Brain Freeze

Via Kottke.

Wow. What a fantastic story.
I Heart Zappos

OK well maybe not. But based on the way Apple’s email to me crowing about iTunes Plus options on the iTunes store makes it sound you’d think they’d gone to mp3 format for those selections. I quote:

With high-quality 256-Kbps AAC encoding and no DRM (digital rights management), the iTunes Plus catalog is the largest DRM-free catalog in the world. And that means you can play iTunes Plus music on any iPod or other digital music player and an unlimited number of computers.

“Play music on any iPod or other digital music player” (emphasis mine). Surely they jest. The only other player I know of that currently plays AAC is the Zune. Apple certainly chose interesting phrasing. It sounds on first reading that these files will work with any player, iPod or otherwise. On second reading I’m not sure what they’re saying.

Whatever the case woe to the person who buys tracks off the music store only to find out that they don’t actually play on most other players save for the iPod lineup.

In part 1 of this series I had an intro about my use of GTD. In part 2 I want to talk about using Google Calendar (GCal) in my GTD system. Part 1 discussed the why around using Google Calendar. This part will discuss the how.

Multiple Calendars/Categories

One of the things I really love about Microsoft Outlook, especially the 2007 edition, is the ability to categorize your calendar items and assign colors (the color functionality was expanded in 2007). This gives you a nice visual cue as to what items belong where. This functionality can be easily duplicated within Google Calendar by using multiple calendars and their associated colors. Since Google “fixed” the calendar application to allow all calendars (not just the primary one) to allow reminders, etc. to be set and transmitted via email (or whichever option you choose) there is no reason not to do this.

Marking things complete

Part of my old workflow in Outlook was to use red for completed items. This gave me an instant visual cue as to which items I had already dealt with. You might ask why I’d do that and for some people it may not be necessary. David Allen says that the calendar should be sacred ground and that if something makes it’s way in there that it should be dealt with and not moved (of course there are exceptions…but in general that should be the case). The simple fact that an item is in the past indicates that it has been completed. Me? I’m paranoid. If I look back a month I want to know that I completed things (usually revolving around paying bills). The red indicator was great for that. Unfortunately I can’t do that in Google Calendar.

OK so I can sorta do it in Google Calendar. If an item isn’t part of a recurring series you can move the item to the Completed calendar/category to change the color to red (or whatever color means “complete” to you and stands out). However if an item you want to mark complete is part of a recurring series doing this will move every instance of the event to the Completed calendar/category. In most cases when you edit one instance of a series the calendar application will ask you if you want to apply changes to that one instance or the whole series but not in the case of changing which calendar something belongs too.

OK so you can’t use a Completed category…now what?

Glad you asked. Instead of changing the calendar to Completed I now just put an indicator at the beginning of the item “What” field. My indicator is (C). C for complete…get it? Easy as that and its a pretty obvious indicator. I plan on using that in other situations as well such as recording when I put gas in my car so I know how often I’ve been having to fill up, when I last had auto maintenance, etc.

The GCal Tickle

Ah yes. The infamous 43 Folders (the actual folders mind you…not the website). I use my calendar as my tickler file. I generally don’t have to store any paper so a note in my calendar on a specific date is good enough. Any required notes for an entry go into the description field. “Tickler file” entries get categorized into the very few major categories I use (like Financial for bills) and entered as “all day” events so they’re always at the top of the calendar. These items generally don’t require a certain time to get done, just some time that day. The nice thing about these entries is that GCal (Outlook does the same thing) defaults your availability status to ‘available’ for these entries so you don’t show up as busy. If I am going to be truly busy all day I create a real appointment that marks out my time for that whole day. That is a better visual indicator to me that I need to be doing something.

Conclusion

I hope this was helpful. It really isn’t that difficult but sometimes just reading how someone else does something is a great motivator for tweaking your own system. In part 3 of this short series of articles I’ll talk about using Remember the Milk and Toodledo for list management. I’ve still been using both of them simultaneously and they both work equally well for me as list managers. More in part 3.

I’m a liberal. I read a lot of liberal political blogs. I really hate this style of writing and it appears all over sites like dailykos.com (this example from crooksandliars.com…context is irrelevant):

Worst. Presidency. Ever.

Using. One. Word. As. A. Sentence. To. Emphasize. A. Statement. Is. Annoying.

Please guys stop this insanity.

I added this blog to their web page but never got a chance to get around to writing an environmental entry. I did however get one up over at my other blog, Greenability, so please see that. I am going to post the banner for Blog Action Day to show my support here.

I’ve read quite a few articles in the past about implementing GTD with online applications such as Google Calendar while I was attempting to use Microsoft Outlook 2007 myself when hopping on the GTD bandwagon. I wanted everything in one place, both work and personal, and given that I had attended one of David Allen’s GTD seminars and purchased the PDF of using Outlook with GTD I wanted to try Outlook.

Note: on the linked web page there is a note that the current document is not compatible with Outlook 2007. I wouldn’t go that far because most of the instructions are exactly the same with only minor differences in where some things might be located. Here is my write-up of that document and its use with Outlook 2007.

On the wagon

GTD really excited me when I first heard about it. It still excites me today. Well, the idea of it excites me but even something such as GTD, which on the face appears so damn simple, can be really complicated. After attending the seminar I was ready to hit the road running with this stuff. I was going to get my life, both personal and work, humming like a finely-tuned engine. Then reality set in.

Off the wagon

In my opinion the weekly review really is bogus. Not bogus in that the idea is worthless but in the frequency. I needed to do a daily review it seemed when just starting out. I’m pretty sure that David Allen says you need to do your review as often as is necessary to make yourself trust your system and for me that review needed to happen daily.

Even with that I found it extremely difficult corralling all of the thoughts and ideas flitting through my mind. I tried to get everything down, on paper if necessary, transferring into Outlook and into my lists there. Many times I could not get things down because I didn’t have the pen and small notebook I bought to carry everywhere or I was not near a computer. In the instances when I did get those things recorded in some form I then found it really difficult to know whether a given item really should be a project.

David Allen talks about what a project is in the book. It is anything that needs two or more actions done to complete it. And those actions have to be concrete, actionable steps. It isn’t enough to say “talk to Fred about purchase”. It has to be “call Fred on phone about purchase”. I have been finding it extremely difficult to break things down that way. I’m not sure why at this point but there is some mental block that keeps me from creating projects properly and that, along with the need for me to have a daily review to go over all of this stuff, really killed my use of GTD. It was just too hard.

Back on the wagon

All that being said I decided to give it a shot again. One reason being because I wanted to see if it worked. Worked for me that is. I know it works for others. The other reason was that I decided to split out my work/life calendars and lists and wanted to give the whole GTD thing a shot with online applications like Google Calendar. It also seemed to be a good reason to test out Remember The Milk and Toodledo simultaneously to see how both operated as list managers with the same information.

So with that part 2 will talk about how I have integrated Google’s calendar into my workflow. Then I will follow-up with the comparison of RTM and Toodledo as list managers.

Note: I know that David Allen says that everything should be kept in one spot to make things easier. At work we use Outlook and I did try doing that. I really want to keep my work/life stuff separate for various reasons. Also I just didn’t like the fit of Outlook to the GTD workflow. It just didn’t work right for me.

Kottke posted this story, 9/11 is over, by Thomas Friedman. Friedman is right, 9/11 is over. It was over a long time ago. What the hell has happened to us?

Being an American is almost embarrassing these days (and to those who would tell me to go live somewhere else, stuff it. I was born here). In days when we are asking Congress for yet another $190 billion for the war in Iraq, which most people want nothing to do with anymore and who want our troops back home, our President is about to veto a $35 billion dollar healthcare program for children claiming that it is a middle-class entitlement and that it goes beyond what the original program set out to do (and the majority of people do want this program). What the hell is wrong with this country?

As a nation we’ve become war-mongering, fear-pushing losers. Environmental problems? Bah. TERRORISM! Dwindling value of the dollar? Bah. TERRORISM I say!

I really hope this country comes to it’s senses during the next election and puts someone in office who can move us forward instead of someone who keeps us on this never-ending path of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

On the Davidco website in the Products section they offer a PDF file called “GTD and Outlook” that describes, funny enough, how to implement your lists, etc in Outlook if you’re implementing GTD.

The website states that the document was really designed for Outlook 2003 and they stress

*NOTE* This current document is NOT yet compatible with Outlook 2007.

I’m here to tell you that with minor tweaks it works just fine with Outlook 2007.

Action List Manager

This section basically works as-is. One difference is the section that discusses customizing your master category list. In Outlook 2007 there is no “master category list” per se. It is just called Categories. It serves the same purpose but the implementation under the covers is different, and better. In this section of the document you simply need to bring up a new task as stated in the directions but you then select Categorize in the ribbon and then select All Categories. Then simply follow the same instructions given in the paper to set up your categories.

There is a task “speed key” that they describe of -g to open the master category list. In Outlook 2007 the equivalent is first -h followed by g. Key Tips and badges (as they are called) are described here.

One other section that is a bit different to set up in Outlook 2007 is where they describe having your task list display next to your daily calendar. The “Arrange by” menu mentioned is gone. Current View for the Calendar has its own menu now and TaskPad has been replaced by the To-Do Bar. So…to restructure their instructions (while on the calendar display):

1. View->Current View->Day/Week/Month
2. View->To-Do Bar
• select Normal
• select Date Navigator
• select Task List

Using the Calendar

This section is exactly the same. It really discusses more how GTD has you use your calendar vs. anything about Outlook.

Organizing Email

Same as above. This is more about what to do with email vs. Outlook-specific items.

Useful Lists/Notes

The only difference here are the menu changes in Outlook 2007. Outlook 2007 has View->Current View and View-Arrange By as two separate menus. Also, instead of Categories in the menu that is accessed in a note by clicking on the icon in the upper-left portion of the note you will see Categorize. Easy.

Final Words

As can been seen the changes, as they relate to the “GTD and Outlook” document, are slight. Really there are just some menu changes that have been made between Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. The core functionality is the same (or better in 2007) and from what I can tell all of the shortcut key combinations work as they did in Outlook 2003.

If you’re looking to see how David Allen’s company recommends using Outlook to implement GTD I highly recommend buying this PDF. It is only $10 and not only does it explain how to set up and use Outlook in the GTD system it is also a good mini-reference to GTD itself.