Zugunruhe: Helping great people get [good] things done: Zoog.un.roo.ee

Remember the Milk: the iPhone app is here!

Not long ago, Apple rectified a big gaffe in the iPhone/iPod Touch by allowing developers to start creating applications. A whole heard of new possibilities opened up (many ridiculous, silly, or just plain weird). However, the productivity capacity of the iPhone/Touch went up as people like the good folks at Appigo created apps that would allow GTDers like me to keep up with their lists. Now, joy of joys, Remember the Milk has released its own application that allows RTM to go anywhere, with or without wi-fi. As soon as I got the news, I downloaded the app. Here’s my review.

First a few tech details. I run Mac OS on everything and I use an iPod Touch. The first thing I discovered was that I couldn’t find the RTM app in the App Store from my iPod. I turned to the newly unveiled App Store in iTunes and snagged the app, then discovered that to use it, I needed to update both iTunes and my iPod software. Once that was done, the app worked seamlessly. You must have an RTM Pro account to use it—if you don’t already have one, you get a free 15-day trial when you download the app. (The Pro account is a measly $25 a year and for me, just for the customer service alone, has been well worth it.)

The interface on the iPod is just plain pretty, far clearer than the previous, Safari-based interface. Once I logged in, it quickly synced with my tasks and presented me with my “today” list. Overdue tasks have the due dates in red (and yes, I’ve got a couple of stale projects hanging around). As far as I can tell, there is no way to set a particular list to be the default, base list that opens up every time you launch the app. For me, this is no big deal because “today” is my default list. But if you have some other context you’ve come up with that is your favorite view, you’ll have to navigate to the list manually every time. Other than that, I haven’t found anything not to like.

The app is easy to navigate and use. It works seamlessly on and off line. It syncs quickly  and so far, without a hitch. I even found a new feature I didn’t know I had: put an email address in a note (in either the app or the browser based version) and lo, it becomes a live mail-to link. Cool!

I am very, very happy to endorse the iPod app version of RTM. It’s a program I’ve come to depend on as a key part of my trusted system and it just got even better.

Three keys to phenomenal productivity, Part II: Implementing the capture habit

To become highly proficient at GTD (aka Getting Things Done, David Allen’s ubermethod for productivity), you’ve got to master three elements:

• Creation of a trusted system—one that allows you to losing or forgetting
• Implementation of a habit of capturing next-actions, commitments, and projects you want to get to
• Reflection and review of what’s in your system to stay current and on top of things

Once you’ve created a system that is truly trustworthy—that is, a reliable way to know what must be done and when, you must get in the groove with adding what shows up to the system. This means laying down some behaviors that may be unfamiliar and perhaps a little awkward, at least at first. Before you begin practicing your new behaviors, it’s helpful to think a bit about how work comes to you.

Where does your work come from? For most of us, we have assigned duties—those activities that are part of our jobs—along with self-assigned tasks (moving us toward our goals and aspirations). In addition, there are requests that come our way as part of the various roles we inhabit (e.g., parent, spouse, community member, and so on). Thus, work comes to you from many different sources.

When a source communicates a next-action to you, whether it’s from your own head or your boss’, the information arrives via written or spoken word. Next-actions can also be implicit or implied, so you have to be alert to what’s being said (or not said) that cues you to know that there’s something to keep track of. Finally, you are a source of next-actions for others and you’ll want to capture the critical ones to make sure that delegated projects and other important things you’re waiting for are done.

Now that you’re alert to where next-actions come from, it’s time to design a way to capture those. For most of us, it’s not hard to have a pen and paper handy most of the time. But there are lots of creative ways to capture information so you won’t forget it—and so you can put it into your trusted system. Here are a few capture tools you might want to explore

• The Hipster PDA: low tech, highly reliable
• Jott: allows you to send reminders to yourself and others
• Remember the Milk: free and internet based

Make sure that you have at least one tool available at all times. That means that wherever you go, whatever you do, you’ll be able to nab a thought or a commitment so that it doesn’t get forgotten and more importantly, you’re not running around trying to remember it. This is the heart of David Allen’s famous “mind like water” mantra: if you’re attempting to keep stuff in your head, you can’t relax enough to be phenomenally productive.

Once you’ve identified and captured the requests, thoughts, duties, and commitments, process them into your trusted system. When you are reading email, for example, and an appointment time is mentioned, you should look at your calendar right then and process the hard edge directly to your system. If you flip an email reply to say that you’ll handle something, that something should be added as a project or next-action in your system.

At first, it may seem a little awkward to move back and forth between what you’re doing (e.g., answering emails) and capturing next-actions, deadlines, and the like. However, practice makes this more and more smooth. The key is to be disciplined and committed to the process. Like any habit, it’ll take roughly 30 days to acquire fluency.

The three key elements for phenomenal productivity

A few days ago, someone asked me to sum up what it takes to achieve phenomenal productivity—in just one sentence. That one sentence was, “Get proficient at GTD.” What does it take to do that? I think it boils down to three key elements.

Create a trusted system: The first key to becoming proficient at Getting Things Done is the trusted system. If you lack a reliable way to track your commitments and what you want to get done, it doesn’t matter how efficient you are.

Implement a habit of capturing whatever comes in: The second essential element is getting very disciplined at capturing commitments, next actions, requests, and things you’re waiting for (such as orders, delegating actions, and replies).

Review your system on a regular basis: It’s fine and well to have a system and capture your pending work to the system. To make the system function, you’ve got to know what’s in it. That means paying attention on a regular schedule—weekly at the least, for some, daily review is a must.

Those are the key elements in a nutshell. But how do you do those? Today, I’ll talk about what it takes to have a truly trusted system. I won’t be covering tools here. In fact, for your very first go at creating a trusted system, it really doesn’t matter where you start. Paper or electronic—either one is fine. Simple is probably better than fancy. But the main thing is: pick one and use it. Period. You can tweak your system later. Start your system now.

What does a trusted system consist of?

• Your calendar of appointments
• Deadlines and due dates for projects
• A list of next-actions
• A list of what you’re waiting-for from others including critical tasks you’ve delegated

Your calendar. This is where dates and times for actual, committed appointment times appear. To have a system you can trust, it means that you know that whatever is on the calendar is a real appointment. This means that if you’ve been using your calendar to track what you might do, or what you’d like to do, you are injecting distrust into your system. Here’s what I mean by that.

Let’s say you have two real appointments and in between, you’ve put reminders of calls you’d like to make. And for whatever reason, you don’t make those calls. Your system isn’t tracking your actual time anymore—now, you’ve got time that is theoretically committed, but in actual practice wasn’t. In addition, when you look at your calendar, unless you’ve got some way of knowing what’s real and what isn’t, everything on it must be vetted for authenticity. Even if you have a code that makes it clear what is a “real” appointment and what isn’t, your brain is still unconsciously classifying each item anew. That classification process takes time and energy away from you. And that means increasing your stress level. Finally, you’re training yourself to ignore appointment times, which can be disastrous.

Therefore, the very first thing you need to do is get your calendar clear of anything that isn’t a real commitment that has a day and time attached to it. The items that appear on your calendar should mean one thing and one thing only: that you are committed to being present in some form or fashion at that time on that date. Period.

Deadlines and due dates. Your calendar should allow you to track days and times on which things come due. These are usually not time specific appointments unless you have to be somewhere or do something at a specific time. Most calendars will allow you to put these sorts of things into a category other than an appointment time--that’s where your due dates should show up. Until you have a good review process in place, and maybe even after that, you might want to have a secondary, “warning track” date that’s far enough ahead to allow you to meet your deadline without pulling your hair out.

To have a truly trusted system, you must be certain you’re not going to forget what you’re supposed to be doing. That means tracking your next actions. Whenever a task comes to you, you’ve got to capture that somewhere rather than attempt to keep it fresh in your memory. If you’re doing enough to need a calendar, then you’ve got sufficient demands on your time to keep a list of next actions.

For the time being, don’t worry about anything but getting the list. You will want your list to be stable enough that it doesn’t get misplaced, lost, or buried. But beyond keeping it somewhere handy, it doesn’t have to be sophisticated. A legal pad or a simple text document will do fine for now. The only firm requirements are that you must use the list religiously to capture what needs to be done and to inform what you’re actually doing. If the list doesn’t fulfill those two requirements, then you don’t have a trusted system.

What are you waiting for? This isn’t a call to action—this waiting-for is the list you use to track what’s coming to you or what you’ve sent to someone else. For anyone who interacts with other people, this list is critical. You’ll use it to keep up with replies you’re expecting, tasks you’ve delegated, responsibilities that someone else has but you depend on, items you’ve ordered, and so on. Anything that you are waiting for should show up on this list.

Being highly productive doesn’t have to be complicated. The tools don’t have to be expensive or high tech. All that’s really required is getting your trusted system in order, capturing commitments and next actions, and reviewing the system to stay up to date. In my next post, you’ll learn about creating the capture habit that will make your trusted system start to gain some traction and momentum.

@Context: Life

I juggle a lot of roles. One of the roles I most enjoy is that of being part of the GTD community. Recently, one of my fellow GTD-ers asked me if I’d collaborate on a podcast with him. Little did I know, he intended to interview me first!

If you’d like to hear about me talk about my system and how I work it, check out the podcast here.

MobileMe

Last week I did something wild and crazy: I threw out my paper calendar. Yes, I know it’s impetuous of me, but I felt that I was ready to walk alone, without my crutch. Now, I am fully, completely, nakedly digital. And what perfect timing, because last week Apple finally released the long-promised MobileMe.

MobileMe is Apple’s answer to the Exchange server. In essence, it’s supposed to allow you to sync iCal, Mail, Address Book, and photos between all your computers. For me, that means everything on my desktop iMac gets synced (“pushed”) to my iPod Touch and my laptop.

Not only that, but MobileMe features a browser based version of iCal, Mail, and Address Book that looks almost exactly like the versions that reside on my computer. No more worrying about backing up iCal and Address Book. No more worrying about losing files, either because MobileMe comes with a whopping 20GB of file storage on their server. MobileMe isn’t just for Mac users, either. It’s billed as working for Windows, too.

It wasn’t just MobileMe that gave me the needed push to go paperless, however. I made a firmer commitment to managing all my next-actions using Remember the Milk (RTM). Check out this super blog post to learn how another productivity-lover uses RTM to stay organized. The next step is implementing one of the cool new iPod applications to allow RTM to go off-line on my iPod Touch—I’ll keep you posted on how that turns out.

As my practice of GTD gets more refined, I’m finding that the idea of going virtual is getting more and more appealing. The freedom of being able to work anywhere with my stuff stored on-line is sounding better and better. I heard an interview recently with the author of this blog post, Ismael Ghalimi that makes me think being totally on-line is a doable and worthwhile endeavor. For one thing, worries about a big meltdown that eats all your stuff would no longer be an issue. What do you think? What would being fully mobile make possible for you?

Get back on track

If you find that your train of thought is often derailed, you’re not alone. A study of people’s ability to pay attention to what they’re doing showed that about 30% of the time, on average, you’re probably not thinking about what you’re doing. That’s if you’re lucky. For some folks, up to 80% of the time, their minds are elsewhere. This phenomenon of being preoccupied, distracted, and generally mindless can lead to all sorts of difficulties, not the least of which is the inability to get things done. However, a recent study of meditation—mindfulness training—showed that you can teach your mind to get back on track. This simple technique may significantly improve you ability to focus, pay attention, and work more effectively.

There are a lot of ways you can learn to use mindfulness for yourself. One of the best I’ve found is to listen to one of the podcasts from Zencast.org. This wonderful site includes an entire (and free) course on mindfulness meditation as well as abundant resources to help you learn to calm your mind.

Before you blow the idea of meditation off as hopelessly woowoo, consider what you miss by speeding blindly through your days. If you find that you’re having trouble sleeping, can’t settle down to work, or obsessively check your email or Blackberry, creating a habit of stopping to focus on your breath may be a genuine lifesaver for you. For certain, you’ll find that when you stop to simply breathe, you are much more present, relaxed, confident, and grounded.

Another view on Remember the Milk and GTD

Ran across a very useful post on the Remember the Milk blog that I thought you'd enjoy. Here, guest author Doug Ireton gives all the details on setting up Smart Lists to GTD. Check out his very helpful post bearing a lot of the technical supporting details here.

Getting in the Weeds, Part Three: Calendars

When I lead the GTD Study Group calls, I’ve noticed that for some reason folks love to get down into the weeds of other people’s systems. There’s just something about hearing how someone else goes about solving the problems of getting everything done that really appeals to people. This is the third post in my “into the weeds” series. Today, I’ll be talking about how I keep track of appointments and deadlines.

For my main calendar, I use iCal. All appointments and hard deadlines are entered into iCal as soon as I get them. If I’m away from home, I enter appointments into iCal using my iPod Touch and sync up when I get back.

I keep four calendars displayed in my iCal: my personal calendar, a work calendar, my husband’s travel calendar, and an academic calendar. Additionally, I track birthdays by entering birth date info into Address Book. Address Book and iCal automatically sync birth date info between them so anytime I add or change info in Address Book, the corresponding calendar entry is updated.

All of my calendar entries are color coded. This helps me to quickly see what is personal and what is not and makes certain info stand out. I set my iPod preferences to show items entered from the iPod in pink. I originally did this because I was still keeping a paper calendar and the pink stood out as a reminder to update the paper version, upon which I was relying.

I still keep a paper daily calendar but not to track appointment times. The iCal is my hard edge—what iCal tells me to do or expect at a certain time is what I go by. However, there is something about processing information by hand that does me good. So every morning, I physically write my appointments out into my wire bound Julie Morgenstern calendar (produced by Franklin Covey). As I write out what the day holds in store, it seems to tip off the thinking process I need to generate any Next Actions that need capturing.

I also keep a personal version of the Franklin Covey “compass.” I created a Word document with a column sized to fit the compass (which is a plastic sleeve that holds a column sized sheet of paper as a bookmark). In my compass, which is updated weekly, I track my key intentions for each week, significant projects that I want to pay attention to, and deadlines. I parse deadlines out into within 30 days and 30-90 days. Now that I use iCal more reliably, my dependence on the weekly compass has decreased but I still find it useful to process deadlines by hand—it keeps them in the forefront of my mind and also generates key Next Actions.

Thanks for letting me share my system with you. I hope you’ve found something useful here. If you have tricks or tips to share, I’d love to hear them!

Getting in the Weeks, Part Two: Remember the Milk

On Wednesday, I started a series of posts that are meant to share an “in the weeds” view of my system for getting things done. Today, we’ll take a closer look at Remember the Milk (RTM).

I use RTM to capture all next actions. For those of you who are unfamiliar with RTM, it’s a browser based system that allows you to capture and organize all sorts of reminders. From this screen shot, you can see that there are lots of features and ways to use this handy program. RTM is free. However, I am a “Pro” user (which costs $25 US per year) so that I can integrate more effectively with my iPod Touch. Well worth the extra cost and nice to support a great program.

When entering a task into RTM, no matter how I go about it, the task goes to the inbox. I use rather strict conventions when I enter a task which makes processing easier later on. Here’s an example. Say I need to pick up ink cartridges for my printer. The task in RTM would be: “@errands Rapid Refill black & color + exchange bad cartridge. What this works out to is: Context, Where, Action. All tasks are entered with similar conventions which gives me a list that is alphabetized by context, then an object (where, who) followed by the next action. Depending on need, tasks are then tagged with due dates.

I use the notes feature but not on a consistent basis. Most often, if I’ve entered the task using my conventions, the description itself contains enough info for me to know what to do and how to do it.

One more example should make this more clear. Here’s a task straight out of RTM: “@web bi311 check gradebook change settings midterm II.” Translated: must have internet connection to complete this task = @web; bi311 is the course I teach. The action is to check the grade book and update settings on the second midterm. I know what I mean by “update settings” but if it was an unusual task, I’d say exactly what the update entailed. This happens to be an update I do often, so I felt no need to add extra detail.

A while back, someone asked me how next actions come to me. What he was getting as was how much work comes in the form of email, how much is generated from meetings, and so on. In my world, I’ve found that next actions show up in several ways:

• Assigned tasks
• Meetings
• Self-assigned through roles, projects, higher level goals and aspirations
• Email

Assigned tasks are activities like updating the monthly Board meeting agenda for a non-profit I serve, teaching duties, and so on. Meetings generate next actions from requests and commitments made by me or made to me by others (which become “waiting for” items). Most of my work is self-assigned: this is the stuff I ask myself to do like writing, gardening, taking care of the dogs, and so on. And then there’s email.

I use three methods for getting email-generated work into RTM:

• Forwarding emails to RTM
• Using the import list function (emailing a list of tasks to RTM)
• Entering tasks directly into RTM using the browser

Linked RTM with email is probably a post unto itself, so I won't go into details here. If you want to know more, email me and I'll give you the rundown.

No matter what, all tasks in RTM start out in the Inbox. From there, I review to see if a due date is needed and if there is a clear context. Once I’m satisfied that the item is properly entered and labeled, like the task you see in this screen shot, I move the item to the list labeled “.” which is a static list that serves as a general holding tank.

From the screen shot below, you can see that I run a whole herd of lists (the tabs labeled !, < .7 d, and so on). All lists except one (the list “.”) are Smart Lists which means that RTM generates and updates each list automatically depending on Smart List search criteria I have set up. (No technical details here; want to know more? Email me.)

• ! is a sanity list. If a task has no associated context, it’ll show up here. In essence this is a fail-safe so that no task falls through the cracks. This list should always be empty if tasks have been properly entered and labeled.
• <.7d: Any tasks bearing due dates within the coming week or any overdue tasks show up here.
• <30 d: Tasks due in the next 30 days.
• > 30 d: Tasks that have due dates sometime beyond the next 30 days.
• @....: Context driven lists that are self-explanatory.
• IAC, ICF: organizations that I serve
• Someday: ideas I don’t want to lose but aren’t necessary. These are all tagged with “-someday.” When an item moves off someday and into a real context, all I have to do is delete the tag.
• Today: tasks that are due today or are overdue. I found this list necessary because RTM’s default overview for “today” doesn’t include overdue tasks.

When tasks are completed, I mark them as complete. RTM automatically re-files such tasks to a completed task list. If a task changes (i.e., is now a “waiting for”) I use a tag to indicate the change in status. That adds the task to the list labeled “@waiting for” and allows me to ignore it in the context list it continues to reside in (e.g., “@Email”) until completion.

The key to my success at using RTM is to be absolutely draconian about making sure tasks end up there. To have a trusted system means to be fully committed to it. By fully committing to RTM, I absolutely have to know that anything that needs doing is listed there. If tasks are in my head, listed somewhere else, or existing as emails, then RTM isn’t acting as my trusted system and my commitment to it will waver. That’s why it’s so important to be able to send tasks to RTM using email, the iPod Touch, or via Jott.

That’s it for tasks. Next time, I’ll take a look at my calendars.

Getting in the Weeds, Part One: Email

Back in April, I posted a rundown of my current (and evolving) system linking up GTD with Thunderbird, Remember the Milk, and Jott. Today, I’m returning to start a series of posts to share how I’ve refined my system as well as point out some new tools I’m taking a look at.

Over the next several posts, I’ll give you an “in the weeds” view of how I process email, the ways I use RTM to create context driven lists, my scheduling system, working with next actions in contexts, and how I go about the weekly review.

My essential tools are:

• My iPod Touch, which is synched twice daily with iCal and Mac’s Address Book.
• A month-by-month, day at a glance paper calendar (I use Julie Morgenstern’s wire bound version from Franklin Covey)
• iCal (and occasionally, Google Calendar)
• Mac’s Address Book
• Remember the Milk (RTM; the Pro version which allows easy viewing on my iPod Touch)
• Jott
• For my email client, I’m using Thunderbird

Email:
I process email once early in the day and a couple of times later on. I have four email accounts; each are housed as separate mailboxes in T-bird. That way, personal email is separated from business. In essence, the various email accounts also separate my roles and help me keep those straight, clean, and clear as well.

When email arrives, it’s processed in the following way: I triage all incoming mail with tags. If it’s something that can be answered in less than five minutes, I do it right away. If not, I tag it as “needs reply.” Any email that has some action associated with it generates a task in Remember the Milk. Emails that are answered but need follow up are tagged as “@waiting for.” I archive a few emails but most are deleted.

Because triage tags are associated with colors, I can open any inbox and immediately orient myself as to what needs my attention.

• “Waiting for” is in green—I scan the entire list about once a week to delete completed items or follow up on things that are pending and time sensitive.
• “For review” is pink. I work to get pink stuff (these are usually newsletters or news alerts)out of the inbox every week. If it sits longer than that, I often simply delete it.
• “Needs reply” is orange which is easy to see and hard to ignore. My goal is to process all needs reply emails within 24 hours or less.
• “Needs action” is in blue. The only reason a “needs action” item sits in the inbox is if it hasn’t been processed into RTM yet.
• I have three other tags that are rarely used: delete, defer, archive. Usually, I delete and archive as I go along. I rarely defer decisions—if it’s actionable, it goes to RTM, if not, it’s archived or deleted.

My daily goal is to have an inbox with only green items—those are all tagged “waiting for” and require no further immediate action from me. I do not use email as a reminder system. That’s RTM’s job because RTM allows me to set due dates for follow up and T-bird does not.

For a while, I was trying out the Remember the Milk provider that uses the Lightning extension. I have dropped the provider for now. I found that the interface was distracting and because the provider can’t parse lists into contexts, scrolling through a couple of hundred items to mark something as complete was getting old. For me, it’s faster to use the browser and so that’s what I’ve ended up doing.

The only part of the system that’s a little clunky for me right now is not being able to tag “waiting for” emails with notes. There may be an Thunderbird extension that allows this that I don’t know about. If you know of one, please email me. Otherwise, if and when I find one, I’ll let you know. So far, I solve this in one of two ways—one is to put a “waiting for” into RTM that reminds me of what it is I’m waiting for. The other is to let the email itself be a reminder which isn’t ideal. If I was keeping the system perfectly clean, these emails would be in RTM somehow so that’s probably the next refinement.

In my next post, I’ll explore how I use Remember the Milk.