Tag Archives: What is Getting Things Done?

GTD in Overcoming Adversity

Posted on by

Introduction:

Came across an awesome post on overcoming adversity on Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com) this morning. Here is the original question:

And here is the first response up when I looked at this thread:

Wow, I wish I’d written this! I’ve touched up against the edge of saying this before (About Fear, Scroll down to Stations, and GTD System Notable). But when you read the above answer, and think “What would David Allen think of this?” to my mind *ka-ching* I think “David Allen would emphatically agree!”

bill meade (from Traverse City, MI)

Office Entelechy

Posted on by

  • Introduction

I’m mid-job-search right now. Decompressing from a 27 month stint at a startup with 60-100 hours a week. Received an awesome job offer last week that reminded me of a Rands In Repose post.

Scan down to “Deliberate Want” and the part about Michelle. My Michelle is Rachel, but I digress.

Decompression allows this thing, reading for fun, that it has been a while since I’ve engaged in. While in startup mode, I read for survival, not fun. But while I was finding Michelle in the post above, and sending the post to Rachel, I started reading more Rands posts.

  • Do this immediately!!!

And a post on CAVE ESSENTIALS jumped out and hit me so hard, I’m pointing you to it. I’m pointing you to CAVE ESSENTIALS right now! Do not walk, run to CAVE ESSENTIALS and experience organizational ambrosia via the written word.

Entelechy is a fancy way of saying “soul” Rand’s post is the soul of office organization. The elements of Rands office entelechy:

  1. Self-pleasing environment design (red walls that nobody else can understand)
  2. Telling people “The door… it’s right there.” at criticism of your office.
  3. Your “forever desk” …
    “A desk’s job is to build productivity, and for me, it achieves this by first providing an immense amount of clear working space.” There is an echo in this blog!
  4. Deep leather couch (so deep that when you put your back against the couch you are in a new time zone).
  5. “Lovingly curated bookshelves” (14)

Highly recommended!!!

Bill Meade

Evernote 20,000 Note Milestone!!!

Posted on by

I just crossed 20,000 notes in Evernote, so I thought now might be a good time to update my occasional series on Evernote. Early in the life of RestartGTD I used to manually count up Evernote pages and track them.

Unfortunately my original note counting methodology was a hack that did not work accurately. Because Evernote has added monthly note counts, here is an example for my account as of December 25, 2016, look for the red arrows 1/3 of the way from the left, near the top of the page:

So, since I can use these Evernote generated non-hack counts, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and scrape out the monthly totals for the 102 months that I’ve been an evernote subscriber.

Here is the previous total and the more accurate Evernote-generated total note count for 102 months:

The count totals diverge in 2013 where SKITCH started defaulting to saving in Evernote. But I suspect that the convoluted “trick Evernote into counting notes” method that I was using, was in a word “bad”. Anyway, I trust the monthly total that Evernote now generate as it predicts the actual number of notes in my account within 2 notes. All comes back but 2 tablespoons! (notes)

So over the 102 months of Evernote, I’ve increased my usage of evernote month by month from 1 note per month on average, to almost 200 notes per month. Here is the same graph plotted with a rolling average notes per month plotted on a second Y axis in Excel 2016’s “hideous orange”:

I continue to use Evernote as my GTD reference filing system … only. I’ve tried tracking projects in Evernote but prefer OneNote for detailed next action decomposition work. But as a reference filing system, Evernote has definitely achieved “roach motel” lock in of my information. The pattern in the orange average is very “ratchet” like. Jutting up, drifting down, but then jutting up again, and again.

bill meade

GTDesk 2016

Posted on by

Before office picture with books

I read therefore i am leads to having too many books. About 5000 too many to be exact. So I consulted my engineering teacher friends and asked the best way to cut bindings off books to scan them to PDF. And the answer was a band saw.

This is the Ryobi 9″ US$130 band saw which I am using to saw-then-scan my book-library.

Lessons Learned:

  1. All the books that are out of copyright are available in PDF to download, just Bing/Google for the title + pdf.
  2. The default band saw blade on the Ryobi works just fine on books.
  3. Sawing off bindings makes sawdust the size and consistency of face powder.
  4. My ScanSnap iX 500 has now scanned 23,522 pieces of paper on both sides for a total of 47044 pages! So I’m 11.7% of the way to needing a new set of pick rollers for the ScanSnap.
  5. I have been forced to clean the face-powder-sawdust from the pick rollers twice. But the iX500 rocks as always. Run, do not walk to Amazon.com and buy one!
  6. I’m using an iMac with macOS Sierra and Apple broke Preview (mac PDF viewer) in this version. You can open a PDF and highlight text in the PDF, but not save to the original file name. So if you are on a Mac and you want to do the band-saw-to-pdf book thing, you’ll need a new PDF app.
  7. For the Mac, the best PDF program to read and highlight in many colors that I’ve found, is PDF Expert 2. It is available for Windows apparently. But I’ve been delighted with PDF Expert 2 as a replacement for Apple’s preview.
  8. I like my desk better empty, than with Bose Companion 5 speakers on it. Clutter is the STRATEGIC ENEMY. However, I do miss having the subwoofer from the Bose speakers to rest my feet on.
  9. This is my first post on RestartGTD in 2016. Leaving the land of start up companies for hopefully greener pastures, and more posts in 2017.

After office picture with PDF’d books:

With the books in PDF form, they all fit into the computer. So here is an update on my GTD Desk with my entire library in it.

Not really, I’ve scanned 200 books so far, 4,800 left to go. If you are in the market for stacking book shelves in Seattle, I’ve got a bunch you can have! :-)

Enjoy!

bill meade

Doing GTD: On the Bandwagon And The Inevitability of “Off”

Posted on by

Introduction

I read a very perceptive article on Medium.com last weekend. The author is Maxim Kotin, and the article “What I’ve learned after 10 years of quantifying myself” had a poignant passage at the end that summed up how I feel about falling off the GTD Bandwagon:

7. Eventually you will give up. It’s inevitable
It doesn’t matter how strong your willpower is. Eventually you will
break. Someday you will feel that you can’t bear the responsibility
for your time [GTD] any more. You will quit — for days and maybe 
weeks if not months. It’s ok. It doesn’t mean that the system is 
bad or ineffective. It doesn’t mean that there is something wrong
with you. On the contrary: you are 100% normal. It’s just too 
damn hard to be alert 24 hours a day.

Falling off the GTD bandwagon for me, comes after “sprints.”

A GTD sprint evolves out of work closing in on you, you responding by organizing with more focus (and a bit of desperation) until you reach the point where you as a GTD trotter horse let go of trotting and start to gallop.

Galloping is a GTD sprint. You give up long term maximum productivity, for short term results. I for example, have a boss who is a genius at pushing teams to produce breakthroughs. When my boss starts pushing, it is like hearing a Caterpillar D12 engine in the distance, then the clank clank of the caterpillar drive draws closer, the the cold steel of the blade on my … back.

In a GTD sprint, you go with whatever situational awareness is in your head, for the duration. The key GTD moment comes after finish. Your crisis is averted, the falling sky has   been propped up. Now what?

Now you let your mind unwind a bit and you realize:

  1. Your GTD trusted system is a mess.
  2. You have an expense report that I need to start procrastinating on finishing.
  3. While you were sprinting, your heard of genius cats were generating questions and you have a queue of genius cat questions awaiting your attention.
  4. You are exhausted.

And now it is time to get back on the GTD band wagon. Aw crap!

Work can feel like it is unending. Like it can never get enough of your time. Another perceptive insight from Maxim Kotin’s blog says:

1. You can only count on 5 working hours a day
You probably know a lot of people claiming that they work 10, 
12 and even 16 hours a day. They are fooling you — and maybe 
they are fooling themselves. Because aimlessly surfing the 
Internet is not work. Hanging out on Facebook is not work. 
Chatting with a peer on Skype or at the cooler is not work. 
Smoking outside is not work. Staring out the window is not 
work. Even working with your beautiful to do list for a 
half an hour is not work either, although it definitely may 
look like it.

So face it. You have to do everything, and you can really only do it in 5 hours a day. Work is not unending. It isn’t about how long you work. It is about how smart you work. So the key question to ask when you are off the GTD band wagon is: “How can I maximize how smart I work in the 5 hours a day available?”

And this is an on-ramp to getting back on the wagon. I haven’t found any way to work smarter than I work with GTD.

bill meade

p.s., Ask me a GTD question! [email protected]

Alas Babylon Update: Spoiler = Everything is fine

Posted on by

The story:

Bigfoot letter happened.

In response, I replied with the permission email I received, when I asked David Allen and the CEO of David Allen’s company for permission to use RestartGTD.com  … before I started RestartGTD.com.

A couple of email exchanges happened over the weekend and early this week.

The VP of legal eagles at David Allen’s company has given me her assurance that she’s good with the current state of RestartGTD.com … because I had/have permission.

 

*Aside* I managed the business side of patent litigation back in the day, when I worked at HP. We were burning 7 figures ,,, a month on six *big nasty* lawsuits, and I hope to never again live in litigation la la land.

So I was *philosophical* about whether to close RestartGTD.com. If the GTD powers that be did not want my enthusiasm (which is not for everyone), I was going to let RestartGTD.com go.

As it stands, RestartGTD.com will continue to operate as it has.

But, you could help if you would:

  1. Email me some GTD questions!!! My best posts are responses to questions. [email protected] is the place to get your free advice on getting back on the wagon.
  2. Get off your duff and install the Evernote web clipper so you become hopelessly addicted to Evernote for reference filing. Side benefit: web clipper makes Evernote filing reference filing easier to do, than not do.
  3. Buy that ScanSnap iX500 ($413 today) that I’ve failed (so far) to persuade you to invest in. You don’t know what you are missing by being paperless.

Thanks for the kind words and back channel emails! More posts soon! As soon as RestartGTD was in limbo I had a bunch of new ideas. :-(

bill meade

 

Rough Organizing

Posted on by

There is an analogy between “rough carpentry” and the topic of this post “rough organizing.” Rough carpentry is also called “framing” and that is not a bad description of the result of a rough organizing session.

Rough Organizing: What is it? 

Rough organizing involves the following tools:

  • GTD’s one idea, one piece of paper
  • GTD’s “mind sweep”
  • A clear desk

I start rough organizing with blank 3×5 cards. One idea, one 3×5 card. I fill in cards and then lay them neatly on the table in front of me in a grid. I fill in cards about the subject I’m working on until my mind is empty. Usually a dozen cards will do it. But, I carry 3×5 cards at all times, so I can capture open loop ideas whenever they make themselves available. So I often will have two dozen cards to rough organize.

The rough organizing starts after a mind sweep has captured all ideas, one to a 3×5 card. Then I lay the cards out on the table so that I can see them all, and then start moving related cards toward one another.

 

As related ideas come together, I organize them in a column, not-overlapping. After I have arranged all related cards into columns, and separated the not-related cards. I can look at the cards and “see” the structure of what I need to do.

  • If I am writing a complex document,
    I will see the document organization, and I can proceed to writing an outline. But usually, I’m in a hurry and I just write the document. Once it is off via email, I throw the cards into recycling.
  • If I am organizing a project,
    I can distill next actions for the project and who to delegate what actions to. This goes into OneNote and then the cards into recycling.

Rough Organizing: How does it save time? 

I find that rough organizing makes writing happen faster. Instead of free writing, then editing, the refactoring the writing. I can see the big elements that need to be covered, organize them in a sensible sequence, and then proceed to writing.

Time is saved because:

  • Ideas jump from 3×5 cards into a computer, in a much more organized fashion than using other writing tools (mind maps, outlines, detailed note cards, Scrivener, etc.).
  • Rewriting is dramatically cut down. The 3×5 card/ideas … are the floors, walls, and ceilings of my writing. It has always been hard for me to go from a writing project idea, to an outline. But with a mind sweep of 3×5 card ideas, to framing in an argument, is … easy. Perhaps I am just writing an outline, by writing the individual ideas without organization, and then organizing them after they are all out. Whatever … works.
  • It is much easier to make writing flow, when one arranges the stepping stones thoughts travel across. And my personal writing nemesis, the creative “leap” (leaving readers behind), has all but vanished since I’ve employed rough organizing.
  • I save time because I write modularly. I’ll make a first pass at a document. Get the ideas framed in, use the document. Then, I find later I’m building out the document and repurposing it for other tasks. Getting feedback from colleagues, to put up drywall, paint, and sometimes, even decorate rooms.
  • I save time because I no longer experience writer’s block.

Great Post on Evernote as Trusted System

Posted on by

Michael Keithley has a great post for those who want to use Evernote as their trusted system. Covers all the basics in just over a page.

Click here to see RestartGTD’s 30+ posts on Evernote.

Bill Meade

GTD of Fear at Work

Posted on by

Quick note on the GTD of fear at work:

I recently started a new job. A dream job. But all dreams come with some crazy, and some weird (C&W). The C&W in the new job was extreme time pressure. This post is my observations on what extreme time pressure and the ensuing fear did to my use of GTD. Or better, what my use of GTD did to my productivity under extreme time pressure + fear.

  1. The biggest positive of this experience was that GTD put me in a focussed frame of mind. There was no possibility of having a mind-like-water when I was desperately behind. Ready for anything? I was barely able to keep up with meetings tomorrow.

    But, … GTD did allow me to develop an attitude towards worry = that worry was a complete waste of time. Being afraid, and resolving to not worry about it. I focused on doing good work, and living or dying based on the good work. This turned out to be an ace that I can keep. I’ve been able to re-use the “We are data scientists, all we can do is good work. And we will live or die based on doing good work.” and so far, good work has produced nothing but breakthroughs. And, …

    I don’t miss the time spent worrying. :-)

  2. I’ve heard about trotting horses that you train them to swing right and left legs together, and then very gradually, you train them to speed up with the trotting gait. If you push them to faster than their training can support, the stop trotting and gallop. This slows the horses down.

    Fear at work pushes my use of my trusted system, to the point where I stop using it. And like trotter horses, I begin to gallop with stream of consciousness organization. And I slow down.

    When I go from trotting with my trusted system, to galloping without it. I’m off the GTD wagon. :-(

    I find that I have to budget time to focus on organizing all the information pouring in. Budget time to refactor and build-out my trusted system towards new challenges. But because of the time pressure, I have to sneak trusted system building into time cracks of the day.

    This is the sentence we GTD users bring upon ourselves. Raising productivity, taking on more, getting to the point of galloping. Then, refactoring and refining. Over time, responsibilities increase, and the refactoring of the trusted system never gets easy. It just works. No guarantee trusted system refinement will be easy.

  3. Looking back on the past 3.5 months, I wonder if the focus GTD has brought, or the ability to put aside fear and worry, has made me more sensitive to patterns. Patterns have been leaping to mind. For example:

    (a) A common pattern of our customer sales cycle.
    (b) The repeated pattern of co-workers under pressure.
    (c) The validation of my “radar” that sees future problems … far in advance

Perhaps there is a self-induced “Hawthorne effect” for GTD people in struggling to keep work life functioning smoothly from a trusted system. Whatever the source, GTD has stood me through.

bill meade

Evernote Conference 2014: Top 5 Benefits for GTD Users

Posted on by

Introduction

Evernote had their fourth annual conference this week. A recap of Day 1, was posted by Evernote, but Day 2, and Day 3, did not make the blog. I watched from afar, underwhelmed at what the technology press were able to wring out of the conference as news. but there are a few big benefits for GETTING THINGS DONE users:

  1. The biggest benefit I’ve identified is that Evernote’s monthly upload quota has been raised from 1 gigabyte per month, to 4.
    I saw this in my account this week. But it was not mentioned at the Evernote conference. Looking around the web it appears that you can opt in to Evernote’s new web template, and that is what causes the bump. There is confusion about this on Evernote’s forums. It looks like trying the new web form explains the increased upload.
  2. So, Evernote has a new web form.
    And if you opt in, you get 4 GB of upload per month! To see the form and get the upload quota bump:
    Step 1: Log in to Evernote.com via a web browser
    Step 2: When you see a dialog box that says “Try the new Evernote Web?” click yes.
    The new web form is nice, and uncluttered. But, is not as fluid as 3×5 cards. :-(
  3. “Work chat” client built into the base Evernote application. It must suck to be the product manager for Office 2013. EVERYONE on the planet is trying to kill email. Evernote, Slack, Asana (see post) and one would have to remember Google WAVE, are all attacking email. This is not likely to have a big GTD impact soon. But, it may be a big deal to GTDers before long. We tend to over predict impacts of new technology in the short run, and under predict them in the long run. I can imagine David Allen smiling at this news. He has chosen to focus on the logic of work, and fastidiously avoided entangling alliances with electronic technologies. I wonder if Work Chat will be exclusively focused on Evernote Business users, or if we individual GTDers will gain workflow advantages as well.
  4. Evernote API. I’ve been waiting for Evernote’s API to build momentum for Evernote, in the way that Twitter’s and Facebook’s APIs launched them past competitors. But, the results have been slow and … goofy. But, API results are starting to happen. Go to Postach.io, and you can see how you can blog from inside Evernote, by creating a note, and then tagging it with “published”
    Imagine a project story board that is organized as a blog. Every day, the post is updated and refined, so everyone can see where the project is. Hmmmm. Evernote API is getting warmer this year. But, when you check the Evernote App Center, no killer apps … yet.
  5. And finally, the last big lesson from Evernote’s conference this year, is that … getting things done is still in our hands. The conference was a blizzard of individual people, showing how they use Evernote to get things done. Using your mind efficiently and effectively is still THE GAME. Thinking drives work to completion. And while electronic tools help thinking, especially, collaborative thinking, they are not yet impressing anyone generative thought. Evernote also announced an effort to build AI into Evernote. AI by the way means “Augmented Intelligence” not artificial intelligence.

I wish GTD had a tool that aided project thinking the way that spreadsheets and databases aid analytical thinking. But .. not. Getting Things Done for the foreseeable future remains an act of will, to think.

bill meade