An Invitation

[da]

This Tuesday, I"m giving a talk on Getting Things Done and the GTD software I use. The talk needs a small amount of tweaking, yet.

[And here's the finished version. Thanks for all your help, folks. It was really useful.]

If you're the kind of person who would attend a (free, 45-minute talk) on GTD...

Wanna look at my slides and notes, and make suggestions about what is unclear?
There are speaker's notes; you have to click the little head icon in the lower-right corner.

Unfortunately, it needs a google login. If you don't want to do that, I stashed a powerpoint here. You can put comments on this post.

Comments before Monday noon are appreciated; especially if you find yourself tuning out after the first few slides. That's helpful to know. :)

Thanks.

Comments

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

Something about your use of periods in the first dozen slides is mildly niggling. I did not click on the little head.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Grazie.

Also, didn't mean to make you do *another* round, but there you have it...

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

I like it. I've been listening to an audio book on GTD recently.

This is far more complex an application of the principals tthan what I use but thanks.

Thanks!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

One of the links I found has a good set of GTD easy steps (not in any particular order) which I liked a lot: http://www.davidco.com/blogs/lisa/archives/2006/12/10_beginner_beh.html

[alltoocozy.livejournal.com]

As a GTD veteran (whose system has completely fallen to pieces over the past few months), I thought it was good. You had mentioned Tracks previously and I've got it bookmarked to consider when I finally start getting things back in order again.

In looking at your slides, even *contemplating* the thought of having all my stuff collected and organized again makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Hee. :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

*grin*

I can see it going in waves, like how my desk clutter waxes and wanes...

Maybe we need a support group.

[catbear.livejournal.com]

This Tracks... it has a public webhost somewhere maybe like perhaps Google bought them? I do not want to host my own applications. Recipe for disaster.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

https://tracks.tra.in/ - not GooBorg, but free. Well, tip-jar.

Though, tracks.tra.in trades custom hooks (for email and sms) for not having the latest version (search function).

[catbear.livejournal.com]

awesome. will use it tomorrow.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Disclaimer: I have never made a powerpoint thingy.

Slide 4 doesn't feel like a list of parallel items (as the bullets would indicate) so much as a progression of sentence fragments.

Slide 8, the differentiation between the two equally named bolded categories is mysterious.

I am a bit curious how well this would work within a large distributed corporation that relies on email for communication, because once something leaves the email system it is difficult to do a "reply to all" to handle to an issue. It seems to rely on the user to provide the technological bridge between systems. I do not doubt that it can work (and have been using a personal wiki at work for information capturing) but it does require effort and attention.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Yes, it requires effort. So far, I've gotten a fair bit out of the effort I put in; we'll see how well it sticks. I know about system fatigue, fer sher.

The GTDish answer to corporations is they should have processes that encourage easy GTD-style communications; for example, everyone will understand if someone says "that isn't even actionable, why are we wasting time on it?"

Tool-wise, I know the GTD creator's company uses a clever Lotus Notes system to keep everything emailish-yet-GTD-ized; there's a Microsquish Outlook Plugin for GTD they recommend.

Tracks is (at this very moment) working on an email-> tracks plugin so you can forward your actionable email to your personal Tracks (with the email as an editable attached note)

Bringing things full-circle, I was experimenting with a GTD TiddlyWiki just before I found Tracks. It was clever, but a mite too clever for its own good.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Man, TiddlyWiki is scary to use. The way the rectangles zoom out and such you know if you stored too much in it that it would eat all of your CPU/RAM. Cool, but.. eh.

I'll stick to my DocuWiki for work. It's working out slightly better than my pad of paper, the formatting commands are simpler than MediaWiki, and the content is stored in plaintext.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yep, that zooming seemed excessive to me as well. Down with overly graphical text wikis! :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Image! I mean.. word!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

o_O

yeah.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

• error on slide 8 - both points say "non-actionable"
  
• slide 9 mentions projects and contexts, but up till then you have only discussed contexts - need to explain projects within the structure of GTD (even if projects are the same as general understanding of projects!)
  
• slide 10 - within the context of GTD, what is an Inbox?

Thanks for sharing this - very interesting! I can't quite work out what the difference between GTD is and what I use - a "to do" list divided into projects/contexts - so I think I might be missing something (which I mention here so you can tighten up your presentation!).

And thanks for the links - useful. I have been using Remember the Milk - similar(ish) to Tracks, I think.

And you might be interested in this post here - a discussion on to do lists etc.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for these comments- slides 9 and 10 are now expanded to five slides that segue into the workflow section better. And I tried to address "what's an inbox", though I fear more content will suffer from too-much-information-itis.

If you're curious, my finished slides are here: http://coder.com/daniel/watitis2008.ppt

One of the bonus slides is on other web-based GTD apps, which includes Remember the Milk- I think if I were looking again, today, I might end up with RtM; when I looked two years ago, its gmail tools bogged down my computer something awful. :)

Yes, as per the article, I've gotten a lot of milage out of scraps of paper. However, I don't trust them as much as I trust Tracks. I've laundered my lists more times than I care to think about...

Thanks again.

GTD

[chadmany2k.livejournal.com]

talk about Outlook Track-It (http://www.outlooktrackit.com")! its the best GTD software, small toolbar for outlook that sets followup reminders for emails!