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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

My Tools @Work

The empty Windows section looked so sad, I thought I'd post something here. Any other Windows users hiding out there? [I can definitely understand the appeal of Macs (some wonderful software out there that's Mac-only, for one), but I've just always used Windows (or, *cough*, DOS) machines.]

Outlook for email, calendar, and a little task management

  • I've created @Action, @Reference, @Waiting, @Reading Material, @Someday/Maybe, @Open Issues (some things seem to fit neither Reference nor Waiting)
  • I flag emails to remind me of the specific action that must be taken; these can also pop up as reminders.
  • I've got it set up so that email from my boss gets flagged for immediate reading, has its own particular color text in the in-box and makes a sound upon arrival. (This would be total overkill when applied to every email!)

Bonsai desktop (for the bulk of my Next Actions, task, project management)

  • I posted about Bonsai in the PDA folder, but its desktop component is just as useful and for the same reasons: categories, filtering, easy to create hierarchical lists/outlines, etc.
  • It's not free, but might be worth the ~$35 price tag to someone looking for a powerful listmaking/outlining tool that seamlessly syncs from desktop to PDA. (I was lucky enough to receive a license to it as a Christmas gift.)

I'm just doing my best to record everything in one of these two tools -- contact information, tasks, projects, lists, etc.

TOPICS: Windows
emuelle1's picture

I'm still tweaking my system,...

I'm still tweaking my system, but I'm realizing that I need to do a program freeze and just get to work.

Components of mt system:
1)Outlook 2003 at both home and work.
2)Dell Axim x30 Pocket PC with Pocket Informant. PI would work great as a stand alone, but text entry on a PPC can be cumbersome. Plus I can never decide on what I want to do.
3)Evernote rocks! I'm thinking of using it for collection.
4)Installed Keynote again. Looks to be useful. Might work for support materials.

Others that I have no idea what to do with as yet:
My Life Organized:
Looks cool, but Outlook sync screws tasks up from time to time. This is what happens when you're evaluating a program while visiting your parents for Christmas, dad knows you want software, and hands you his credit card to hook yourself up.
I'm tempted to create a rule that Outlook will have no task that is not a Next Action that can't be done in the next week. I have lots of tasks and I'm getting nowhere on all of them. I could port them to a text list, Tom's spreadsheet (thanks, Tom), or My Life Organized, and bring them back to Outlook when they are NAs doable within a week's time.

I'm also looking at text files, but having spent so much time trying to be high tech, it seems so anti-climactic. But I have to find something that works that I can stop tweaking.

It does seem odd that most GTD people seem to be using Macs. I don't know if I like Windows, but XP finally has some stability and Macs are priced out of my range. Mac users seem to like them though.

 
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