My name is Fokke Kooistra. I live in Almere, the Netherlands. I am married to Anneke and together we take care of our 5 lovely children. I love reading about productivity and teaching others to be more productive.
Fokke’s blog: Productivity 101
My name is Fokke Kooistra. I live in Almere, the Netherlands. I am married to Anneke and together we take care of our 5 lovely children. I love reading about productivity and teaching others to be more productive.
Fokke’s blog: Productivity 101
Fokke Kooistra, one of the contributors to GTDtimes also blogs at his own blog, Productivity 101. In a post yesterday, Fokke observes that while there are now a large number of sites with GTD information, not all of these sites provide the most accurate content based upon a strict definition of GTD. To help people find answers that are accurate, Fokke has used Google Coop to start a GTD specific search tool that only contains links to sites that have information explicitly based upon David Allen’s concepts or accepted best practices derived therefrom. Do you know of a site that should be included? Visit Fokke’s post and suggest it in the comments.
Productivity 101
Story By Fokke Kooistra
Due to a job change I had to switch from OSX to Windows XP. On the internet you can find info for switchers from Windows to OSX . You can find info on that path here and here.
To be honest, after 6 years OSX it is ….. well, hard. I will not go into Windows bashing because I can get the work done. A system is a system and not the Holy Grail. David Allen has taught me the basic ingredients of a good system to stay productive. I now think switching to paper will keep me as productive as I was on my Powerbook. It isn’t the system that makes you productive but some key elements like getting everything out of your head and maintaining a good set of lists. This will help you use your head for new ventures and opens up creativity.
Pondering on what makes it so hard brought me to this conclusion: the main thing that bothers me is the complexity of Windows. Windows has just too many options, toolbars, buttons, menu items and possibilities. The sad thing is that I don’t use most of them. And frankly I guess not a single person has never used all of them.
So here is a golden tip for all you Windows users: strip as much functionality as you can. I did it: eliminate toolbars, uncheck extra features and look for ways to make using Windows just simpler. And learn as much shortcut keys as you can. I just invested an afternoon to get this sorted. And it really pays off.
I would like to point to two utilities that really helped me the last weeks: fingertips, a time saver like Quicksilver for the Mac and Virtual Desktop Manager, a Microsoft Windows XP PowerToy.
If you have any tips on using Windows more effectively, let me know in the comments!
During my commute to the office this morning I sat next to a very executive lady. She was flipping through at least 200 hundred freshly printed pages of paper. From the looks of it, minutes, memos and other valuable material for an upcoming meeting. From the expression on her face I got the impression that she hadn’t prepared for the meeting and that the meeting was not more that 60 minutes away.
I was thinking about my pre-GTD time where I had several tricks to mask being not prepared in a meeting. I wrote dates in the upper right corner of every first page, with my autograph. I sometimes folded the corners to give the impression that I read the whole thing. Watching the lady made me feel a bit embarrassed while thinking back. How foolish a person can become!
How much money is wasted here. The time and effort to write the memos and other stuff. The paper and the time of the meeting that most probably won’t be very effective. “Lets think about it some more and discuss it in the next meeting….”
I have developed some habits in this area to stop this silly practice.
1. If someone asks me to write something I first try to find out what the successful outcome is for the person I need to write that piece for. When I ask someone to write a memo I give a specific outcome for the memo, a problem to solve or a solution to propose.
2. If I haven’t been able to prepare myself or read a piece I just excuse myself upfront and tell I wasn’t able to read it. Most of the time I haven’t been a slacker but there was just too much in my schedule. Or to be honest, it wasn’t worth reading. It is better to just say just that than keep alive a practice that only deliver drawers full of memos, vision documents and project plans that no one will ever pay attention to.
3. If minutes for a meeting are overdone I just stick with an action list. Sometimes minutes are required but if not, most of the time an action list will just do. How can someone call a meeting where you have to speak about 200 hundred pages anyway? Not unless the meeting lasts a couple of days.
To those who read this and remember me in a meeting with those folded corners and nice autographed date stamped memos, I am sorry to have fooled you. And for that matter I am sorry that I was fooling myself!
Republished by permission from the author. Productivity 101 is Fokke’s blog.
Photo by Tracy O. Attribution via a Creative Commons License.
