GTD Implementation Guide
David Allen’s GTD Implementation Guide is a just-released PDF guide to help those who have read Getting Things Done to take it to the next level. There is a lot more detail to all steps of the process and how much time it is expected to take. It can be thought of as a part two of the book.
I am looking forward to reading this as soon as I get the time!
Going from Things to Omnifocus
I have been a heavy Things users since the beginning, but there have always been certain features that I have found lacking, such as sub-projects and a distinction between areas of focus.
Omnifocus has had all necessary features since I can remember, so I finally decided to give it a go for real. All active projects and areas from Things have been migrated to Omnifocus, leaving the someday/maybe list for if/when I commit to using Omnifocus for a foreseeable future.
The one thing I will have to live without for a couple of days until I can commit, is buying the iPhone app. That means I will be using Evernote on the iPhone to capture actions and projects on the go.
I am really looking forward to be able to use sub-projects and see if that increases my productivity and peace of mind about large projects. Perspectives are also something I look forward too, since that means being able to focus on just work or personal, even though there are deadlines arising in both places. In Things, everything is meshed together and it is practically impossible to completely separate all focus areas. There is an option to disable an area of focus, but that is a too inconvenient workaround.
Going from Failing to Straight A’s with OmniFocus & GTD
Colin Wheeler writes about his journey about Going from Failing to Straight A’s with OmniFocus & GTD. It is very interesting to see GTD being used from a student’s perspective, instead of the working professional normally shown.
Habit Fields
Habit Fields is an article from A List Apart, describing how different physical places assert certain behavior.
The more capable and multipurpose our tools become, the more the burden of deciding what they do shifts on us. Physical constraints must be replaced by artificial ones, and the effectiveness of our tools becomes an extension of our own willpower and self-discipline.
Just because you can have instant access at your fingertips doesn’t mean you should.
Finding your own trusted GTD system
Finding your own trusted GTD system to feel at ease, even though you are forced to use certain tools at work. Chip Joyce shares his story on using Omnifocus together with Lotus Notes and getting everything working.
The Psychology of OmniFocus
The Psychology of OmniFocus (How to Wrap your Head Around the Finest (and Most Perplexing) GTD App on the Market) is an excellent article by Ryan Norbauer, describing how he uses OmniFocus, the GTD pitfalls, and his core thinking:
The main point of OmniFocus is to hide things from you that you can’t possibly be doing right now while still letting you track them.
This is a good read if you have been curious about OmniFocus and haven’t dived in and tried it yet.
Things vs The Hit List vs Omnifocus
I have been using Things for a long time, both on my Mac and iPhone. While being very good at what it does and being visually beautiful, I have lately been having lots of trouble finding a good solution for a “Waiting For” focus, planner, setting a starting date, subtasks and other minor things. Their support forum is full of these requests and many other too.
Both The Hit List and Omnifocus do not suffer from these shortcomings, and have other benefits too. THL has a very nice planner where you can see items due today, the next days, next week, month etc. It makes it very easy to get an overview on what and when things have to be done.
The one thing missing in THL at the moment is iPhone sync, which is where Omnifocus shines! It has a very competent syncing framework and a native iPhone client (a bit pricey though). Omnifocus follows the principles of Getting Things Done almost to the letter, which may be too rigid at times, and it does not have support for tags at the moment.
What to do? I have invested in Things for the Mac and for the iPhone, but I have considered the idea of moving to Omnifocus for the moment, and maybe returning to Things when it has matured somewhat. I like THL quite a lot, but without syncing with an iPhone application, it’s useless for me.
Book Review: Getting Things Done by David Allen
I have discussed Getting Things Done, or “GTD” here for a long time, but I have never actually read the famous book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. I recently decided to read it (or actually listen to it), and I’m glad I did.
While I have embraced principles from GTD before, like having an empty inbox, but reading the book really makes everything come together and make sense. Even though many online resources talk about the GTD framework and process, they mostly touch on specific areas, and not the whole perspective. This book ties everything together to bring some sense into the hundreds of GTD tips floating around, for which even I am to blame.
The most important lesson in the book for me was to ask myself one single question on every action item added into the system:
What is the next action?
Such a simple question can have a tremendous impact on productivity and actually finishing tasks and projects. How many times have your not come out of a long meeting discussing action plans and strategies, just to realize that you haven’t really discussed how to proceed further in the project? By asking the simple question, the direction in a meeting can change and lead to you actually knowing what to do after a meeting!
There are of course lots of other lessons to be learned in the book, but I will leave those for you to find out by yourself! The ultimate goal of the book however, is to provide you with the principles and a framework for managing your entire life, not just your work. This will in most cases lead to a stree-free life, both personally and professionally.
The book is well thought out, both contents and structure wise. David Allen speaks with authority, while still maintaining the casual dialogue style (I listened to the audio book), which makes the content even more credible. If that isn’t enough, David has over 25 years of experience from managing tasks and coaching CEOs of large companies.
The only downside for me personally is that David speaks a lot of the analog world for managing tasks, like file cabinets for instance. Even though many people probably still use these kind of things for physical media, many people particularly in my line of work keep everything on the computer. Even though it was tempting to skip these parts, they all made sense in a way, and it of course makes the book available and relevant to even more people.
This is a perfect read for everyone, so grab it in your preferred media and enjoy!
Rating: 
Google releases Google Sync for iPhone, WM, SyncML
Google has just released a beta of their latest mobile service — Google Sync. This service makes it possible to sync your Google Calendar with your iPhone, Windows Mobile or other SyncML client, for free!
They use the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol, meaning that support is already built-in. To enable this on your phone right now, go to the Google Sync website and follow the straight-forward instructions. Be sure to backup your calendars and contacts beforehand though, since all information will be erased on your phone.
The easiest way to manage the contacts is to enable syncing them to Google using iTunes. Instructions for this are available as a part of the setup process on the site, so there is no need to worry.
The above mentioned process will enable synchronization of the default calendar only! If you want to access multiple calendars, or even imported calendars which are owned by others, you need to go to m.google.com/sync using your phone as the Google help pages suggest.
There is a problem however, this does not work with Google Apps domains. To sync multiple calendars with a Google Apps domain, first make sure that you are using the “English” language on the website. There is a link to switch if you don’t.
Second, don’t go to the page mentioned in the help section, but instead go to m.google.com and choose “Sign in with your Google Apps” link. When you have signed in, there will be a sync icon presented, which will take you to your calendar sync settings. From there you can add multiple calendars, which will then automatically be synced to your phone.
One downside of using Google Contacts instead of the local Address Book is that the photos aren’t synced properly. There is however an application available for Windows with no name that syncs the photos from Facebook to your Google Contacts account. While this might not be the best option, it definitely beats not having any pictures at all.
Postbox — a new take on email?
Postbox is a new application for managing email. It has some serious competition to deal with, like Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail. Postbox does mail in an intuitive and fast way, which makes it easy to manage messages and actually get things done. Their website sums it up quite well.
“Postbox is a new way to manage online communication. It lets you spend less time managing messages and more time getting things done.”
“Postbox lets you organize your mail by topic so you can focus on one thing at a time.”
“Postbox works behind the scenes to catalog everything in your email.”
“Once you’ve found it, you can really start doing things. Postbox is designed to break down barriers. Any mail content can be annotated or combined with information from the web to create new mail messages.”
The application itself seems to be based on the upcoming Thunderbird 3, judging by the looks alone. This means that it benefits from all great things from the Mozilla suite, such as great spam filtering, clean looks, tabs and client certificate support for IMAP. It does however mean that it uses the XUL interface, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, but it does not integrate very well into the Mac environment.
Postbox main window
Looking at the main window reveals a wealth of information. To quickly view attachments, images, links and contacts there is a shortcut bar on the tab bar itself.
The application puts a big focus on tags, or Topics as they are called in the application. It is very easy to add and view Topics. Having Topics on messages makes it very easy to find messages relating to different projects or keeping on top on what to do next.
Topics / Tags
One of the cool new features is the ability to annotate messages. This makes it possible to edit email and add your own text and title to it. Then you can either replace the original message or create a copy.
Annotate view
Messages are threaded in a beautiful Gmail style view, sorted chronologically. On the top a list of included authors are displayed for an easy overview.
Thread view
I will post a review later when I have had time to try it out for a few weeks. It looks promising, but it has to fill some great big shoes if it will replace Apple Mail as my default email application.
Postbox is currently in closed beta, but add your name to their waiting list and you will be notified when it is available for download.
[Postbox]
-
- Folders
-
- Postbox main window
-
- Thread view
-
- Topics / Tags
-
- Annotate view