August 18, 2008

The inbox: your loading dock of raw materials

If you are somewhat new to GTD and you are interested in implementing the principles in Getting Things Done, make sure that you actually get and use a magical little device called the inbox.

If you've read the book or been to a seminar, you know that the first phase of successfully managing your workflow is to collect whatever you've got your attention on. The basic principle of collecting is that you'll have a heck of an easier time managing an action or project to completion if you get it out of your head and into an objective trusted system outside of yourself. Otherwise, the thought or promise or commitment will just keep spinning inside your psyche, yelling for attention and draining your energy. If you've ever watched a GTD aficionado in action you've probably noticed them jotting occasional notes to themselves in the middle of meetings or in the middle of nowhere. Then, when they have the chance they spend some time to process what those notes really mean and determine what actions, if any, they are now committed to regarding what they've collected.

Think about GTD as an approach for successfully managing all of the agreements you have with yourself and others. In this approach, collecting and processing are the steps in which the agreements get manufactured. When you process something you've collected and actually define a new commitment, you literally create something out of nothing. You now have a future outcome where before there was nothing. Think about your actual physical inbox as one of the key loading docks for the raw materials that may become your commitments. If you don't actually use an inbox in this way, essentially your whole office, home, and/or psyche will become your inbox - and that can get awfully messy.

In the trenches of today's knowledge workers I've seen many variations on the concept of the in-box. For some, the in-box is a place where other people drop things off - like memos, reports, and mail. For others an inbox is where they keep all of their work-in-progress until they have time to do it. Still others have no idea why they'd even want to have a box called In anywhere near their desk.

Yes, the email and voice-mail inbox IS automatically filling up for us every day - so those are difficult collection places to miss. But remember that your physical inbox (or in-folder while you're traveling) can actually be one of the most important parts of your GTD system. Yes, it's a place for others to drop stuff for you. But more importantly, it's a place for you to drop all your own meeting notes, notes to self, and random stuff you haven't quite figured out until you've got a bit of processing time to make sense of it all and make some new agreements.

I'm curious: what's your favorite collection tool and how exactly do you use it?

Posted by mdolan at 02:28 PM | Comments (7)

November 27, 2007

A picture of my trusted system

I'm so excited to be officially blogging now. My very first comment came from Mitch who asked if I could share a little bit about my "trusted" GTD system setup.

Mitch - it would be my pleasure...

I'll use the framework of David Allen's five phases of workflow to discuss my system: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do

Collect
The tools I use to collect what's got my attention are:

Medium Black Moleskine lined notebook - I usually keep it with me whenever I'm working. I date the pages and use if for notes, brainstorms, sketching, etc.

My email arrives in two different places. One in my Lotus Notes, which is the application that we share at the David Allen Company. The other is a personal email account which I collect in Outlook. Yes, I often need to copy info from a Lotus email into an Outlook task or project, but this is a trade-off I'm willing to make at this point.

DavidAllen NoteTaker Men's wallet - for collecting on the go when out and about.

Jott.com - when a thought occurs to me while driving or really anywhere, I use Jott to get in to my email in-box for processing.

Since my current "office" setup is essentially in my kitchen, my physical in-box is a built-in box in the exposed
cabinet of the office area of our kitchen. Other than that, I have a portable in-folder in my mobile office bag, which usually sits next to me whereever I'm working.

Process
For the GTD un-initiated, "processing" essentially means to define what exactly you are going to do or not do about whatever you've collected.

I try to process everything I collect at least every other day. Sometimes when I'm slammed this slips a day or two, but I almost always catch up in my weekly review if that happens.

I use Outlook and the Netcentrics Outlook Add-In for processing my stuff.

Organize
Outlook contains my next actions, my project list, my digital notes, calendar and my contacts. These all sync to my Palm Treo 680.

I usually have a five drawer upright old Steelcase file cabinet not far from where I work in the kitchen. But right now it's actually in storage! We're in the process of showing and selling our home - and we needed to clear a lot of things out temporarily until it's sold. So for now, I have a small portable file container that contains the essentials I thought I'd need for the time-being.

As mentioned above, I keep a lot of things in my Brookstone traveling office roller-bag, including key working project folders, an Action Support Folder, Read FYI folder, Travel Support Folder, and all of my coaching gear (Brother PT-15 labeler, books, supplies)

I also use Plaxo as a tool to link my Outlook calendar to my wife's laptop. That helps us a lot in terms of coordinating childcare, travel, and the "work" of our family.

Review
I typically look at my calendar at least a couple of times a day, and review my action lists at about the same frequency, depending on how booked my calendar is for that day.

I get in a good weekly review, on average, every 8 or 9 days. And yes, I am human: Sometimes I'm so slammed that the weekly review gets either abbreviated or pushed off. But I think the longest I've ever gone without a weekly review was about three weeks (and man did it take a while to get through that one!!)

Do
When I've got actually "doing" time for things that aren't on my calendar, I'll scan my action lists, consider how much time and energy I have, try to consider my higher-level goals, and essentially just use my gut and the due-dates on my actions as my guide.

Sometimes during my weekly review I'll schedule some blocks of time in the upcoming week for specific projects or just general doing time. This is especially true when my schedule is crammed.

So there you have it - or at least an overview of it! Of course from my perspective being in control and having perspective on your work is not just about the system and tools that you use. What's more critical is the thought process with which you actually use your system and tools. In other words, you can have all the fanciest gear and most up-to-date systems, but if you're not actually consciously defining the agreements you've got with yourself the tools will be pretty useless

Also - a brief disclaimer: This is just the way my system has evolved. A lot of this is a matter of personal preference and just plain what works for me. Your system and approach is probably different. We are different people, with different styles, work, and lives. The golden rule when it comes to system and tool choices is to do what is attractive and workable for YOU, no matter how your neighbor is doing it.

Posted by mdolan at 01:32 PM | Comments (5)