Last week’s mac TechMail is Use The Hit List to get things done with Mac, which talks about using The Hit List as a task manager. It works quite well with the GTD methodology, although it’s not necessarily geared towards it (you can use THL without following GTD). It’s a pretty decent program and one of the best on the mac I’ve played with so far.
Tag Archives: GTD
When done becomes Done
A friend pointed me to a really cool blog post called The Larry Test. It basically talks about when done is Done. I.e. an engineer will keep working stuff until it’s perfect, likely because it’s in our nature (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewritten code just so it looks better). It’s a pretty good piece on identifying what things absolutely need to be done and working so you can say you’re “Done”. I suppose from a developer’s perspective, this would be a use-case for milestones.
Anyways, it’s an interesting read.
On the road to Getting Things Done
“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behaviour. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviour.” — Dee Hock
I’m reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done book and this quote really stuck out at me. Totally true. I know a few people to whom the latter belongs to.
Anyways, this is a really good book. I’ve already gotten some fantastic ideas from it and am already shifting my way of thinking, and I’m only 1/4 through the book. I’ve been trying to ascribe to the GTD “methodology” through the use of GTD-related software, but I have yet to turn it into a lifestyle.. so far it’s been nothing more than a few bits and pieces here and there, mostly relating to my work with Mandriva which has really had the advantage of keeping me and getting me focused. Of course the GTD “methodology” could be used everywhere — from work, other hobby projects, and personal life too. I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient and by reading this I’m seeing what I’ve been doing wrong, what I could be doing better, etc. Really good stuff. I plan to read it through once then go back with my highlighter once I’ve got the overall concept so I can really amplify the parts I struggle with and really need to have sink in.
Anyways, highly recommended. Even if you think you’re efficient now (and you could very well be), there’s always remove for improvement and doing things better/faster/easier should be an aspiration for anyone who has less time than they’d like (and who among us can honestly say we have *enough* time for everything we want to do?).
Getting things done with mutt
This week’s TechMail is Getting things done with mutt, a look at using the GTD concepts with my favourite email client.
GTD and reclaiming my inbox
Well, I’ve decided to try and take the plunge and implement some GTD philosophies in my life. While it encompasses a lot of different things, the first thing I aim to try is to reclaim my email, which has been getting way out of hand lately. I remember about 2 years ago I did the same thing and it lasted for a bit, but things never last unless you make them habit. Of course, to make it habit now, I need to fix a few things first.
The first thing was to unsubscribe from non-essential mailing lists. I used to sit on the openssh and exim mailing lists, amongst a few others, just to glean tips and insights and whatnot, with the full intention of implementing some of these ideas. In fact, my exim mbox has over 150 *saved* messages that go back about 3 years… messages I’ve thought “this would be good to try”, etc. But know what? In three years, I’ve barely looked at those messages again, and I’ve implemented about 2% of the “content” of those saved messages into active implementations on my exim server. And now that I’ve out-sourced most of the hosting I do for other people, those things don’t apply since my exim server handles mail exclusively for me and some mailing lists I still run. So do I need to know how to integrate spamassassin with clamav under exim? Not really. Do I need to learn more spam tricks? Again, not really, since I use TMDA as my “guard” for my email accounts on that machine. In other words, will I ever use those 150 exim messages? Probably not. Will I ever look at those mails again? Even more unlikely.
So I’ve been taking the axe to some old/saved messages and removing myself from mailing lists that I’ve had a cursory interest in but haven’t really been active on. It’s slow going because you need to make a concious decision as to what is important and what isn’t. But the basic idea is to have these folders as empty as possible… even the mailing list ones. It’s not just enough to keep my inbox uncluttered, I want *all* of my mailboxes uncluttered. And the less mail I have coming in that isn’t important, the less time I spend deleting crap.
Once I have my email under control again, I’m going to start looking at other areas to increase my productivity and reduce the amount of wasted time. Time is a finite resource, and I have too little of it as it is… so I need to start making some changes to more effectively utilize my time. Especially now that my daughter will be in school 5 days a week full-days (grade one, wOOp!) and my wife will be working full-time (as the secretary of the school my daughter goes to), if I discipline myself to get up when they do (and, of course, not go to bed at 1am), then I have a good 8hr window in which to work. My main goal is to stuff the 10+hrs of work I do every day for Mandriva into those 8 hours. There should be no external distractions (at least not of the same magnitude anyways), which already gives me a bit of an edge, but if I can squeeze it even more by getting rid of the inconsequential *crap* that seems to suck up so much time, then I think I can probably take those 10+hrs and compress them maybe into 6-7hrs and actually give myself some breathing room and get *more* done.
The main idea here is the concept that if my wife and kid are gone all day, when they come home I’d like to spend time with them… time with them instead of finishing up this update or that, writing articles for TechRepublic, or doing other work-related things. A worthy goal, I think.
