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October 30, 2006

Would you choose the same Stuff?

We had an flood in our bathroom and bedroom the other day. I discovered it via text message from my husband. He knew I was doing a seminar so he texted me with enough information to get my attention, but not too dramatic to freak me out. "Flood in bathroom. Getting new rug." It was serious enough to require replacing the rug and do some repainting. Hello new project.

I spent most of yesterday bringing the stuff back into the room. I thought it was interesting how my Stuff had proliferated and things had landed in the wrong place. How did the sleeping bags end up under the bed? Oh yah, after that last trip I didn't feel like taking them down to storage. Why am I saving all of these CD cases? Oh yah, I thought I might need them but now I'm realizing I haven't looked at them in two years.

It was actually quite refreshing to have a chance to look at everything that was going back into the room. Do I need this? How often do I use this? Is this exactly the way I want it?

If you took everything out of your office and then had to put it back in (and really gave yourself time to look at everything) would you choose the same Stuff? Would you change anything? Pick one thing that's been bugging you that you know has taken more of your attention than it deserves and change it. Are those pictures on your desk exactly the way you'd like them? Are your files working for you or do they need some purging? Are you comfortable in that chair you sit in 8,10,12 hours a day? Can you see your monitor clearly?

Try it. I bet changing that thing that's been taking your attention is going to be like taking a rock out of your shoe. You'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

Posted by Kelly at 02:32 PM | Comments (2)

October 27, 2006

Mind like water

I just wrapped up a great week with some clients in Minneapolis. On Tuesday I did a full GTD - Mastering Workflow seminar for 100 people. The next day was designed as an Implementation Day for those participants--an idea I absolutely love. I sometimes hear in seminars that people love the information and want to get started but they are not sure if their boss/team will think it's OK for them to spend the time away from their "real work" to "get organized." This particular client makes it easy for participants by carving the class out on their calendars as a two-day training. The entire day following the class is permission to implement GTD. In the afternoon, we regrouped for a two-hour Q&A, Outlook power user class and more. Awesome.

Minneapolis is one of my favorite cities. I took time out on the other night to walk around one of the lakes. I caught this shot on my Treo. A great example of Mind Like Water!

Posted by Kelly at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2006

When is fast too fast?

I was doing some volunteer work today. They had asked me to come in to help them with a specific project of installing some software. Simple enough. As soon as I got there, one person announced to me that it was "one of those days." It was clear to me that the energy in the office was frenetic. At that point, I was fairly relaxed and was clear about what I was there to do.

2 hours later I somehow became involved in 3 concurrent projects/problems, none of which was making much progress. I had also become frenetic and stressed like the rest of the office. I was trying to do everything too quickly and all at once. I felt like my whole internal engine had starting revving at a higher speed, but not in a good, creative way. Instead of giving my attention and creative focus to one thing, I tried multi-tasking and being a latest and loudest problem-solver. Problem is, I didn't do any of it very well. If I had stuck to my original project and purpose for being there I think I would have seen better results and completion. Instead I took on 3 projects and did a mediocre job with all of them.

When does fast become too fast?

Posted by Kelly at 06:26 PM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2006

View from above

One of my joys of traveling for David Allen Company is seeing the world from 37,000 feet in the air. There's something about seeing things from that perspective that is relaxing for me. I was flying into Seattle the other night and caught this photo of the sun setting on my Treo:

I've got a busy few weeks of travel coming up. I'll be going to San Diego, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Vancouver. I love the travel aspect of my job. It's fun to be able to go to different places each week.

Happy travels...wherever your travels lead you.

Posted by Kelly at 08:56 AM | Comments (1)

October 10, 2006

Handling completed calendar entries

A client asked us recently about handling completed calendar items on her Treo. There are some tips here that can apply to whatever system you use, but for you Treo users in particular, option #4 may be handy.

1. Do nothing. If it's within the same day, it may be obvious to you what has been completed on a review of the day's events. This is what I do.

2. Delete completed items. Downside of that is that there will then be no record of the entry.

3. Put the word DONE next to the entry which will still preserve it as an event in the Calendar.

4. Change the category on the Treo to Completed (a new category you can create). On the Treo, you can assign categories to Calendar entries so that a small colored circle appears next to the entry.

Select any Calendar entry on the Treo and tap the Details button.

Tap the drop-down menu next to Category, where it may say Unfiled.

I would suggest creating a new category called "Completed" under "Edit Categories."

When you complete an item, you can go back to this Details screen for the entry and change the Category to Completed. That way it will appear with that colored circle on the Treo for you. It's not a super obvious way of separating out Done items, but if may help.

A more obvious way to see what's done versus not done, may be to take it a step further, after changing the category to Completed, and filter your Palm daily calendar view to "Unfiled" instead of "All." This could work if you are only using the categories Unfiled (which is set by default for all calendar entries) and Completed (which you create). Then the Unfiled view will only show you what's left to be done for the day. You can filter your calendar in the top right corner of your screen by tapping on the word All and changing it to Unfiled.

There is no way on the Palm to select two categories at once (such as Urgent and Unfiled.) The only category that allows multiple categories is All.

Of course, many programs allow you to change the look of entries, to serve this same purpose as described in #4, if you want that functionality. In Outlook you could change the Label and in Lotus Notes you can go under Tools>Preferences>Colors and change the color for different calendar entries.

Hope this helps.

Kelly

Posted by Kelly at 06:55 PM | Comments (2)

October 03, 2006

BlackBerry questions

I have a few questions for you BlackBerry users out there please:

1/ Will all recent models of BlackBerry's allow filing an email on the BB?
2/ Are email folders only created on the desktop and then sync down to the BB?
3/ Are there any limits to the number of folders the BB will show?
4/ Do emails filed in an Outlook personal folder show up on the BB?

Whatever you know and can contribute here I'd appreciate it. I've been running a BB Simulator and have scoured the BB website, but haven't been able to figure these ones out. I'm suspecting it makes a difference in model and server, but I'd love some input on this.

Thanks!
Kelly

Posted by Kelly at 11:56 AM | Comments (4)

October 02, 2006

My lists

In a recent blog post, a GTD'er named Peter asked me "Is it possible for you to share an example of your lists?" I'd be happy to share more specifics about how I manage and use my lists, in case this is useful:

Email: Lotus Notes
Calendar, Tasks and Memo Pad: Palm Desktop
Handheld: Treo 650
Paper notes: Levenger Circa Pad - full size and pocket size

My lists:
In the Tasks Function of Palm Desktop, here are my action lists for all of my personal and work commitments:

@Anywhwere - for things I can do anywhere, as long as I have the thing (such as hard copy critical reading)
@Calls - no mystery there
@Errands - things to do out and about such as shopping lists, things to drop off, pick up etc.
@Home/Office - things I can only do at home and/or in my home office
@Laptop - actions that require the computer
@Talk To - Agenda lists for key people (boss, co-worker and husband)
@Waiting For - things I'm waiting for from someone or something else (call backs I'm waiting for, email responses, orders placed etc.)
Projects - the list of my outcomes that will take more than one action step to complete

Currently, I have 25 projects and 50 next actions on my lists. No where near the volume some people have, which is fine by me!

In the Memo Pad I have these reference-type lists:
Blog Ideas
Checklists
Fun
Guidelines
Health & Fitness
Inspiration
Like To Buy
Places to Go
Someday
Someday-Work
Travel

I have been a Palm Desktop user for about 10 years and am very happy with it. Even though it means my email is in another program, I find the benefit of Palm's simplicity worth the effort of manually entering actions that come by way of email into my Palm Task lists.

By the way, even if you don't use a Palm handheld, you can download the desktop program for free from Palm's web site.

Posted by Kelly at 10:30 AM | Comments (17)