A Community Contribution by Aeon J. Skoble, PhD. He’s a Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State College.

I know that David Allen is interested in seeing how people in different sorts of professions use GTD, so I offered to share my experiences applying the methodology in a world that’s generally regarded as a different one: academia.  I have found that GTD is highly applicable to the academic profession.

I was actually managing adequately before I discovered GTD, but my productivity, while pretty good by institutional standards, was sub-optimal with respect to my own expectations.  I wasn’t well-organized, I often had “near misses” with deadlines, and I had a good deal of stress-producing clutter.  I literally had 6000+ messages in my Outlook inbox.  As the cover of the book hinted, I wanted not only to increase productivity, but to reduce stress.  GTD has indeed helped in both aspects: productivity is up, stress is down. Some of the most useful parts have been among the simpler ones, chiefly “capture everything rather than try to keep it in your head” and “don’t confuse your calendar with your to-do list.”  I used to drive myself crazy repeatedly by playing this game: I’d realize I hadn’t worked much lately on a particular essay I needed to write, so I’d put “work on that essay” on my calendar for Tuesday morning, then I’d spend Tuesday morning prepping for a class or putting out a fire, and then I’d feel anxious because I didn’t write the essay.  If nothing else, I have learned to distinguish calendar from to-do list, and projects from next-actions.  That’s as vital for academics as it is for any business executive. [Read more →]

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This is a community contribution by Ryan Oakley.

For me, GTD has always worked extremely well for those small(er) tasks and projects.  You know – those little things that used to fall through the cracks but, with the help of GTD, are now easily tracked and moved on until completed.

These smaller projects don’t need much in the way of “project support material” (PSM) — maybe just 4 or 5 lines of information to keep close at hand to help finish the project.  For me, I have mostly used the “notes” section of a project task item in outlook for a good and easy place to put this type of PSM.

But…what about those larger projects?  Like a 2 week vacation to Europe (travel books, emails, reservations, tickets, list of things you want to do and see, things to pack, addresses of family to visit, etc.) or maybe that multi-million dollar project at work that has 8 months worth of project plans and 5 milestones, 247 emails, 156 page reports, bi-weekly meetings, and 7 team members (complete with collaboration).  Ahh!

My GTD system breaks down with that kind of complexity.  [Read more →]

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Dear DavidCo:

After working with the GTD system for quite awhile, I find tracking next actions in Outlook to be pretty easy.  The harder part is tracking projects.  Where do you do that and how do you move from the 10,000 ft. level to the runway?

Wayne Pepper, a senior coach and presenter with David Allen Company replied:

I keep my Projects list in Outlook Tasks.  I simply create a category in Tasks labeled “Projects”.  Then, whenever I process a thought, an email, a piece of paper that has an outcome associated with it that will take more than one step to complete, I create a new Task and enter into the Subject field the name of the Outcome (for instance, “tune-up car”) and then I identify the very next action (call mechanic to find a good time), and I create another Task with that action in the Subject field.  I would then categorize that next action as a call by selecting the “”@Calls” Category.  I then review my collection of Projects (my Projects List) once a week during Weekly Review, making sure the project is still relevant, making sure that I have appropriate Next Actions supporting it, and focusing on how much attention that Project has or has not been receiving as a way to assist my focus and intuitive choices for action into the following week.

Our GTD & Outlook Setup Guide also walks through using Outlook Tasks for managing both your Projects and Next Actions. It’s a great resource for applying GTD to Outlook.

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One of the key buckets in your GTD system is Waiting For.  So what’s the biggest creator of Waiting For? Sent emails. Sure, you could slog through your Sent folder for which ones you actually need to make sure to track, but that’s like searching for a contact lens on the beach.  Good luck having that be a trusted and efficient system.  Another way to track Waiting For items is to create a simple rule or filter in your email program.   Here are those rules for two popular mail programs:   Gmail & Outlook.  If you’re on a different mail program, it’s usually pretty simple to set something like this up if it’s got a filter or rule function.  [Read more →]

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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?

• Where do you keep your lists? Your calendar?
• Do you sync to a handheld? If so, what is that?
• Your favorite collection tools?
• Killer desk supplies?
• Project planning, brainstorming and creative mapping tools?
• What else??

[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.]

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Often, your project support will include documents on your computer like Word or Excel files. You can attach the actual document, but what happens if you update the original? How can you be sure you have the latest attached?  We got this very question from a GTD’er and thought it would be useful to pass along:

I am struggling with how to file electronic documents.  Some of the documents live in email, some live in folder and some in the tasks in Outlook.  I end up checking all three places to find the most recent copy of a document.  Do you have any suggestions on the best way to handle this?

A great way to do this in Outlook is to insert a hyperlink of the file, not the actual file attachment.  From within a Task note field, select to attach a file. Then choose “Insert as Hyperlink.”

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Some of the most common questions we get are about managing projects.  Here is how one of the Coaches replied when a new GTD’er was asking how to manage projects and all of the related steps.

There are 3 components to consider with your projects:
1. Tracking the outcome on a Projects list(s) that serves as an master inventory of your Projects.  For example, “Complete 2010 Budget.”
2. Tracking the project support, future actions and reference for your projects.  For example, budget research you have been gathering, than you will use when working on the project.
3.  Tracking the next actions for the projects, on your context-sorted next action lists.  For example, “Call Jose in marketing for his dept. budget figures,” or “Book meeting to go over taxes.”

The key to your next action lists is that they only hold your next actions. [Read more →]

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Hey GTD’ers–for those of you who use the Getting Things Done® Outlook® Add-In by NetCentrics, make sure you grab the critical update before Sunday. Here’s what they say:

NetCentrics has released an update for the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In, Version 3.0.40.  This update is critical and provides you with the latest version of the Getting Things Done Add-In and offers the highest levels of stability.  This update needs to be installed before the Daylight Savings Time change (November 1, 2009) in the U.S. This update corrects the issues of the Add-In losing its activation status during Daylight Savings changes and time zone changes.

You can get it directly from the NetCentrics site. Note: please be sure to contact NetCentrics, the developer,  if you need support on this. They are the best ones to answer your questions (versus DavidCo.)  We just know so many of you use the product so we wanted to pass this along.

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Meg Edwards, one of our senior coaches, created some fantastic coaching videos with the team at Netcentrics–makers of the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In.  If you use this tool, you’ll find these to be a great series for learning to get the most out of this tool for your GTD system.  Even if you don’t use this tool, there is gold to be mined in Meg talking about the best practices of using Outlook.

Watch now

(GTD Connect members can watch these inside the Connect Media Library)

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I recently spoke with Dean Hering of Netcentrics about the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In. We had a fun chat about how the product came to be and what it does these days for GTD’ers on Outlook. Listen now.

Right before the podcast, I Tweeted that I’d be speaking with him and I asked Dean some of the questions some of you sent to me (such as getting tech support, Office 10 release, how it interfaces with Toodledo and more.)

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