Too many businesses!

[ekillian]

Hi all, I am new the the forum but I have been starting and restarting GTD for about 4 years.

I own my own business which has two divisions, one is design and consulting the other is instruction, all email for this business comes to my Outlook.

and

I am a Director of another business in which I have two different duties as well, business development and instruction. This email does not go to my Outlook, it is cloud based(godaddy).

I have tried Evernote, OneNote(I think I like ON better but it is up in the air) as well as the standard paper GTD system. I like the didgital way better because of my travel requirements.

How do I set up a folder system for all of this?!

[mcogilvie]

Hi all, I am new the the forum but I have been starting and restarting GTD for about 4 years.

I own my own business which has two divisions, one is design and consulting the other is instruction, all email for this business comes to my Outlook.

and

I am a Director of another business in which I have two different duties as well, business development and instruction. This email does not go to my Outlook, it is cloud based(godaddy).

I have tried Evernote, OneNote(I think I like ON better but it is up in the air) as well as the standard paper GTD system. I like the didgital way better because of my travel requirements.

How do I set up a folder system for all of this?!

How do you want to see your lists and reference material? Have you tried doing it that way? Does it work? Why not? What needs to be handled better? How can you change things to do your work more effectively?

[cwoodgold]

Sorry for all the questions, but if you provide more information I or others
might better be able to make suggestions. Please ignore any questions you
don't feel like answering.

What do you mean by a "folder system"?

When you did GTD before, what did your context lists look like? What contexts did you use, how many next actions did you typically have in each context at a given time, how often did you look at the context lists, and how useful were they?

Do you like having the different things go to different email systems? I can see advantages and disadvantages. You might like to have separate context lists for the two email systems.

What were your reasons for stopping GTD before? (E.g. procrastinating looking at the next actions lists, procrastinating doing weekly planning ... ooops that's precisely
what I'm doing at this very moment -- perhaps I'll log off)

[vbampton]

I'd agree that we need a bit more information about your folders.

In the meantime, let me offer a few clues, as I'm in a similar boat (main business has multiple streams, plus founder/director for another business).

1. Check whether your GoDaddy email can go into Outlook too - most can. It's easier to manage when it's all in the same system. You'll still be able to see them together or separately, and you can maintain separate folders.

2. I'd keep your projects and actions for both businesses in the same system so you can make the best use of your time. I name mine with the area of focus to easily identify which is which. So I might have LRQ Marketing, LRQ Sales, PSS Website, etc.

3. For filing, use the same system for everything, but by all means keep separate A-Z filing systems for each business if they don't overlap.

[TesTeq]

I own my own business which has two divisions, one is design and consulting the other is instruction, all email for this business comes to my Outlook.

and

I am a Director of another business in which I have two different duties as well, business development and instruction.

Does it really work for you and for your businesses? I am not able to focus appropriately on more than 2 businesses at a time.

[Smile Police]

Hi all, I am new the the forum but I have been starting and restarting GTD for about 4 years.

I own my own business which has two divisions, one is design and consulting the other is instruction, all email for this business comes to my Outlook.

and

I am a Director of another business in which I have two different duties as well, business development and instruction. This email does not go to my Outlook, it is cloud based(godaddy).

I have tried Evernote, OneNote(I think I like ON better but it is up in the air) as well as the standard paper GTD system. I like the didgital way better because of my travel requirements.

How do I set up a folder system for all of this?!

I have many business that I run or work for.

I have every email come into my outlook.
I track every thing threw talks and calendar

I run off a hosted exchange server, Godaddy and Inter media is two the I have used personally.

This way i have a cloud based email system as well and a desktop system as well as a mobile phone system all sync into one entire system

I step up my folders as projects. For each business I run I set up a project and this project has many sub projects.

I use clear context to speed the process up for me as it save so much time.

[mattsykes]

On the email front: if you feel it would be best to have all in one place, can you set up via POP3 or somesuch so that it all goes into the one email client?

It sounds like you need to be really clear on your areas of focus. While you need to have a way to make sure you're across everything in each area of focus, my experience is that you still want to have everything in the one system - so that you capture it all.

[ekillian]

Thank you all for your input.

I am stepping down from the "other" business which allows the godaddy account to effectively go away. One problem fixed.


I am currently clearing all the stuff, reference and all(I figure if I have not looked at it in a year I won't) and starting fresh with OneNote. This has created a VERY large shred/recycle pile.

I found a couple blogs that have ideas I like and read GTD again. Outlook is now properly configured, I am learning to use OneNote and I actually use my phone to take pictures of things like magazine articles etc and enter them that way.

Tomorrow will be Mind-Sweep day.

My desk will be a clean, flat, creativity inducing space this evening.