Pure Play

Taking Control: Why your email client may not be the place to run todo lists

'Bull - it has to be. Its where I spend the most time. And where most of my actions come from."

All that is true. However it takes a lot of work to make the structure of a piece of software designed to manage email into a system which is flexible enough to help you control all of your stuff.

A key issue is the actions which arise outside of your email - voice mails, twitter messages, physical paper stuff (remember that?), texts, messaging from online collaboration systems, whereever.

All of those items need to be incorporated into your system. And the emails which are non-action items (for review, for reference, for delegation or just to be deleted) need to be cleared out of it.

As  you move from a basic email client or service (ie Mail on the Mac) to a more featured offering like Outlook then the task becomes easier with discrete areas for tasks and calendar items which are nicely integrated. Addons such as the GTD® Outlook® Add-In by Netcentrics or the Jello dashboard for Outlook.

Ultimately you have to balance the friction which comes from using multiple pieces of software with the compromises around implemention of your system using software not designed for that purpose.

keith

 

Taking Control: Avoiding the mental head wreck of endless to-do lists

I have rarely met anyone who can deal with to-do lists that are hundreds of items long - there is a serious mental challenge to scanning something that long without pulling away and finding something less painful to do.

That is where projects come in. In Getting Things Done terms a project is anything which will take more than one action (remembering that an action is something discrete as opposed to a large and sweeping aspiration statement!).

So for me almost everything falls into the category of projects. And inevitabley some projects are more pressing or more important than others. So the actions contained within those projects are ususally the only ones I consider when deciding what to do on any particular day.

A level above that I group projects into discrete sections - usually operational. So either a larger project which contains several elements (a complex website build for example) or an operational area.

What do you do to make sense of your list?

keith

Taking Control: Things you may need to refer to sometime

When working your way through the stuff that clogs up your inbox each day it is really helpful to have a well organised and accessible place to put reference materials.

For physical stuff that place should be to hand - making the filing away really quick and easy.

For digital stuff it can be tricky depending on what devices you use and what the policies are whereever you work.

Whatever you use should fulfil the following, or as many of them as possible:

• Capable of taking information orginating in multiple formats (ie html for webpages, pdf's etc)
• Be instantly searchable across both titles and content for all parts of it
• Be usable on as many devices as is practical

There are an increasing number of services which allow for the above - my working one is Evernote. This is around since June 2008 and has been developed and improved constantly since then.

For me it allows me to take either a whole document or a clip of one (a copy and paste) really easily - and it preserves the formatting when you do so.

Sorting can be done on a number of levels - Notebooks, Places or tags and you also have a kickass search function.

Sync is instant - so as I drop information into it on my main computer it is copied into "the cloud" and then instantly available on my other computer, my laptop and my iPad.

It does not matter what you use - it just needs to do the job for you. What is your favorite tool for digital reference holding?

keith

Thanks to MrBill for the photo

Taking Control: Tackling an email backlog after holidays

The theory of a zero inbox (briefly this says that you need to process your email and get it the hell out of your inbox to a system somewhere else - resulting in a strong mental boost to see it at zero) can go by the wayside for good after a break of a week or two.

The cumulative backlog may need some more brutal hacking through to regain control - otherwise it will suck the will to live from you!

A great post on this was done by Gina Trapani in her Work Smart series. You can see the full post here - it is entitled How to Power Through a Mountain of Email and the key messages are:

• You may well need to work in bulk - imposing straightforward deletions based on criteria like sender or lenght of time since received.
• Give yourself permission for short responses - clearing your decks in a much more concise way than normal.

The sooner you do this the sooner you will regain control and lessen your stress. Check out the full post.

keith

 

Taking Control. Sorting out an office working area

We had friends around at the weekend and at one point the conversation turned to his office and how he was frustrated with it.

That frustration was initially expressed as a lack of daylight (he works with his back to the window).

We pulled up Abobe Ideas on the iPad and sketched out his currently layout, identified a much larger list of issues and then made the following change suggestions:

Physical Layout

His desk was modelled on the traditional idea of facing the door. Which is great, except that it put his primary work surface (and a chunk of wood)between him and his guests in room.

Personally I prefer not to do this, when I meet people I turn around and we work face to face with nothing between us.

Removing that requirement meant that he could change his layout and have the desk facing out the window. Making sure that the glare from the sun would not cause an issue with his monitor. Working Files That also produced a bonus - his working files are on shelves high up (good) but currently not reachable by him when working (bad).

The new layout means he can reach up while sitting and get what he needs. That is much better as it allows him to move all working files off his desk.

File Storage

Next was the meeting table, currently a dumping ground. As well as that his extensive shelves also enable him to function as another area for medium term file storage. However the presence of numerous files relating to non-current projects inhibits him from clearing the room.

Decisions On What Stuff Is

He now has a task to work through each file, wherever it is, and do 2 things.

Firstly make a decision on what it is:

• Current actionable project belonging to him
• Current actionable project belonging to someone else
• Project for the future
• Reference material to be either stored or read.

Next get rid of all the stuff that belongs to someone else, is a future project (making a note of it) or is reference material.

Next Actions

Finally be clear on everything that remains of what the next action is - in Getting Things Done (GTD) terms each action needs to contain a verb and so can be immediately done if required.

We did not go anywhere near an actual system for recording all of his projects and actions. The above chunk of work will take him a chunk of time to implement and in itself will give him an enormous mental boost.

Once that has happened I will introduce the next stage of GTD implementation to him ;)

Keith