Notes on Productivity Home Page

[Guest blog post by Nathan Paul]

David Allen opens his book, Getting Things Don, the Art of Stress Free Productivity, with this statement: “It’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control” (p. 3). I don’t know about you, but my immediate reaction was, “Yes please!”

I’m going to give you a partial summary of the first chapter of Mr. Allen’s book. I’ll try to give you enough of a sense of what this book says and what it can do for you (and has done for me) without giving you all it has to offer (both to respect Mr. Allen’s IP and not get myself sued by him or his publisher).¹

What do you want to get done?

Mr. Allen defines “work” as “anything that you want or need to be different than it currently is” (4).

So. Are there weeds in the garden? Are there emails in your inbox? Is your air conditioner broken? Do you need to help your kid decide on a college? How many hundreds of things are there in your life that you need or want to accomplish, do, create, or change? We’re going to take a little look at how to do it all.

This isn’t just a system for your job. It’s for your whole life.

What’s in your way?

Continue Reading "An introduction to a solid way of getting things done" »

[Guest blog post by Nathan Paul]

The Natural Planning Method is something you’ve been doing your whole life without realizing it. Recently, I’ve been learning to consciously apply it to everything I do — and it’s been a huge relief. In a word, it’s given me a trusted process for dealing with just about anything I need or want to do. Now, instead of dozens of projects flying into my brain at random to tug my attention away from what I’m doing, I can focus on the present, because I know that everything on my to-do list is set to be taken care of. This isn’t anything quasi-mystical, and I’m not going to ask you to buy anything.

The steps

What David Allen (the speaker from the video that was the subject of my last entry) has done is reverse-engineer the process that your brain naturally uses to plan anything:
1. You identify something you want
2. You envision what having it will look and feel like — what will be true once it’s accomplished
3. Everything (information, ideas, actions) associated with getting it floods into your mind
4. You organize those ideas, actions, and info into patterns and steps
5. You determine the very next thing you need to do — and do it

How you’re already doing it

Continue Reading "The Natural Planning Method: simple, effective, and free for helping you get things done" »

[Guest blog post by Nathan Paul]

When I hear the words “productivity guru,” I picture a bald, fit, bespectacled man with a goatee and a flashy suit giving a jargon-heavy presentation to a group of executives (who are pretending to understand what he’s saying) on the subject of how to cram 100 hours of work into a mere 50-hour work week — and, more importantly, how to get their employees to do the same. His constant calendar-checking, emailing, and texting do nothing to interrupt his flow of sophisticated corp-speak.

I definitely do not picture a guy like David Allen speaking intelligibly about concepts I can understand and that get me excited about learning to get things done. The fact that my expectations were utterly confounded is the reason I recommend this video.

Continue Reading "TED: “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” A recommendation and response" »

I'd like to introduce you to Nathan Paul, a friend of mine whose current blog title is "Aspiring pro writer and non-homeless person". Nathan is a recent graduate of The Master's College where I have the privilege of teaching as an adjunct professor in the business program. (I've also taught an introduction to robotics course as well). I've been mentoring Nathan and sharing with him topics and information I wish I had learned when I was his age. I've put together a list of topics and we are working through them together. I've encouraged Nathan to write about these topics and even to post some of them on his blog so that others may benefit as well.

Many of the topics we are exploring together have to to with personal effectiveness and life management. Nathan has given me permission to share some of these posts here on this blog.

I'm sure you will find Nathan's posts inspiring and thought provoking. If you want to read more, I encourage you to visit his blog, Nathan the Paul.

Stay tuned...

After setting up Deja Office on my new iPhone, I have been experimenting with their "Memos" or Reference Database over the last few days.  Here is what I have found:

I created a new test document on the iPhone and synched it over to notes.  I made sure to choose a category for this test document, and was pleased to find that when I replicated with Notes, my test memo appeared and was correctly categorized.

However, I was away from my computer yesterday and needed to capture some information into my Reference Database.  I pulled out my iPhone and quickly created a new Deja Office memo.  The information I was recording fell under two categories in my reference database, so as I was adding the category, I chose two categories, everything looked fine, so I saved the memo and double checked that it was recorded in Deja Office - no problem so far.

It was not until I synched Daja Office with Lotus Notes that I noticed the problem.  I replicated Notes, then went to my Reference Database and opened the category I had filed the memo under to find the memo.  To my surprise, I could not locate the memo under either of the categories I had filed it in, nor could I find it in my uncategorized view.  It was not until I searched under "All Documents" that I located my entry.  It appears that Deja Office had created a new, invisible category that was a combination of the two categories I entered.  This new category does not appear as a category on the left side of my screen.  

This is a big problem for me as I often have entries that use multiple categories.  I would love to see a solution for this.

Our company recently purchased several iPhone 5c's for testing purposes and I spent a good portion of the day setting up my  phone and testing various productivity solutions to see how well they integrate with eProductivity.  I set up Lotus Traveler to synchronize my email, contacts, and calendar. Next, I set up the IBM Traveler Tasks application and the IBM Traveler Companion App I was disappointed to learn that IBM Traveler does not provide a solution for the IBM Notes Notebook as this is a key element in any personal information management (PIM) system.  I use my Notes Notebook as my go to Reference Database.  The Reference Database is a key tool in my toolbox and I find myself using it on my smartphone on a regular basis.

Continue Reading "Deja Office for Lotus Notes" »

[Guest blog post by  Jason Spencer]

Eric Mack reached out to me recently and offered to show me how he uses IBM Notes. I wanted top see eProductivity in operation anyway so this was my chance to learn from its creator

My first One on One coaching session with Eric Mack focused on an introduction to eProductivity which I found impressive. Eric Mack and David Allen have created an optimized software package and user interface for IBM Notes.

(As an aside, I believe that it  would behoove anyone working in software development to preview the demo and see what a completely optimized life management tool looks like.) Over a three day period, I implemented all 57 exercises to properly demo the software. In my next post, I will describe more about this experience.

Continue Reading "IBM Notes as a "Trusted System" for Getting Things Done" »

Journalist and professor Jason Spencer is on a quest to use IBM Notes as a productivity platform. I've invited him to share his experience with Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first and second guest blog posts are here, here and here.  Jason's fourth installment update is below.

Setting up IBM Notes with the Getting Things Done White Paper

Yesterday, I tried to set up IBM Notes and organize my work according to the best practices of David Allen's GTD methodology. I ran into some snags which I documented.

Today, as I continue my productivity journey, I decided to see if David's white paper on using Notes would provide some relief to the challenges I encountered with vanilla Notes. I spent a day setting up my vanilla copy of IBM Lotus Notes using David Allen’s Getting Things Done white paper for IBM Notes. If you have never used a GTD White Paper before from the David Allen Company, you should know that their white papers give you a complete Getting Things Done Setup for that specific piece of software, turning confusion into clarity.

Continue Reading "Guest Blog: Using the GTD Setup guide for Lotus (IBM) Notes" »

Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer'

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Notes/Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first and second guest blog posts are here and here.  Jason's third installment update is below.

Challenges Implementing Getting Things Done with IBM Notes
I'm a long time proponent of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to work and life. In fact, knowing that David uses and recommends IBM Notes as his knowledge platform of choice is what first led me to consider switching from Outlook. When Microsoft emasculated their productivity tools I got fed up and decided to explore the tool that David Allen uses. I understand that David also uses eProductivity but I wanted to first understand what it is about Notes that has kept this program around for over two decades. Using my knowledge of GTD, I decided to see if I could implement this approach to productive work within my vanilla Notes 9 Social Edition Setup.


Continue Reading "Challenges Implementing Getting Things Done with IBM Notes" »

[Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer's rant against Microsoft for their emasculation (his words, not mine) of their productivity tools.

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Notes/Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first guest blog post is here. Jason's second installment update is below.]

IBM Notes True Cross Platform Support
Despite all the challenges I faced setting up IBM Notes, I chose Notes as my primary life management application because IBM has tried to make Notes a truly ubiquitous cross platform PIM. IBM chose to pursue simplicity in Note’s mobile device support-- like Google Apps for Business, IBM Notes Traveler (the IBM Notes push email and PIM solution for mobile devices)  embraces Microsoft Exchange Active Sync Protocol for maximum interoperability. Furthermore, IBM Notes Traveler offers software for iOS and Android; and support for Blackberry and Windows phone platforms.  Similarly, Notes also offers a robust web interface far more comparable to its native client then Outlook Web Access 2013 (OWA) to Microsoft Outlook. When it comes to desktop operating systems, you can run the full IBM Notes Client natively on all major operating systems --Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors of Red Hat and Ubuntu.


Continue Reading "IBM Notes True Cross Platform Support - Guest post by Jason Spencer" »

[Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer's rant against Microsoft for their emasculation (his words, not mine) of their productivity tools.

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.]


Here is Jason's first guest blog post...

Technology Challenges Setting Up IBM Notes

Originally I started working with IBM Notes Smart Cloud edition which includes a free copy of IBM Notes 9.0 Social Edition and huge cloud base document Management Suite for only $10.00 a month. First off, the technical support and the hosting provided by IBM is fanatical – they will, if you have the patience, hold your hand through everything, including adding your own custom domain.

Continue Reading "Setting Up IBM Notes / Smart Cloud - Guest Blog by Jason Spencer" »