A Wandering Mind

*Warning: this post contains references to dripping motor oil, shredding tires, and that oh-so-sexy smell of raw gasoline exiting tailpipes. In other words, get ready for a little car-p0rn0, GTD-style.

I was 17 when I bought my first real car: a 1987 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS. It was a beast of a vehicle, with a throaty (yet slightly underpowered) 305 cubic inch V8, twin Flowmaster exhausts, and of course, that great feature of 80′s muscle cars, T-Tops. Shortly after buying it, I discovered it was one of only 6,000 produced models known as the Aerocoupe. With a gently sloping rear window in the same style as the NASCAR racer of the same make and model, this made the car a semi collector item.

To say that I have many fond memories of that car would be a rather bland understatement of fact. I spent hours upon hours under that car, getting to know every bolt and screw in intimate detail. On Saturdays I would take friends out for a cruise to the local DQ, T-Tops off, the warm summer air doing its best to ruin the girls’ precise hairdos. Truthfully, I’d be lying if I said that only one adolescent fling took place in its back seat.

The car certainly had its share of flaws, including 1) a tendency to burn about a quart of oil for every tank of gas, 2) floorboards that were close to Flintstone style before an aluminum-clad intervention, and 3) those glorious T-Tops that leaked like a sieve when rain struck. But despite that, the car always had a certain, guttural romantic appeal to it. I suppose there’s just something about the throaty roar of Detroit iron that is irreplaceable in the mind of a teenager.

After around four years of ownership, I bought a Toyota pickup to serve as my “winter” car, since, needless to say, “Risky Business” (as the car came to be called) was near useless in snow. Shortly thereafter, at the behest of my parents (and my better judgment, financially speaking), I sold the car to a local mechanic, who promised to take good care of it. I can still hear that gentle, yet masculine thrum-thrum-thrum of the exhaust as that car drove off.

Ever since, I haven’t quite been able to let go of my desire for round two of mechanical challenge. But it always seems like other, more pressing priorities always took precedence. Get a job, have a family; certainly all very worthy tasks. But in the back of my head, the desire to feel that gut-tingling sensation of American-born acceleration just never went away. It lingered, clawing its way into my consciousness from time to time, mostly whenever I hear the familiar sound of a big block spewing half burned carbon through strait pipes.

Now what in the world, you may ask, does this little rambling story have to do with GTD? Well, you may recall that in my post GTD – 1 Year Later, I mentioned that one of my week spots was the blatant lack of a Someday / Maybe list. Well, it is a deficiency no longer. Behold my inaugural “Someday/Maybe” list:

So, anyone know of any 1987 Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupe’s for sale?

Lately I’ve been spending time working on the third floor of my house, preparing it to be the ultimate productivity / GTD / geek lair. Well, at least as much of an “ultimate” room as current economic conditions allow. Anyway, like any good GTD practitioner, I’ve been doing some good brainstorming around how to make this space as GTD friendly as possible, and thought I’d share some of the highlights.

1. A clearly accessible inbox
   
   
   While I mostly use e-mail as my collection point, the need for the occasional use of paper as a reminder still remains. Now I’m not a fan of fancy, gold-plated desk accessories, so instead I found a great little wire-metal set at the local IKEA. Eight bucks and I have a great three-tray collection point. I’m thinking one tray for things to read, one for general collection, and one for… TBD I suppose, suggestions welcome.
2. A functional way to archive materials, sans paper
   
   My @Reference folder is far and away the largest in my Outlook mailbox, as well it should be. But for those things like statements, receipts, magazine articles, etc, I’m thinking a nice, fast, feed-style scanner will do the trick. While I’m considering the Fujitsu ScanSnap, but its lackluster support of Linux may end that idea. I’m hoping to find a way to make indexed, search able PDFs from documents, so that I can easily find things based on search phrases like “December 2007 IRA Statement”. But that will be the subject of another post.
3. A large white-board like surface
   
   While I probably can’t afford the real thing, I’ve read about using tileboard as a good (and cheap) replacement. Nothing beats it for broad, brainstorm-style thinking and planning, or loud reminders of some home task left undone.

That’s about it for the practical, now what about the impractical? Think about what you would want if money were no hindrance whatsoever. Maybe along the lines of the ultimate GTD dashboard? Picture a huge, 60+ inch LCD, touch screen display, permanently showing your Remember The Milk (or other suitable GTD tool) homepage. Now you really have no excuse not to know what needs to be done.

And why not see how the man himself does it?

So what’s your dream GTD office like?

With the market trending as it has lately, I’m sure that many companies are feeling pressure to cut costs and make more efficient use of resources. Being in IT puts us in a position squarely targeted in this kind of a situation; after all, technology units are often basically glorified cost centers.

Given the gloomy outlook for the coming months, I thought it might be appropriate to post some thoughts on how we (as GTD’ers, especially in IT) can add as much value to our services as possible. Think of this as an expanded framework for determining what you should be spending your time doing, now that resources are likely to be tighter than ever.

One thing about the tightening budget strings is that it brings things like evaluating priority and value of work into clear focus. Now more than ever, it is important to approach your daily work with a rational, methodical, and clear-headed approach, as opposed to simply giving in to whatever is yelling at you the loudest. Needless fat must be trimmed in order to ensure that we are providing the maximum of value, with a minimum of cost.

In my job previous to the current one, I worked on a development team that followed a model of total baseline operation. That is, the only “cost” associated with our efforts was that of the set staffing; there was no “discretionary” bump in resources when the list of projects grew too long. As a result, we needed to adopt a method of carefully choosing how our time was spent, to ensure that we were providing as much value to the business as possible.

Each project submitted for possible work had to be justified in four key areas:

1. Reduction of risk – perhaps the project would allow for closer scrutiny of certain high-risk areas of operation, such as large dollar transactions, or fix a bug that had the potential to cost thousands in errors.
2. Direct cost savings – by automating a process, it would eliminate the need to hire additional staff to cover an increase in volume or additional services offered. Note: while we didn’t like to think of it this way, the opposite was also true, in that some of our projects likely got people laid off.
3. Client service – the project might fulfill the request of an important client or set of clients. Or, it might allow the company to provide services not yet offered, thus enhancing our appeal.
4. Reduction of system load – because a great deal of the processing work for my company takes place on legacy mainframe systems, increased system load can almost directly equate with increased expenditures (more MIPS = more $$).

If a project didn’t meet merit based on the above four-tiered evaluation, it was unceremoniously dropped from our list of work. We had to be brutually efficient at this triage; with no cost for our efforts, the projects poured in. Even today, I still consider it one of the best frameworks for evaluating potential projects.

So the next time you’re trying to decide how to spend your time, look at your project list with a critical eye, and consider what value it truly adds for your clients.

This past week, I was happily chugging away on my laptop, when suddenly, things went very wrong. The first sign of trouble was that one of my applications simply closed without warning or error. Next, upon trying to launch the program again, I was told that Windows couldn’t find the application in question. Not good…

Soon after, Launchy (an excellent program, by the way) completely tanked, and could not be restarted. Within around thirty seconds, icons on my desktop began spontaneously disappearing, until finally the entire Explorer desktop just vanished.

At this point I frantically tried to power off my computer, hoping that I can attach the drive later and recover some data. After successfully hard-powering my laptop, and placing it safely off to the side, I had a friend begin to download the latest SystemRescue CD.

But in the mean time, what was I to do? My job is highly computer centric, between e-mail and endless project planning details. But the productivity geek in me found it totally unacceptable to merely sit around while I was awaiting some technical resolution. So, what is one to do?

1. Get Back To Your Lists
   I borrowed a friend’s computer long enough to access Remember The Milk (a nice benefit of using a cloud app for tracking your lists) and printed out my Next Action list. While I could have filtered for tasks with a context other than “@computer”, I chose not to, since many of those tasks may not actually require a computer (but were marked only as a preference).
2. Cover Your Bases
   I also stayed on my borrowed computer long enough to set an out of office response. While I could have stood by the window and gotten good enough Blackberry reception to get e-mail, it would have been highly inefficient as a response device. Better to eliminate all unnecessary obstacles and stay focused.
3. Take The Sure Things First
   I started out by taking care of anything that could be done on the phone or face-to-face. This way, I can leave later time clear for those tasks that truly required use of a computer.
4. Pull Out The Old Moleskine
   While I prefer to use tools such as FreeMind for tasks involving planning or brainstorming, in this case I found the old pen and paper almost as useful. There’s something strangely rewarding in scribbling notes and free-drawing mind-maps; the physicality of it makes it really feel like you are accomplishing something. I just might have to do this more often, even with the computer around.

In the end, I had a highly productive morning; time was not wasted, projects moved forward, and decisions were made. Because of this, I was able to grant myself permission to spend most of the afternoon performing a haphazard recovery of my hard disk (thank you SystemRescue CD and Linux), without feeling guilty about neglecting my other duties.

So what’s your DR (that’s Disaster Recovery in IT lingo) plan? If you’re computer, iPhone, or other technological “necessity” went down today, how would you handle it? After reading this post, hopefully not by running wildly about your office, screaming at the poor Help Desk folks to hurry up. Trust me, they do things much faster when not poked and prodded too often.

Well, it’s right about a year since my initial GTD kick got under way, and it’s about time for a review.

What Has Worked

1. Your Brain Is Not A To-Do List: I don’t know how I ever managed to come close to tracking all my responsibilities in my head, at least not without it swelling to the size of a watermelon.
2. Next-Action Oriented Thinking: Projects are much easier to move along if you know the one, clearly defined, physical action that will cause forward progress. Rather than having things languish in “Well I don’t know what to do next” status, I always know what needs to be done.
3. The Weekly Review: It took a while to turn this practice into a habit, and I’m still probably not as good with it as I should be. But it has helped immensely in setting goals for the coming week and ensuring that no project sits unnoticed.

What Still Needs Work

1. Operating At Altitudes Above 10,000 Feet: While I’ve gotten pretty good at organizing my daily tasks and projects, what is still missing is some overall goals for the coming year, the coming decade, my life, etc. The truth is, I have so much to do at what David Allen calls the “Runway Level” that it’s been altogether too easy to ignore this issue.
2. That (Dreaded?) Someday/Maybe List: To be honest, I don’t even have one at the moment! Yes, I know, I am ashamed. Here I am, trying to be something of a productivity geek, and I don’t have one of the core parts of the GTD system. *Smacks hand* I think this really goes hand in hand with what I’ve said above, in that I’ve gotten lost in the day-to-day management.
3. GTD In My Life Outside Of Work: Although I have improved since my last post on the subject, it’s still a weak area. I still haven’t quite found the perfect way to integrate these principles in my home life, especially the idea of universal capture. Example: I’m sitting reading a book, and my wife asks me to deal with the kitty litter. Do I stop reading immediately and write it down, or e-mail myself? Or do I just get a wooden box and have her throw things in it, much like an inbox? Anyone have suggestions?

So there it is, my one year review. Instead of being bummed that I haven’t gotten it quite right yet, instead I am excited that there is still improvement to be made! If GTD makes this kind of a difference now, operating at 60-70%, just imagine what it will be like when honed and tuned further.

So how long have you been practicing GTD? What areas do you have down solid, and what ones still need improvement?

“Hi folks, my name is Josh…”

…and after careful consideration (and with a little guidance from some important people in my life ), I’ve come to the conclusion that  I spend all together too much time on my computer.

I would estimate that (outside of work) I spend 2 hours per night reading blogs, doing research on personal projects, or just zoning out.  On weekends it’s probably even worse, with somewhere around 5+ hours per day spent doing the same thing.  What’s even worse is that I’ve found that most of my time is spent doing rather mindless browsing, without any clear purpose.

Well, all that is going to change, starting now.

The New Rules Of The Game

1. No computer after dinner, except on Mondays and Tuesdays when I write posts for this blog.
2. No more than 3 hours per weekend day on the computer.

Now obviously this does not include work or any after-hours emergencies; I don’t think “I’m trying to cut down on my computer usage” would be a very valid excuse for neglecting my job duties.

I’m hoping that in addition to the obvious benefit of more time with *gasp* real people, this change in policy will help in other ways.

With Limits Must Come Efficiency

Because I am limiting myself to a set amount of time, I have two choices on how to proceed: 1) Continue browsing mindlessly and fail miserably at getting the important tasks done; or 2) Cut out all the crap and only do the specific, necessary work. Which one do you think I’m going to choose?

As a side effect, this will force me to more closely define my personal projects and initiatives. Certainly at work, I’m relatively disciplined in terms of scoping out projects and planning the necessary work before beginning. At home though, I tend to be more spontaneous and unplanned. Not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly it does not lend itself to efficiency.

Do you set limits on time spent with technology? How do you make sure that what time you have staring at a screen is used most efficiently, both at work and outside?

Stephen over at Productivity In Context posted a nice series on how to plan and run better meetings. I don’t know about you, but useless, directionless meetings are a huge problem where I work. If people followed Stephen’s guidelines, I would bet that we’d all get a lot more productive results.

Today was my first day back from work after nearly a week off.  Surprisingly, I had only around 300 e-mails to process in my inbox; I usually receive that amount each day, not counting automated alerts and the like.  After reviewing everything and making sure all my lists were up to date, I began working on what was the most important, urgent matter at the time.

By about 9:30AM, several fires had appeared on the horizon.  Each demanded much attention from my team, and it quickly became obvious that my day would not be very productive, at least from the perspective of crossing off a lot of items.

In the past situations such as this would cause my blood pressure to rise almost instantly.  Not because of any physical danger (“When Servers Attack” anyone?), but because subconsciously, I immediately began worrying about what I was not doing.  That is, if I was spending all my effort to correct some immediate problem, what was getting implicitly pushed off?

So what happened today?  Certainly at first, I felt a slight twinge and a brief rise in my pulse.  But after taking a breath and calmly reviewing everything in my “Next Actions” list, I was able to definitely know that I was indeed directing my time appropriately.  The feeling was one I am certainly not used to!

This state of being was possible only because of the following pre-existing conditions:

1. I have been incredibly good in terms of making sure that each and every possible “open loop” is in my trusted system, no matter how small or how insignificant it may seem.
2. I have developed the habit that whenever one of those “it needs to be done now” (usually stated by whomever reports the problem) type of problems hits my plate, I do the following:
   1. Use soothing words and a little empathic listening to get the person to remain calm.
   2. Ask pointed questions about the true severity of the issue. How many, what’s the workaround, etc.
   3. Take note of all the information for future reference. Moleskins are great for this.
   4. Politely let the person know that I am going to review the problem with my team and get back to them when more information is available, and as soon as time permits.
   5. If I believe the problem is truly urgent, I’ll immediately decide on a next action and put it in my list. Otherwise, I’ll throw some reminder into my “in bin” for later perusal.
3. I review my lists with near religious regularity, constantly reminding myself to not lose sight of the larger picture.

All of these combine to enable me to do my daily work with agility and perspective, such that at any given point, I feel very confident that I am doing exactly what  I should be.

The most difficult part?  Maintaining an even keel and and objective frame of reference in the face of perpetual problems.  That is a skill that I am still very much honing, and one that can only be developed through daily practice and a strong sense of your emotions.

How do you maintain a broad view of your responsibilities, while still responding to the fires that fall on you unexpectedly?

Most people would agree that one of the principle benefits of GTD is the ability to see anything and everything on your plate at a given time.  Once you have mastered the fundamentals of clearing your brain and deciding on next actions, your lists should be fairly comprehensive and all encompassing.  This fact, in and of itself, gives GTD a lot of its cathartic power, in that you can see all your open loops in one place and have a good context to choose what to work on.

But what if I don’t want to do it?

Pop quiz: what is the next step after you have 1) Collected, 2)Processed, 3)Organized, and 4)Reviewed? It’s Do of course!

So naturally, you look at all your next actions, and automatically one jumps out at you and says “Pick me!  I’m fun and easy”.  Emotionally, you want to listen to that little voice, so you start working.  Before you know it, the task is done, and you go back to your list.  Immediately, another item jumps off the page, practically screaming “I’m next!  Me!”  And so on.

At the end of the day, you probably have checked off a good number of things off your lists.  You probably feel good and think to yourself, “Look at all I’ve accomplished today!  This GTD stuff isn’t so hard.”

Here’s the problem: you know all those tasks you’ve been doing all day?  While some of them probably legitimately needed to be done, most probably fell into what Steven Covey calls the “Un-important / Not-Urgent” category.  In other words, while they may have given you an emotional “good feeling” and felt good while being done, they probably did not do much to advance your larger goals and move critical projects along.

But the server is calling my name…

I’ll use myself as a prime example.  This morning, after I made sure my task lists were all up to date, I had a choice between the following:

1. Restore backup of my linux home media server, from before I managed to completely corrupt it with various packages I didn’t really need (the topic of another post perhaps).
2. Finish packing for the holiday trip my wife and I are taking, scheduled to leave this evening.
3. Empty the cat litter.
4. Bring in new cat litter from the trunk of the car.

So looking at this list, and with the knowledge that I am a consummate geek, which one do you think appealed the most to me?  Hint: if you said “Empty the cat litter”, you obviously don’t understand the phrase “consummate geek”, and need to consult Wikipedia or another credible source.

Naturally, it’s number one, “Restore the backup…”.  I ended up spending around three hours struggling with correcting miscellaneous configuration and system settings.  In the end, while I was successful, I felt that I had not accomplished much of anything, and felt stressed and anxious about completing the remainder of my items for the day.  In retrospect, if I’d just taken care of items 2, 3, and 4 first, then moved on to my geekery, I probably would feel a lot better, and would have still had time to fix up my system before our departure.

So the next time you find yourself caving in to that little voice telling you “Pick this one, it’ll be fun!”, stop and think for a moment.  Is this really what I need to be doing right now?  What will happen if I don’t do “X”?  Is this one of those “Non Urgent / Not-Important” tasks?  Trust me, you’ll be thanking yourself later.  And that fun-to-do task the little voice was nagging you about?  It will be even more fun later.

In Which Our Hero Selects His Weapon In The Battle Against Chaos

In many ways, the principles of GTD are rather tool-agnostic.  You can write down your tasks and dump your memory into any one of many different repositories, both physical and electronic.  That being said, it is helpful to have some kind of framework available with which you can evaluate all the various options out there.

In my experience, a GTD system works best when it meets the following criteria:

The system is readily available to you at all times

Your chosen repository will do you little good if you are not able to easily refer to it at all times. Whose to say, for instance, that you won’t suddenly get inspiration on a new project while out running (it happened to me today, as a matter of fact)?

Ease of use

Similar to the above, but not necessarily the same. You could probably find a Web 2.0 app that was available on both your iPhone and online (therefore meeting the above criteria), but was still an absolute boor to use. If it’s not easy to query, edit, and analyze what’s in your system, you will surely shy away from using it, rendering it worthless.

Tagging or other means of categorizing items

Without the ability to easily filter and sort your lists based on contexts or other tags, the task of deciding what to do at any given moment becomes harder. For instance, if you are on the train headed home after work, and you only have access to your phone (and no internet), you should be able to quickly see a list of all the tasks in the “@phone” context.  It also makes it very easy to check off your “next action” and “waiting for” items across multiple projects.

Tracking of completed items

It is an accepted fact in the world of psychology that positive reinforcement is very powerful in changing behavior patterns. As you continue in your efforts to ingrain the principles of GTD into your daily life, being able to see all that you’ve accomplished can be a very powerful motivator to continue down your chosen path. I’ve found it amazingly satisfying to look back at the past week on a Friday and see just how much I’ve been able to do.

---

I believe all three of these could be accomplished with any number of tools, be it a web app like Remember The Milk (a subtle endorsement for my weapon of choice) or a simple paper based notebook. To me, that’s the point of the framework: it’s platform independent. Hopefully you will find it useful in your quest to find the right tools for implementing GTD.

Speaking of which, if you already have a framework, what is it? How do you evaluate all the various options available to us?