This was great, buying a book took a minute.  I was able to highlight, bookmark, and annotate as I read (by the way I dog ear, write in, stick post-its, etc., in books as I process them).  The DX is light, it read to me (90% of books seem to have text-to-speech enabled), the built in dictionary was FANTASTIC for my vocabulary (*Aside* If you know an English as a second language person, or you are learning a foreign language, the dictionary function cuts lookup time by a factor of 10).  Nice.

    However, once I had tasted the iPad Kindle app, I could not stand how slow the DX was.  So, I moved my reading to Kindle on the iPad.  This allowed all the same benefits except the iPad does not do text-to-speech (*Note* the Kindle Fire also does not do text to speech).  But the sensitivity of the iPad screen was all wrong for highlighting.  And, this point I was hooked on highlighting, because the Kindle software allows you to view just the highlighted parts of a book, so highlighting speeds up re-finding key passages.

    But, just for grins, I tasted the Kindle app for Mac.  (Note: You can get Kindle for your PC or Mac by going to http://www.amazon.com/kindleforpc or http://www.kindleformac.com.) Once I started reading via Kindle on my 11″ Macbook Air (MBA) I could no longer stand the slowness of the iPad or the difficulty in selecting text for highlighting on the iPad.  So, how I read books today, has shifted entirely over to my 2.1 pound 11″ MBA.  I now have 174 Kindle books on the MBA and mercifully, it does not weigh an ounce more than when I bought it!

    But … but … what about non-book reading?

    Interesting you should ask!  My non-book reading is shifting over to … wait for it … wait for it …. Evernote.  Huh?  How can Evernote be a reading app?

    Simple I will show you:

    Evernotegrabtools

     Source: Google Chrome Web Browser on my school office iMac 24″

     While I do have a subscription to the tree-killing Economist magazine.  I actually read the Economist via Evernote.  I web surf to the Economist web site, then read.  When I find an article that I think I may ever refer to again in a conversation or project, I click on either the elephant icon (a.k.a. Evernote web clipper that I wrote about recently), or on the Luxo Lamp icon (a.k.a. Evernote Clearly).

    What is Evernote Web Clipper?

    Allows me to select text and then clip it to Evernote for later reading.  See previous post here and Evernote’s web clipper page for details.

    What is Evernote Clearly?

    Let me explain with an example.  Go to PCMAG.com and click on the cover GPS article and this is what you will see:

    Pcmagnormal

    Clutter anyone?  If you click on the Evernote Clearly (Luxo Lamp) icon while looking at this page, this is what you will see:

    Pcmagclearly

    Evernote Clearly is like personal digital video recorders that strip out commercials.   Clearly allows you to see and/or cut to the meat of interesting web pages, leaving out Flash animations, advertising, and gratuitous cross linking.

    So, once you clear the article of clutter, you read it in your browser, and if you don’t have time to finish, or if you know you’ll want to refer back to this article and web page, you clip the article to your Evernote reference filing system.

    I read in Evernote more and more each week as my short term memory is shifting from creating book marks to the good stuff, to clipping and forgetting good stuff because I know I’ve got it in Evernote.  But seriously, Evernote Clearly is worth having just to be able to read web pages in peace.

    What does any of this have to do with GTD?

    GTD is about organizing and re-organizing one’s informational infrastructure in order to liberate the mind and make the biggest dent in this big old world, possible.  Writing is a big part of this org/reorg process.  And consequently, so is reading.  Casting your reading into electronic technology enables you to:

    • Have more of your infrastructure with you at any given time.  For example, Bill Jelen’s most excellent Excel 2010 In Depth in Kindle form.  Is on all three of the computers I use along with Excel.
    • Use more slices of otherwise wasted time, to read and refresh your mind.
    • Travel much lighter.  The days of 50# backpacks in grad school are over.  Now I’ve got my world in the 2.1 pound Macbook Air.
    • Increase the naturalness and expressive power of your work.
    When I organize I feel God’s pleasure.  Moving my reading to electronic means has allowed me to read much more, find what I’ve read faster, and access to more external pertinent information has increased the creativity and speed with which I accomplish projects.
    I suspect that David Allen hates to “back” any technology because technologies come and go.  For me, however, technology is how I do GTD.  Swaping paper for electronic reading has increased the efficacy of my work.
    Reading efficiently and effectively, just matters.  :-)
    bill meade

    How to scan business cards, step-by-step with YouYube Video

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    Shutterstock 29310835s

    Source: Purchased from ShutterStock.com

    Hey! 

    FYI, I just added a static page on How Tos, where the first how to is on scanning business cards.  This page includes a link to a home made restartgtd.com YouTube video of the business cards moving through the ScanSnap scanner.  In my Getting (re)started with GTD classes, when the students see how fast the duplex scanning operates, they immediately flip the mental bit related to being able to catch up with paper.  If paper (or business cards have you down) you may want to check out the video.  

    Resistance is futile, you need to buy a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner to get paper assimilated!  

    bill meade 

    Give clutter air!

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    Just saw a creative inspiring post on apartment therapy.  The idea is to use the Asker counter organizer from Ikea.  

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    Source: Apartmenttherapy.com

    Ikea Spotting has a similar desk arrangement with tons of Ikea storage tools that get the clutter up above the desk so the workers won’t see the clutter on the desk.  This does not hold the laptop up with a dish drainer (Wow!), but you can imagine yourself sitting at this desk and getting things done.  

    NewImage

    Source: Ikeaspotting.tumblr.com 

    As I hypothesized in the post on the “good enough” home desk, I think that the surface of the desk being clear is critical to my clear headedness.  Not saying that this is for everyone, but it works for me.  

    I would alter the above two desks by raising the hanging bars 6″ each.  That gives you surface to 6″ up that is clutter free.  Next, I would get all the device clutter (speakers, iPhone dock, iMac stand) off the desk with either arms or more Asker hangers.  No wires.  No clutter.  No hangups to thinking with your hands on the desk surface.  

    bill meade