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[Whitepaper, haha] My System for GTD
GrahamC | Sep 20 2006
Below i'll outline how i do my thing to get through the day and to "GTD" - at the bottom i'll note problems i have with the system. FYI, I'm an engineering manager in charge of 11 engineers in a number of disciplines My layout is nowhere near as pretty as Patrick Rhones whitepaper, it's a little more stream of consciousness - so apologies if your eyes bleed. I've included in brackets the keys i use to invoke actions in case people care. I use [="Blue"]Microsoft Outlook[/] for [="Red"]Calendar[/] and [="Red"]email[/] ? my folder structure looks like this: Outlook Today The Archives are broken up by year because otherwise my archive folder was too slow with 13,000 emails in it. I have [="Blue"]3 macro?s[/] set up for my email Alt+1 (moves email to archive), Alt+2 (moves email to personal), Alt+3 (moves email to Respond/Action). All notifications of new emails have been been removed and more often than not i completely close Outlook when I'm not actively working with email. I use [="Blue"]Copernic Desktop Search 2[/] (Alt+W) to search for any emails or files on my pc. I?ve tried a few options but Copernic gives me the best view of search results so that I can easily pick out any info I want. This allows me to have a common dump of emails in the archive folder without any tagging or bumpf. The Calendar portion of Outlook only holds meetings that I am to attend. It?s set to view one day. Every Monday I print out a snapshot of the working week to come. This weekly snapshot I bulldog clip to the inside cover of my [="Red"]ubiquitous capture tool[/] ? [="Blue"]a day to a page A4 diary[/]. This allows me to write to it and view it at a glance. The diary I do not normally use as a diary, but it allows me to automatically see when I've entered notes. I use one of those 4 colours in a single pen jobs to write into my diary. (http://www.epinions.com/content_97060687492) At a convenient time, I review those actions that I?ve dumped into my MLO inbox and sort them into my appropriate contexts/projects and perhaps do a little more thinking on them. MyLife Organized allows me to filter my actions to see all relevant types and is set up to throw [="Red"]reminders [/]at me for things such as peoples birthdays and any of my engineers going on holiday in the next week. ( I use MLO rather than outlook for these because I can set up lead times rather than getting caught out on my fianc?s birthday ) I used one of the standard templates in MLO to set up my work because it can simply regenerate groups of daily tasks like check voicemail and paper inbox. I use a bog-standard [="Red"]in-tray[/] for any mail or paper work to go into before I process it. Any physical documents I want to keep go into the [="Red"]A-Z hanging file[/] behind me. When I?m working at my pc and I find an interesting titbit like a quote or something I just drop it into [="Blue"]Evernote[/] (Cntrl+Alt+v) for future reference. The fact that it remembers the web address it was copied from is a great help. My [="Red"]desktop [/]I?ve copied from lifeclever.com, all I have on it are 6 icons: And a text bar which is my input for [="Blue"]Slickrun [/](Alt+Q). A little genius of a tool which enables me to keep my desktop so clean and tidy. I use [="Blue"]Netvibes [/]to hold a number of shortcuts and RSS feeds for my personal browsing habits, a dashboard of stuff that I ?need? to review, all at once. I?ve a new toy/aide that I?m learning to play with right now; I just recently bought an ?[="Blue"]Invisible Clock II[/]?. It has 12 alarms can be set in vibrate mode ? useful for mental triggers to do things like ?drink water @ every alarm? ? also has a useful meeting timer for pacing meetings. Problems
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GrahamC: Nice work. The advice...Submitted by randellt on September 20, 2006 - 11:48am.
GrahamC: Nice work. The advice I got on tracking delegated items is to trust the people they are delegated to and forget them. That works great if you have complete trust in that person. In MLO I created a context called "@check-ins" and a parent task named "Check in with ..." with it's "This is a project" box ticked off for things like this that I really need to know about and for people I suspect may not deliver. For example a child entry, "Bob re: network diagram for Project X" shows up looking like "{ Check in with ... } Bob re: network diagram for Project X" in my MLO ToDo view. I'm trying not to put all delegated actions in my system to keep my own sanity intact and to work on trusting my people more. jabba: Would you mind sharing your 3x5 template? » POSTED IN:
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