GTD
All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin
Didn’t do anything productive
A few weeks ago, there was one day when my mom and I didn’t do anything productive. I had a cache of “Day Break” episodes because my mom hasn’t seen it before, and I thought she might like it. The problem is that she had misplaced her [paper-based] address book, so that was nagging her. We watched through the first six episodes (which, until yesterday, was all of them), but after every other one, she’d get up and look around for that address book.
She finally found it at the bottom of a plastic bag of “stuff” in which she was going to take to the Philippines after Christmas. Of course, she was happy and in a great mood.
Why is it that when I misplace something, then find it later, she’s still mad?
Anyway, if everything you need to do is written down and out of your head, then you can relax during the moments when you’re not dealing with your stuff. Ever since GTD, I’ve felt that much better about basically everything I’m not doing.
Why an agenda list saves a ton of time
“There’s something else I need help with, but I forgot what it was.”
I cringe when I hear this because it usually means I’ll have to make an extra trip back to do another job that might have only taken a few minutes extra.
Now, I have a huge appreciation for agendas. Before, the only time I see or hear about agendas are with older people in managerial positions. When I was coaching, and we had division meetings, the director would pull out a paper listing topics needed to be discussed. (To be honest, I didn’t know it was called an agenda until recently!)
When I talk to my boss, and I sometimes won’t remember what questions I had until I walked out of his office. Then, I’d have to go back and interrupt him again. Sure, he’s only a few steps away, but instead of one “interruption”, I’m turning it into three or four. Annoying? Most likely.
Listen - this stuff is for everybody!
If you’re a student, dedicate a sheet of paper for each class or teacher to write down questions throughout the lecture. When they prompt the class to ask questions, or you meet with them in their office, whip out that paper and go through the questions quickly and easily. (I realize I have to actually follow this advice, so someone hold me to this.)
Last week, I had to meet with a counselor. Rather than keeping the questions in my head, I had them written down. It was so much simpler! What if this small tip would’ve shortened how much time I’ve been in college?
Digital Tracking
In my Palm PDA, I have an “@Agendas” category in the Memos section. When you have more than one topic you need to discuss with someone, create a memo with that person’s name. Below their name, list the questions/ideas you want to bounce off them.
Conclusion
I hope I helped you realize that you can use agendas anywhere, not just at work. It’s definitely made my life that much easier. How has using agendas helped you?
Reference: “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity“, Chapter 7.
When the server dies
For a moment, I hit a brick wall. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I’ve been “away” since last…Thursday. You know, trying to write and keep up with my news reader. It’s been pretty crazy at work. I’ve had a lot to do, but it probably didn’t take as much brain power as it would to restore a whole system, upgrade software on the server, fend off excessive questions, figure out how to restore Exchange data for 200+ accounts to a newer version of Exchange…you get the idea.
The story
When the building was reconstructed, the contractor thought the server room needed a water pipe (since there was going to be an air conditioner inside). He didn’t know it was going to go to the roof.
Last Wednesday, a coworker was trying to turn on the dishwasher. One of the switches was for that water pipe that went into the server room. He flipped the switch, and water started flowing on top of one of the servers. (Not his fault, it wasn’t marked - it was just there.) Fortunately, the water only affected the Exchange and domain server. We have another one for ProLaw, and the other data and switches were on the rack. Something like that.
On Wednesday, Scot was able to upgrade the rack to the Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003. As of Tuesday, I think everything is basically back to normal. Everyone has access to their data, email, calendar, and contacts. The rest is just minor issues here and there, and updating the lesser-used computers to the new domain.
For me, the feeling of crossing off the names of the staff one by one kept me going. Plus, everyone was so nice and understanding. Through it all, Scot didn’t lose his cool. He might have gotten close, but I never saw it - he kept it together.
What can I learn from this?
Some of the staff commented how much they missed everything. The files they were currently working on, plus their calendar, contacts, and email.
- Print your calendar for the upcoming week regularly. You can make changes on this paper by hand, then update the calendar when you get back to your computer.
- Print important email. If it’s really that important, this is a good idea anyway.
- Print your contact list periodically. You put this off, but when you lose it for a period time, you realize how valuable this is.
- Use a PDA. This is fragile, too, so I backup to a SD memory card using BackupBuddyVFS. I sync this to my home and work computer, so I think I have all the angles covered.
- Sync frequently used files to a USB flash drive. Try running PathSync from that drive, too. I love it.
The main one that deserves it’s own section: delete email. Have you read Inbox Zero? I’m happy to say I practice what I preach. (Well, Merlin preaches those articles, but you know what I mean.)
That’s it for now. I’ll be going into work tomorrow as well, with hopefully everything settling back down. Four days this week - amazing!
Take efficient notes, save time
You all like having spare time, right? When you’re studying for a test, that’s what it’s all about - time. Well, if you haven’t heard of the Cornell method, I think Gina Trapani wrote a great article that opened my eyes.
Geek to Live: Take study-worthy lecture notes (@ Lifehacker)
So why am I just now going to make sure I take notes in this way? For years, I’ve taken notes in classes. (How much I took is irrelevant. *grin*) For years, I earned mediocre grades when it came time for the tests.
Why? Because I couldn’t study efficiently.
Sure, you can type up almost everything the professor says. You can even record the whole lecture. But when it comes time to study, will all that content help you?
I can remembering buying my Griffin iTalk and Griffin Lapel Mic so I could record all the classes. When I used them, they got the job done. (After a late night, or I was really groggy in class.) When it came time for the final, I never listened to them again - there was too much! Recording a lecture isn’t a substitute for taking good notes.
The last thing I want now that I [should be] back at Cal Poly is to finish and regret not having done better. I think adopting a better system of taking notes is worth the learning curve. This post is for myself, but I know lots of you might be heading in this direction. I just want to help you figure it out quicker than me, whatever it is.
What’s worse? The pain of change, or the pain of regret? Take efficient notes now, or feel the burn of finals week when you’re scrambling for all that study material.
How to manually keep your contacts synchronized
A light bulb materialized above my cranium as I was manually “synchronizing” the contacts between my Palm Tungsten E and my cell phone. Usually, if we get a new phone number, we put it into our phone and leave it at that. What about the geeks that has a PDA?
My solution? Write the number down immediately! (Put in in your inbox, too.)
Personally, I don’t carry my PDA with me in my pocket; it’d be too bulky. By writing it down, when I get back to my PDA, I can add that contact there as well. You have to be vigilant to do this when someone changes their phone number, too.
My goal: never to have mismatching contact information for anyone across all my devices.
What do you do to make sure you have up-to-date contact information for everyone?
Vegetate at peace
Are the days you just “veg” good days?
You know what I mean. It’s your day off, you just vegetate at home.
I’ve been having a few of these days these past couple of weeks. How can I do this and go on with peace of mind?
The weekly review! (If you need a refresher, Black Belt Productivity summarizes chapter 8.)
Sure, my schedule is really wide open now that I’m not coaching. Aside from that, there’s always something for me to do - it just so happens that most of the tasks I have written down aren’t that important.
Reading through David Allen’s “Ready For Anything”, chapter 13 hit home:
If I didn’t have the lists I have, and if I hadn’t done a thorough review of them within the last few days, I wouldn’t have been able to trust my inventory of ‘defined work’ was complete and current this morning. And that it could wait. [...] Without my lists, I would probably still have pruned my pine tree this morning — but for all the wrong reasons.
I love how I don’t worry as much as the average person. I’m not apathetic, I’m just at peace with all my lists. What about you?
How to speed up podcasts for free with Audacity
Update 4/18/2007: This post is outdated. Audacity 1.3.2 (Beta) changes the method a bit, which I describe here.
Over a month ago, Lifehacker linked to an article: “Speeding Up Podcasts and Audio Books“. Here are the two sentences that caught my eye:
It lets you play one minute and fifteen seconds of audio for every minute you listen. In other words, you get an extra 25% of content.
However:
It’s the feature that Apple introduced with the 4G iPods back a couple of years ago. The feature is the ability to speed up (or slow down) audio without changing the pitch (if you are familiar with variable speed tape recorders, you understand that simply speeding up the playback of something tends to also make the speaker sound like a chipmunk).
I have a 3G iPod, so I don’t have this feature. The article mentioned Amazing Slow Downer, but it’s not free. Fortunately, Matt commented about Audacity:
Audacity is great for this, at an unbeatable price ($0). [..] It is cross platform, open source (free), and [speeds] up audio excellently, [in addition to] being a general purpose audio editor. There was a beta of the next version last time I checked that allowed bulk conversion. Unfortunately no command-line. (Effect [menu] > Change Tempo is the command you want.)
So, if I want to speed up podcasts, I have to do some work. Except for the tempo increase, it won’t be automatic.
Why is Outlook broken?
A coworker asked me, “Outlook is broken - can you fix it?”
I go to her office, asking them to reproduce the problem. So, they use the “Find” feature to try and find an email, types in one search term, then clicks “Go” (or whatever it was). Then, Outlook froze. Okay, so she ends the process and restarts Outlook. A couple minutes later, I walk out of their office, problem “solved”.
What happened?
She was searching 6,000+ emails! Those aren’t stored locally, either; we have an Exchange server. So, I explained that the server probably got overloaded and didn’t respond to her client computer, which led to Outlook freezing up.
My suggestion? Move the emails around (into sub folders, since their inbox contained all those emails). Then, you could narrow down the search more easily. I saw a bunch from 2004 and 2005, so those probably need to be purged and/or archived. My other tip, put the email from 2004 and 2005 into their own folders, labeled respectively. A few minutes at a time, they could go through them and just delete the ones they don’t need anymore.
From what I’ve learned with GTD, I went a bit further to explain that the inbox should just be used as a collection box, and they needed to sort the email into other folders to make it easier to take next actions.
So, what are my current email folders?
- @Action
- @Public Counsel
- @Read Only
- @Waiting For
- Archive
- Finances
- Public Counsel Reference
- Purchases
- To Nuke
I have folders which help me narrow down where an email from my inbox should be relocated to (if needed). That allows me to find emails more easily. However, you should definitely tweak the system to suit your needs.
My secret: the “To Nuke” folder. When I get an email, and I’ve already replied to it or took action with it, I’ll move it to my “To Nuke” folder immediately. Every week, I’ll sift through it to see if any email won’t be needed any longer. Most times, it’s usually safe to clear it out.
Remember, this is what works for me. You need to figure out a system that’ll help you manage your email much more efficiently, even if it only saves you a few seconds. It’ll add up. Hopefully you can take my fairly broad folder system and adapt it to your usage. (No, it isn’t a new idea - I’m just stating it my own way. Inbox Zero is much more detailed…you don’t even know!)
Oh yeah, if you slack off for awhile, don’t worry about it. Just get back on track, m’kay? If it makes you feel any better, I’m slackin’ right now, and today would be perfect to get things back in order.
Chill a bit
I’ve been taught that you need to keep yourself busy so you don’t get into trouble. That’s probably good advice, because if you leave someone with not much to do, you’re more likely to get into trouble. So, I keep myself “busy”. However, my definition of busy might differ from yours.
I coach, work, and go to school. In my free time, I try to stay nimble in card magic, play guitar in a band, blog, read other blogs, play video games at friends’ houses, etc. What’s the difference in the type of busy-ness of these things? Some of these are necessary for me to advance in life, some are necessary to help other improve in their lives, and some are simply for me to get away from the craziness of life to relax.
In chapter 47 of Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life:
There is seldom enough time and energy to do what you want to do, when you focus only from the level of physical doing. You must constantly let go, relax, and refocus. If you’re in a hurry, your vision can become myopic and your energy can be prematurely exhausted. With your clear intention inserted into the universe, trust that the method and the process and the resources for its manifestation will unfold in the grander scheme, in the best timing. Chill a bit, and allow yourself to play your bigger game.
Two guys in our band took off last week for a few days to just chill and stuff. A road trip, I guess. When they got back, both sounded fresh and ready for the upcoming week, whereas before, one of them seem agitated in regards to our upcoming show. Yesterday, I hung out at a friend’s house all afternoon and played video games, then we watched a DVD that evening before taking off.
The difference I see between me and some of my friends is that they might not take the needed time off to relax. Sure, I might be sacrificing something in the process, but in the long run, I feel that I’m better for it. Ideas definitely pop into my head when I’m not stressing out about something.
At the end of the chapter, David listed three questions:
- What can you do today that you know you don’t have time for?
- What wheels seem to be spinning in your life and work that could use a rest?
- When is the last time you did absolutely nothing?
An elegant and portable inbox
I bought an Office Depot Poly Ultra Wallet a while ago because I wanted a portable inbox - it only costs three bucks. Basically, it’s an inexpensive (cheap) solution when you’re out and want to keep whatever stuff you gather throughout the day. Then when you get home, you can dump everything into your main inbox. Additionally, you could keep a small pad of stickies to “tag” the items for easier processing later on.
It definitely looks nice because they come in assortment of colors - I have a blue one! 
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