Having a trusted reminder system is a critical success factor for GTD.   Given GTD is really an approach that is tool agnostic, nearly any tool will work as long as you have the right ingredients.

I laughed when I read a blog recently where someone tried swiping at GTD saying that “GTD is for techies only.”  David Allen’s roots in working this methodology, as well as my own, come from the paper planner world.  You can’t get much more low-tech than that.  In fact, some of the most elegant and accessible lists I’ve seen are paper ones.  Sure, there’s the rewrite factor of paper, but electronic list managers have the “over-featured” trap to watch out for. There are pros and cons to both.  I say, go with what works best for you.

Some of the most technically savvy people I know manage their lists on paper to shift their consciousness away from all of their electronic input.  It’s a fantastic pattern interrupt to switch over to a paper list when you stand in front of a fire hose of email and the Internet all day long. There’s also almost a zero learning curve with a paper system.  And, if you’re building it yourself from blank paper, you have a ton of flexibility on what it looks like.

So for any of you looking for a hard copy GTD system, with ingredients you can likely find around in your house or office, here’s what to do:

1.  Go to your graveyard of old 3-ring binders  (every company has one!) and find one you like.
2.  Find some divider tabs   (if you can’t find some, Post-it notes or flags will work to delineate each section.)
3.  Grab a stack of blank paper from your copier or supply closet and hole punch it into the binder.
4.  Download this free article on Setting up a Paper Organizer  from the GTD store and assemble the sections.
5.  Populate the lists with your complete inventory.

If you can’t find all those supplies at hand, even buying them from your local stationary supply store would only run about $6.  Could you spend more than $6?  Sure.  You could really trick it out with a leather binder and high-quality paper.  If you’re choosing one of the many web-based electronic systems out there, you’ll want to make it accessible from anywhere–especially when you’re offline.  This kind of paper system would work well if you’re doing a hybrid of digital and paper.  For example, electronic lists could be your home-base, but you print key lists to a binder for easy access and portability.

Next time you walk into a meeting, notice how many people have a paper lists or printed calendar with them. It’s more common than you think. If it’s your style to do things on paper, do yourself a favor and create a great hard copy system.

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A few weeks back, Duracell contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in testing out their new pre-charged rechargeable batteries.  These are nickel metal hydride batteries that come in a variety of common sizes including AAA and AA.  Being a gadget guy with more devices than I know what to do with I can always use batteries so I said yes.

When I found a use for the new batteries I did something I’ve never been able to do with a rechargable batter before: I was able to open the package, insert it into the device and turn the device on, all without having to charge the batteries first.  This is one of those “Homer Simpson - DOH!- moments” where you wonder why no one thought of this before.  In retrospect how stupid are these battery companies that sell you a device that is useless out of the box and is only functional after you’ve invested hour waiting with it plugged into a power source and costing you addtional money.

As far as I can tell these batteries perform as well if not better than the nickel metal hydride Duracell batteries that I had before only without the wait.  Cool.

The company has a promotion related to this with an online “Museum of the Obvious“. -  it’s a bit bandwidth intensive so have a fat pipe if you want to spend a few minutes being amused.

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Frank Tomizuka has just posted a great tutorial on how to make your very own hipster PDA over at Instructables - the world’s largest “How To” website.  For those of you that have never heard of a Hipster PDA, Merlin Mann introduced the idea over at 43Folders way back in September of 2004.  If you’d like a decidedly lower tech solution instead of a high tech device this may be just what you’re looking for…

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My friend and mentor Andy Abramson who authors the excellent blog, Working Anywhere.  He has just posted an article called Tools of the Global Nomad that is a must-read for anyone that does any serious amount of work while on the road as well as folks that work from home but have the needs (or wants) of services comparable to those that any reasonably sized and appropriately equipped enterprise would have.

Andy’s list of service providers is very comprehensive however there’s one company missing and I think it is a vital one to have on your list if you travel in Europe at all and especially if you rely on mobile data in any way, shape, or form.  That company is Yoigo.  They’re a telecommunications service provider that sells 3G sim cards that work just about everywhere in Europe.  The deal with them is that for about the equivalent of $1.25 per day you get unlimited voice and data with your own new international number.

These SIM cards are sold all over the place - you can get them at grocery stores, tobacco shops, etc.  These cards, in and of themselves are enough reason to unlock your iPhone if you are planning on going to Europe.  They mean the difference between being connected or not being connected (or being connected and not coming home to a $17,000 data bill - no I am not joking - I really did get one of those!)

Among the providers Andy lists are:

PhoneFusion,  GrandCentral , Jazinga,  Boingo , Skype, MaxRoam, GizmoProject, Truphone, Mobivox and many others. This is one of those “print it out and save it” sort of posts as it references a ton of best of class providers that can make it a lot easier and more economical to get things done and look good doing it.

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One of our challenges in implementing GTD across our organization was to change our people’s habit of keeping stuff in their heads and get them to start actually using an external tool for collection. As you might imagine, if there were leaks in “Collect” process we simply couldn’t go ahead with the other stages of Gaining Control. Of course change always happens slowly. So we continuously stressed the benefits of collecting in an external system at our Weekly GTD Training meetings and I would occasionally send motivational reminder emails, like the one below:

Hi everybody,

A reminder to all to collect 100%. Currently as I’m sitting at my
desk, I see John on the phone, Ram on the phone and & Steve
having a discussion with Omer, but NOBODY’s
collecting. Even if you feel, “oh C’mon, have we got to collect this too,
but this is nothing important”, please do so. Only if we over-collect, for the
sake of collecting only, shall it become a habit. Once it becomes a
habit then we’ll start collecting the really useful stuff.

Take care everybody & All the best,
Arif

I admit I was going through quite an over-enthusiastic GTD Phase and was highly motivated to have a team around me that was GTD ready. But I was confident that it was a change for the better that would appreciated by all once we get there.
Well, of all the measures we have taken to fire up everybody to collect, the one that was most appreciated was when we designed a personalized pocket-note-taking pad for ourselves. After all David Allen does say that one of the best way to charge yourself to implement GTD is to get some cool gear. If you really have to collect always, you’ve got to have the tools around you to do so. I had experimented with several note-taking pads, including the David Allen Official Note pad that comes with his Note-taker Wallet, but none of them seemed just right. For some either the size was too small, or it was not too easy to tear off a page once you had completed jotting down what you needed to, none of them had a cool snazzy design.
Our criteria of a good note-taker wallet was:

1. It had to look good. So good that it mad a style statement. The user’s gotta feel like keeping it with him always and whipping it out when it came time to collect something.

2. The size had to be small enough to carry in your pocket, yet large enough to fit a mind map in there if you needed to.

3. One should be able to rip the paper out really easily once he’s captured something. Most of the note-pads I had seen were either spiral bound or micro-perforated. I’ve experienced that the spiral bound notepads, don’t tear off really easily when there are too few pages left in the pad. And the micro-perforated ones need you to hold the upper section of the notepad in one hand so that you can left the bottom portion of the page and tear it off.

4. The pages should not be ruled. So if anybody wants to draw something e.g. a route-map, mind map or an engineering drawing (we are a Construction Company), it would be really simple to do so

So after very intensive R&D we arrived at our first prototype. Ta-da:

The Design is something that everyone appreciated, even Leslie Boyer Harradine (Official David Allen Trainer) complemented us on it when she was down here.

Well there you have it. We first thought we’d put these notepads up for sale to the GTD community, but then since that was not really priority, we said, let’s just have it for in-house use. Anyway, Feel free to copy any of these to make your own personalized Capture Tool. Would love to hear your thoughts on the above. And if you do implement these, please do post what sort of reactions you have from the people using them. I eventually see this being like a trademark, that all Vakil Housing employees carry this particular brand and style of notepad with them.

This is the Second Installment in the series of Posts for Rolling out GTD at Vakil Housing. You can see, the first post in the series here.

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Nokia’s Sexiest Phone Ever

I’m still shaking my head in wonder at the new Nokia E71.  Is this really a phone by Nokia? This phone, which is barely thicker than the battery that powers it, is one of the all time sexiest phones I have ever seen.  Hardly the sort of device made by the company that is to phones what Russia is to tanks and assault rifles.

Don’t get my wrong.  I’m a die hard Nokia fan.  I have many, many Nokia phones and I use them every single day.  A least 8 of my lifetime top ten favorite devices have been Nokia phones but that doesn’t mean that I am so blinded by my Nokia gadget lust that I fail to see that Nokia usually makes phones more like tanks than like jewelry.  This is not in and of itself altogether a bad thing.  Nokia phones are by far the most durable, reliable and functional devices of their sort bar none.

But sexy?  That’s hardly  a word you see in conjunction with most Nokia devices.  Until now.

Did I mention that the E71 is thin?  How thin? It’s a bit difficult to measure something this thin but my guess is that it’s between 6 and 7 mm at the thickest point.  What’s amazing is that in spite of the svelte package this is as fully featured a device as Nokia has ever introduced.

Let me give you a quick rundown on the specifications:

Form

• Form: Candy bar with full keyboard
• Dimensions: 4.49 x 2.24 x 0.39 in
• Weight: 4.47 oz
• Full keyboard
• High quality QVGA display

Display and 3D

• Size: 2.36″
• Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA)
• Up to 16 million colors
• TFT active matrix (QVGA)
• Two customizable home screen modes

Connectors

• Micro-USB connector, full-speed
• 2.5 mm Nokia AV connector

Power

• Battery: BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Po standard battery
• Talk time:
  - GSM up to 10 h 30 min
  - WCDMA up to 4 h 30 min
• Standby time:
  - GSM up to 17 days
  - WCDMA up to 20 days
  - WLAN idle up to 6.9 days
• Music playback time (maximum): 18 h

Memory

• microSD memory card slot, hot swappable, max. 8 GB
• ~110 MB internal dynamic memory

A down-loadable PDF with the comprehensive specifications can be found here: nokia_e71_complete_specifications.pdf

As you no doubt noticed the device has GSM, Edge, UMTS, HSDPA, WiFi and a GPS radio.  It also has a huge battery - the same battery, in fact, that comes in the much larger N810 Internet Tablet so you can pretty well anticipate that this phone is going to have about the best battery life of any phone you’ve ever used.

What does it do?

Out of the box it has support for Microsoft exchange mail as well as for Blackberry mail, though for that you’ll have to pay a subscription fee to Rimm. Out of the box it also has the ability to auto-detect your network settings and configure your services automatically so no holding for hours while someone at your carrier tries to look up how to set up MMS on your handset, it just configures itself.

[Read more →]

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TUAW is reporting that “Outpost“, an application still under development, will make Basecamp even more useful by supporting management of the application via your iPhone. Details are still fairly sparse at this time and it looks like we’ll have to wait a few more weeks to really see what the folks building Outpost are doing with their UI as even the images on their website state that they are under development and subject to change.

A lot of people are pretty excited about this developing software.  Basecamp, by 37 signals is a very popular application, and many folks that follow the GTD productivity strategy have found that Basecamp is one of the most efficient and effective tools for helping to keep track of commitments, projects and the next actions that they entail.

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Who wouldn’t want a new high resolution display with thirty inches or more of real-estate upon which to spread your work?  Imagine the joy of having your entire spreadsheet visible at a glance and not having to futz around with freezing part of the pane.  Think of the pleasure of having two full pages displayed side by side, at a reasonable resolution no less, while editing your latest feature article.  Personally I find myself salivating at the idea of looking at the HD imagery from the Apollo missions and from the current ESA and NASA craft orbiting distant worlds.

Not that my intended use will help sell anyone’s boss, but if you’d like to turn the wistful daydream above into a practical reality for yourself, a recent report by Pfeiffer Consulting may actually have the ammunition you need to get that Apple Cinema Display you’ve been craving.

While most people would probably agree that one of those sexy big displays exudes uber-geek success and is the province of Avid and Final Cut Pro maestros everywhere, what is less well known is that these larger displays can boost general productivity using many more mundane applications.

Pfeiffer Consulting’s report called “The 30-ince Apple Cinema Display Productivity Benchmark” was intended to measure the real world productivity impact of using a larger size display.   The key underlying question they asked was:

Does this added comfort translate into higher productivity? To provide clear, activity-based data to answer this question was the aim of  his research project. 

In essence they wanted to do a clear comparison using more typical applications and see if the use of larger monitors yielded sufficient improvements in productivity that over time these increases generated a significant return on the investment (ROI).

The specifics can be found in the report which is in PDF form and can be downloaded for your reading pleasure.  For those of you that have better things to do that read a half a dozen pages of highly specific benchmarking detail, I suggest you print the report out for your boss and incorporate these quick summary findings into the email that briefs him on the wisdom behind your request for the glorious new display:

From the Report:

•  High-resplution displays such as the 30-inchApple Cinema HD Display can result in measurable productivity and efficiency gains.
• Productivity gains were present in not only professional design and publishing, digital imaging, and digital video, but also in general productivity and office applications  such as word processors and spreadsheets.
• Cumulative productivity gains linked to a large, high -resolution display can lead to a return on  investment (ROI) of several thousand dollars per year.

I swear I did not make a word of this up.  Scout’s Honor.

Should you find success with this approach and become the proud and oh-so-productive new owner of a sexy HD display,  don’t forget who shared this little tidbit of useful information with you and come and leave us a comment.  Better yet, when your friends come and jealously eye your new desk accessory, tell them how you got it and where you got the info…

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If you’ve got an iPhone (or if you simply want to make yourself jealous of people that do have one) you have to check out O’Reilly’s new publication, iPhone Hacks…

I know that there are a lot of people that have been using the iPhone for GTD. Personally, I didn’t expect the iPhone to be nearly as exceptional as I’ve found it to be - in fact, my low expectations were probably the worst call I’ve ever made in terms of a technology prediction. While it is true that the iPhone leaves something to be desired in terms of actual content creation (the N95 and N82 *review pending on my other site) are the undisputed kings in that arena, the iPhone is simply a game changer when it comes to mobile content consumption, whether it’s browsing the web, listening to music, watching video or reading email, the iPhone has set a new standard in functionality, ease of use and sheer gee whiz when it comes to the portable However, there is a lot more to the iPhone than most people realize. From the thousands of applications available for a jailbroken iPhone to the web applications open to everyone, the total volume of applications that have been developed (not to mention those about to be released using the iPhone SDK) is testimony to the degree of interest and excitement with which this device has been met by the developer world.

That said, there’s still a big gap between hard core geeks comfortable with hacking (and risking damage to) a $400 dollar device and the average person who would just like to do a few additional things with his or her phone. This is the niche that I see O’Reilly’s product filling. Not only is the online publication (soon to be followed with a book from what they say) full of helpful hints (did you know that simply how you hold your iPhone can make a 100% difference in Edge performance?) but the information can take the mystery out of jailbreaking your device, explain how to use installer.app and generally make it possible for all but the most irremediably tech-tarded among us to do just about anything we want to do with this device.

O’Reilly is offering a free thirty day trial (no credit card required) and after that it’s $5.99 per month. I read the first two chapters and in spite of being a hard core gadget junkie, I found out a few things that I myself didn’t know (including the tip above). I heartily recommend checking this out - it may just be the publication of the year.

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Even when I was just overhearing Marc’s conversations with folks about GTD I was aware that implementing GTD on Windows Mobile was something of a challenge. The litany of complaints is long and for the most part expected. GTD Applications on Windows Mobile are too “bulky”, it takes longer then pen and paper, it doesn’t sync with the other tools people use, or it doesn’t sync well enough. There’s too much enforced structure or not enough, it isn’t customizable enough or there are too many options making it cumbersome…and that’s just scratching the surface.

Well, Jeff Kirvin of “The Journey of a Reluctant Writer” has sorted out what seems to me to be one of the sanest, simplest and most functional means of using a Windows Mobile device for your portable GTD application. His article is a must read for anyone struggling with this problem as well as for those of us that simply want to see the creative approaches others are taking to deploy GTD systems in their own personal work and life environments. Check it out…

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