Don't forget to use your Spock brain

In my last post, I encouraged people to use their Kirk brain in business. Now, let's look at the flip side - engaging your Spock brain.

In many organizations I've worked with, people often make decisions using "gut feel," or based on who's complaining loudest, who's got the most compelling story, and things like that.  Guess what - there is another way.

Give me the facts

With many business decisions, you can learn a lot just by looking at what's already happened.  Gather data on the current situation, look at historical trends, and see what patterns may emerge.  This is often a good way to identify root cause of past issues, and sanity check your hypotheses for the future.

Go beyond the hype

How many times do you choose to do something because "everybody is saying x," or "I just talked to Joe, and this is a big problem," or some other seemingly compelling claim?

It is easy, particularly when you are working with someone who knows how to push the right buttons, to make decisions based on emotional pleas or drama.  While these claims may be a good indicator of where problems exist, don't just rely on "latest & loudest" to drive your actions.  Gather data, assess the situation, and determine whether you really have a good handle on the problem (both in nature and magnitude) before you jump to action.

This is also a place where it makes sense to document the evidence, rather than relying on word of mouth - as the saying goes, sometimes the story grows in the telling.  Forcing the discipline of writing down the problem, steps taken, and other aspects of the situation can serve well to take some of the emotion out of the discussion.

Sanity check (aka "Use someone else's Spock brain")

When you're too close to a problem, your perspective can deceive you.  It may be helpful to join forces with someone else who can take a more detached, objective look at the situation.  Often, they will ask questions you haven't asked, identify pattern you didn't see, or bring a different set of experiences to bear on the problem which can help you come up with new solutions.

How do you know if you aren't using your Spock brain enough?

There is not one litmus test, but some good indicators that your organization may be ignoring the facts are:

• It feels like you are making the same mistakes over and over again, which means you are ignoring data from the past;
• It feels like certain people always get their way in your organization because they know what emotional buttons to push to derail the current plan in favor of their new pet project;
• Your priorities keep getting changed based on fire drills and crises;
• You find that no matter how hard people work on fixing problems in the business, they never seem to get better.

The bottom line is that you should ensure you aren't letting the Tyranny of the Urgent, or Management by Hype cause you to do things that perpetuate the problem.  Taking a step back and using your Spock brain to look at the facts is a useful skill for any manager.

Don't forget to use your Kirk brain

If you have to communicate controversial or significant changes to your employees, chances are you spend a lot of time working through what you want to do, why you're making he decision, and so on.  Then, at some point, you communicate the changes.

But sometimes, the reception of the message isn't what you anticipated, and people respond negatively.  Why?

Spock vs. Kirk

Chances are, you used your Spock brain a lot during this process.  If you're a Star Trek fan, you know that the Spock brian is the home of logic, reason, objective thinking, and such.

Often, the key to making changes go more smoothly is to consciously engage your Kirk brain.  Again drawing from Star Trek, the Kirk brain is the domain of emotion, passion, intuition and personality.

When you plan your communications strategy, spend some time thinking through the reaction to your message - not from Spock's perspective, but from Kirk's perspective.

• How will your message be perceived by your "audience?"
• If you were hearing the message for the first time, without the benefit of the logical discussion and time to digest the details, how might you respond?
• What hard questions are likely to come up?
• And so on.

There is a good possibility you won't know the answers to these questions. After all, we don't know what we don't know.  What next?

Borrow a Kirk brain

At this point, it may be a good time to team up with a few people from your employee population who can act as 'sounding boards'  and help you anticipate where your message could have unanticipated negative effects.  If you go this route, a few things should be made clear up front:

• Before engaging in a detailed discussion, assure your sounding boards that you will take their input seriously (I'm assuming you will, of course).  In return, insist that they not undermine your message by letting it "leak."
• Make it clear that input does not equal a vote, and that there's always the possibility you will not alter your message or decisions based on the input.

During the process, be candid and open as much as you can - and this candor and openness should go both ways. Don't hold a grudge if you don't like what your sounding boards tell you (if you feel like you won't be able to do this, don't engage with sounding boards - you probably won't get positive results anyway).

There are plenty of resources out there for helping managers and companies deliver messages well and to help people through change.  But I think one of the most important resources is right there in your Kirk brain.

By the way - if this topic makes your brain hurt, take a break and (in full color) see what happens when Kirk fights Spock. And, of course, if you have thoughts, best practices, or good resources on effective communication of difficult topics to employees, please share.

Maintaining focus in a cubicle

I work in a "cube land" kind of office. In some ways, I like it. It's open, light, and I get to interact with the folks around me which makes it easy to collaborate, etc. I'm rearranging things soon so I'll be surrounded by my team, and I'm looking forward to it.

The dark side of working in this environment is that it can be very distracting - there is a fair amount of noise, it's easy to find yourself getting sucked into others' conversations, you get lots of drop in visitors, etc.

Around our office, we've had to develop tactics for dealing with this. I'll share a few of them here for two reasons:

1. You may work in a similar environment and find these tactics beneficial.
2. You may have techniques you can share that will help me.

Cut out the noise

Cutting out the noise around me is perhaps the most effective tactic to help me stay focused.  Some of the methods I use are:

• Use noise-canceling headphones. I use Bose QuietComfort headphones, which  I've had for a long time.  I originally bought them for travel.  They are fantastic, but they are so big I almost never took them on trips.  I have found them to be great for cutting out the extraneous noise in the office.
• Use a focus "soundtrack." A few years ago, I bought a CD called "Music to Enhance Concentration," and I started using it during my GTD Weekly Reviews.  It is engineered to be the right kind of music to help you focus on what you're doing, and it works really well - better than a random playlist.  I highly recommend it - I ripped it to iTunes, created a playlist, and I use it during writing, project work, inbox processing, or any other task that requires focus.  When I listen to it through my Bose headphones, it's even better.
• Use a white noise generator. At home, I sleep with a white noise generator.  At the office, I use a SleepMate white noise generator to keep the background chatter from distracting me.  I keep it under my desk where I can easily turn it on & off as I need it.  Having it under the desk also makes it less likely that it will annoy others around me who may not like white noise.  The one I use is a mechanical white noise generator, because most of the electronic ones I have tried have annoying "artifacts" in their sounds, or looping kinds of effects - mechanical ones (like the one I use in the link above) don't.

Obscure the view

If your problem is visual distraction, try to block it out.  Some ideas for doing this:

• Face away from the aisle, or away from high-traffic areas. If you face an aisel or "thoroughfare" you are more likely to get distracted by motion, make eye contact with others (which could invite "drop in" visitors), or get sidetracked.  Face toward a cubicle wall or toward a lower-traffic area to counteract this effect.
• Use a privacy screen. Sometimes, the reason you are facing high-traffic areas is because you don't want people to see what's on your computer screen.  If that's the case, a privacy filter can help.

Send signals

• Establish a protocol with people around you about when you can and can't be interrupted.  In one of the places I worked, we used big "dots" - they were circles about 6 inches across that were red on one side, green on the other.  If your dot showed the red side out, people knew you didn't want to be disturbed.  This works best if you come to an understanding within your team or in a broader group.
• Hanging up a sign can help too, such as, "Weekly Review in Progress - Do Not Disturb" or something like that.

Get a room, camp in a coffee shop, or work from home

• For really intense projects or times I need undisturbed focus, sometimes there is no substitute for getting out of the office.  This could be reserving a conference room for a couple of hours (though in our office, conference rooms are scarce); finding a local coffee shop you can camp out in for a while (be nice - buy some coffee and/or snacks); or working from home, if that is an acceptable option for you.

Shift your day

• Coming in early or staying late can help combat the hustle and bustle of your office.  You'd be surprised how productive it can be to come in even 1 hour earlier, when the office is almost empty.

Those are some of my most common techniques, and they work pretty well.  What about you - do you have other techniques that help you focus?  Drop me a note or a comment - I'd like to add to my playbook.

From the archives: My GTD Odyssey

Below, you'll find a consolidated, single-post version of My GTD Odyssey, originally published in October 2006. It seems something got munged in my migration to my new hosting provider, and some of the links got broken. This was originally published in 4 parts and is now combined into one...which means this is quite long.
I've made a few updates but most of the post is as it was originally published. Also, the modern day equivalent of "Total Workday Control / TWC" is now "Master Your Workday Now!" - from an updated version of Michael Linenberger's book that I mention below.
The concepts in the new book are very similar and I recommend you get the new book - you can see my review of "Manage Your Now" in a previous post.
I'm now using a Mac primarily, so I'm still exploring things like Omnifocus and other solutions, but there really is no equivalent to Clear Context when it comes to Entourage or the Mac. I only hope that, once Microsoft re-introduces Outlook for the Mac later this year, that it will also run Office 2010 plugins - that would be awesome, as I might have a shot at getting Clear Context back into my routine.
Enjoy! -- Dwayne

As I mentioned in my last post, I've had somewhat of a breakthrough with Getting Things Done recently, and I want to share what I've learned in hopes that it will benefit at least one other person. To you GTD veterans, some aspects of my account may seem like a rehash of things you already know, but I want to provide as complete a picture as I can so please, indulge me.

The allure

I first fell for the siren's call when I read David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) a little over 3 years ago. A former user of the Franklin Covey planning system, I'd drifted away from using that system because it didn't blend well with my highly online existence (and the binders were bulky). I was seduced by GTD because it offered a systematic approach for dealing with all the items on my radar - work, home, electronic, and physical. And, GTD just seemed to make so much sense!

The most anchor concepts that stuck me from this method were:

• Capture everything that comes into your mind as quickly as you can - tasks, inputs, thoughts, commitments, ideas, interesting things you want to research, etc.
  
• Funnel what you capture into the smallest number of "inboxes" as possible - create fewer landing zones for inputs into your life
  
• Use context lists (@calls, Errands, @computer, etc.) to organize your actions into lists based on where you'll need to be to complete the action
  
• When you clear your inbox, take out any "embedded actions" and convert them to "next action" statements in one of your context lists
  
• Use the "two minute rule" to knock of simple items without devoting energy to tracking them
  
• Use subject-centric filing techniques to help organize piles of "stuff" into usable buckets
  
• Use a philosophy of "make it up, make it happen" to help envision and focus on outcomes
  
• Develop a trusted system so you can put your mind at ease by dropping commitments, projects, tasks, etc. into the trusted system and count on the fact that all items in the system will be managed
  
• Conduct weekly reviews and perform regular "Mindsweeps" to get all the hanging chads& open loops out of your head, keep projects moving, and identify your next actions for any commitments you've made
  
• Use your trusted system to track all your commitments - those you've made, as well as those which others have made to you

I began in earnest and followed the process in David's book to start organizing my life.

My challenges

I began to see some benefits of GTD immediately - I felt more organized, had fewer "stacks" of things lying around my office, and began to get a handle on my overflowing inboxes. I tried to mimic the techniques in the book as closely as I could - including weekly reviews.

However, over time, I found that some aspects of GTD simply didn't work well for me.

• The 43 folder "tickler file" method described in the book never caught on for me - I am not at my desk very often and don't have a lot of paper to deal with, so this technique was the first to go.
  • Note, however, that I do use the general topic-centric filing technique David writes about. As he recommends, I'll create a file for a single piece of paper (or a folder for a single item of email). This really does make a difference.
• When I first got my inbox to empty, it felt great, but I found myself speding so much time trying to keep it empty that I didn't really get a lot of things done - I just pumped them into @context lists to make them disappear. This became like a game of "whack-a-mole."
  
• I have never been able to successfully integrate the @context concept of list management into my workflow. I tried, but the "context-centric" view never really got to be a real habit with me. As a result, my lists didn't get processed very often.
  
• As a result of my inability to use context lists properly, weekly reviews felt overwhelming and began to be fewer and farther between until they pretty much went away Essentially, I was getting very proficient at populating lists I seldom looked at again.I was getting very proficient at populating lists I seldom looked at again.

The net result: My system had an "out of sight, out of mind" feel, so it was no longer trusted. I began to leave items in my inbox for processing instead of putting them on a list. Basically, I think I missed the "go here and get your tasks" feel of the Franklin Covey system.

I tried a bunch of techniques to try to "fix" my GTD implementation, including:

• scouring blogs for tips 'n' tricks,
• re-reading GTD and Ready for Anything (several times each),
  
• incessantly listening to "Getting Things Done Fast,"
  
• starting over again fresh periodically, and
  
• even attending a live David Allen seminar

Stop the insanity?

Through these many restarts, I began to feel like a yo-yo dieter - I'd make a little progress, but I kept ending up in the same, frustrated place with my implementation of GTD. So, I decided to look for a new way to work in hopes of getting better results.

I read a bunch of other personal management books and began looking at lots of tools (web sites, Outlook add-ins, etc). Each of them had one or more interesting nuggets of learning, but none of them seemed like they'd be any more effective for me than GTD.

What's a wandering soul to do? I kept living in limbo, limping along with 500-1000 messages perpetually in my inbox, occasionally wrote things on my hand, and continued to search for a better way.

Any of this sound familiar to you? In my next post, I'll share what fate has brought to my doorstep and how I'm successfully using GTD today.

In part one of my tale, I explained my agony and ecstasy with GTD, and how I found myself in search of a better way. Today, I'll discuss how I got off of my productivity plateau and reached the next level in my journey toward mastery with Getting Things Done.

Sometimes things show up at just the right time

I was experiencing some performance issues with my installation of Outlook, so I uninstalled everything and began to gradually add programs back in a more controlled way. The day after my clean install, I got a note from Brad Meador of ClearContext Corporation, informing me that there was a a new version of their ClearContext Information Management System going into Beta. I'd had a ClearContext license for a while, but really hadn't used it for two main reasons:

• I was accustomed to using David Allen's GTD Add-In for managing my email inbox, and
• the last version of ClearContext I tried required too many steps for me to create follow-up tasks (like "waiting for" tasks).

From the feature list for the Beta version (v3) looked like it had some cool improvements, so I downoaded and installed ClearContext's Beta and began getting familiar with it. I found I liked it quite a bit - this version made it much easier to delegate messages and create follow-up reminders.

ClearContext kills seven at one blow

ClearContext uses "Topics" to organize your messages, and has buttons to automatically file messages by thread, or by topic. The program makes assigning topics very simple:

• 
  
  If you move a message to a file folder, ClearContext will automatically assign a topic matching the folder name to that message - and any related messages in your mailbox.
  
  
  • For example, I have a folder called "Customers" and a folder for each customer under that. To assign a topic, I can either use ClearContext to assign the topic.
    • There are multiple ways to do this, but I typically go to the Topic field on their menu bar and type the topic in there. This is an autocomplete field which helps minimize typos, and if you type a new topic in there, ClearContext will automatically create a folder to match the topic you've just assigned.
      
  • Additionally, version 3 actually prompts you for a topic any time you reply to or forward a message without an assigned topic. That helps make the use of topics a part of my workflow.

The real power -- indeed, leverage -- of this comes into play when you are processing your inbox, and you need to deal with a thread of message about a specific topic. By assigning a topic to one of the messages in the thread, they all become part of the topic. Then, by clicking the "Topic" button on the toolbar (the far right icon on the screen grab above) all of the messages in that topic disappear into the appropriate filing folder. Seven (or more) at one blow!

There are more subtleties and powerful aspects of ClearContext's topics, but this one use case alone has played a big part in making my inbox more manageable. The ability to deal efficiently with threads and topics is a big differentiator between ClearContext and other tools I've used.

ClearContext as taskmaster

Another work stream in any information management workflow is task and "future action" management. ClearContext has some useful tools in this area, as well. Another toolbar provided by ClearContext has a number of task and future action buttons.

• "Task" creates a an Outlook task out of the highlighted message, opens the new task dialog, and populates the task with a copy of the message.
  • From there, can change the ClearContext Topic, change the Outlook Category to match a particular context (more to come on that), set a reminder, etc.
  • You can also (via the ClearContext task toolbar) tell ClearContext whether to file, delete, or take no action on the original message.
  
  
• "Delegate" forward the message to someone else and creates a follow-up task to aid in tracking and follow-up.
• "Schedule" creates an appointment out of the highlighted message so you can specifically schedule time to follow up on that item and block it out on your calendar.
• "Defer" will make the highlighted message disappear and magically reappear after a specified amount of time - this is now my equivalent of GTD's "tickler file."
• The last button, "Unsubscribe", is a pretty interesting one - if you find yourself cc'd on a thread that holds no interest for you, press this button and ClearContext will move the entire thread to a "ClearContext Unsubscribed" folder. Furthermore, as additional message come in on that thread, they'll be automatically moved out of your inbox, too! And the messages remain there safely in case one of these irrelevant topics suddenly becomes relevant again.

Try it for free

If you're interested in ClearContext, it's easy for you to check it out. The product is very cool, and they offer a free trial on their download page. If you decide you don't like it, it is very well behaved and its uninstaller does a great job of cleaning up after itself.

Hey wait - ClearContext rocks, but I've still got problems...

As happy as I was with ClearContext for zapping inbox clutter, it still didn't solve my bigger problem. I was still:

• leaving things in my inbox because I didn't have a system I trusted, and
• tossing things into lists I wasn't reviewing regularly, and (biggest of all)
• I was holding lots of commitments in my head.

So clearly (no pun intended), ClearContext was necessary but not sufficient.

In my next post, I'll tell you about the "next big thing" that showed up on my doorstep just when I needed it.

Note: Yes, I realize that this is very Windows- and Outlook-centric, but such is my odyssey. Fear not - I will try to "net this out" with some platform agnostic learning from this experience at the end of this series of articles. And I have discovered a cool GTD resource for Mac users, as well.

Above, I talked about how I discovered the leverage of ClearContext for getting my inbox emptied out. However, I was still just moving things out of sight without a method to go an retrieve them. The essence of my problem is the same phenomenon that I see in the IT shops where I do process work:

This was not a "tool" issue - what I was lacking was a sound process (or at least a sound process that would work for me).

Searching the "next big thing"

At this point, I couldn't figure out a way to integrate GTD's "context" lists into my lifestyle and individual process, so I began to look for an alternative personal management system.

• For nostalgia, I dug out my old binders and revisited Franklin Covey. That only reminded me why I'd moved on from there in the first place.
• I read a lot of books ("Leave the Office Earlier," "Never Check Email in the Morning," "Take Back Your Life," and a bunch of other, similar tomes). While these are excellent books, they either didn't hit home with me at a visceral level, or felt like they had too much overlap with GTD.

Another email from Brad

One day, I got another email from Brad Meador telling me that ClearContext had begun working with Michael Linenberger, author of "Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook: The Eight Best Practices of Task and E-Mail Management" (also known as TWC).

Furthermore, Brad told me they'd tweaked ClearContext to support the views and workflow outlined in the book. After finding out more and discovering that the late Marc Orchant wrote the introduction (Marc was one of my favorite work+life+technology bloggers), I ordered a copy of the book and installed the TWC-specific version of ClearContext.

I devoured the TWC book, and loved what I was reading. However, there were some aspects of TWC that didn't were too different from my GTD habits and didn't feel natural to me (more on that in a minute).

Jumping into TWC

TWC is a great process framework, particularly if you are just embarking on your journey for an Outlook-based personal management system. It integrates some aspects of many of the time management / life management systems to which I've been exposed.

What I like about TWC

• TWC adopts GTD's technique of describing things in terms of next actions.
• TWC has a more prescriptive method for dealing with projects and "miniprojects."
• TWC's new Task views (chapter 3) and methods for dealing with Tasks in Outlook (chapter 5).
  • These provide a different workflow that actually pulls me back to my long lists of possible actions on a daily and weekly basis. I've found that this workflow recreates the "go here to get your next task" feel I missed from other systems. It has also kept my lists from going stale.
  
• TWC uses 3 distinct task lists
  
  • The TaskPad Task List (I call this my "Today" list):
    
    • These are the next actions you want to work on today (not just those that are due today - see below for more)
    • This list is configured to show only those tasks that you wanted to see on or before Today.
    • You monitor this list in a kind of "dashboard" view (like the image at right).
      
      • (There are instructions on creating this view in chapter 3, or you can let the ClearContext TWC edition create it for you)
  • The Daily Task List:
    
    • These are the next actions that have been assigned a date in the future (i.e. you've decided when you want them to show up on your "Today" list so you can consider looking at them)
  • The Master Task List:
    
    • These are all the rest of your undated tasks - the undated ones.
• TWC makes a distinction between a "due date" and a "start bugging me about this" date
  
  • In TWC, you use Outlook's due date to determine when a given next action will start showing up on your TaskPad Task list - I think of this as the "start bugging me" date
  • If you have a firm due date, you actually include that in the subject of the task. For example, you may have "Complete online renewal process at oregonzoo.com - DUE: 10/31/06" as a task name. If you want it to start showing up on your "Today" list 3 days earlier, you simply set the tasks Outlook due date to 10/28/06, and this task will start appearing on your "Today" list beginning 10/28.
    
    • Note - this may sound complicated the way I describe it, so I suggest you read the book where this is covered much more clearly.

The most dramatic shift I noticed from using TWC is that it helped me get into the habit of daily and weekly reviews (sometimes more than once a week, if you can imagine!) and it really gave me a workflow that helped me work my lists.

What I didn't like about TWC

• TWC doesn't really use "Contexts" like GTD - instead, it uses Outlook "Categories" to segment and organize email
  
  • I find Outlook's Categories to be very clunky use (lots of extra steps), so I quickly abandoned this aspect of TWC.
• The TWC inbox management workflow outlined in Chapter 6 didn't feel natural to me.
  
  • I find ClearContext's methods to be much smoother and use its functions instead.
• TWC doesn't embrace "Topic-based filing" like GTD - rather, you file everything in big, general purpose buckets, then filter those buckets using categories.
  
  • I'm firmly immersed in GTD's approach toward topic-based filing, and I like the advantages of this approach. Furthermore, if you use ClearContext's "Topics" you can click a button and automagically file messages in the correct Topic folder using ClearContext. Very powerful.
  • I also do a lot of email management on my PDA. My PDA doesn't support assigning Categories to email messages so it was a big pain to manage things in my inbox while traveling. By using Topic folders, I can file messages from my PDA and easily find them later.

To sum up TWC, I believe it is a phenomenal methodology and, in many ways, it works better for my work style than TWC. If I were starting from scratch today, TWC would probably work just fine for me. In fact, I recommended it to a friend of mine and he is already off to the races and using it productively two weeks later.

However, it still wasn't the "all things to Dwayne" process I was seeking. What to do?...

GTD: The siren's song returns

During my evaluation of TWC, some CD's started showing up in my mailbox from David Allen's company. I'm a charter member of David's GTD Connect program (not cheap, but I'm getting my money's worth -- so far). They start sending me CD's with interviews with various professionals and GTD practitioners to share experiences. Think of them as podcasts by mail.

As I listened to these interviews and began to hear about others' journey with GTD and some of the tweaks they'd made to the system, I began to feel a renewed sense of excitement about the GTD - and a new sense of opportunity.

This led me to implement my own hybrid approach, combining the best of GTD with the best of TWC. I continue to tweak, but I am feeling more in charge of my days than I have in quite some time.

One of the coolest aspects of the Getting Things Done (GTD) "vibe" is that you can (and should) tweak the system to fit how you live, think, and work. As I've shared in my last few chapters of my Odyssey, that isn't always easy. Knowing something is broken is not the same as knowing how to fix it.

A quick recap of my condition:

My main symptoms, as you may recall, were:

• I hadn't been able to develop a workflow that turned "management of my context lists" into a predictable habit;
• Which resulted in ever-growing, stagnant lists;
• Which meant that things got lost in my "trusted system;"
• Which drove me to leave more things in my inbox so I wouldn't lose track of them;
• Which led me to distrust my system.

The opposite of hilarity ensued.

My newfound nuggets of hope included ClearContext (which helped me gain an upper hand on email and task management in Outlook), and "Total Workday Control" (which helped me with a new approach to list and task managment).

My prescription: A hybrid approach to GTD

I won't cover everything about GTD here -- you can read the book for that -- but I will recap the things I'm using intact, then the things I've tweaked to fix the things that didn't work for me.

The keepers - things I'm doing "by the book" are:

• The "Next Action" approach
• The 2-minute rule
• The Collection habit (recording thoughts and actions as soon as possible after they enter my head)
• GTD's approach to topic-based filing (physical and virtual)
  • But I don't use paper Tickler files - I travel too much and am too "virtual" for that to work for me.
• Focusing on getting In to empty, and using David's processing workflow (the diagram in the book) to get there
• Using traveling GTD folders: A red Inbox one, a blue Read & Review, and project support folders
• Actively extracting the "embedded actions" from my captured notes and getting them into action list
• Keeping my "hard landscape" and nothing else on my calendar
• GTD's method of project planning (tracking is covered below)

That's not to say I do these perfectly all the time (I am still much better at work-related stuff than I am at home-related stuff, for example), but I haven't made significant changes to these aspects of GTD.

My hacks - the things I've tweaked or added include:

Hack	Description
I've added more traveling folders	I've added a folder called "Supplies" that has stamps, envelopes, thank-you notes, Post-It's, and other things that are handy when traveling on the road. I've also added one called "Shred" so I can put sensitive things in there after processing my folders on the road. Sometimes I don't have a trash can handy, so I sometimes use this as a trash folder, as well. I used to have a separate Trash folder, but I decided to trim things down by sticking with "Shred" only.
I use TWC's method for managing tasks, which has led to modified Weekly Review behavior	This includes using the Total Workday Control (TWC) views I described, which were installed automatically by the TWC edition of ClearContext. Here's how this works for me: Each morning, I go through my "Today" list - my TaskPad dashboard that shows up on my Calendar screen in Outlook (one of the TWC views). As I discussed in my TWC post, this view shows all the things I wanted to be reminded of as candidates to work on that day. It also shows things left over from previous days. I go through the list and decide whether I can realistically get each item done that day (i.e. do I have the time, am I in the right place, do I have the gumption, etc.) If it's still an appropriate target for the day, it stays there. If not, I either remove the date, delete the task, or set it's Outlook "Due Date" for a future date. note - setting a future due date makes it disappear again into my (now trusted) system Most mornings, I make a sweep through my Daily and Master Task Lists (also TWC views), and review each item to see if there are any items I want to... bring forward to today, assign a "start bugging me" date to by putting a date in Outlook's Due Date field Remember - in TWC, "true" due dates are noted in the subject line of the next action - Outlook's "Due Date" field is just when you want the item to start showing up on your Today dashboard view This workflow means I really am working my lists all the time so I now feel I can trust them. It also means I am doing a sort of "mini Weekly Review" every few days. I am now scheduling a formal Weekly Review every week or so, and have been doing it. The difference is that I use this formal Weekly Review time to do a full GTD Mindsweep, and analyze all of the things on my list to make sure they are really actionable, look for any stalled projects, and things like that. I believe this is the most significant change I've made, and is the thing that was missing from GTD for me. Even though it means buying yet another book, I really recommend that you pick up a copy of TWC even if it's only to see Linenberger's kung fu for managing tasks.
I use TWC's method of noting Projects, Goals, and Mini-projects in my task list	I still use the GTD mindset for thinking about projects, but GTD isn't prescriptive enough for me about how to track them in your system. I've seen other tracking systems on blogs that seemed cool, but I ended up either abandoning them or was afraid to try them because they were too complicated. TWC includes a very easy technique for flagging / tracking projects and goals in Outlook. Basically, you create a nomenclature (starting with a "P" for Project) and use it to record all your projects in your system. If I have a project about remodeling my kitchen, for example, I might create a project task called "P - Kitchen - The kitchen is updated, has more usable storage, and we love how it looks." Then, I decide on the Next Action (or even more than one possible Next Action) and I use the project name ("Kitchen" in this case) in the Next Action text. For example, a Next Action of this project might be, "Kitchen - Discuss budget and time frame with Kathleen." This makes it easy to tell which items are projects, and which ones are related to those projects. Pretty simple. And there is some great material in the book on "Mini-projects," as well. For Goals, I simply write them with a G at the beginning, like "G - Exercise - I exercise for at least an hour, 3 times per week." I then create Next Actions relating to this goal, using a notation method similar to that used for projects.
Different way of using Context lists	I don't assign Contexts for everything the way I originally did when I started with GTD. That said, I still use a few pretty consistently (using the Categories field in Outlook). The only Contexts I use these days are: @Calls @Computer - Web (mostly research items, prefaced with "RD" which is shorthand for "look into") @Computer @<name> @Waiting for Errands (for some reason, I've never used an @ sign here) Ideas @Blog @<city> Why do I use these? They help me answer a couple of important questions during my Task reviews. What calls do I still want to make? (@Calls) What things do I want to research? (@Computer and @Computer - Web) What errands do I need to run? (Errands) They help me track open loops (@Waiting For) One cool thing about using TWC's "Today" dashboard approach: I can use the @Waiting For list like a tickler file by assigning a Due Date to an @Waiting For item so it will show up in a week or two so I can check back in on the status of the item. They give me buckets to put things in for 1:1 meetings with other people (@<name>) For example, when I sit down with Gene, I check to see if anything is on my @Gene list - those help build my part of the agenda. I also put person-specific "@Waiting For" items on their named list. They help me quickly find and review any crazy ideas I may have recorded (these don't have to be written in Next Action form) (Ideas) They provide a discrete bucket for specialized topics. @Blog is for blog post ideas and random thoughts that may find their way here @<city> is a place for those "Next time I go to that city, I want to do this / see this person / stay at this hotel" and things like that. I no longer feel pressure to put everything in a category-specific context list.
I use ClearContext to manage my Outlook inbox	I've already discussed this as of this Odyssey, and it is a key element in my ability to get my inbox to empty every day for the past month. Actually, there were two days I didn't - last weekend when I was on a Boy Scout campout all weekend. But I used my newfound techniques to get back to zero first thing Monday morning. It was a piece of cake. When you combine the email filing leverage of ClearContext with my ability to trust that items tossed into my Task lists will actually get read, I'm easily 10x faster at dealing with items in my inbox now. All this makes it seem sooooo much easier and less stressful to clear my inbox these days.

The foundational principles

Whether you use Outlook or not; whether you use ClearContext or not; whether you use TWC or not, there are certain foundational principles I've learned that I think you can apply or develop from my experience. Here are some thoughts about what they are:

• If GTD is not working for you, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Try to separate it into the components that are working and those which are not. This "divide and conquer" at least helps you identify which things you'd like to keep and helps focus on finding better ways to fix the things that are broken.
• Beware of the "magic tool" trap. If you have a process problem, you need to find a better process to fix it.
• If your Task lists are growing longer, going stagnant, etc. and you don't trust yourself to manage the items they contain, that's a process problem. You need to find or develop a workflow that forces you to look at them methodically. For me, that method seems to be what I found in Total Workday Control (TWC).
• If you do want to find a tool to help you with a particular aspect of your life, look for one that simplifies your process rather than making it more complex (for example, I found that ClearContext enabled me to achieve a more precise and far more efficient flow for topic filing of messages in my email inbox).
• Look for others' solutions, and find a community of practice that you can learn from and share information with - GTD is very tweakable / hackable, and I'm finding that others' tweaks and hacks are helping me immensely.

Other resources

Along my journey, I've found some great resources that may help you in addition to those mentioned above:

• Mac users: Todd Vasquez has done a fabulous job in creating a Mac "application" (actually a set of scripts) called Ready-Set-Do! that sets out to capture the essence of GTD on the Mac, and provide a solid workflow around it. Check it out.
• I find golden tidbits in the David Allen Company forums all the time. You can register and follow the threads for free - well worth the time.
• The GTD Connect membership offers access to members-only forums that provide even deeper-dive, facilitated resources for a fee.
• The OfficeZealot GTD Zone has links to blogs with tons of personal productivity bloggers that regularly touch on GTD.
• The sites featured in the "Productivity" and "Work, Life, and Management" categories in my blogroll (in the top navigation bar on Genuine Curiosity) are places I often find inspiring and helpful tips & tricks.
• For tools and technology related to personal productivity, check out the "Technology" category on my blogroll.

My GTD Odyssey will continue

So, that's the story so far. As a lifelong learner, I know that this journey is not over. I hope you benefit from my thoughts at this point, and I will continue to share as I continue to learn.

And I would love to hear from you with any questions, tips, tricks, and useful things you find on your own journey.

My iPhone 4 after 1 week - a review

I've had my iPhone v4 for a week now, so I thought I'd share some brief thoughts here.

Reception

I've had no real issues with reception, in spite of all the news stories on this topic. I think a lot of my good experience is related to my paranoia - I ordered a case for my iPhone before I even received it, because I was worried about it being too slippery, and wanted some protection from scratches & drops. This meant that I avoided the reception drops reported by others, since my fingers don't touch the metal rim directly. The case I chose is Boxwave's Cyclone Crystal Slip (in Azure Blue, pictured at right), and it covers the metal band around the iPhone, as well as the back. I test dropped my phone with this case, and it does an awesome job of protecting the phone.

Form factor

I upgraded from an iPhone 3Gs, and the iPhone 4 is very similar in dimensions, but slightly thinner. This makes it more pocket-friendly, and it feels like a very sturdy little gadget. The glass back makes it very slippery so I definitely recommend some kind of case to help you grip it better (again, the Cyclone case comes to the rescue).

Battery life

As I've posted here in the past, my biggest gripe about the iPhone has been battery life - with the iPhone 3Gs, I had to surround myself with chargers and plan recharge time into my daily routine. With the iPhone 4, the battery life still isn't breathtaking, but it's notably better. With normal use and identical settings, I can get through a whole day without recharging. Might not sound like much (especially compared to my old Blackberry which could go for a couple of days under heavy use), but it's "better enough" for me.

Screen

The screen is awesome. At first I thought "yeah, whatever" but I am really noticing how much better the higher res screen is, even in non-graphically intensive apps.

Camera

The camera is fantastic. The resolution, of course, is about 5x better and the picture quality is great even in low light. In really low light, the flash kicks in and does a nice job of illuminating your subject. There is also a digital zoom, which can occasionally be helpful (but digital zooms sacrifice picture quality).

Facetime

One big change is that Apple's added a front-facing camera (1.3 megapixel) that allows you to take pictures of yourself (whee...) or have a 2-way video chat with another iPhone 4 user. It works pretty well, but the iPhone 4 requirement limits how much you can use it -- and the fact that it currently works only when you're using Wi-Fi limits it even further. I'm looking forward to when they allow you to make these calls over the 3G network, and when they enable Skype or similar video communications apps to use the iPhone 4's camera.

iOS v4 improvements

The new version of the iOS (previously known as iPhone OS) is pretty cool. My favorite improvements:

• You can now create folders of apps to help you organize your apps. It's about time!
• Email is much-improved, allowing you to show all your various email accounts in a single inbox view.
  Bonus: Mail also has a "conversation" view which collapses all the messages into a single entry in the inbox. When you click the message, you "drill down" into a view that shows only the messages relating to that specific subject.
  

The negatives

All in all, I really like the iPhone 4 and am glad I upgraded. But it isn't perfect. Here are my gripes:

• Still no support for Flash content. The religious war between Steve Jobs and Adobe make this unlikely to change.
• The A2DP Bluetooth still doesn't support the [Previous Track]/[Next Track] functions, caller name announce, or really anything beyond [Play]/[Pause].
• I still wish the battery life was better. If the thickness of the iPhone 4 was the same as the 3Gs, but I got longer battery life, that would be no problem at all for me.
• Multitasking is not very impressive. Maybe I just need to be patient for more multi-tasking ready apps, but it's not all I'd hoped. Its really more of a "multi-pause" capability at best - aside from a couple of apps (Pandora, for example) it just pauses your apps in the background so you can restart them faster.

You may notice I didn't mention AT&T. That's because I don't have an issue with AT&T - their coverage in the Portland, Oregon area has been solid for me, I travel internationally where their roaming works fine (though Int'l roaming can be ridonculously expensive), they let me keep my unlimited data plan. Plus, I like having an iPhone.

I talk to strangers

The other day, Kare Anderson reminded me that I haven't written about the "genuine curiosity" for which this blog is named. As I've mentioned in my About page:

The concept is this: when you're talking to people about stuff, rather than trying to connect the dots in your own mind (i.e. jump to conclusions or make assumptions), hold back a bit on that tendency and ask another open ended question. Simple, but it'll make a difference in what you learn, how open people are to you, and how much you connect with them.

For me, this means I end up talking a lot with strangers in spite of what my mother always told me (I think it's a lot safer as an old guy like me, and it was good advice when I was a kid).

People traveling with me sometimes think it's weird, or get uncomfortable, but I find out very interesting things through this process. Let me share a few recent examples:

Kouff's Story

On a recent trip to London, I was walking near Trafalgar Square, on my way back to my hotel after dinner with a colleague. A guy was selling "The Big Issue," which is a newspaper that homeless people sell as part of a program to help them get back on their feet. I didn't have any cash with me, but I spent a few minutes talking with the guy, starting with "So...what's your story?"

The guy told me everybody calls him "Kouff" (I'm guessing at the spelling) and that he used to be an officer in the Hungarian army but he moved to London for a change. He says he has a brother who is working in the US with the US government, and that his brother told him where Osama bin Laden is. At this point, I'm intrigued.
Kouff says he will tell me where bin Laden is, if I promise to split the reward money with him if I can find him. OK, no problem. So he tells me bin Laden is on an Apache Tribal Reservation somewhere in the US, and I should go there and find him. Interesting.

On the off chance that I run into bin Laden, I asked Kouff how I can get him the money if I get the reward. "Easy - put it in the post to me. I'm Kouff with the red hair. Everybody know me."

And if you happen to find bin Laden based on Kouff's tip, please give him half the reward.

Sergei's Story

This past weekend, I stopped at a rest area during a trip with a group of Boy Scouts. They were in the restroom and I was hanging around outside waiting for them. A guy was standing there having a cigarette and I said hello. He asked me some questions about my Scout uniform (I'm one of the adult leaders, and we wear our uniform shirts on road trips). He told me the uniforms were different in Ukraine - they were black, and he said they looked a lot tougher.

I asked him what got him to move to the US. He told me they left because they didn't have freedom to believe what they wanted, so they left as soon as they could. For example, he said his mother is Christian and one time the government put her in a cell for 3 days without food because she wouldn't tell them "there is no Jesus or God."

He loves living in the US, and he is now a citizen - as are his wife, his kids, and his mother. He told me, "Never forget how important your freedom is in this country - I thank God for freedom every day because I remember what it was like."

Sergei told me the best memory he has of life in Ukraine was when they found out he was leaving and the KGB tore up his military passport and told him he was not allowed to come back to Russia.

Even the "normal" stories are good for you

Not all the stories are that unusual, but they are still good for my perspective and I usually get something good out of the interaction.

Through this approach, I've spoken with people who are missionaries in foreign countries; people who have great advice about restaurants, books, and gadgets; people who are afraid of flying that I've been able to comfort; and more. But you don't get the memorable stories without hearing the normal ones, too.

So think about it - maybe try talking with a stranger every now and again, and see if you find a few memorable stories of your own. (And, of course, be sensible and safe about it.)

If you find any memorable stories, I'd love to hear them.

Travel