Eric Mack is the creator of the popular eProductivity suite of software for Lotus Notes (a David Allen tool of choice) and regular contributor to GTD Times. He also serves as David Allen’s technical advisor.
Eric Mack is the creator of the popular eProductivity suite of software for Lotus Notes (a David Allen tool of choice) and regular contributor to GTD Times. He also serves as David Allen’s technical advisor.
A contribution from Eric Mack with ICA, developers of the “GTD Enabled” application eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes
Does your employer block productivity apps on your BlackBerry, iPhone, or Android Smartphone?
With the recent discussions about Apps and how consumers want the freedom to find, evaluate, and purchase Apps for their Smartphones, I wonder how many users are able download and use a productivity application and how many have policies that prevent them from doing so.
If you found a productivity application for your mobile device that was proven to increase your performance, would you: a) be allowed to install it? b) encounter resistance (or refusal) from IT to allow you to install it? c) make a business case to management for why this App should be allowed?
Please take a moment to take the quick poll then scroll down to share your comments.
Community Contribution from Eric Mack, partner of the David Allen Company
As many of you know, David Allen has used Lotus Notes for his personal GTD system for many years. As such, David and I will be co-hosting two upcoming webinars on GTD & Lotus Notes.
Exclusively for IBM employees:
On April 8th from 10am – 11:30am PST, we’ll be doing a webinar exclusively for IBM employees on applying GTD to Lotus Notes. Many IBMers are fans of GTD already, and this will give more insight into David’s master tips, tricks & strategies. We’ll also look at eProductivity – the only software tool for Lotus Notes that’s earned the distinctive “GTD Enabled” certification.
If you’re an IBM employee, sign up now.
Open to the public;
David and I will be doing another webinar on GTD & Lotus Notes on April 28th that is open to the public. Sign-up now. Space is limited.
Have you ever wondered how Santa maintains perspective and control over everything that has his attention? I mean, with all of the letters, a toy shop to supervise, flight plans and air travel restrictions to deal with … and the weather! It’s enough to drive any normal person crazy. I always thought Santa must have a secret to staying productive. Apparently, he does.
Will Traveler make getting things done with Notes easy? 
I have a long-standing interest in devices and applications that increase mobile knowledge worker productivity, particularly those that support the GTD methodology and can sync with Lotus Notes. The problem is that most of the devices that I have used to date fail in one or both categories. For this reason, I have continued use and recommend the Treo 755p for power GTD users that want a powerful mobile list manager that seamelessly integrates with Lotus Notes. It’s not that the Treo is the best mobile platform out there. It isn’t. It simply has the best native list manager for managing projects and actions using the GTD methodology.
Since I know that someone will object to my statement, let me explain what I want in a mobile list manager: I want to click one button and see my list of projects and actions, sorted by context. I do not want to have to click Start, Run, and then click a bunch of options to find my tasks. I also want these views and the way I set them up to be persistent, which rules out two of the most popular device families on the market today. I don’t mind using third party solutions to accomplish this, but for some devices, like the Nokia Series, they simply do not exist. I find it amazing that devices marketed to the business professional and equipped with so many productivity features would be so lacking in this vital component of productivity: list management.
For years, David Allen and I have discussed this: why do manufacturers make great hardware and then drop the ball when it comes to the suitability of their list management and task integration? (David uses a 755p, also.) I think it must be that manufacturers are expecting people to purchase based on the shiny features and not on what they can accomplish with the device. Earlier this year, a client generously gave me a shiny new Nokia E90 Communicator <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E90> as a thank you gift. The E90 is a truly amazing mobile productivity device. Except, it has two problems: No task management. Zip. Zilch. Nada. (Unless you count their lame recording of a task as a note in a calendar event) and no reliable over-the-air sync of tasks to Lotus Notes. David and I played with this device this summer and agreed that while it sported an impressive list of hardware features it was essentially useless for us as a mobile GTD support tool. So, into pile of “really cool devices that I cannot use” it went. I hoped that someday, I might find a solution that would allow me to test this device as a list manager with Notes.
As much as I like the device from a productivity perspective, the Palm OS-based Treo is rapidly being eclipsed by BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices with some competition from iPhone. (I say “some” as I have yet to find a suitable on-device sync and device management solution for iPhone, which means I won’t recommend it for use with Notes and GTD.) I recently surveyed our customers that use eProductivity for Lotus Notes and found that well over 50% are using BlackBerry. In the U.S. the remaining 50% is made up of a large number of WM devices and then a variety of other devices. In Europe, the Nokia S60 platform is more common with WM coming in second.) (Before I go further, I do plan to purchase a BlackBerry Bold to evaluate as my next productivity platform, but that’s a post for another day.)
Enter Lotus Traveler
Last week, Nokia and IBM announced support for a number of Nokia’s S60-based mobile phones, extending the reach of Lotus Notes to millions of users of Nokia devices that use the Nokia S60 3rd Edition platform. According to the announcements and blog posts including yesterday’s on GTDtimes, in excess of 80 million people – the number of Nokia S60 3rd Edition devices shipped globally – will soon be able to connect to corporate email accounts on a Lotus Domino Server. The glue that makes this possible is Traveler, a product that launched earlier this year. The Lotus Traveler software provides real time access to email, calendar, address book, journal and to-dos and the newly added support for the Nokia S60 platform is coming next month.
I think IBM is making a smart move to extend the reach of Lotus Notes to a variety of platforms. For years, I’ve used and recommended CommonTime mNotes and Sybase iAnywhere. If you have a Windows Mobile or Palm device, CommonTime simply works. Sybase has extensive device support, however, my experience is that they are making it increasingly costly for clients to buy their products. (I guess they are doing really well and do not want my client’s business.) So, I welcome the announcement of Traveler. I think it’s great to have a native Notes solution to recommend as well.
How well will Lotus Traveler handle Task Management?
I have no doubt that the Lotus team will do a good job with sync to the Nokia platform, and I have read enthusiastic reviews from users who are using Traveler on their Windows Mobile devices. What remains to be seen, is how well Traveler handles task management. This is something that Lotus and other vendors historically haven’t done very well. The IBM Web site for Traveler shows a thumbnail for a task list but there are no screen shots of any task lists so I cannot tell how well they have been implemented. Since I have yet to install Traveler, myself, I cannot comment on how well Traveler handles task management, either on Windows Mobile or on the Nokia Platform. If you are using Traveler for task management on either of these platforms, I’d like to hear from you with your thoughts.
Question: When you identify important projects, do you clearly define the successful outcome?
Do you clearly describe, either in the project title or description what success, even “wild success” will look like?
If you are not doing this, you are missing out on perhaps the most powerful productivity tool available to help you accomplish your goals and dreams: your brain. In fact, if you don’t regularly do this, you’re leaving your brain in park when it could be driving you to accomplish wild success.
Visualizing the Successful Outcome
Many years ago, David Allen shared with me that one of the first things he did when planning his first book, the best-selling, Getting Things Done, was to write the Wall Street Journal review of his book, first. He wrote the book review as he would like it to appear in print, even before writing the first chapters of his book. For many years I’ve written my projects in the past tense — as if they were “done” and I found that helped me to “see” done as the objective. I thought that David’s example of writing a formal review of his book project was very clever and a powerful visualization tool, so I made note of it.
My Personal Application
When I set out to develop my eProductivity software, I followed David’s recommendation and wrote my own review. I determined to summarize the product in two sentences, one from the perspective of the Notes community since eProductivity is built on Lotus Notes; the other from the GTD community because eProductivity embodies many of the principles that I learned from David’s book.
For the Lotus Notes community, the most concise review I could come up with (after many iterations and variations) was this: “eProductivity: The Ultimate Personal Productivity Tool for Lotus Notes.” This eventually became the marketing tag line and company mission. It is my hope that I have accomplished this and that people in the Notes community who evaluate eProductivity will tell us that we have accomplished this objective.
For the GTD community I came up with a slight variation: “eProductivity: The Ultimate GTD Implementation Tool for Lotus Notes.” For those aspects of the product that were specifically designed with the GTD methodology in mind this was my driving measure. As I worked on eProductivity I would regularly refer back to my “review”. Not only did this help keep me motivated but it also helped me fix in my mind the final product and how it would work, how people would use, and how it would improve their ability to get things done. For me, like for David, creating the review helped me to visualize exactly what done looked like.
Do you know what “done” looks like?
If you don’t know how “done’ looks for a particular task, not only will you be incapable of knowing when you are done, you will also miss out on the ready help available to you from your most valuable and trusted resource — your brain.
How does this work?
In my experience, writing my project definitions in terms of their outcome creates a cognitive dissonance between what I have defined as done and the present reality. As a result, whenever I read that project statement (or in my case, look at the product logo and tag line) my brain has to subconsciously decide if it agrees with the statement. If it does, great. I’m done. If not, it usually identifies one or more things that I need to do to make the statement true.
A Built-in Personal Success Coach
It’s quite easy to enlist your brain to define the next actions you must take toward success: all you have to do is craft a clearly defined outcome statement and read it. Immediately, your brain will decide if it is true or not. It may say, “Self, well done.” Or, it may say, “Self, that statement’s not entirely true because this is not done yet.” If so, simply capture what has your attention on to an appropriate list and act on it. Shortly, you will be completing actions that are in alignment with your successful outcome and you will be accomplishing your goals.
This exercise of beginning with the end result in mind has been a powerful tool for me — a productivity tool, even — to help me in the decision making process. Whenever I had a decision to make about this project — whether it was in design, architecture, features, programming, or budget — I would ask myself “what decision can I make that will bring me closer to the two outcome statements I defined? There were times in prior years when I simply wanted to wrap up the current feature set and put the product out there, however, it did not meet my criteria for my successful outcome. So, we waited, and persisted, and continued working, learning, and refining until we are where we are at today.
I encourage you to think about creating one or more successful outcome statements for each of your major projects.
If you decide to try this, post a comment and let me know how your brain worked out as your personal success coach.
I think you will be amazed at the result.
Update: If you would like to see the result of my project, eProductivity, I invite you to watch the overview video
This is the final post from my e-mail that answers the question: “How to ramp up quickly with GTD and Lotus Notes?“ We’ve touched on the productivity equation and we’ve looked at how methodology is the first component of the equation. We also explored the technology or tools that can be used to implement GTD in Lotus Notes. Last week, I discussed Mobility: how to get things done on the run, and two days ago, I blogged about the value I’ve found in getting coached and coaching others.
As I wrap up this series, I want to share some of the resources I’ve used to get connected to the information and people who help me sharpen my skills.
Here’s what I shared in my e-mail about some of my current favorite ways to stay connected to all things GTD:
Today, I’ll share the next part of my e-mail that answers the question: “How to ramp up quickly with GTD and Lotus Notes?“ We’ve touched on the productivity equation and we’ve looked at how methodology is the first component of the equation. We also explored the technology or tools that can be used to implement GTD in Lotus Notes. Last week, I discussed Mobility: how to get things done on the run. Now, as I begin to wrap up this series, I want to discuss the value I’ve found in getting coaching in how to make all of this work together.
There’s a lot to be learned from reading books and attending seminars. I routinely do both. But when I really want to improve my skills or performance in a given area I turn to a coach, a mentor, or an expert that can help me accomplish my objectives. I think it’s important to understand that hiring a productivity coach is not a magic bullet for getting things done. YOU have to do the work, but a good coach can help you see what may not be readily apparent to you and encourage you to build sustainable habits. (I’ll talk more about sustainable habits at the end of this post.)
Here’s what I wrote to the person who asked me about getting things done on the run…
Today, I’ll share the next part of my e-mail that answers the question:How to ramp up quickly with GTD and Lotus Notes? We’ve touched on the productivity equation and we’ve looked at how methodology is the first component of the equation. We also explored the technology or tools that can be used to implement GTD in Lotus Notes. Now, let’s look at mobility…
As you learn more about GTD, you’ll come to appreciate the value of getting everything out of your head and into a system you can trust. In order to do this, it is critical for you to be able to do this no matter where you are or what you are doing. To do this, it’s important that you equip yourself with tools that support you whether you are; at home, the office, or on-the-go. I recommend at least one analog tool and often at least one digital tool, depending on your mobile information management needs. If you are someone that always has a computer available to you 24×7, then this section may not be useful. Lotus Notes does a great job of keeping information synchronized across distributed computers. On the other hand, if you are like me, you spend at least some part of your work day “out and about” and you need a way to keep your GTD lists and related information with you so that you can work from your lists, and manage your work.
Let’s discuss the mobility aspect of getting things done while on the run…
Today, I’ll share the next part of my e-mail that answers the question: “How to ramp up quickly with GTD and Lotus Notes?“
We’ve touched on the productivity equation and we’ve looked at how methodology is the first component of the equation. Now, we’ll look at the technology or tools that you use. Since you’ve already selected GTD as your methodology (a decision I wholeheartedly agree with) you now need to find a GTD implementation tool that will support you in the way that you work. From my email:<blockquote>II. Choose your GTD implementation tool and master it
From 3×5 card to paper planner to MAC/PC to BlackBerry — there are a range of solutions. The brilliance of GTD, I think, is that it’s platform agnostic so you can manage using the GTD methodology just as well on a napkin or using custom software. What you need to find is a very good list manager, something that is easy to use, is easy to integrate with your existing workflow, and is fast. Most important, it must be something you can trust.
We discussed your use of Lotus Notes at your company. I think Lotus Notes is a powerful tool for personal knowledge and action management. It also happens to be the tool of choice for me and for the The David Allen Company. (Disclosure, The David Allen Company is an ICA client and David is a good geek friend - I designed and deployed their Notes collaboration infrastructure and have supported David and his team for the past 15 years, so I’m a little biased as to the power of Lotus Notes.) Many people are successfully using GTD with Lotus Notes in a variety of ways.
Today, I’d like to talk about methodology as a key component in my productivity equation and specifically how it relates to ramping up quickly with GTD and Lotus Notes.
Whether you are conscious of it or not, you have a methodology, a system, a habit for how you get your work done. Some methodologies, systems, and habits will be more productive than others; some can even be counter productive. I began this series by writing an email to help someone get started using Lotus Notes as his implementation tool for David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology.
Over the years, I’ve learned several approaches to knowledge work but to date I have found none that made more sense and was more sustainable for me than GTD. It wasn’t always this way. I used to find Stephen Covey’s 7-Habits approach to be ideal and while I think it is an excellent approach for planning, I was unable to sustain it on a day to day basis and I often felt bad that my day to day actions were not getting me closer to my goals and vision. That’s not to say that Covey’s approach doesn’t work – it does, but it was a great deal for me to maintain.
Covey takes a top-down approach to productivity, starting with the desired outcome (“Begin with the end in mind”) and then working down to daily actions that line up to support those goals. On paper that makes sense to me as the best way to go. In real life, however, it was hard to do, because, well, life happens.
David Allen’s approach starts at the bottom – clearing the decks — so that you can think freely about the bigger picture stuff. I’ve been working with GTD since long before the GTD moniker and I can tell you that it is sustainable. What do I use today? A little of both. The foundation of my work style is built on the GTD methodology, while Covey has certainly influenced the values and planning aspects of my work and life.
