(The tool David mentions at the end is eProductivity for Lotus Notes. It’s what he uses personally to manage his projects and actions. If you’re a Notes user, you can learn more about David’s setup in the free Webinar on April 28th.)
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.
Question: How did you organize your tasks? Am I suppose to have a main Projects category and corresponding action tasks categorized @home, @work, etc?
David Allen: Yes, for me “Projects” is a category, just like the action lists of “Calls”, “At Computer” etc. They are simply flat lists, tied together with your review of the whole system.
Question: If there are 5 (or likely more for me) separate sections in a folder to track everything, how do you pull everything in a project back together rather than having it all scattered? [Read more →]
As many of you know, we are a Lotus Notes shop. Have been for years. Even Lotus is also catching on to the value of GTD (with the GTD tool eProductivity) for adding value to Notes :
If you’re still searching for the best tools for your GTD implementation, be sure to check out our latest Productive Living newsletter.
For those of you looking for the best ways to implement GTD with Lotus Notes®, join the next Webinar class on GTD Connect, our subscription-based online learning center. It will be held February 4th at 12pm Pacific Time. If you can’t make the live event, the replay will be posted to the GTD Connect Media Library (screenshot shows all of the replays currently available.)
GTD Connect is a great way to get practical & tactical coaching advice on implementing GTD. Webinars are held about twice a month on a wide range of topics for GTD’ers. If you’re not a GTD Connect member, check out the free trial (which will also allow you to take a Webinar class during your trial membership.) If you decide to join beyond your trial, it’s only $48 a month and you can cancel anytime. The free trial is a great way to see if GTD Connect is for you. Trial members can access to the full site except for podcasts and downloads.
I’m a retired teacher who now has a tiny gem or a business called ‘Life in the Flow Lane.’ I read Getting Things Done a couple of years ago and implemented some things. I am a GTD Connect newbie. The Webinars are simply invaluable. You have given me a much greater understanding of the whole GTD process. For example, I really get that I need to have a list that attracts rather than repels me! It seems obvious, but you show how to make that happen. All the resources on Connect work well together. I think the mix you have put together is simply outstanding. – Sharry Teague
Whenever I’m on a plane and we fly through a cloud, I can’t help but think “Oh man, I hope this isn’t the one that has all my data in it…” Tony_D on Twitter.
Eric Mack recently interviewed David Allen on his use of Lotus Notes, eProductivity and cloud computing. Hear what David thinks of working in the cloud and where he’d love to see things go…
For more of these videos, stay tuned to the Notes on Productivity blog. We’ll also post some of them here too.
Wikipedia defines a killer app as “…so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology.” So, what are your killer GTD apps? What do you use regularly AND find to be essential to your GTD implementation?
[Small request: If you are commenting about an app, please disclose if you are the developer and/or involved with it in some way. Thanks.]
What’s out there for Lotus Notes users who want to sync To Do’s to their iPhone? Nothing. As far as I know. Believe me, I’ve searched for nearly a year. As a Notes user who was enchanted with an iPhone, I thought surely a To Do synching solution could not be far behind. Nope. Nothing. You can sync Calendar and Email, but not To Do’s. It’s not a complete mobile GTD solution for me without To Do’s.
Because the iPhone was built without a Tasks application it means building not only a secure syncing solution, but a corresponding App on the iPhone. I thought Lotus would be doing that, but not from any releases I’ve seen so far.
A guy wrote to me this morning to ask what solutions are out there for this, as he’s about to roll out iPhones to their entire workforce. They use Lotus Notes and he’s been unable to find anything that will sync Notes To Do’s to the iPhone. He asked if we are building it (no plans to.)
Has anyone heard of anything coming or available that will sync Lotus Notes To Do’s to the iPhone? We’d love to hear about it.
In our new series called GTD Toolbox Tours, we’ll be highlighting and reviewing different tools, products, software and gear that can support your GTD implementation. We’ll cover list managers, labelers, pens, file folders and everything else that makes your GTD system hum like a Ferrari. This week we’re starting with a podcast with Eric Mack, the designer of a software tool called eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes.
In our recent podcast on The Perfect GTD List Manager, we shared that one of the most common questions we get is, “Which tool should I use for my GTD lists?” Specifically, you want to know which tools David Allen uses! While the GTD approach is tool-agnostic, we have our personal favorites, as we know many of you do as well. eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes is one of those, and is the tool David (and most of the staff at DavidCo) use to help manage our workflow. Even if you are not a Lotus Notes user, we think you’ll find value in hearing from Eric about what he learned would make the ultimate tool for David Allen to use.
In this podcast, Eric Mack (@EricMack) shares with Coach Kelly Forrister (@GTDCoachKelly) on some of the design philosophy and underlying features and principles that make eProductivity a tool David recommends. (Note: There’s a free trial and on the podcast Eric also offers a $100 off to the first 50 people that contact him by June 15.) Some of the features discussed on the podcast will make more sense if you check out some screenshots. LISTEN NOW
Eric Mack, eProductivity creator
If you’re attending LotusSphere be sure to attend the two sessions being presented by David Allen and Eric Mack.
The first session, Best Practices Session, BP304:
“IBM Lotus Notes and Me: Maximizing Personal Productivity with Lotus Notes” will take place at 5:00 PM on January 19, at the Swan Hotel (SW 7-10). Due to the top down approach employed by most corporations in conjunction with Lotus Notes, many users see Notes as a “company” tool and not “their” tool. When tools become “personal,” productivity increases and when personal productivity increases so does the productivity of the work group and the organization. This session will show both expert and novice Notes users how they can use Notes coupled with proven best practices to make them
immediately more productive.
The second session: Birds of a feather session, BOF408: “Getting Things Done with IBM Lotus Notes” will take place at 7:00 AM on January 20, at the Swan Hotel (SW Mockingbird 1-2)
Here’s the Abstract:
This session will explore ways to make using Lotus Notes more productive by making it “personal.” This interactive discussion will bring together expert and novice Lotus Notes users to share how they are using Notes for personal action and information management.
About David Allen
David Allen is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and
organizational productivity. His twenty-five-year pioneering research and coaching to
corporate managers and CEOs of some of America’s most prestigious corporations and
institutions has earned him Forbes’ recognition as one of the top five executive coaches
in the world and Business 2.0 magazine’s inclusion in their list of the “50 Who Matter
Now.” Fast Company Magazine has also called David “one of the world’s most
influential thinkers” in the arena of personal productivity.
David is the international bestselling author of Making It All Work: Winning at the Game
of Work and the Business of Life, Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free
Productivity, and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life. He is
also the engineer of GTD, the popular Getting Things Done methodology that has
shown millions how to transform a fast-paced, overwhelming, over committed life into
one that is balanced, integrated, relaxed, and has more successful outcomes.
For additional information about David Allen and GTD, please visit www.DavidCo.com
About Eric Mack
Eric Mack is the founder and president of ICA.COM, Inc. (ICA), a professional
consulting organization, based in California, USA. In 2007, Eric celebrated 25 years in
business as an technologist, software developer, public speaker, and productivity
consultant. He has provided expert consulting services to more than 350 corporate and
government clients, most notably in the area of information, communication, and action
management. An articulate speaker, Eric has also shared his technological insights with
more than 10,000 people around the world through his eProductivity coaching and
seminars. Eric has been a featured speaker at the Office 2.0 and KMWORLD
conferences and was the keynote and featured presenter for the Beyond Planning
Conference in Manila, Philippines.
Eric is also the creator of eProductivity™, a GTD® implementation solution for Lotus
Notes that is both used and recommended by David Allen.
For additional information about Eric Mack or ICA, please visit www.ICA.com
