Category Archives: ScanSnap

Perfect GTD desk +1

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Screenshot 12 19 12 4 53 PM 2

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:

Screenshot 12 19 12 6 00 PM

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:

NewImage

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.

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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 [email protected] 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!

Support RestartGTD by buying at Amazon.com from this link!

 

bill meade

GTD Bricolage De Jure

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Introduction:

Having bought a house recently, cash flow has been at something of a premium.  So, whenever I can find a way to bing a fun improvement to my desk for no out of pocket costs, I’m very focused.  Today I had the idea that I could re-purpose the stand from my 27″ iMac, which looks like this: 

Source: Bookyard.com

to be an over desk shelf for my most excellent ScanSnap S1500M.  Here is the inverted stand on the edge of my “progeny of the Perfect GTD desk” which I will someday, post about.  

As every angle of the iMac stand is “out of plane” to attach the stand to my desk required an evolutionary step beyond my normal double sided sticky tape technology platform.  So instead of tape, I used drywall screws.  If you look in the following picture you will see 5 1″ black drywall screws loosely holding the stand to the under side of the desk, and around the corner from them, you will see two 2″ drywall screws holding the platform (was base, is now the shelf) parallel to the desk.  

Note, I am laying on the floor looking up at the underside of my desk in this shot. 

Here is another angle looking across the desk: 

And here is another angle looking across the face of the desk at the shelf and the monitor: 

Apologies for the 24″ iMac growing out of the back of the shelf in this picture.  *Note* if you have a spare 2.8 GHZ iMac motherboard from the early 2008 24″ iMac, email me at [email protected] otherwise I’m going to have to scrap this machine.  :-( 

…

Moment of silence 

… 

Now, back to bricolage.  Here is a shot of the ScanSnap on the shelf closed up in hibernation mode.  

And here is the scanner open and ready for action! 

More with less! 

I may have to employ double sided sticky tape to make sure the scanner does not walk off the shelf.  But I’m going to wait and see if the built in non-skid strip is enough.  I don’t like the idea of sticking my scanner down because the best way to get people to understand how great a scanner is, is to take my scanner and let friends scan their documents.  Something about scanning your own documents activates a neural pathway that description misses.  So, I’d like to preserve my free range ScanSnap if I can.  

 

bill meade 

 

 

In Box Zero Disease: A conversation from RestartGTD Part 2

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From: Bill Meade [email protected]
Subject: Re: Thanks for blogging on Restart GTD
Date: October 30, 2012 1:11:07 PM PDT
To: Dave Findlay <[email protected]>

On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:32 AM, Dave Findlay <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Bill,

Just thought I’d drop you a quick note to say Thank You! for writing your restartGTD blog. I’ve found it helpful with all the practical details of (re)implementing my own GTD system.

Thank you for writing.  The blog is not beating the world for traffic, so I continue to write the articles I wish that I had read and could read.  Every time I start down writing an article, I develop new GTD ideas.  I’m having a blast.  I’m glad you are enjoying it as well.

As a brief background on the GTD journey of one of your regular readers, I first found GTD at age 25 (I’m 29 now), when I was working as the sole paraplanner in a busy financial planning office. I found it through a search borne of desperation — I was working long days, had weeks of work piled up, no possibility of outsourcing or hiring extra help due to some extenuating circumstances within the company, and my huge backlog was starting to cost the company money. I figured I was a few weeks away from a nervous breakdown, and implementing GTD offered immediate and spectacular relief, even though I did it poorly at the time.

Since that first experience, my GTD adherence has waxed and waned over the following four years, meaning a month or so of great GTD hygeine, followed by a 6-12 week period of gradually slacking off, usually followed by some high-stress event, like missing a deadline or getting caught short somewhere and having to pull an all-nighter or work over a weekend, followed by an all-day session relocating the handlebars of my GTD system, etc. Kind of like the Book of Judges on repeat, hehe.

Since reading your blog, I’ve taken the plunge and sourced a ScanSnap S1500M, which has significantly streamlined my filing, and I’ve also switched email providers to make filtering and getting to Inbox Zero a much more common event (would have done this years earlier, but all the passable variants of my name in gmail were already taken). Inbox Zero now happens an average of once a week, in all personal and work email accounts.

By the way, this makes you a GTD black belt.  I went to the official GTD seminar in Portland OR, last November and was surprised to find that I was a black belt!  Only about 15% of the people attending the seminar implement anything like the full GTD suite of tools and habits.  I had discussions with DavidCo last year that gave me that statistic.

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon recently when I do a good brain-dump and weekly review, where I get all email and physical inboxes to zero and get very clear on all my projects at 10,000ft, bring them up to date and recalibrate time-lines for the completion of ensuing steps … (and my weekly review still only happens on this level about once every 3-4 weeks, if I’m honest) … immediately afterwards, I get sick. It’s like my body has been amped up on stress for a period, and the clarity that a good review brings is enough to let my body down off its adrenaline-high, to an immune trough — I don’t want to accept the term “leisure sickness” just yet, but the experience is similar.

You are the second person to tell me this.  My first thought is “Get up to, but no to, inbox zero.”  Avoid the trigger, but capture most of the benefits.

It’s amazing how our minds and bodies get used to a certain level of dysfunction, and struggle when it’s eliminated. I’m examining my GTD system to see where the gaps are — I figure if I’m stressed enough to crash my immune system, then somewhere along the line I haven’t externalised all my open loops and agreements. My brain is still trying to handle them.

I have people who tell me that as they approach a panic-free work, that they get a new fear (?).  The new fear is that the lack of chaos will kill their creativity.  I think the reduced form equation for this is:

stress = creativity

Crazy!  But, tell that to the inmates!  They don’t have the receptors in their brans for the message.

Two of my MBA students who have gotten to inbox zero, task zero, and are fully caught up on work, have contacted me in terror to say “What do I do now?”  Culture, school, watching our parents work hard as we grow up, a lot of our world conspires to program us to always be working … under stress.

/begin GTDessay

Think about it, how many unstressed people have you see at work in your life?  The boss?  Bosses may look serene on the outside, but on the inside they messes.  Western cultures all teach “behind as normal” which makes little sense.  The disappearing boundaries between work/personal, tast/project, team/individual in today’s knowledge work place seem to be tapping into the evolutionary trait of trying harder.  Trying harder is a vestigil function, it makes no sense today to live perpetually trying harder today.

Come to think of it, I used GTD to get my work under control, and then I used GTD to double my work capacity, while proudly increasing the quality of my work.  Perpetual “behind as normal” is not sustainable.  I’ve been postponing the day of cut off.  That day that David Allen talks about near the beginning of GTD where you “control what information gets into your life.”  Control the inflow, control the system, control your life.

My next GTD problem is to figure out how to fix the thermostat needle for “enough” work.  How do I decide enough is enough?  How to I get a feedback signal to tell me that I’m too low or too high? When exercise ceases?  When whimsical thinking ceases?

I think “behind as normal” thinking is what throws so many people off their GTD band wagons.  It is just habit to lapse and then recede comfortabbly back into being behind with the rest of the herd.  In Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART he talks about humans being herd animals, and creative people having to convert themselves to turf animals.  To picking some turf that they will live or die defending.  Something like that tranformation is behind the need to restartgtd all the time.

/end GTDessay

Your thoughts would be welcome, but I understand you’re busy, so no pressure. Thanks again for writing such an helpful blog.

I appreciate the kind words and encouragement.  May I post this email response on the blog?  Most GTD users are closet users.  You can’t survey them for what they need to hear to develop further.  They won’t answer.  So I keep trying to use every input possible to lay out fleeces that will resonate with readers.  Your thoughts would be great to post!

Best Regards,

bill meade

p.s., Do you produce awesome Zinfandel in Toowoomba’s Darling Downs?  Am I invited for some if I’m in the neighborhood?  :-)  I ran several invention workshops while working at HP, in Melbourne (mel-bunn).

Warm regards,

Dave Findlay
Toowoomba, Queensland

In Box Zero Disease: A conversation from RestartGTD

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Part 2 here

From: Dave Findlay <[email protected]>

Subject: Thanks for blogging on Restart GTD
Date: October 30, 2012 4:32:53 AM PDT
To: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>

Hi Bill,

Just thought I’d drop you a quick note to say Thank You! for writing your restartGTD blog. I’ve found it helpful with all the practical details of (re)implementing my own GTD system.

As a brief background on the GTD journey of one of your regular readers, I first found GTD at age 25 (I’m 29 now), when I was working as the sole paraplanner in a busy financial planning office. I found it through a search borne of desperation — I was working long days, had weeks of work piled up, no possibility of outsourcing or hiring extra help due to some extenuating circumstances within the company, and my huge backlog was starting to cost the company money. I figured I was a few weeks away from a nervous breakdown, and implementing GTD offered immediate and spectacular relief, even though I did it poorly at the time.

Since that first experience, my GTD adherence has waxed and waned over the following four years, meaning a month or so of great GTD hygeine, followed by a 6-12 week period of gradually slacking off, usually followed by some high-stress event, like missing a deadline or getting caught short somewhere and having to pull an all-nighter or work over a weekend, followed by an all-day session relocating the handlebars of my GTD system, etc. Kind of like the Book of Judges on repeat, hehe.

Since reading your blog, I’ve taken the plunge and sourced a ScanSnap S1500M, which has significantly streamlined my filing, and I’ve also switched email providers to make filtering and getting to Inbox Zero a much more common event (would have done this years earlier, but all the passable variants of my name in gmail were already taken). Inbox Zero now happens an average of once a week, in all personal and work email accounts.

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon recently when I do a good brain-dump and weekly review, where I get all email and physical inboxes to zero and get very clear on all my projects at 10,000ft, bring them up to date and recalibrate time-lines for the completion of ensuing steps … (and my weekly review still only happens on this level about once every 3-4 weeks, if I’m honest) … immediately afterwards, I get sick. It’s like my body has been amped up on stress for a period, and the clarity that a good review brings is enough to let my body down off its adrenaline-high, to an immune trough — I don’t want to accept the term “leisure sickness” just yet, but the experience is similar.

It’s amazing how our minds and bodies get used to a certain level of dysfunction, and struggle when it’s eliminated. I’m examining my GTD system to see where the gaps are — I figure if I’m stressed enough to crash my immune system, then somewhere along the line I haven’t externalised all my open loops and agreements. My brain is still trying to handle them.

Your thoughts would be welcome, but I understand you’re busy, so no pressure. Thanks again for writing such an helpful blog.

Warm regards,

Dave Findlay
Toowoomba, Queensland

Part 2 here

RestartGTD’s Evernote posts to date

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For those who are interested in Evernote, here are the main pages where I’ve talked about how I use Evernote:

  1. How I got my 94,000 page file cabinet into Evernote (within a description of my workflow before and after)
  2. How Evernote anchors my GTD system by making reference filing easier to do right than wrong
  3. Falling off the GTD wagon and getting back on via Evernote 
  4. Restarting GTD with Evernote 
  5. Great external post on using Evernote for project and reference filing at once
  6. How To for Evernote/ScanSnap
  1. The *trick* to dragging and dropping files into Evernote 
  2. How to scan business cards into Evernote
  3. How to install Evernote web clipper  <= It will rock your web surfing world!  Never forget a URL again! 
  4. How to set up presets (scan checks for deposit, documents for Evernote, Pictures, email, etc.)

My Evernote setup is joined at the hip with my most excellent $420 ScanSnap S1500M (for Windows look at the S1500).  Full disclosure: If you buy your scanner from these links, I get a commission from Amazon (However, the scanner costs you the same).  If you don’t like this arrangement, change the links once you find the scanner on Amazon.  

Previous to buying the ScanSnap S1500M when I accepted a job requiring a move, I owned a ScanSnap S1300 ($300 TO $350, one model for $260 which I suspect is older).  The S1300 holds 13 pages in its input bin, which is so much better than using a flat bed scanner, you get euphoric at being able to get paper off your desk.  

But, … the S1500M has a 50 page input bin, it has more robust paper guides, it is MUCH faster.  And, did I mention it is MUCH faster?  In my opinion, the S1500M is worth the price difference.  You will scan your paper into Evernote 3 to 4 times faster (my guess having used both).  And, once you have the bulk of your paper into Evernote, the S1500M is such a pleasure to use, it will keep your desk clean of paper.  With the S1300 I was constantly fighting buildup of pages in my inbox.  

Fujitsu has a promotion going on from now until November 1st, where if you buy a ScanSnap you get a free year of Evernote premium.  See offer details at the bottom of this post.  

Hope this helps! 

 

bill meade 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Get off the paperless fence!!!!

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Scansnap Deal!

Dealnews.com has an almost $100 lower than Amazon price on the ScanSnap S1500.  

S1500deal

If you’ve been agonizing over whether the ScanSnap is worth the price, buy now, you’ll only cry once! 

I have a ScanSnap S1500M that I used to go paperless with GTD.  I started with 94,000 pages of paper, and then looked at every paper document and asked myself “Will I ever have a next action with this?” and if the answer was no, I recycled the paper, if the answer was maybe or yes, I scanned.  I scanned 20% of my 94,000 pages (17,500 pages) in four days with the S1500M.  

Four days to organization, because I can now find virtually every document more easily with Evernote, than I ever could with SteelCase.

Do it.  Do it now! 

bill meade 

How to set up ScanSnap presets on RestartGTD Howto pages

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There is a new howto page up today about how to manage presets in Fujitsu’s ScanSnap software.  The longer you have a ScanSnap, the more ways you find you can use your scanner.  Not just for scanning to PDFs, but to email, to Evernote, scanning for electronic deposits, etc.  This post shows you several setups and explains how they are similar and different, and how you can preset these setups so you can switch quickly between scanning tasks.  
 
bill meade 

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

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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

GTD Anchor #1: Reference Filing

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Source: HABRAHABR.RU

What do I mean by “reference filing?”

Glad you asked!  There are two components to my reference filing system: Evernote, and the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500.

Evernote

Evernote is document storage and synchronization infrastructure.  Pay $50 a year for a premium account, then install Evernote’s client software on as many Macs or PCs as you want, and all the documents in Evernote will be synchronized across all your computers without you having to take any actions.  Evernote could be described as a means of providing “working backup” where your Evernote store is used on each of your computers, so you are testing your backups whenever you switch machines.

Key features of Evernote in decreasing priority value are:

  1. Full text search.  Pictures, Word files, plain PDF files, and even some hand-written scans, are processed once a day so that the documents become full text searchable.  Once you start using full text search, you tend to do much less organizing of documents into notebooks, because documents become so easy to find via keyword search and tagging.
  2. Friction-free capture of (advertising-free) web pages.  <== Turns Evernote into short term memory for me.
  3. Keyword searching.
  4. Tagging.
  5. Friction-free synchronization.
  6. Cross computer availability of all mission-critical documents.
  7. Remote access to documents.  Evernote has a cloud component, so you can be at an internet cafe, decide you want to print a document, and then log in to your Evernote account, download the file and print it.

Some people have their entire GTD system in Evernote.  Not me.  When I first started doing GTD I put my entire life into OmniFocus, and my brain hated the one-electronic-system-to-rule-them-all solution.  I could not sit down at my desk and use OmniFocus after I had entered every open loop.  Welcome to my first “off the GTD wagon” experience. Since then, I’ve been iteratively refining my GTD trusted system, keeping it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

I use Evernote purely for reference filing (purple region 3 in the following figure).  Evernote has several nagging weaknesses: (1) it does not search within all file types, (2) It does not have a simple highlighting function.  Lack of a highlighting function causes me to read documents in PDF form, highlighting them in PDF, and then emailing them to Evernote, and using Evernote just to recall documents and original source web pages.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500

I can’t say enough about this little machine.  It enabled paperless reference filing, via Evernote.  It folds up into a very small package.  It scans fast enough that a 150 pages scan, in under five minutes.  I strongly encourage you to at least go to Amazon and look.

Here is my sales pitch on selling you on buying a scanner:

  • In under a week, you can be paperless via Evernote and the ScanSnap S1500.  I started with 94,000 pages in December 2010 and in 4 days, I had recycled the entire 94,000 pages.
    • Once you are paperless in Evernote, you will discover that you can “find” documents you never would have bothered to look for, while the document was in paper.  I’ve found old newspaper articles that were handed out to me as a student, and then forwarded them to my students.
    • When was the last time you could find any document that you knew you had?  You can be there again with Evernote and a ScanSnap.
  • There are four tricks to guaranteed scanner success:
    • First, go through all your papers and sort them into boxes labeled “Recycle” and “Scan.”  When in doubt, put the paper into your “Scan” box.  Once you pre-sort, you will know which scanner to buy.
    • Second, buy the right scanner for the amount of paper you need to scan.  If you have less than 500 pages you can buy the slightly cheaper ScanSnap S1300.  I did this at first when implementing Evernote.  I found that the S1300 with its 12 page paper bin, and slow speed, was just too clunky to get it done with my piles of paper.  If you have 400 pages to scan and a doubt about buying a slower unit, or, if you have 501 pages to scan, then you are crazy not to buy the ScanSnap iX500.
    • Third, as soon as the scanner arrives, take it out of the box and put it on your desk.
    • Fourth, once the scanner is on your desk, call your friend “Bill” the gadget guy and tell him what is on your desk.
  • Remember “Meade’s Law” which is “Buy the best, only cry once.”
    • I was lucky and a friend offered to buy my ScanSnap S1300, I warned him that he’d be happier with the iX500 but he insisted.  By the way, “Thank you Steve!”
    • For most people with a bureaucratic residue of disorganization, the Fujitsu iX500 is going to be the happiest, highest-utility long run solution.
  • If you’ve read this far, ask yourself, “How long have I been thinking that a scanner ‘might be useful’?  If you have been thinking about this for longer than a month, the time is now to GET YOURS. You won’t regret it.

What happens next?

One you have a reference filing system, you have an anchor set solidly into improved organization.  Whenever your fall off the wagon with GTD, no matter what, your reference filing system will be in ever increasing order.  Evernote and the ScanSnap make it easier to be organized, than to be disorganized.  Once you have an anchor in improving your organization, you have a home base to work out from as you refactor your life to incorporate more effectiveness and more efficiency.

If anyone has had great experiences with other scanners, please post what scanner you have (make and model), how long you’ve used it, what the one best thing about it is, in the comments to this post?

Thank you!

bill meade