Category: post

I couldn’t not post about this right away. Looks like the fine fellows at 37Signals are finally going to give us the Backpack upgrades they have had cooking for a while now. You can find the first sneak preview here. It features the new ability to place item types anywhere on the page. It was frustratingly static before, so this will be a welcome change.
Not only that, but they have been doing some interesting things with OpenID. Now with several of their apps (Highrise, Basecamp, with Backpack to come), when you sign on to one of them using your OpenID, you get a bar across the top of the page called OpenBar. It has links to all of your other 37 Signals Open ID enabled applications which you are then able to seamlessly switch between. In other words, log into one and it will log you into all and allow you to easily switch between them. No need to keep verifying your credentials because OpenID has already provided them. It knows which Basecamp, Highrise, etc. accounts are yours because OpenID has told them who you are. It is the sort of thing that OpenID was made for. Brilliant.
In any case, I am super excited for all of the things coming down the road from these guys. If past history is any indication, I am sure I won’t be disappointed and it will be worth the wait.

In my day job, I work for a 4-year residential liberal arts college. It is a great job with many benefits – both granted and not. One of the benefits comes along each summer. When a vast majority of the students leave to go home, they tend not to cancel their magazine subscriptions for that 3 month period. Instead, the magazines arrive and get left in some large postal bins by the mailroom. With no recipient there to greet them, they become free for the taking.
Those that know me know that I love magazines, especially when they are free. So, I am known to go down and scrounge through the bins picking out anything that seems remotely interesting without regard to need, time or any other constraint because, well, they are FREE.
Of course, It is not like I have the time to read dozens of magazines. I barely have the time to read the limited amount that I actually subscribe to and DO read, nearly cover-to-cover, every month. After a few weeks of seeing the pile of magazines grow on my desk, with no time to ever get through them, I knew I either had to find some way of reading them or put them back for someone that would.
Then, it occurred to me. In the digital world, using Google Reader, I quickly jump through hundreds of posts in dozens of RSS feeds I subscribe to. When I do this, I star the ones I am interested in or require more time to read fully. Then, when my time and energy allow, I go through my starred items and read them. Here is how I apply that same method with the magazines.
First, I flip through the pages quickly scanning the headlines for things that I want to take the time to read. Using Post-It Flags, I mark the pages with stories that look interesting to me. This way, I can go back through and quickly jump to only those articles that I marked when I have the time to read them, already having put the time in up front of doing the finding. Just like using the starred items in Google Reader.
I know this may seem simple, but it saves me tons of time that I otherwise would have spent doing the wading and reading at the same time. It also made useful a stack of items that seemed to become so daunting, due to the sheer time I perceived to be involved, that I never derived any benefit. There are even several magazines I find myself returning to the bin, not having found anything worth my while during that first quick pass.
It is all about being able to focus in on the signals knowing that I have already aggregated them from the noise.

About a year ago, I wrote a very long whitepaper that outlined my Getting things Done influenced productivity system (some might even call it exhaustive) . A little something I deemed Org-Fu. That being said, like many things, systems change. They naturally grow and evolve with time and with some consistent evaluation of what works and what does not. Here, I will focus more on what has changed with my system and simply refer back to my original Productivity Whitepaper for the items that have not. Without further ado, here is my system as it stands today:
Tools

• Capture Device – Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase/Jott
• Physical Inbox- Ikea Dokument
• Next Actions/Projects and Lists – OmniFocus
• Calendar/Reminders – Backpack
• Notes/Misc. Info/Research- Yojimbo
• Vertical Mapping – OmniOutliner Pro
• E-mail – Mail.app
• Physical Notes – Levenger Circa (Letter Sized)/Large Moleskine

Capture Device
For a couple of years I was an avid fan of a Ruled Pocket Moleskine for capture. While it served me well for that time I often found it a bit too bulky to carry around in my jeans pockets. There was not enough room in the front pockets with other stuff in there like my keys, phone or wallet. Putting it in my back pocket caused it to bend and the pages to come loose from the spine as I would sit and move.
I considered other alternatives but wound up expanding the use of my Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase for the majority of my capture. It is slim and slips into my back pocket easily. I always have it at the ready and use the same dash/plus system on index cards as I did with the Moleskine. I then process those items into OmniFocus (see below) when I am at my computer.
In those cases when I am unable to capture by writing, while driving for instance, I use Jott. Jott allows me to call and leave a message for myself which then gets translated into text and e-mailed to me. I then can process those into OmniFocus with a simple copy and paste.
The combo of these two tools is a killer capture system for me as I always have one or both with me at all times. It is what capture in GTD should be – easy, fast and ubiquitous.
Physical Inbox
Nothing changed here. For more information, please refer to my Productivity Whitepaper.
Next Actions/Projects and Lists
OmniFocus is a soon to be released GTD based organization tool from the fine folks at The Omni Group. They have long made many of my favorite and most used applications on the Mac and they certaily don’t disappoint with this one. OmniFocus is still in a limited alpha release so I am not sure I am at liberty to say to much about it. I have posted about it before.
OmniFocus is heavily rooted in the GTD methodology and, as one would expect, allows one to organize by next actions and projects and execute by contexts. It allows for working on project tasks in order or in parallel. It also allows for sub projects. It is, hands down, the most user friendly and perfectly crafted GTD application I have ever used.
Calendar/Reminders
After many years with my old friend, Now Up-to-Date and Contact, I had to leave. It was a bittersweet goodbye filled with a few tears and some restless nights. The only solace I found was in a simpler life filled with SMS and e-mail, ease of entry and browser based ubiquitousness. That’s right, I now use the Backpack Calandar and Reminders features for my hard and soft landscape needs.
Regular reader know that I am a huge fan of Backpack and, until OmniFocus came along, I used if for all of my GTD needs. Now, I mainly use if for the Calandar and Reminders. the Calendar is very basic and no frills but it does the job of telling me where I need to be and when I need to be there. The one feature I have come to not be able to live without is that reminders are sent 30 minutes before an event via SMS to your mobile phone or via e-mail or both. Killer. I use the reminder for those “soft landscape” items that are not quite events but I still need a tickler anyway. I have written about hard versus soft landscape items here before.
Notes/Misc. Info/Research
Yojimbo basically took the place of two applications I wrote about in my previous whitepaper – NoteTaker and Notational Velocity. I pretty much use it as I did those other two applications. It is my digital commonplace. I store all sorts of things there. Meeting notes, research, project support materials, bookmarks, web clippings, PDF’s of product manuals, passwords for websites, even the chore lists I leave for my sons. If I need to write something that is not a blog post or and e-mail, it usually begins it’s life in Yojimbo. If I need to store information that I might need to find later, it usually ends up in Yojimbo.
The main reason for this is that I find it easy to search for things quickly and in a iety of ways when I need them. I keep things sorted by date modified so that the most current stuff I have saved or edited is always at the top. In addition, I let it sort things for me using the smart folder like “tag collections” feature so it is easy to search a subset of items grouped by a tag I have assigned them.
In a perfect world, the Finder in Mac OS X would work this way and there would not be a need for an application like this. It is getting there and it looks like with improvements to spotlight and the quick look features in Leopard it will get even closer. That being said, at this point I would be hard pressed to give up the ease and elegance that Yojimbo offers.
Vertical Mapping
Nothing changed here. For more information, please refer to my Productivity Whitepaper.
E-mail
Nothing changed here. For more information, please refer to my Productivity Whitepaper.
Physical Notes
I wrote about my paper based notetaking and love of using Levenger paper and Moleskine in the original whitepaper. Not much has changed here either.
There is one small change however. At the time I wrote:

“I am considering replacing the Levenger notepads with a Levenger Circa Notebook in order to keep things a bit more organized and complete but am not quite ready to cross that expensive bridge yet.”

Well, I did not have to cross it because my wife crossed it for me and got me a beautiful Bomber Jacket Leather Letter Sized Circa for our first anniversary. Granted, there was lots of heavy hinting from me to her on this purchase but, hey, it was paper and therefore was an appropriate first anniversary gift.
The short review is that is it beautiful. It is one of the few things I own that I look forward to having reasons to use it. I have some tabbed dividers in place to create a few sections. I have a section called Actions. One for Notes. One called Project Support where I can punch project materials using a Circa/Rollabind punch I borrowed from a friend. Then one final section called Archive that everything goes to when I am done with it. My plan is to eventually get some more Circa rings and gather these items and file them when it begins to pile up.
I have not been using it too long but it is a great system that is helping me stay on top of my game.

Just a reminder to my regular readers. When you do not see much activity here, feel free to check out my tumblelog – The Random Post.
There you will find cool links, photos, quotes, funny words and odd angles. Basically, it is all the little snippets that catch my attention while cruising the interwebs and is far less structured than the posts here.
If you do check it out, and you enjoy it, I would love to hear your feedback. Heck, I would love to hear your feedback even if you don’t.

Merlin Mann once again drops the mad science on how to get prepared from the upcoming release of OmniFocus which I have mentioned here before. That being said, the tips he gives not only apply to OmniFocus, but can apply whenever you are in the process of switching to a new application for your productivity system. Here is Merlin’s take…

“Moving your world of action into a new application is like moving into a new house (and can be almost as stressful). This is your chance to throw away crap, rethink how you’ve been doing things, and just give yourself a fresh start. So before you ever fire up OmniFocus for that first time, do yourself a favor and get sorted out with your current system first. Believe me, you’re much more likely to handle this well before the temptation of having the app in your hands sends you diving into using it full-time.”

I have been preaching this sermon for a long time. An application can help to support a robust productivity system but, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is finding a system that works for you. When your system stops working, gets a little stale or no longer inspires – treat it as an opportunity to refresh and recharge. While I don’t recommend always looking for “the perfect GTD application”, sometimes switching out the tools gives you the inspiration and excitement you need to get back into the game. It has for me at least.

I know it has been a while once again so this will be an attempt to catch back up and share with you all of the informative little nuggets of wisdom I have run across.
Apologies up front. My brain is kind of all over the place today so this part of the series might come off as a bunch of senseless rambling.
Leo at Lifehack.org shares some great tips on pairing down your todo list to it’s bare essentials. He introduces the idea thusly

“Do your days seem to be crazy busy and your to-do list filled up with an endless supply of tasks? Is your calendar full and your work day a non-stop rush from one thing to another?… If so, you may have too much on your plate. It’s time to step back, take a few minutes, and pare down that to-do list to just the bare essentials”.

Basically, the idea is to only focus on those things that you absolutely need to get done and defer the rest. I have noticed an increasing number of movements along this line as of late. David Seah’s Emergent Task Planning sheets being one elegant example of this. As someone who has been very overwhelmed as of late with a mind-boggling amount of tasks on my plate I can say that such methods have had an alluring appeal. And now that you have used these techniques to win back some time, Leo also has this list of productive ways of using it.
The 37 Signals Product Blog highlights some blogs posts on how to use Backpack to get your GTD on… And my post on my GTD Implementation ideas is one of the ones featured! So cool to be recognized.
Wondering what this whole GTD thing is I speak of and how to get started? Well how about this massive list of GTD resources?
My iChat buddy list is nowhere near the number where it is in need of organization. That being said, when it gets there I plan on using this method promoted by Chanpory at LifeClever. Simply divide them up into groups based on the frequency with which you chat with them. They also suggest some other groupings that, depending upon your usage, may prove more useful. The root of it all is to use the grouping features in your chat client to tame that list, enhance the signal and manage the noise. Interesting ideas for sure. Much is written about taming e-mail but (IMHO) not nearly enough is written about getting control over your IM.
For those of you who are fed up and really want to go radical on the distraction cutting front, checking out what Brian Oberkirch did to trim his attention sails is awe inspiring. In fact, I am literally afraid of some of suggestions but there are some true gems in there too.
While we are at it, how about a no meeting day for your place of work?
Personally, I would like a no anything day every once in a while.

OmniFocus, the long awaited Getting Things Done based application from the fine folks at The OmniGroup, is currently in alpha and has been made available to a few brave folks, of which I am one, who are willing to put up with the potential bugginess of it all. Therefore, there is not too much I should say about it quite yet. Here is what I can say:

• I have been actively using it for for all of my personal and work related projects and next actions. I have run into a couple of bugs but that is to be expected in an alpha build. Having had a former job in software QA, I have had experience in such matter and I have been making sure to back up the database regularly. That being said, nothing yet has made me nervous about actively using it for my GTD system.
• It is a very solid GTD application. It is really effective at encouraging you to focus on next actions and working your plan in contexts. It has it’s own built in quick entry panel and Quicksilver integration to make adding items quick and easy. It is, in my humble opinion, going to be the GTD app to rule them all once it is released.

• Short of 37 Signals pulling any rabbits out of their hat soon, I very well may use it permanently for my GTD system.

Even though it is not widely released, The Omni Group has been very forthcoming with video previews and other information about the application. If you are interested check out Ethan Schoonover’s OmniFocus videos here and here for a good overview of the product.

Wow, long time since a post. Life has been crazy. Hopefully, the offerings of today will make up for it:
OmniFocus looks like it is coming along just fine. Although it is still in Alpha and has not yet been made available outside The OmniGroup, Ethan Schoonover provides a long detailed video of the sorts of things we can expect. Needless to say I am chomping at the bit to get my hands on this.
Unclutterer has a great post about a new organization system for files called Freedom Filer. Basically, they give you the tabs for your hanging files and a system, you implement it and they promise you will never have paper in a clutter in your file cabinet again (or be afraid to even get that far). Looks intriguing. I have had “organize filing cabinet” on my someday/maybe list for a while now. Therefore, this solution is tempting.
Whitelines is a new concept in paper. Instead of a darker ruled page that we have become accustomed to, it actually has a white rule. Some of the advantages to this is that your writing stands out more and the lines do not show up if you make a photocopy.
Zen Habits is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs. Not only due to the middle path solutions to life that are on offer but the posts are regular and the content is well written. Take, for instance, the recent series on ZTD (Zen To Done). It is a modified version of GTD with a focus on forming habits and simplicity. Brilliant ideas and suggestions here, especially if you are having trouble staying on the productive saddle.
Lifehacker comes through once again on the Google GTD tips. This time, the walk you through using Google Notebook to get your Org-fu on. Google Notebook is a very useful tool in it’s own right but this brings it to another level. Ya dig?
Speaking of Fu… Merlin Mann drops the knowledge on some handy ways to use Smart Mailboxes in Mail.app… His fu is strong.

I am currently at MinneBar, an un-conference happening in the Lowertown area of Saint Paul today. Looks to be a great day with many promising sessions.
I am liveblogging the event (or at least the sessions I am attending) over at my other web space – The Random Post. Hop on over and check it out for some regular live updates.

When some people first start implementing GTD, they feel the need to run out and spends lots of cash getting chic notebooks, nice pens, expensive folders and labelers. While these things are nice to have you don’t need a lot of money to get started with a trusted system. Towards that end, Brett at the ever useful Cranking Widgets blog has a good tutorial on making a GTD system for about $20. Proof that is is about the system, not the tools.
Jott is the first truly killer web app I have seen in a while. It works like this – Call Jott, tell it who you want to send a Jott to, talk after the beep, the magic robot turns your words into text, robot sends your words as e-mail. Send a Jott to yourself, send one to others, all from your phone. Killer.
Wise Geek has some good tips on making your offline life a little easier. Some of my fave tips here include, keeping your essential items in one place, keeping a backup fund of cash hidden for emergencies, and saying “no”. (via Lindsay)