Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
[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
13 Comments
POSTED IN:
Something I learned WRT archiving...Submitted by GrahamC on September 21, 2006 - 6:46am.
enine;6000 wrote:
Something I learned WRT archiving by year. When you do that it tends get messy because you now have to search multiple folders making it a real PITA to search for anything. I spent most of this summer reorganizing Archive folders from 1998 to 2005 into project related so I could have one archive folder with all completed projects and one with active projects so at most I have to make two searches. Copernic makes it totally painless for me to search for stuff - that's part of the joy. I don't actually have to spend time worrying about how i organise my mail - i just dump to archive - no matter how pointless it is. » POSTED IN:
|
|
EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |