Brain Freeze

The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen.

Yeah…(10+2)*5. I0 minutes of work, 2 minutes of break repeated for 5 cycles.  This is Merlin Mann’s system to beat procrastination which he first wrote about back in 2005.  I had read about this ages ago on 43 Folders (the article is pretty old already) but never tried it.  Today I started.

I’ve had feats of concentration so heroic there should be epic stories (you know…like the Odyssey) written about them.  Those are few and far between though Normally I have a real problem getting things going.  I can procrastinate with the best of them and I’ve been that way my whole life.  I’m not sure what it is but it seems that I have two problems: being able to break tasks down into manageable pieces and, these days,  being too attracted to the many distractions that is the internet.  Overall it hasn’t hurt my effectiveness because I get things done on time.  I just don’t like how I get there so it was time to give anything a shot that might help.  That is where (10+2)*5 comes in.

I was reading the other day about an application for Windows called Instant Boss that was designed specifically to time the dashes.  It actually isn’t limited to (10+2)*5, you can set the values to whatever you want.  The default is (10+2)*5 and that’s what I’ve started with.  So far it is working great.

One of the things all of these dashes seem to do (at least according to the authors) is get you to the point of working to where you start to skip the breaks.  This was true for me even on this first day of trying it.  The 10 minutes go by, you get the signal from the application to take a break, but you are in the middle of something and don’t want to stop so you hit the “skip break” button and go on for another 10 minutes.   This whole thing is fantastic because I’m moving towards a goal, sometimes in 10 minute chunks, sometimes longer, with what seems like little effort.   I suppose the knowledge that after 10 minutes you are free to let your mind wander for a bit is the key.

There is also another dash from Jeff Covey called The Progressive Dash which also sounds fascinating but again leads to the same thing as the other dashes:

By the end of that time, I wish I could continue and get more done. Pretty soon, I’m wanting to get back to it and finish it instead of procrastinating about it.

Exactly how the (10+2)*5 thing worked for me.  Amazing in it’s simplicity.  Limitless in its power for Good. 

I read a comment in a forum (think it was in the RTM forums but can’t find it again) that there really was no difference between Lists and saved searches (AKA: Smart Lists).  I have to take exception to that because there is a huge difference:  you can’t move items to a Smart List.   One of the ideas of GTD is getting your Inbox to empty.   In RTM you can’t do that if you are simply relying on tags. 

The Inbox

There is one work-around which is creating a Smart List Inbox which you can set to only have those items that haven’t been tagged yet.  If you’re using Smart Lists and tags as your way of organizing things you’d be tagging everything with a context when you process your inbox.   You would set up your Inbox Smart List to only show those items that haven’t been tagged yet.  I’ve been experimenting with this and it seems to work well since you can set that new Inbox as the default tab when you log in.

The biggest issue here is that you can’t get rid of the RTM-provided Inbox.  It would certainly be nice if there were an option to hide it.

Project Lists

I’ve also set up two Smart Lists for projects. One shows work-related projects and the other shows personal projects.  At work all of my projects are tagged with a bug ticket so I can use that in the project’s tag ie: p-alpha-456.  I also set up the main project task with a priority level of 1.  I then set up my Smart List for work like ‘tagContains: p-alpha AND priority:1′.  This insures that the Smart List only shows the high-level projects I’m currently working on.  

I do the same thing for personal projects.  The Smart List is set up along the lines of: ‘tagContains: p- NOT tagContains:p-alpha AND priority:1′.  Again this shows me the current high-level personal projects.

Contexts

My contexts are also set up as Smart Lists with a simple ‘tag: <context name>’.  Not much else to say here since every task will eventually get tagged with a context and show up on the appropriate Smart List.

Conclusion

So far this system is working well in the all of 3 days or so I’ve been trying it I’m sure it will get tweaker further but things seem to be flowing nicely.

Today I discovered that the fine folks behind Remember the Milk created an extension for Firefox that integrates the RTM task list into GMail. Quite simply this is fan-freaking-tastic. I was already using the Google Calendar “plugin” which works well but the GMail integration really is awesome since it is far more integrated into the GMail UI than is the GCal option.

As far as GTD goes though now I have a complete online environment for mail, tasks, and calendar. In fact I’m so excited by this I just decided to start getting my work email via GMail as well. It seems really silly to keep work stuff in one spot and personal stuff in another. I know that David Allen doesn’t recommend doing this and it just feels wrong. There should be no reason to have to hit multiple sources for what is essentially the same information.

Just one note about the GMail extension: please read the warning note near the bottom of the page I linked to above. If you feel squeamish about stuff like that then head for the exits and don’t install the extension.

Way back in October of last year I wrote part two of a small series of articles about using various online applications to follow David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology of time management.  At the end of the second part I said I would cover using Remember the Milk (hereafter referred to as RTM) and Toodledo for the list-keeping part of the methodology.   Here is that long overdue follow-up.

What took so long?

Glad you asked :)  A host of things came into play the most important being that I totally fell off the GTD wagon.   About the same time I posted the last article I started looking for a new job and I’ve been really busy every since.  I’m just starting to once again pick up the pieces of my GTD practice such as it was.

I also hit some snags in just how to use RTM as a list keeper.  But before I talk about that let me talk briefly about Toodledo.

So long Toodles

First off let me say that Toodledo is a fantastic task and list keeper.  It has a ton of functionality, offers good Google Calendar integration, and has a very nice UI that is very configurable.  Why did I stop using it then? 

1. The version that I found essential, the Pro version, isn’t free.  It’s only $14.95 a year but pretty much all of what I need is in RTM which, at the moment anyhow, is completely free.
2. You can only have one note per task.  RTM allows you to have as many as you want.  I use the notes a lot and I like being able to keep different notes per idea. 
3. History of completed tasks in the free version only goes back 1 week!  I find this totally ridiculous and its a show-stopper.  I like to go back and refer to things often and the 1 week limit is just kills this application for me.

All that being said, if these aren’t issues for you then by all means give Toodledo (especially Pro) a look.  It really is a nice application.

The cow says Moo…

Isn’t that a great logo?  How can anyone resist such a lovable cow?  Doesn’t it make you want to use RTM? :)  Well, RTM is free so go try it.  I’ve done so and I’ve been pretty happy so far.  But I’ve been having problems and have been searching out a solution.   Before I get to that let me tell you how I was using the application for GTD previously.

Contexts

I was using the List feature of RTM for my contexts.  I have only a few that matter like @home, @work, @computer, etc.  I have five total so I thought that having those contexts displayed as tabs would be beneficial and it was.   The contexts worked just fine.   I would create tasks under the right context and move on. 

Lists

I, shockingly enough, also used the list feature to hold my other lists so that the main lists, such as Someday/Maybe, To Buy, etc. also showed up as tabs.   Items would be added to those lists easily enough.  They were actually RTM tasks but in the scheme of things that really was irrelevant because it just looked like a long list of things I wanted to buy, things I wanted to do someday, etc.   Again this worked fine.  The real issue for me was projects.

Projects

Projects was a tab (an RTM list in other words).  Each project (remember, anything more than 1 step is a project) had a place holder task on the project list.  Now I kept running into the problem of how was I going to add tasks to those projects?  The way I had the system laid out the only option was to use the Notes feature which I did by adding the subtasks for a given project in the Notes.  This did not work at all.  There is no way to make items inside a note into a task so therefore there was no easy way for me to move things into the appropriate context when I needed to.  This actually is the reason I originally took a look at Toodledo.

Also, using a list per project also doesn’t work.  Remember that anything requiring more than one step is a project?  At any given time you might have 30 or more projects happening.  That is a lot of tabs cluttering up the screen.

Solutions

A couple of days ago I just couldn’t take it anymore and went looking to find out how other people are using RTM for GTD and I ran across this article.

I thought that most of the ideas there, both in the article itself and the comments, were very good.   By using tags for my contexts I can create smart lists that are based off of searches on those tags.  That way I still get a tab for my contexts.  What about projects though?  More in a second.

What I found interesting was that people were doing the same thing I was doing before with having an RTM list/tab serve as the placeholder for their contexts and the more I think about it the more I think this is probably still the best way to go.   I still have the issue with projects though.  What is the solution?

The solution seems to be to just tag items with a project tag such as p-create-website or something along those lines.  That lets me search easily enough for what I need and it doesn’t clutter up the screen.  It just doesn’t feel satisfying though.   What I’d really like is a sub-task feature.  That would let me create a Projects list/tab like had done originally and then add tasks for each major project.  Then I could add the project steps in as sub-tasks.

Gripes

One thing that really bothers me about the RTM tagging system (and they are not alone by any means) is the stupid way you separate tags.  Instead of making tags separated by commas you use spaces which means no tags like “p-create website” without using quotes.  And when you do use quotes for spaces the final tag just removes all the spaces. Boo!!!  A small thing maybe but annoying.  At least WordPress gets the tag thingright

Second gripe is add subtasks :)  They would be really useful.

Last thing that really irks me about RTM is the funky way the UI works sometimes.  I don’t like the fact that in the default single select mode you can check the boxes of multiple items yet only have one item be affected by edits (yes I know about multiple edit mode).   That breaking a common usage pattern that most people are familiar with.  It would seem the check boxes only apply to the  actions available in the actions dropdown that appears above the task list.   Given the way they’ve engineered the UI I’m not sure how else you’d approach it but it feels wrong to me.

Final Thoughts

Even with my gripes I still think RTM is a fantastic application.  Does it have every feature I want?  No.  Does it do things the way I’d want all the time?  No.  But it still works well in my system and it’s not causing me any major pain or agony.  And you certainly can’t beat the price

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’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.

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.

So I’ve been doing GTD for a bit now and keeping up pretty well with the process. The one part of the process that I’ve been absolutely terrible keeping up with is the weekly review which, of course, is one of the most important parts of the system However so far things seem to be working well regardless.

One of the problems I’m finding thought with trying to do GTD with the PC is, well, the PC. I’m using Outlook right now because it syncs well with the Blackberry I have from work. The big problem though is that I have to be at a PC in order to update my lists, etc. I suppose I could use paper but then if that was the case why not just switch to paper in the first place?

There are two great things about paper: the portability and the immediacy. My Blackberry is portable but the user interface is awful. It’s painful inputting items on it even with the “full” keyboard. It takes a long time. So far nobody has matched the interface of pen with paper.

The Blackberry also will not let me categorize calendar items which I then have to update later on Outlook. I tend to like using the color-coding of calendar entries because it gives me a real quick view of my contexts.

I’ve been holding off on trying paper because of the old problem of having to constantly copy items when having to start new pages in the organizer. I just realized today however that with GTD that isn’t an issue. Because I am working with contexts in which things have to be done and not dates on which they have to be done (when not in the calendar but it isn’t an issue with the calendar) there is no need to move things around. They are simply crossed off when done and the list can easily be expanded by just adding a new page and continuing.

The other neat thing about paper is the freebie templates like DIY Planner and The Printable CEO. There are some fantastic options on just those two sites.

So fine. At this point I’m pretty much convinced that I’m not getting much on the computer that I can’t get with paper. In fact I think I’m missing out on some things by not using paper. The one thing I’m not sure about though is this: what if I don’t want to carry a paper planner around with me when I’m not at home and not at work? What are other people doing in this situation? I have the Blackberry almost all the time so while it isn’t ideal it’s highly portable. I just don’t think that’s a good reason to not use paper. Anyone have any ideas?

So in GTD one of the things that we’re supposed to do is make use of the calendar for three things (the so-called Hard Landscape):

• Date-specific information
• Things that need to happen on a certain date
• Things that need to happen at a certain time (and date)

One problem that has really plagued me in the past is “how do I know that an item on the calendar is complete?” I don’t mean that day the event occurs but down the road when I’m reviewing items to make sure they’re done (mainly making sure bills were scheduled). Long-time GTDers may say that I shouldn’t need reminders. Between the fact that the calendar should be considered sacred (according to The David himself) and the weekly review I shouldn’t need any indication they might say.

They may be right however in my current state I need these indicators. The next-actions list it is quite obvious what is done and what isn’t. Not so with the calendar so in Outlook 2007 (my current choice for GTD following the Outlook 2003 guide from davidco.com). There is a quick and dirty way to flag completed items though using categories.

In the category list I created a category called “completed” and its color is set to bright red. When I have finished something thats in the calendar (”Schedule credit card payment” for example) I clear its current category (@something) and either flag it with the “completed” category so it shows up as bright red or I reflag with “completed” then also add the original category back in. The effect with the second method is that the last category you chose in the list is the main color while the other categories are presented as small color squares inside the item (forgive me..I don’t have any screenshots handy at the moment). This little red “flag” also shows me that something is done.

So far its working well. Hopefully at some point I won’t need those reminders but for right now I’m sticking to them