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October 12, 2005

How do you get a day off your mind?

Whew. Good and bad news about my life now is that often I have days that spin almost more creative opportunities and potential open loops than I feel capable of handling. (The better you get, the better you'd better get!)

Today a good example. Spent eight hours in San Francisco today with Mitch Kapor and the Chandler group (combined as the Open Source Applications Foundation), who are dedicated to creating a personal information management application that will be accessible as a foundation for lots of collaboratively creative iterations and plug-ins, as well as a simple but appropriately sophisticated model for people to manage personally and interactively some basic knowledge-worker stuff.

Mitch created (in addition to Lotus 1-2-3) Agenda, one of the first and only products of substance that began to grapple with taming software sophistication to support how we really think. Serendipitously, I was an early beta tester of Agenda, because I was doing an early version of GTD training inside Lotus in the 80's. Mitch and some of his key people have now done GTD seminars, and he's professed buy-in to it's principles as necessary to incorporate in the long term, for personal management.

So he brought me up to spend a day giving my input into their thinking and design process. They're doing good stuff, and I've no doubt that we're still only at the formative stages of real integration of software with the best practices of productive thinking. Nice for me personally to have someone of Mitch's stature to recognize the potential for the interface of GTD with something that is attempting to support such a broad audience.

Then I took BART over to Berkeley to have dinner with Jerry Michalski, the guy who turned me on to The Brain and who was also (along with Mitch) in my San Jose RoadMap seminar. Jerry's got a handle on what he's labeled as the "relationship economy," and we had a fun dinner comparing notes about such things, including where I'm trying to guide the David Allen Company within all its contexts these days. Jerry had a couple of great suggestions I hadn't really thought of before, that could be key anchor points for some things we'll be creating. Jerry's involved in some ad hoc but extremely creative and interesting projects. I suggest you stay in touch with this guy's thinking. I will.

As I sat decompressing in the bar of the Four Seasons here in SFO tonight, mind-mapping thoughts on a napkin about today and the so-what's and therefore's and maybe-if's, galvanized with the heady conversations all day long,I'm thinking: I need two days of processing for one day of engagement!

Posted by David at October 12, 2005 11:18 PM

Comments

Hi David,

I'm currently reading GTD and really like it so far. While I am also eagerly awaiting a full release of Chandler, I ran across this application that I believe would fit in nicely with GTD. It's called Zimbra ( www.zimbra.com ). If you have a moment check out the demo.

Frank Wiles

Posted by: Frank Wiles at October 13, 2005 02:55 PM

I only hope that Mr. Kapor and his team have read your book and are able to Get Chandler Done. They have a giant task ahead of them and I admire what they're doing -- trying to get it right.

Open source advocates and people like myself who aren't so thrilled with Outlook have great stuff to look forward to.

Posted by: Mike at October 14, 2005 07:18 AM

I am extremely glad to hear that Mitch Kapor and the Chandler group have bought into GTD philosophy. I've been following the work of the OSAF almost since inception with eager anticipation and have often thought that Chandler + GTD would make a killer application. Can't wait to ditch Outlook. Keep up the good work!

Posted by: Dave at October 24, 2005 04:00 PM

Several things brought me here tonight, mostly indirectly, including BART and some mental fragments. (I liked the title of David's blog entry, potentially recursively becoming how to get your mind off your mind -- as the saying goes, "Whereever you go, there you are!" So many times I do associate that with David's GTD first step emphasis of definining just what is the "Done State.")

I had used BART today from the East Bay to get to a free pizza day at North Beach Pizza in San Francisco by Grant & Union. Commentators to a popular Internet destination rated this as the best place for pizza in SF. So North Beach gave away pizzas all day from 11AM to midnight to celebrate their getting this award. I did need something to occupy my time both during BART and while waiting in line (I waited about 1-1/2 hours.) So I did pack into my business case / reading folder a book I've been meaning to read for a while. Yes, I did allocate for it in the form of a "Someday/Maybe." Ironically, the title coincides with this blog entry I'm replying to. This book is Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind."

So I really couldn't get a day off my mind until I read this book which speaks of the concept of
"memes," the basic building block of the mind. It's almost like David's idea of getting things out of your mental RAM onto physical space (like writing a mental download onto a piece of paper.) I liked how Brodie's book explanation of memes gets one to take conscious note of what may be tugging at one's mind, especially external forces one wouldn't otherwise be aware of. Paradoxically, knowing what's going on and into the construction of your mind helps you get your mind off it! (Top that off with something in the chemistry of tomato and pesto having an effect on one's DNA, leading me here indirectly.)



Anyway, I'm really grateful to the GTD methodology. Getting my free pizza "Done State" in North Beach was reachable through the "Next Action" paths of the Financial District. I'm grateful to now have seen some potentially lucrative "open loops" along Montgomery Street. Somehow knowing there is a Done State to things makes the inner steps in between enjoyable. And edible!



I hereby offer Brodie's book as a corollary companion to David's.


Posted by: Glenn Mandelkern at October 27, 2005 02:35 AM