Meg Edwards of the David Allen Company posed that question to the audience in Eric's GTD breakout session: "GTD at Home."
I thought, great question.
Working with someone who is busy is one thing. Being busy is a signaling device that says this person’s skills are in demand. This person has credibility.
But overwhelmed is a whole different ball of wax. The overwhelmed person is not able to focus well on the projects at hand. I don’t trust the quality of his or her work.
GTD certainly makes you busy. I say that both tongue-in-cheek and from experience. When I first started GTD, it made me aware of my many projects that needed some action. I got busy and then quickly I got overwhelmed. I wasn’t familiar enough with my productivity system to handle the influx of new actionable items. That is one kind of crazy, the self-induced kind.
And then sometimes, things simply get crazy due to circumstances. The rest of life has to be put aside and the email inbox that is piling up has to be ignored while you work to get that One Mega Project taken care of. This is a second kind of crazy.
As Meg Edwards observed following her rhetorical question, GTD helps in both camps of “Crazy”. It give you a system to keep overwhelm from happening in the first place. And secondly, it gives a roadmap for getting back to sane once a crazy circumstance has subsided.
As I grown in my familiarity with GTD, I’m finding her words to be true.
It’s OK, you are not seeing double. Not really anyway.
This is Eric and his daughters, Wendy and Amy. Both Wendy and Amy are long-time GTD users and they have been instrumental in getting eProductivity ready for market. Much of the excellent help and tutorial files are their work.
They both did a wonderful job demo-ing eProductivity and chatting with Summit attendees. I’m grateful on a very personal level because with them handling the booth, I was able to go to most of the sessions. Thanks ladies!
This picture also goes to show that GTD is a cross-generational productivity juggernaut!
One creative slice of the Summit was the Coaches’ Theater. Now, I never really got to hear a presentation at the Coaches’ Theater, but judging by the rest of the Summit, I’m certain the material was excellent.
What struck me as particularly clever about the theater was its location: one end of the exhibit hall. By positioning it this way, a lot more traffic got sent by the exhibit booths. Continue Reading "Catching the Theater at the GTD Summit" »
I sure hope not. I do recall my junior-high math teacher making an encouraging conjecture. She speculated that people are much less intelligent today than, oh, 5,000 years ago. The reason: genetic decline. You might say the gene pool just ain’t what it used to be.
But perhaps another threat to intelligent thought is lurking…
Twitter.
At the Summit, Ismael Ghalimi declared that, “Twitter is pure evil”. I heard a similar sentiment echoed by many of the speakers.
Two reasons I can see for making such a strong statement about Twitter: it can be an endless stream of distraction and it can promote quick, thoughtless blurbs.
My e-mail, Skype, Twitter, and Sametime have been buzzing all morning over Ed Brill's post. This combined with some ideas I have about Andrew Pollack's question today "What can IBM Do to help grow the Lotus Community" have me thinking. Here are some hastily collected thoughts on this.
At the GTD Summit, many people stopped by our booth. Many raved about eProductivity, but one of them fell in love with what she saw. Unfortunately, she was not a Notes user. In fact, she had not heard of Notes.
This smart woman decided that she had to have eProductivity and if that meant getting Notes, she would. I was both excited and frustrated -- Excited because I knew from our conversation that GTD along with Notes and eProductivity would be a big help t her. Frustrated because, at present, IBM does little to make it EASY for individuals (future Notes champions) to learn about, buy, and install Notes for personal use.
Two days later this enterprising individual sent an email to let me know that she had downloaded Lotus Notes and eProductivity and had self installed them. A few days later she informed me that she had dumped Outlook in favor of Notes and eProductivity. This isn't the first time this has happened but it's starting to happen more often.
Getting to see the eProductivity up on the big screens at the GTD Summit was quite a thrill. I wasn’t close enough to see Eric’s face but I’m sure he was grinning when the eProductivity logo displayed the first time. After all, eProductivity has been in the works a long time.
It’s been a journey. Too bad Ian, our principal software architect, couldn’t have seen it in person, but I’m sure he’s reading this blog carefully! Having David Allen, a long-time eProductivity user, and other GTD faithful riff on the merits of eProductivity and Lotus Notes during the conference was quite encouraging to boot.
I wonder how many people caught this: when David flashed screen shots of his personal task lists - those were from eProductivity!
A more colorful word for idea churning is percolation. Percolation serves to let your brain take other great ideas and common themes, and then mash them together to create that most hallowed of business goals: synergy.
A Summit panelist proposed an intermediate step in the GTD workflow process for percolation-needy items. The step would nestle in between Capturing and Next Action
But the problem is that percolation is not a natural GTD workflow step to grab hold of. Once you’ve captured an actionable idea, GTD says to either put it into a Next Action or throw the item onto a Someday/Maybe list (third option: delegate it). But percolation? It’s less tangible than a Next Action but more immediate than a Someday/Maybe. It’s critical to innovation but awkward to handle.
My personal solution has been to put “brainstorm” next actions into my Anywhere category. This still can suffer from out-of-sight, out-of-mind tendencies. Ideally, I want my really creative ideas to be bouncing around my head frequently, creating all kinds of synergistic magic.
The same panelist who opened the percolation can of worms also had this tidbit of advice: when you are doing a Weekly Review, prime your mind with 3-4 projects that you want to pay special attention to over the next week. Maybe this is a better way to do percolation. I’ll experiment.
When I think of GTD -- perhaps because I’m fairly new to the methodology—inspiring creative innovation is not the first benefit I think of. After all, productivity helps to get the nitty-gritty details done, accomplished, put away. It clears space in your mind for higher-level thoughts to occur. But actually inspire innovation? That seems like a logical leap.
Not so.
GTD teaches you to capture thoughts whenever, wherever they occur. Black belt GTDers have a capture tool with them at all times.
Once you’ve become a pro at capturing your thoughts and putting them into a trusted system, the benefit to innovation becomes obvious.
Stepping back for moment, creativity is defined as coming up with a great idea. Innovation is defined as putting that creative idea into action. Of course, the two concepts are very tightly linked. Bottom line, though, is that in order to be innovative, you need to be creative first.
That’s where GTD helps by teaching you to always capture your thoughts.
It’s far easier to innovate when you’ve come up with half a dozen creative ideas for that looming project over the course of the last week. Or year. When you sit down at your computer, and the deadline is ticking to think up something excellent, you have a huge head start. So much of your thinking can be done already and you can comfortably slip into execution mode. You don’t have to wait for the innovation lighting to strike you.
A panelist at the session called this, “seeding your mind”.
So can creative innovation be scheduled?
Yes, if you’re using GTD capture principles to seed your mind for success.
My name is Ryan Heathers. I work at eProductivity with Eric Mack.
Eric invited me to guest author a series of blog posts covering the recent GTD Summit.
The first-ever GTD Summit was held two weeks ago in San Francisco and I was in attendance. Let me just say, it was fantastic! I had planned on blogging the event in real-time, but things got a little hectic between being an exhibitor and an attendee.
But nevertheless, the blogging was accomplished by drawing upon some extensive notes and a few pictures. The posts in the series vary between quick blurbs and medium-length thought pieces.
A lot of my writing assumes that you are familiar with GTD. If you are not, take a look at www.davidco.com for info straight from David Allen, GTD’s creator.
I gave up on Getting Things Done methodologies when I realized that, by saying no to urgent but ultimately unimportant tasks, I could keep all my "to dos" in my head. Or so I thought. I've discovered that I have a lot more "to do" lists than I realized. Here are some of them:
My work "to do" list, which I keep in a Lotus Notes task list because it replicates to my Blackberry
My personal "to do" list, which I keep in various formats, including scraps of paper and the new Google task list which integrates with GMail.
My blog "to do" list, which I keep in a separate GMail e-mail folder, because most of these "to dos" originate from e-mails
My GMail personal e-mail inbox, which consists of (a) e-mails to which I have yet to respond and (b) e-mails which are actually "to dos", and which should probably be with list 3, except that they are more urgent so I want to keep them in front of me.
My "books to buy" list
My "music to buy or download" list
My work Lotus Notes e-mail inbox, which consists of (a) e-mails to which I have yet to respond and (b) e-mails which are actually "to dos", and which should probably be with list 1, except that the e-mail provides a lot of detail on what needs to be done, so I can't be bothered to transcribe it to a "to do" list).
My work Lotus Notes Calendar, which consists of both (a) scheduled work and (b) personal appointments
Gmark Google Bookmark "to dos" consisting of (a) links to include in my next Links of Week, (b) links to pages I intend to read "when I have time" (i.e. never get around to these), (c) links to pages to add to my blogroll (actually belongs in list 3), and (d-e) links to books to buy and music to download (actually belong to lists 5 & 6).
My blog post ideas "to do" list
My "to read" hard copy piles
My voice mail "in-boxes", for my work and home numbers.
I could write a chapter on how I would organize this. For now, I'll share a few quick thoughts and invite my readers to share how they would tackle Dave's problem.
I'm still processing my thoughts from the GTD Summit. What an amazing event! In fact, it was probably the most inspiring (not to mention productive) conference I have attended. To be in one place with 400 people, including movers, shakers, thought leaders and GTDr's was definitely a high.
I'm not sure the audience caught it but when David Allen showed screen shots of his personal system. he was showing Lotus Notes and eProductivity. I know that Several people downloaded and installed Lotus Notes and eProductivity for the first time as a result. How cool.
Today was a great day at the GTD Summit. We are hanging out with some of the best and brightest people in the world - key thought leaders and leading innovators from around the world. The day was full of inspiring conversations. Some, however, were less than inspiring - at least until I got a new outlook on how to receive what I was hearing. Let me explain...
The first person I met today in the general session ask me what I do. As soon as I mentioned the software I used, his immediate response was "I hate Lotus Notes." I had several other equally inspiring conversations within just a few hours.
At first it bothered me - I almost felt that I should somehow apologize for using Notes (or the fact that I really enjoy doing so).
Then, mid-morning, I remembered a lesson I learned from Zig Ziglar.
People never change their minds. But, they do make new decisions when provided with new information.
I decided to make it a challenge to see if I could help as many people make new decisions about what they thought about Lotus Notes.
We had many people stop by the eProductivity exhibit, some because they simply wandered over and others because they heard David Allen talk about how he "loves Lotus Notes." and how he uses eProductivity. (They apparently figure that if David Allen uses and recommends IBM Lotus Notes there must be something about Notes that they are missing.) In any case, however they get to the exhibit, they arrive with either a question or a comment. Some were excited about Notes and some were frustrated about Notes. I met several of each today. The people I really enjoyed meeting, however, were the self-proclaimed Notes haters.
The GTD Summit kicks off this evening and I've decided to make a special offer to commemorate the event. In short, for every individual license of eProductivity purchased, I'll provide not one but two license keys.
Now you can increase your own productivity and help a colleague get things done at the same time.
I'm very excited to participate in the first GTD Summit. As with my recent trip to Lotusphere, I will be wearing three hats: Attendee, Exhibitor and Panel Moderator
This year, I will be moderating the "GTD at Home: From the Board Room to the Living Room" discussion panel. If you have a question you would like to ask the panel, please post it here. IBM Blogger Chris Blatnick will be attending as well. Between Chris and Ryan on our team I'm sure the event will be well covered. Also be sure to keep an eye on the GTD Times site as they will have live updates, too.
I believe that GTD Summit will prove to be an important event to attend, possibly the best investment for 2009. The list of speakers is impressive and the breakout sessions will address important areas of personal and organizational productivity from key thought leaders
I'm also excited that we will get to meet several of our eProductivity customers there. If you are planning to attend the GTD Summit, please plan to stop by and say hello, You can find me in the above session on Thursday and at the exhibit with Amy and Wendy during the week. Look for this sign:
Need a ticket to the GTD Summit? Here's an opportunity you won't want to miss.
It should be a lively session. I'm looking forward to it!
The GTD Summit is shaping up to be the conference to attend for 2009!
P.S. Thinking about buying eProductivity licenses for your team? Remember, if you purchase a workgroup license of eProductivity, I'll give you a pass to the GTD Summit. If you are on the fence, this is a great opportunity. (See details)
Next week, my sister Amy and I will be accompanying our father to the GTD Summit; we will be assisting him at the eProductivity pedestal in the product showcase. We will help people learn how we use Notes, eProducivity and Mr. Allen's GTD methodology to get things done.
As part of my preparation, I created two documents to help my sister and me prepare for the Summit. I have learned that it is helpful to map out the people we might meet and connect this to a picture so that if we meet them we have a reference point. So that is what I did.
My father encouraged me to share these maps on his blog so that whoever is interested can use them to plan for the conference.
The first mind map contains all of the information relevant to the GTD Summit (speakers, agenda, exhibitors, etc.) 20090301_GTD_Summit_Planning_Map_(Wendy_Mack).mmap
The the second map contains information about key people at the David Allen Company - many of whom will be attending the Summit. 20090301_GTD_Summit_DavidCo_Key_People_Map_(Wendy_Mack).mmap
I hope that this information helps. My sister and I look forward to helping and learning.
Update: I created these in MindManager 7. Use the free MindManager viewer to read these maps.
This post is not for everyone, (there is a string attached), but if you want to attend the GTD summit and you use Lotus Notes, it may be of interest to you.
In short, to promote the public release of eProductivity, I've decided to purchase several passes to the GTD Summit and give them away to people that purchase eProductivity. With the special Lotusphere discounts, if you are planning to attend the Summit it is actually cheaper to purchase eProductivity for your team and get the free GTD Summit registration than it is to purchase a single pass to the Summit! (Details here.)
So, there it is: You can attend the GTD Summit and you and your team can use the same GTD implementation software that David Allen and his team use to get things done with Lotus Notes. I cannot think of a better value, especially in this economy. (Read my previous blog post about the GTD Summit.)
Please help me spread the word. Thanks.
Eric
P.S. Blogging has been very light these days. That's not for a lack of draft topics - I still have a bunch from Lotusphere. It's simply a matter of a lot to do this month. The public software launch, graduate studies, and teaching a course in Business Driven Technology have all kept me busy. I am Twittering a little (as part of my KM Research) so you can find me there. I'll be back to the blogging by the end of the month. Meanwhile, I would appreciate it if you would help me spread the word about eProductivity.
We no longer live in a make-it-and-move-it society where productivity can be measured by parts produced, raw materials consumed or time spent. For knowledge work, we need a new productivity equation. In my public seminars, I present just such an equation:
VALUE = Knowledge x Methodology x Technology
I've blogged about this formula before, so I won't go into detail here, but I do want to point out two things: First, notice that the value created is the result of not one but three factors: Knowledge, Methodology, and Technology (or tools). Each play an important role in the productivity equation. Second, these factors are multipliers - changing any one of them has the potential to greatly effect the outcome or "value" created.
Unfortunately, many people focus on the tools they use or even what they know while giving little attention to the methodology - the process - they use to get things done.
It's in economic times like this when the improved productivity of organizations and the people within them becomes critical. It's also in these times that our ability to maintain personal focus and control are key to success. I've blogged a lot about my success using the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology an important part of my personal productivity tool kit. My friend and long-time client, David Allen, creator of this methodology, has been a pioneer in finding ways to increase our productivity by changing the way we think about the work we do.
If you are planning to be at Lotusphere, you are in for a treat! Stop by pedestal #722, say hello and hand us your business card. Then, pick up your Lotusphere 2009 resource CD from the Notes on Productivity Blog.
This CD contains the presentation slides from my Lotusphere presentation (BP304) with David Allen, a number of GTD Documents from the David Allen Company, two recent podcasts on using Notes productively, (courtesy of Bruce Elgort and Michael Sampson), links to useful resources, and a special gift from eProductivity.
This is my way of saying "Thank you" to the Notes community and for stopping by to say hello! I look forward to meeting you!
Remember: eProductivity, Pedestal #722 in the Lotusphere Product Showcase. See you soon!
Industry analyst, Michael Sampson, recently interviewed David Allen about his use of Lotus Notes, and today has published the almost one-hour long discussion. During the podcast, Michael and David talk about: how David uses Lotus Notes in his company, what he thinks of Notes and the tools he uses, and David's upcoming presentation at Lotusphere.
At the end of the podcast, Michael puts his IT analyst hat on and shares his thoughts about why he thinks Lotus Notes works so well for David Allen and his company.
Here's an opportunity to listen to two very smart (and productive) people talk about Lotus Notes!
One of the productivity exercises I try to go through at least once each new year is to clear the decks of my productivity workspace. What that means is I remove from my office everything that isn't supplies, reference material, or decoration. I dump it into boxes and move it into the next room. What you see here is the result of that first step. this is my productivity cockpit, my flight deck for productive work....
In these photos, you can see that my desk surrounds me and I have everything I need to work effectively. (I'll blog more about the tools later, for now I simply want to share what the decks looks like when they are clear.)
The next step is to bring things back into my office and put them into the appropriate places. Much of the "stuff" that I bring back is in piles - books and reviewing or researching, papers, project files, stacks of mystery read/review items, and piles of scraps of ambiguous stuff. The rule is - and this is important - I cannot bring anything back in without putting it into the proper place. To do this, I throw all of the collected items into my physical in basket to process.
Then, I remove one item from the top* and answer two questions:
1. What's the successful outcome?
2. What's the next action?
With a clear understanding of the outcome for something that I am holding and a clear grasp of the next action I can decide what to do next: Continue Reading "Clear the Decks!" »
David Allen teaches that one of the most important parts of his Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology is the weekly review. It's an opportunity to pick up, cleanup, and regain control and perspective across the horizons of our commitments. For those of us that resort to post-its (I won't mention any names, Alan) it's an opportunity to get those into a trusted system, too.
At the end of each year, I like to review my systems to see what I can clean up and what I can improve upon for the coming year. I start with an extended weekly review, which often turns into a week-long review. If you are unfamiliar with the weekly review process, here are the steps that I follow, inspired by David Allen's helpful GTD Weekly Review Audio Series: Steps to a successful GTD Weekly Review.
Get Clear
Collect Loose Papers
Process Papers
Empty Capture Tools
Process E-Mail
Empty Head
Get Current
Review Action Lists
Review Previous Calendar
Review Upcoming Calendar
Review Tickler Files
Review Waiting-For List
Review Projects
Review Goals and Objectives
Review Areas of Focus
Review Relevant Checklists
Review Reference & Support Material
Get Creative!
Review Someday/Maybe List
Sadly, for some of us, (myself included at times), the weekly review has turned a weakly review. Even though I have built a Weekly Review Coach into my Lotus Notes software for getting things done, it doesn't do the review for me - it's still up to me to do that.
A few months ago, we received a call from the lead elf and part-time IT Director at the North Pole. Apparently Santa needed an effective way to track his projects and actions.
To my delight, I learned that Santa and the elves use Lotus Notes as their collaboration platform! Naturally, I recommended that Santa try eProductivity, which he did.
This morning, I received a Skype call from the big man himself. He called to thank me for my help getting him set up. I asked him if I could have a few screen shots for my blog so that I could show you how he uses Notes and eProductivity to get things done. I guess Santa was in a jolly mood, because 10 minutes later, I received these three screen shots:
IT folks are not keen on feeding an end user frenzy. They fear the end user application that will grow and need the IT resources to support it. IT resources/costs are watched like no other. We lock down the end users from adding new databases to our servers which limits their ability to collaborate to the magnitude that David envisions.
Has an IT executive ever been fired for recommending a Microsoft solution? On the other side of that. People who push alt-Microsoft technologies are taking a risk.
The pool of resources available for supporting Lotus Notes is small and getting smaller. Management has little choice but to move to other technologies because they can't find resources for Notes.
I think Curt's explanations are reasonable explanations but if they are indeed correct, I think they are poor excuses for management, including CTOs, CIOs or CLOs tasked with improving the productivity of the organization and ensuring that their people get the most benefit from the tools available to them.
This reminds me of something I once heard Business Expert Zig Ziglar say about companies that made excuses for not training their employees:
"There's only one thing worse than training your people to be productive [with tools, like Lotus Notes] and losing them...
that's not training them and keeping them."
Unfortunately, I think Curt may be right about some companies on the first point. As far as point #3, it doesn't take much to get significantly more from Lotus Notes, often just a paradigm shift in how people think about their work and the tools that they use.
Gmail labs recently added a new application called, cleverly enough, "Tasks," which brings task management inside of Gmail. If you afre someone who lives in Gmail, then having your tasks there too, makes a lot of sense. If you use Gmail and you understand the principles of David Allen's GTD methodology, then this really makes a lot of sense. (This is the same reason we built eProductivity around the Lotus Notes In-box: we wanted to help people to manage their stuff by making it easy for them to process their incoming items at the point of entry.)
I'm not a Gmail user so I can't say anything about the quality of their implementation, but if you use Gmail, it's probably worth checking out.
Here's an opportunity to get a preview of the next generation of David's popular GTD RoadMap training at no cost. In less than two weeks, David Allen will be speaking at UCLA and you're invited!
On December 13th the David Allen Company is presenting a special event, Q&A, and book signing with David Allen. This special program is also the kick off for David’s new book, Making it All Work as well as a new GTD marketing campaign for 2009. (David's goal is to reach a broader audience, which is why he's asked me to extend the invitation to everyone who reads my blog.) I'm sure this will be a treat. Schedule permitting, I plan to attend as well.
Details: Registration begins at 9AM and the event runs from 9:30 to 12:30. They will be filming this event and will invite people to share testimonials if they want. Plan to come dressed in business casual attire.
I have a long-standing interest in devices and applications that increase mobile knowledge worker productivity, particularly those that support the GTD methodology and can sync with Lotus Notes. The problem is that most of the devices that I have used to date fail in one or both categories. For this reason, I have continued use and recommend the Treo 755p for power GTD users that want a powerful mobile list manager that seamelessly integrates with Lotus Notes. It's not that the Treo is the best mobile platform out there. It isn't. It simply has the best native list manager for managing projects and actions using the GTD methodology.
Since I know that someone will object to my statement, let me explain what I want in a mobile list manager: I want to click one button and see my list of projects and actions, sorted by context. I do not want to have to click Start, Run, and then click a bunch of options to find my tasks. I also want these views and the way I set them up to be persistent, which rules out two of the most popular device families on the market today. I don't mind using third party solutions to accomplish this, but for some devices, like the Nokia Series, they simply do not exist. I find it amazing that devices marketed to the business professional and equipped with so many productivity features would be so lacking in this vital component of productivity: list management.
For years, David Allen and I have discussed this: why do manufacturers make great hardware and then drop the ball when it comes to the suitability of their list management and task integration? (David uses a 755p, also.) I think it must be that manufacturers are expecting people to purchase based on the shiny features and not on what they can accomplish with the device. Earlier this year, a client generously gave me a shiny new Nokia E90 Communicator as a thank you gift. The E90 is a truly amazing mobile productivity device. Except, it has two problems: No task management. Zip. Zilch. Nada. (Unless you count their lame recording of a task as a note in a calendar event) and no reliable over-the-air sync of tasks to Lotus Notes. David and I played with this device this summer and agreed that while it sported an impressive list of hardware features it was essentially useless for us as a mobile GTD support tool. So, into pile of "really cool devices that I cannot use" it went. I hoped that someday, I might find a solution that would allow me to test this device as a list manager with Notes.
I have a very special opportunity that involves my client, The David Allen Company. In short, I have been asked to nominate a few people to participate in a special program. There's no cost and the benefits are huge. You'll be asked to share and blog about your experience. I can nominate 3 people. If you are an established Notes blogger with a serious interest in personal productivity, I'd like to hear from you and see some of your personal productivity blog posts that you have written. You know where to find me.
Here's an outstanding way to boost your productivity: Oliver Starr recently announced a contest on the GTD Times web site to win a Full Day Executive Coaching from The David Allen Company. I've been fortunate to have received this coaching in years past and it was a very positive and productive experience for me. Meg Edwards was my coach and she worked with me to help tune my systems and habits to become more effective.
I know many of the people on the David Allen team personally and I can say that they are a sharp group of intelligent individuals who are skilled at showing people how to get things done. Unlike a public seminar, where you will learn how to implement the David's GTD methodology in your life, in the workflow coaching you will experience what it's like to actually get things done while learning how to sustain the process.
At the risk of sounding like a commercial spokesman, I'll stop at this: I think the workflow coaching is an extraordinary value. The opportunity to enter a contest to receive this coaching for free is almost unbelievable. The contest ends tonight. Details here.
Many excellent proposals have been submitted for Lotusphere 2009. Whether you plan to attend Lotusphere in person or watch the broadcasts and read the blogs after the fact, as part of the community it's your civic responsibility to understand the topics and cast your vote for the session's you would most like to see - or not see - on the Lotusphere agenda.
KMWorld is just two weeks away. Last year, Steve Barth and I presented a workshop on Personal KM. Steve's moved on to other things, so this year I've invited a Paul Heisig, from Disney, to join me in presenting this workshop.
On Monday, September 22, (1:30 p.m - 4:30 p.m.) Paul and I will be presenting a workshop on Personal KM:
Personal Knowledge Management & Productivity Paul Heisig - The Walt Disney Company Eric Mack, eProductivity Specialist - ICA.COM This workshop illustrates how personal knowledge management (PKM) can make a lasting impact on the enterprise. Workshop leaders take a look at how productive knowledge work evolves from individuals, teams, and organic communities to ultimately impact the entire organization. It offers an overview of potential entry points for the individual knowledge worker and explores the top challenges that companies and those individual employees face, including the variety of collaboration vehicles offered in the marketplace. Discussion and categorization of the emerging collaboration technologies includes how to apply them to the individual user to fit into the larger enterprise road map. The workshop discusses key success factors and lessons learned; insights from past industry project implementations; and takes a fresh look at the successful habits, tools, methodologies, strategies, and techniques of knowledge work in a Web and Enterprise 2.0 world.
If you're planning to attend the conference, let me know - it would be nice to meet you in person.
The Notes community is buzzing with proposals for sessions for Lotusphere 2009. The IdeaJam site is busy with ideas and people are voting to show their interest (or lack thereof) in various topics. I think that this is a great use of IdeaJam to serve the Notes community.
With David Allen's recent comments about Lotus Notes, last week, I've decided to revisit the idea of presenting a session on personal knowledge management and productivity using Notes for next year's Lotusphere 2009 conference.
This session would look at some of the best practices of information and knowledge organization as well as how to effectively manage projects and actions with Lotus Notes.
Last year, I proposed a session on Maximizing Personal Productivity with Lotus Notes, but with so many excellent developer and admin tracks last year, this topic was considered outside of the scope of interest for Lotusphere. (Lotusphere is more administrator and developer oriented.) Still, it seems to me that even developers and admins (and the people they serve) need to be productive.
I'm not sure if Lotusphere is the proper venue for a session that is not specifically focused on admin/dev topics. If there are enough votes to make this interesting, I'll rework my proposal and perhaps even talk to David Allen to see if he'd like to co-present this with me. Right now, I'm curious to see if there's sufficient interest to warrant further development of this session topic for Lotusphere 2009.
Note: This session, if approved, would focus on best practices for using Lotus Notes that do not require any third party applications. The goal is to present best practices that can be applied right away with any version of Lotus Notes. I would plan to mention some of the add-on tools that people are using to increase their productivity with Notes (.e.g. OpenNTF Mail Experience or eProductivity) but the primary focus will be to show people how to get more done with what the version of Notes that they already have installed on their computer.
David Allen's up in San Francisco at the Office 2.0 conference today. This morning, David delivered the opening keynote with Office 2.0 conference organizer Ismael Ghalimi.
I understand that Ismael asks David, "Why Lotus Notes?" David shares his thoughts on Getting Things Done with Lotus and eProductivity. Cool!
I've not yet had an opportunity to watch the video but I see that Ed Brill's already blogged about it.
Question: When you identify important projects, do you clearly define the successful outcome? Do you clearly describe, either in the project title or description what success, even "wild success" will look like? If you are not doing this, you are missing out on perhaps the most powerful productivity tool available to help you accomplish your goals and dreams: your brain. In fact, if you don't regularly do this, you're leaving your brain in park, when it could be driving you to accomplish wild success.
Visualizing the Successful Outcome Many years ago, David Allen shared with me that one of the first things he did when planning his first book, the best-selling, Getting Things Done, was to write the Wall Street Journal review of his book, first. He wrote the book review as he would like it to appear in print, even before writing the first chapters of his book. For many years, I've written my projects in the past tense -- as if they were "done" and I found that helped me to "see" done as the objective. I thought that David's example of writing a formal review of his book project was very clever and a powerful visualization tool, so I made note of it.
My Personal Application When I set out to develop my eProductivity software, I followed David's recommendation and decided to write my own review. I decided to summarize the product in two sentences, each from the perspective of a different audience. eProductivity is built on Lotus Notes, so I decided that the Notes community would provide one perspective. Since eProductivity embodies many of the principles that I learned from David's book, I decided that the GTD community should provide the other.
You're not using ActiveWords?!! You don't know who Buzz is?!! You're in for a real treat! Tech evangelist, Robert Scoble will interview my buddy, Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, on www.fastcompany.tv today at 10:00 AM PST.
Buzz is always an interesting guy to visit with. To refer to him the CEO of ActiveWords is too limiting. Buzz is perhaps the best networker in the tech world - he's certainly the most prolific. (There are probably only 2-3 degrees of separation between Buzz and anyone in the tech world you'd want to meet.) I've had the opportunity to work with Buzz on several occasions as we share a common passion for all things mind mapping, GTD, and productivity.
Buzz and I first began talking about adding ActiveWords support for Lotus Notes several years ago. We finally did it and, with ActiveWords and eProductivity, millions of Notes Users can finally control the most productive aspects of Lotus Notes, from anywhere - even when Notes isn't running! I wonder if he will demonstrate or talk about ActiveWords and Notes on the show? (Hint to Buzz)
Anyway, here's the link to the live broadcast. I believe the replay will be up shortly, too.
A few days ago, I posted an eProductivity Preview Invitation for folks to see what we have done to create the ultimate GTD implementation tool for Lotus Notes. As part of the sign-up, I asked folks a number of questions, including which version of Lotus Notes. Here are the results so far.
As you can see, there are concentrations at each end of the spectrum with pockets for each version. This is to be expected. This is not a comprehensive survey, but it is interesting to see what the folks most interested in getting things done with Notes are using. Fortunately, we have coded eProductivity to support versions 6.02 - 8.5x of Lotus Notes across all platforms (yes, even Mac and Linux).
I plan to update this over time to see what more we can learn.
The sign-ups for the eProductivity preview program continue to pour in. We decided to increase the # of preview kits we will offer to 200 so that everyone that completes the application will be able to participate.
It's been interesting to read the forms that people have filled out to learn who uses Windows (99%) and who uses Mac (< 1%) and which versions of Notes folks are using. (Lots of activity in Notes R6.x and R8.x) and what challenges people face trying to get things done in Lotus Notes. I'll have lots to share as times goes on.
Meanwhile, I'd like to offer a special thanks to the bloggers that have picked this up, and I encourage you to visit their blogs:
(If I have missed anyone, please let me know. If you are a GTD or Notes blogger, let me know and I'll add you to our pre-launch list.)
I am preparing the preview kits and will send them out in batches of 25 as the completed applications are received. I plan to send the first batch tomorrow morning.
Some folks wrote with questions, e.g. what versions of Notes?, will I get a free trial?, etc.. I refer you to the eProductivity Preview Invitation which has all of the details. (Be sure to scroll down the page as there is a lot to read.)
Thanks, I look forward to posting great news, soon.
My blogging's been pretty limited for the past six months -- I've been hard at work on the public launch of eProductivity™ for Lotus Notes®
As you may know, we completed the eProductivity beta program in early January, 2008 and for the past six months we have been doing pilot programs with various companies around the world. Now, we are getting ready to share eProductivity with the public. (I know, it's been a long time.)
People in the pilot program tell us that they recover up to 30-minutes each day in time spent processing their email or managing their projects and actions. They also love the Weekly Review Coach that we have built into eProductivity. I think it's the ultimate GTD® implementation tool for Lotus Notes; however, don't take my word for it. I'll leave that for you to decide. I’m about ready to push the GO button and formally launch the commercial version of eProductivity.
Before I do, I want to make sure that our end-user download and evaluation process is easy to understand. I’ve decided to invite the first 100 people that respond to participate in a 24-hour preview of eProductivity.
I'm at home today, preparing for an important eProductivity meeting. I just emailed the following meeting confirmation and three questions to the 10 people who plan to attend. The first two questions are relevant to anyone that wants to implement the GTD methodology in Notes:
As I prepare for Wednesday's meeting, I want to make sure that I show you things that you will find useful - things which you can take back and put into practice right away.
I have 3 very quick questions to help me prepare... These questions assume that you are already using, have tried using, or are considering using Lotus Notes as your GTD Implementation tool.
1. What is a key frustration to successfully managing projects and actions in Lotus Notes? (e.g. What gets in the way of doing this easily?)
2. If you could have any feature you wanted in Notes to support you in better managing your actions and projects, what would that be? (e.g. What's missing? What would help you be even more productive with Notes?)
3. What would you most like to learn about at Wednesday's meeting? (Please agenda, attached.)
Thank you for your comments.
The meeting will be in two parts. The agenda is below.
These guys, lurking at the back of the room aren't playing video games, at least I hope not. They are two of the newest team members at The David Allen Company, John Ward and Chris McIntyre. Both seasoned presenters, they are here to audit Kelly's class and sharpen their GTD presentation skills. We enjoyed a nice lunch together; I look forward to seeing them in action, soon.
Kelly just gave us a tour on how to setup Notes and Outlook as GTD implementation tools. Even though I think I know this stuff, I still learn new things and I got to share a few tips of my own. Listening to some of the questions from the audience inspired a few new ideas for features I plan to build into eProductivity for Lotus Notes to make getting things done with Lotus Notes easier. I've got those items on my agenda list to discuss with my dev team.
The seminar is going well, Kelly's in peak form, people are learning and laughing at the stories she's sharing from her work in the GTD trenches. (Example: Most full e-mail box? 87,000 emails. True story from Kelly.)
Well, time to get back to the seminar. I'll try to post another highlight, soon.
Kelly just gave an interesting illustration of thinking about projects from a...z. Here's how this works: Z represents the successful outcome - what your project will look like when done. A represents the next single physical action to take to move forward.
b...y represents any additional action steps (but not the next action) along the way.
Now, here's the secret: Z (the project) goes on your project list. A (the next action) goes on the appropriate action list. Everything else (b...y) needs to be parked somewhere, but if they are not next actions they do not belong on your current working list.
I'm in Newport Beach today, attending the GTD Mastering Workflow Seminar. Although I've been to about a dozen GTD and MAP* seminars over the past 15 years, I continue to learn something new each and every time I attend.
Kelly Forrister is our presenter today, so I'm certain it will be a great day of learning and fun with a group of people committed to getting things done at work and play. I've had the good fortune to work with Kelly at four different organizations over the past 15 years. She's as passionate as I am about productivity and she's also a geek and we share a mutual interest for high-tech gear to support our productive lifestyle. (If you haven't done so, check out Kelly's blog.) Oh, and did I mention that Kelly uses Lotus Notes? She and I have been using Lotus Notes productivity since the early R3/R4 days.
Kelly Forrister recently posted her thoughts on what makes a good GTD list Manager. She proposes several requirements and key features to look for in a good GTD list manager:
Sorting lists by context
Ability to assign a due date
Portable for on the go access
Easily accessible
More attractive to you than repelling
Doesn't force priority codes
Place to capture additional notes
Ability to search and sort in various ways.
Robust enough to handle all of your stuff.
I think Kelly's list serves as a good foundation of the core features that any sound GTD implementation tool, whether low-tech (e.g. paper) or high tech (e.g. Lotus Notes) should offer.
The timing couldn't be better for me, as I'm in the process of doing a product analysis and writing copy for eProductivity for Lotus Notes, my own GTD implementation tool for Lotus Notes. In addition to my own criteria, I plan to run vanilla Notes and eProductivity for Lotus Notes through Kelly criteria and see how they fare. I'll post my thoughts here, in a future blog post.
GTD Times recently (and quietly) launched. I've been asked to be a guest contributor; I'll be in great company.
This is a GTD Community planned in part by my late friend Marc Orchant. Marc and I had spoken about this project and I'm delighted to see it continue on, if nothing else as a tribute to a topic he was so passionate about. - GTD. GTD Times is now in the capable hands of his friend, Oliver Starr.
GTD Times promises to become the premier go to site for all things GTD, and I'm excited to be a part of the community.
I'll start contributing to GTD Times, shortly. (I'll still be blogging here,too.)
I'm honored to be a part of the GTD Times team.
You can read Oliver's welcome and introduction, here.
As I wrap up this series, I want to share some of the resources I've used to get connected to the information and people who help me sharpen my skills.
Things have been pretty quiet on the web front with eProductivity. The web site hasn't changed from the "coming soon" banner I put up last year and eProductivity guy still needs a haircut.
Behind the scenes, things remain busy as we work with clients that are currently getting things done with Lotus Notes and eProductivity using David Allen's GTD methodology.
At the end of last year, we completed the eProductivity beta program, and at the end of this month, we will wrap up a four-month eProductivity workgroup pilot program. We are now getting ready to turn on the web site so that the world can see what we've been up to. We still have some work to do on promotional materials, strategic partner relationships and training people to become future eProductivity coaches to support enterprise deployments.
I've decided to make eProductivity available both as purchased or subscription software so that users may choose the option that will serve them best. I'm going to need a bunch of people to test the new license activation system, if you'd like to help and (get a free preview of eProductivity at the same time), contact me.
Otherwise, if you have signed up for the this eProductivity Newsletter, you'll be invited to a sneak preview, soon.
There's a lot to be learned from reading books and attending seminars. I routinely do both. But when I really want to improve my skills or performance in a given area I turn to a coach, a mentor, or an expert that can help me accomplish my objectives. I think it's important to understand that hiring a productivity coach is not a magic bullet for getting things done. YOU have to do the work, but a good coach can help you see what may not be readily apparent to you and encourage you to build sustainable habits. (I'll talk more about sustainable habits at the end of this post.)
Here's what I wrote to the person who asked me about getting things done on the run...
As you learn more about GTD, you'll come to appreciate the value of getting everything out of your head and into a system you can trust no matter wherever you are and find a tool to support you. To do this, it's important that you equip yourself with tools that support you wherever you are; at home, the office, or on-the-go. I recommend at least one analog tool and often at least one digital tool, depending on your mobile information management needs. If you are someone that always has a computer available to you 24x7, then this section may not be useful. Lotus Notes does a great job of keeping information synchronized across distributed computers. On the other hand, if you are like me, you spend at least some part of your work day "out and about" and you need a way to keep your GTD lists and related information with you so that you can work from your lists, and manage your work.
Let's discuss the mobility aspect of getting things done while on the run...
We've touched on the productivity equation and we've looked at how methodology is the first component of the equation. Now, we'll look at the technology or tools that you use. Since you've already selected GTD as your methodology (a decision I wholeheartedly agree with) you now need to find a GTD implementation tool that will support you in the way that you work. From my email:
II. Choose your GTD implementation tool and master it From 3x5 card to paper planner to MAC/PC to BlackBerry -- there are a range of solutions. The brilliance of GTD, I think, is that it's platform agnostic so you can manage using the GTD methodology just as well on a napkin or using custom software. What you need to find is a very good list manager, something that is easy to use, is easy to integrate with your existing workflow, and is fast. Most important, it must be something you can trust.
We discussed your use of Lotus Notes at your company. I think Lotus Notes is a powerful tool for personal knowledge and action management. It also happens to be the tool of choice for me and for the The David Allen Company. (Disclosure, The David Allen Company is an ICA client and David is a good geek friend - I designed and deployed their Notes collaboration infrastructure and have supported David and his team for the past 15 years, so I'm a little biased as to the power of Lotus Notes.) Many people are successfully using GTD with Lotus Notes in a variety of ways.
Whether you are conscious of it or not, you have a methodology, a system, a habit for how you get your work done. Some methodologies, systems, and habits will be more productive than others; some can even be counter productive. I began this series by writing an email to help someone get started using Lotus Notes as his implementation tool for David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology.
Over the years, I've learned several approaches to knowledge work but to date I have found none that made more sense and was more sustainable for me than GTD. It wasn't always this way. I used to find Stephen Covey's 7-Habits approach to be ideal and while I think it is an excellent approach for planning, I was unable to sustain it on a day to day basis and I often felt bad that my day to day actions were not getting me closer to my goals and vision. That's not to say that Covey's approach doesn't work - it does, but it was a great deal for me to maintain. Covey takes a top-down approach to productivity, starting with the desired outcome ("Begin with the end in mind") and then working down to daily actions that line up to support those goals. On paper that makes sense to me as the best way to go. In real life, however, it was hard to do, because, well, life happens. David Allen's approach starts at the bottom - clearing the decks -- so that you can think freely about the bigger picture stuff. I've been working with GTD since long before the GTD moniker and I can tell you that it is sustainable. What do I use today? A little of both. The foundation of my work style is built on the GTD methodology, while Covey has certainly influenced the values and planning aspects of my work and life.
OK, let's get practical: My advice for getting started with the GTD Methodology:
In my eProductivity Seminars I always begin by introducing my eProductivity equation for knowledge worker productivity:
KWP = M x T x K
Put another way:
Knowledge Worker Productivity [or results] = Methodology x Technology x Knowledge
That is, the outcome of any project will be influenced (one way or the other) by how well you use and apply (your methodology) your knowledge and tools to the problem at hand.
I believe GTD provides an outstanding framework for managing work productively - the methodology; I think that Lotus Notes can be a powerful tool for information, action, and knowledge management -- the technology. As far as what your knowledge... only you know that.
Think about how this equation applies to your knowledge work. What are your methodologies (defined or undefined)? What tools do you use?
How does what you know influence the work that you do?
Last week, an executive at a large global consulting firm with over 100K Lotus Notes users called me to ask for help getting up to speed with GTD and Notes. He told me that he was feeling overwhelmed at work with a growing number of projects and responsibilities and in his pursuit of a solution he had found and read David Allen's book, Getting Things Done. He was also aware that while Lotus Notes is an excellent tool for messaging, collaboration, and information management, it wasn't supporting him in the way that he needed. He was calling to get eProductivity for Lotus Notes and some coaching to help him set up Notes to be more productive. After a fruitful conversation, and my promise to help him, he asked me, "How can I ramp up quickly with GTD & Lotus Notes?" Continue Reading ""How can I ramp up quickly with GTD & Lotus Notes?"" »
Zig Ziglar tells a story of how for 40 years of his life he chose to be fat. That's right. You see, according to Ziglar, he never accidentally ate anything.
Last year, I realized that when it comes to the internet (among other things) I was choosing to be fat. I was consuming more Internet calories than I needed and it wasn't even the good stuff. Worse yet, like junk food, the Internet -- the very tool that had enabled my high-tech lifestyle -- was distracting me from getting things done. So, at the beginning of 2008, I decided to reduce my daily internet intake in order to improve my productivity.
What I expected to be a one-month experiment turned into a 3-month adventure and I learned a lot along the way...
I recently sent out a call for productivity-minded people that want to implement David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology in Lotus Notes to join the eProductivity Workgroup Pilot program. eProductivity came out of beta a month ago and now I'm doing the research on enterprise deployments to learn how they are using and benefitting from eProductivity and how I can facilitate deployments. The eProductivity workgroup pilot program is for workgroups of 10-20 people and allows me to personally coach a group of people and learn from them as they start getting things done in Notes. To help them get started, I offered to host private webinars for these pilot sites to assist them in the process of learning to use eProductivity.
This week, I delivered the first of several private webinars, this one for an eProductivity Workgroup Pilot at a large organization on the East Cast. Most of the people on the call were technically savvy but many were new to the GTD methodology.
Using some slides from last year's eProductivity Conference, I began by presenting a brief overview of my eProductivity Equation and some of the GTD principles and concepts that I have found most helpful. Then, we took a tour of some of the key eProductivity features. Finally, we wrapped up with an extended time of Q&A. We did not cover all of eProductivity but we laid a foundation for future webinars.
After the call, I asked my host if I could share the audio portion of the webinar with other eProductivity users; she graciously agreed...
I've received some interesting requests for eProductivity but none as original as the one I received this morning:
Re: eProductivity for Lotus Notes and GTD
Hello from Denmark :-)
I have told Santa that I would really really like to have a copy of eProductivity for Lotus Notes.
He said that I have been a good boy so I should contact you directly to request a preview....
I've had people contact me directly or via a friend to get into the eProductivity preview program, but this is the first request that I know of that solicited Santa's help. A novel approach to be sure.
The title of this post is in response to a comment on Michael Dolan's recent blog post sharing his experience coaching team of people that are using Lotus Notes as a trusted system for GTD. Michael's post is worth reading, because he talks about the importance of being the master of your domain: knowing and controlling what crosses over the transom. Specifically, Michael addresses the issue of delegated tasks, not just in Lotus Notes but in general, and how difficult it can be to use well as a team. (You should read Michael's original post and my response.)
What caught my eye, however, and the topic I wish to address today is whether or not it is possible to build a trusted system out of Lotus Notes. You see, a reader of Michael's blog, Doug Ransom, had this to say in a comment he posted:
... I think it is near impossible to build a trusted system out of Lotus Notes, which is why my assistants print everything out. We just cant trust Lotus Notes as a bring-forward system. I often find myself writing down the important stuff to do today on a piece of paper because there is no way in Lotus Notes to capture "this must be done today if possible". It is just too cumbersome to effectively review the lists.
Doug continues...
Everyone I know who switched to Lotus Notes from Outlook dropped off the GTD bandwagon. I am moving towards simply using Lotus to-dos for a "-waiting" category; anything I assign to my assistant or anyone else goes into this list. I'll go to some other system (paper, excel, or perhaps daylight (from marketcircle) for my GTD system. ...
Where do I begin? You already know, from the title of my blog, that I'm going to defend Lotus Notes as a productivity tool. But what else do I have to say? Lots.
First of all, I think it's important to separate the methodology from the technology (the tool). In my eProductivity seminars and coaching, I begin by teaching my eProductivity equation: productivity = knowledge * methodology * technology
I'm delighted to see David Allen on the front page of CNN's technology section, this morning. I remember meeting with David and a group of advisors under the Oaks, in 1997. David share his vision to positively impact the world. I'm thrilled to be able to play a very small part in that and to have enjoyed a front row seat for what's proven to be an exciting adventure.
For those of you already familiar with David Allen and GTD, there's nothing new in this article. For those who read my blog who've not heard of either, you need to read it.
Congratulations, David! I'm proud of you and delighted to be a part of your team.
If you use Lotus Notes and the GTD methodology, you'll be pleased to know that the long awaited GTD and Lotus Notes implementation guide is now available. My colleague, Kelly Forrister, and her team worked hard to assemble a valuable collection of tips and tricks for using the Lotus Notes Calendar, Email, Personal Journal, and To Do's more effectively.
David Allen and I began using Lotus Notes long before The David Allen Company first opened its doors. Over the years, I've not only learned for myself what works and what does not, I've had the privilege to watch other highly productive people use Lotus Notes effectively. I think Kelly's done a great job of collecting some this wisdom in one place. Continue Reading "The GTD and Lotus Notes Implementation Guide is here!" »
Yesterday, I spent 12 hours processing 117 emails in one client folder alone. This was the second pass at my in-box and these were the hard emails - the ones I had dragged there because I knew they would take more than 2 minutes to complete. I finally went to bed with an empty folder, in fact I deleted the folder. This morning, my SameTime IM window popped up with a message from my colleague, Robert Peake, the unwilling recipient of many of the emails I had sent the day earlier. Here's the transcript: Continue Reading "A new two-minute rule for email" »
Here's a useful application for Blackberry users: S4BB recently released Next Action!, a replacement task application for the BlackBerry that claims to make it more GTD friendly.
The web site indicates that this new task application will maintain compatibility with existing desktop applications, such as Outlook and Lotus Notes. I've not had the opportunity to verify this yet, but this sounds like a promising solution for BlackBerry users that use Lotus Notes (with or without the eProductivity Template).
Presently, many of my clients use Lotus Notes and a Palm-based device (e.g. Treo 650/700p) for their task management due to its simple interface and categories that make it easy to implement GTD.
While I am not personally a BlackBerry user I understand that managing GTD-style categories with the BB can be a challenge. I'm curious to see if this product delivers on its promise.
If anyone has first hand experience with this product, please post a comment.
Last week, I got to enjoy a fun afternoon in the studio with David Allen, Robert Peake, and Merlin Mann (43 Folders). David invited us to Ojai to record an upcoming GeekTD podcast. David though it would be interesting to bring together a few geeks with varying approaches to productivity. Merlin talked about how he uses his Mac, Robert talked about the power of Mac and Open Source solutions, and I talked about Lotus Notes as a productivity tool for Getting Things Done. The discussion went all over the place and I have no idea what will end up in the finished version. David asked great questions and tried to keep order, which must have felt like herding cats.
David opened the session by stating how cool he thinks Lotus Notes is; he asked why, after 20 years, it seems that many people who use Notes still don't get the power of Lotus Notes. David shared that he frequently goes into organizations that use Notes only to find that people (and their managers) have no idea what their system can do for them (e.g. that they can create their own databases, participate in discussions, use newsletter summary, agents, collaborate, etc.)
My colleague, Kelly Forrister is recruiting beta testers for a new GTD and Notes document.
I'm looking for a few people to beta test a document on implementing GTD with Lotus Notes. It's a great tool, following in the footsteps of our whitepapers for Outlook and Entourage.
Lotus Notes and GTD; productivity combination or curse? If you frequent the Getting Things Done forums you'll find many posts on this topic with differing both points of view.
As I have written before, I believe that the ideal solution for getting things done involves both the technology and the methodology of productivity. It does not matter if you use a napkin, pencil and paper or a powerful tool like Lotus Notes; if you don't have a logical method for organizing your projects and actions any system will become equally dysfunctional. Likewise, if you do have a good methodology in place for getting things done, then you may wish to consider any of a number of tools, including, pencil & paper, a napkin, or even Lotus Notes. I've used all three and I find that each offer key strengths. This blog post however, is about using my current favorite, Lotus Notes, as a tool to support the GTD methodology. (At the end of this post, I've included a link to some helpful information on using NOTES & GTD.)
Lotus Notes and GTD For the past fours years, I've been using a custom template that I developed to support my use of Notes to manage my lists of projects and actions. Gradually, I've added to or improved upon many of the features of the standard Notes forms and views to make it easier for someone familiar with the GTD methodology to jump into using Lotus Notes as their information management tool. (Note that I did not say that the other way around. if you already use Notes and do not understand the GTD methodology, my template will not necessarily make you a better organized person, though it may help. If you are unfamiliar with GTD, I recommend that you consider this book.)
Given the nature and level of my work, I'm somewhat removed from the challenges that many people face trying to implement GTD in vanilla Notes. Migrating from Palm Desktop or Outlook or even a paper-based system like Time Design into Lotus Notes can be a frustrating experience both due to the new way that work is done and the need to create new habits. I spend so much of my day using my eProductivity template for Notes that I sometimes forget that Lotus Notes out of the box is not as intuitive as it could be for managing projects and actions with the GTD methodology. In short, I want to re-experience what it is like to move to and use vanilla Notes to manage projects and actions. I want to revisit what does not work, what's improved since I last did this and what still works well. I believe that the only way I can truly do this is to jump in with both feet.
Methodology
+ Technology = Productivity.
That was the title of yesterday's blog article. The response, both publicly
and privately, has been very interesting, so I've decided to take this
discussion to a more public format.
Over on the GTD forum, I asked the question, "Do you distinguish between
the technology and methodology of productivity?"
I hope you will participate
in my poll on the GTD
Forum of the David Allen Company web site. You can see the results in real-time.
In the coming weeks, I'll share my own experiences on the tech side of
the productivity equation.
Here are the questions in the poll:
I'm clear about the difference. I use
each where appropriate in a balanced way
I understand the difference, but I tend
to focus more on the technology
I understand the difference, but I tend
to focus more on the methodology
I routinely confuse the two, alternately
focusing on one or the other to an extreme
It’s easy to buy the latest and greatest in technology, but that does not guarantee a boost in productivity. Without a method for its effective use, the potential benefit of a new technology will be limited. Technology might even get in the way.
It's important to distinguish the difference between your method of getting things done and the technology that you use to support your work. These separate elements must work together in order to be productive.
This weekend, David Allen blogged about things that get in the way of productivity. Last night, he asked his seatmate on the plane what got in the way of his productivity:
... I asked him what he thought was the main thing that got in the way of his productivity. He didn't have to think very long before he said, "organizational processes." Too many forms, too many boxes on the forms, too many rules and regulations for filling out the forms.
This comment reminded me of a conversation David and I had over 10 years ago. At the time, I was using a custom Notes-based action management system, patterned after a system I had designed for the Navy. As I had learned about new methodologies of project/action management, I simply "built" what I had learned into my system. This was great, but it added a measure of complexity to my system. I remember I once showed some new features to David. He smiled; I think he even said something like "check back with me in two months from now and let me know if you are still using it."
Two months later, I wasn't using my own system … at least not fully.
You see, my system had gotten in the way of my process. Rather than allowing my system to be just a support tool, It had morphed into a do-all system with lots of features, including the proverbial "kitchen sink." While it allowed me to do many things well, it did not always make it easier to do them.
Many years ago, I scrapped all of my systems and started over. I decided to separate the methodology from the technology. That was a good move. The result was my eProductivity Template for Lotus Notes. Now, my system complements the way that I work. I even incorporated a key concept of the GTD methodology: organizing actions by context. This small change had a tremendous impact for me. I've been using this template ever since, and I’ve provided the template to several clients who are using it to manage their actions and projects with excellent results.
Make no mistake. The system does not do the work - it’s only a tool. I still have to "work" my system ... and some days I do this better than others.
As I consult with clients about how they use technology, I make sure that they clearly understand the difference between the methodology and technology they use to do their work. If I don't believe they have a sound methodology for managing their actions and projects, I give them a copy of David's first book, Getting Things Done. (I always keep a few of these books and tapes on hand for this purpose.) While I can deploy the latest and greatest in technology, I know that without a method for its effective use, its potential benefit will be limited.
When I work with my clients, I usually create an ICA flow diagram of their work. The ICA approach considers three aspects of the workplace: Information, Communications, and Actions, and the diagram allows us to see what they do and how they do it. Once we are clear on the workflow, I show my clients various technologies that they can use to support them in their work.
More than once a client has remarked, “if only I had the system you use [i.e. Lotus Notes, eProductivity Template, a Palm, whatever.] then I would be more productive.” Not true. As I explained earlier, without a sound methodology, the benefits of technology are limited. Begin with the methodology first. If a client does not have a clear grasp of this important concept and a well-defined way of thinking about their work, I refer them back to Getting Things Done.
Methodology + Technology = Productivity
I've continued to refine my systems over the years; I suppose I always will. Now, however, I’m careful when adding new “features.” I don't want technology to interfere with my work. If, after a few weeks, I find that I’m not using a new feature, I remove it.
Remind yourself that while your systems should support you in your work, they should not restrict or otherwise limit it.
Do you make a clear distinction between the methodology and the technology that you use? If so, I'd like to hear about it.
I'm supposed to be studying and writing a research paper, however, I checked my email this evening, and saw a topic that inspired me to blog. One thing led to another, and, well, that's why I'm here at midnight producing my first podcast. I've actually been laying the groundwork for a series of podcasts for eProductivity for sometime, however, tonight, I just decided to go ahead and do it and see what happens, so here goes ...
I'll be adding proper Podcast enclosures soon which will allow you to automatically download my Podcasts to your iPod or other audio player. Meanwhile, here's the link to my RSS Feed.
All of this is still at the early developmental stage. Feedback is most welcome
A member of the GTD Forum recently asked if anyone had implemented GTD using Lotus Notes and a Treo 600. I started to respond with my recommendations, based on my own experience; before I knew it my post had turned into a mini-essay.
Have you ever tried to use Lotus Notes to manage your projects and actions? If so, then you know how frustrating using the To Do form can be. Out of the box, I find it entirely unsuitable for serious action management. Even the Notes 6.x To Do form, which makes some needed and helpful improvements, is still lacking as an action support tool. Lotus Notes is not alone here; the Microsoft Outlook Task form also looks like developers attempted to include many task management features without giving consideration to which ones are essential for action management. The result is that these product's To Do and Task forms are overly complex and counterintuitive. What is needed, is a simpler To Do or Task form -- one that captures the essential information yet presents it in a context that galvanizes the way that we think about what we have to do. For me, it must also be fast; I have found that if I can't create an entry in a few seconds, I won't consistently use it.
Fortunately, Notes forms can be easily modified using the Notes Designer tool. In my opinion, two capabilities that make Lotus Notes the most powerful application for local and distributed collaboration are that 1) almost all aspects of Notes applications can be extended or enhanced, and 2) these changes and the data that they affect can be quickly and easily replicated throughout an organization. (That may sound like a biased comment, but after consulting for more than two decades, including working with Notes for the past 12 years, I still have yet to find a software product that comes close to having the power of Lotus Notes. Until I do, Notes will remain my preferred tool of choice.)
One of the first things that I do in my eProductivity seminars or coaching sessions is to show my clients how to tune the Notes To Do form to turn it into a powerful action support tool. The book, Getting Things Done, by David Allen, describes an approach for action management that is powerful and easy to use; the principles can be easily applied to Lotus Notes by moving a few fields around and changing the way that categories are used. Perhaps the most profound change is to change the text labels for categories and subject to context and action. (See below)
These may appear to be minute changes; do not underestimate the power in their simplicity. For me, these changes have completely transformed the way that I use Lotus Notes for action management.
If you want to get even more from Lotus Notes as a personal information management (PIM) tool, be sure take a look at my eProductivity template, which leverages the principles of the GTD methodology along with other best-practices for productivity -- all within a Lotus Notes context.
If you have thoughts about today's blog entry on the use of Notes as a productivity support tool, I'd like to hear from you!
My story in action management began in the mid 1980's when I received a contract to teach a course on systems analysis and design methodologies for the Navy…
Hello fellow Notes users and GTD enthusiasts! 
To my delight, I learned that Santa and the elves use Lotus Notes as their collaboration platform! Naturally, I recommended that Santa try 
These guys, lurking at the back of the room aren't playing video games, at least I hope not. They are two of the newest team members at The David Allen Company, John Ward and Chris McIntyre. Both seasoned presenters, they are here to audit Kelly's class and sharpen their GTD presentation skills. We enjoyed a nice lunch together; I look forward to seeing them in action, soon. 
Kelly Forrister is our presenter today, so I'm certain it will be a great day of learning and fun with a group of people committed to getting things done at work and play. I've had the good fortune to work with Kelly at four different organizations over the past 15 years. She's as passionate as I am about productivity and she's also a geek and we share a mutual interest for high-tech gear to support our productive lifestyle. (If you haven't done so, check out Kelly's 
Zig Ziglar tells a story of how for 40 years of his life he chose to be fat. That's right. You see, according to Ziglar, he never accidentally ate anything. 
Private eProductivity Webinar Audio Track
