Well, I eventually got my iPad. I got a 64GB 3G and so far I am loving it. Really looking forward to getting a lot of productivity apps on it.

I can see some great things coming from my iPad!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is to an article titled 3 Brain Hacks to Easily Memorize New Info and Save Time While Studying. I love these little memory joggers and use quite a few of these myself. Good read.
• My second link is a link to an article showing you how to use toodledo for GTD and Inbox Zero. Great read for a nice simple application that can be used to Get Things Done.
• My third link is to a post about how to password protect Evernote. I must admit that security has been one concern of mine with relaying so heavily on cloud based services such as Evernote. This post helps to show you how you can password protect Evernote.
• My fourth link is a link to a nice post that provides 10 Tips for Reducing Junk Email. Junk email gives us all a problem and if you can reduce the number you get, you can reduce the time spent clearing out junk and increase your time to spend on productive work.
• My fifth and last link is a link to the new GTD Implementation guide from David Allen. This does cost $20 and I have not yet bought it myself but if it is from David Allen I am sure it will be worth it and I am hearing good buzz around Twitter about this implementation guide.

Hope you all have a great week ahead!

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 30th May 2010

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We stayed in a great cottage which unfortunately had no Internet or mobile phone coverage so I could not get any type of a connection to release my usual Sunday post.

I have had another busy week this week and next week seems just as bad!

Good news is that I can officially order my UK iPad tomorrow, at last!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is to an article from Brent Ozar titled How I Use GTD 50,000 Foot Goals. This is a great read that explains how the author uses those 50,000 foot goals to help him achieve the big picture in what he wants out of life.
• My second link is a link to a great visual post titled Top 10 Motivation Boosters and Procrastination Killers. Some great inspiration and a ton of links in this post that will keep you going for a good while.
• My third link is to a post from Brian Wilson’s blog where he asks the question Are You Unconsciously Wasting Hours Of Your Life?. Great time management post that is worth reading and digesting.
• My fourth link is a link to a great review of the Nirvana GTD Application. This is a very detailed review of the app with a ton of screenshots and really does an excellent job at reviewing the application.
• My fifth and last link is a link to an old but awesome post from Merlin Mann on 43Folders.com about Getting Started with Getting Things Done. This is a classic read and I have started to cover some of these classic posts in this list.

Hope you all have a great week ahead!

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 9th May 2010

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I have a very important exam at the end of March so I am taking most of March to study for this exam so that I hopefully pass the exam. It is a 2 day lab based exam and not easy so wish me luck!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is to a great email productivity tool called AwayFind. I have been using AwayFind for a good few months and it really is my email savior. I have just been sent an invite to the Private Beta of version 2.0 so I thought I would add it to my links as I will be no doubt covering all the new features in a new blog post.
• My second link is a link to a great detailed post showing you how to save Safari Browsing Sessions to Evernote. This post shows you how with the help of a little AppleScript you can get all your active Safari tabs saved into Evernote. Great helpful post.
• My third link is to the a post titled How to get stuff done fast! – accelerated productivity using GTD. Another great blog post that covers blitzing your productivity with the awesome GTD Methodology!
• My fourth link is a link to a nice post titled Time Management Techniques for Ambitious Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Millionaires. The title is pretty self explanatory and this is a nice post to read that covers some aspects of time management for the entrepreneur.
• My fifth and last link is a link to Part 1 of a Series of Getting Things Done with a Mac. This first part covers workflow and also introduces the basic concepts of the Getting Things Done (GTD) Methodology.

Hope you all have a great week ahead!

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 7th March 2010

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It is amazing how an illness knocks you for six and comes from left field to totally disrupt your plans. Mind you, after an illness I feel really energized and eager to get back to it all!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is a great slide based presentation titled Getting Things Done with Social Media. This provides a GTD approach on how people can bolster their online presence.
• My second link is a link to a Omnifocus GTD power tip – reviewing Stalled projects quickly. This is a handy little tip from the StayConnected blog on how to utilize the stalled filter within OmniFocus to your advantage.
• My third link is to a nice little post with some Getting Things Done with Google Tips. Most of my Google tips focus on Gmail but this little post also looks at the other apps from Google such as Google Reader and Google Calendar. Worth a read.
• My fourth link is a link to four tools that help Fabian Pattberg’s Sustainable Days more Productive. Great to see that Evernote, one of my favorite applications is on this list.
• My fifth and last link is a link to a blog post I picked up from Twitter titled How to Use Evernote to Create the Ultimate Post Conference Reference Guide. This is a great post that shows off some of the features of Evernote and its ability to help with cool tasks such as recording facts from a conference. Good post.

Hope you all have a great week. Hopefully I will be back to my normal self pretty quick.

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 22nd November 2009

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Spent a few days trawling through my emails and allocating these to where they should be. I collected over 100 tasks whilst away on OmniFocus for iPhone so these all needed sorting. In fact, Tuesday/Wednesday of this week turned into a great two day review of my current tasks and projects. A mammoth weekly review!

Looking forward to another great week. I am away Thursday to Tuesday in Reeth, Swaledale for another break, looking forward to it already!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is a great post from Web Worker Daily titled Postponed: Procrastination. Procrastination is productivity’s biggest enemy! and one which we all face. It is so easy to put things off and drift in the ether rather than focus and do. Great tips from a great blog.
• My second link is a link to txtGTD, a text based GTD system. This is a cool little script written in AutoHotKey for Windows or Perl for WIndows, Linux, and Mac. I have just found this myself and I am looking at the Perl version as it looks quirky and cool. Check it out and let me know your thoughts on it.
• My third link is a link to a post titled How To Get More Done As A Freelance Web Designer. Although this is aimed at Web Designers, there are some great generic tips from Lee Munroe, the author of this blog.
• My fourth link is another Gmail GTD tip titled GTD Action Lists and Gmail Labels from the pennies in a jar blog. Again, I do not use Gmail but I know a lot of people do so be sure to check out this cool little post about GTD using Gmail.
• My fifth and last link is a link to a review of the Things GTD iPhone application. Nice little review of a great app that I am sure I would use if I was not hooked on OmniFocus!

Wishing you all a very productive week ahead!

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 23rd August 2009

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To help with this problem, DIGTD wants to showcase a few different but still useful productivity tools that won’t require any payment to try out.

The first area worth looking into is Firefox-based add-ons; small plug-ins that can provide a little extra functionality for your browser. Mozilla’s Firefox 3 has swept the browser market so thoroughly that many computer users are already familiar with the program and this has resulted in the availability of a massive number of community created add-ons.

They can be a bit difficult to wade through however and it is for this reason that we want to detail a few of the better productivity focused extensions worth an installation.

OpenItOnline is a great time-saver that allows users to bypass the traditional launch of word processing programs such as Microsoft Office and instead open documents straight from their browser. Rather than requiring the installation of an Office Suit package, OpenItOnline gives Firefox users the ability to directly access .doc, .xls and many other common extensions right from their browser. It also hosts compatibility with Google Spreadsheets, Docs and more.

Screengrab! is another invaluable Firefox add-on that can be used for a variety of different, time-saving functions.

Users can save or copy image files of whole pages, rectangular sections or visible portions of any browser displays for later reference without having to print out the entire page.

Shareaholic is a fantastic tool for the demographic that uses the Internet for regular linking and news sharing, allowing for a substantial cutting down of the usual amount of time that frequent access can require.

The add-on supports popular services such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and Digg and hosts the option to quickly check traffic rates and comments without actually having to visit the given network’s site.

As well as Firefox, Shareaholic also supports Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and above as well as the Flock Browser.

This really is a great tool to help you build you collection of social bookmarks for various sites that you visit. There may also be some Search Engine Benefit in making sure most of your pages are bookmarked on various social bookmarking websites.

HP Smart Web Printing is one of the rare free extensions that is actually made available from a leading technology company. The Web Printing add-on allows for an excellent shortcut and editing program to be accessed directly from Firefox. Users can save pages as .pdf files, arrange and delete information exactly as they wish and combine multiple pages into one document before printing.

Evernote Web Clipper is an add-on from the popular productivity developers, Evernote, and functions as a free extension to help users conveniently import information to their Evernote account. A handy toolbar menu allows for in-depth context sorting and quick data management without actually requiring the user to launch Evernote.

Evernote is another of the big companies that offers a free GTD-centred service. Although it does cost more to fully register with a “premium account” most of the key features of Evernote are available with a no-charge account.

There are a few Getting Things Done programs that can be downloaded completely free of charge as well and it’s a good idea to have some of these bookmarked to try out for yourself. The sign-up and/or installation of these applications is usually extremely simple and quick, something that makes a trial run of any of them well worth the required time.

Nozbe is one of the leading developers in the GTD community and it has definitely earned its place by virtue of some fantastic work on the software client. For strict adherents of the GTD system Nozbe is well worth a shot due to its careful consideration of Allen’s directives and suggestions.

Free Nozbe accounts can access all of the sorting and information entry features responsible for making Nozbe so reputable among its users and purchase of the full version unlocks absolutely everything for the serious user.

ThinkingRock hosts great functionality, community and ease of use without requiring any payment. The developers at ThinkingRock are great at keeping up with their user’s needs and latest editions of the productivity client are always improving on an already formidable GTD system.

The shareware and freeware communities are always worth a shot as well. One of the best results of the GTD explosion the Internet has seen in the last few years involves the massive amounts of programs constantly developed by enthusiastic developers, eager to try their hand at the perfect adaptation of Allen’s system. Try a few out for yourself and see how they work for your purposes.

Email sorting has long been a popular area for Getting Things Done adherents to work on and better manage, incorporating GTD organization as a front-line method for dealing with new, incoming information.

Here are a few cost free solutions to email clutter and inbox sorting.

To start off it’s a good idea to take a look at Google’s Gmail and the organization possible through making use of a few of its built-in features.

Gmail is a great email service for message organization, context sorting and more. Setting the site to HTML or Google Docs viewing can allow for the opening of .doc files for starters, allowing for much deeper levels of customization and specification.

Gmail users can also install Greasemonkey (designed by a Google Reader engineer) for free and then widely enhance the functionality of the email client by sorting contexts and actions as soon as emails enter the inbox.

Email Templates is another quality extension that uses Microsoft Outlook as its basis. Email Templates allows users to create custom frameworks for email sending, a feature that can make it into an invaluable tool for anyone that needs to send mass emails or standardized messages to multiple recipients.

Each of the frames created in Email Templates can be applied to as few or as many contacts as desired, making it into a great way to add personality or regular form to any message without spending a lot of time doing so.

There are also a number of other email add-on services that offer free trials to demonstrate the true value of their software. Additional worth for users committed to default email clients can be important and this is where most of these titles come into play. Here are a few licensed programs that deserve a trial run before purchase.

Mail Act-On is a great program to increase the usefulness of Apple Mail and boost the productivity of the email client’s regular users. The plug-in allows Mac fans the ability to assign hot keys or reference pop-up menus in order to quickly navigate the most valuable Mail features with ease.

The Rules panel in Mail Act-On expands for great sorting, providing a handy method for the context filing of all sent and received messages. Combined with hot key shortcuts, Mail Act-On is a fantastic way to immediately sort and clearly organize all of your messages before they get a chance to clutter up your message folders.

Claritude Software are another provider of email productivity tools based on Microsoft Outlook so Windows only.

Claritude Software offer a 30-day trial that gives users the opportunity to try out the powerful sorting engine available with the program.

The main benefits of Claritude are found in the organizational potential that is brought forth by being able to quickly file both outgoing and incoming emails, saving large amounts of time while allowing for easy GTD sorting. Find-as-you-type file searching is another well developed aspect that makes navigating an inbox much faster, cleaner and simpler.

Trying out the above programs is a great way to find your favorite systems without having to spend a dime to do so.

Take a few of them for a spin yourself and then explore the categories on your own as well in order to get the most productivity potential possible out of your everyday software.

Have I missed any free apps that I have not covered before? If so, please leave me a comment so that I can readdress this post.

Thanks,

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Some Different Free Productivity Tools

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This blog post is worth reading as it will save you time, just as it saved me time. I use AwayFind as my email solution and do not get paid anything for telling you that I use it. You are getting the best type of recommendation for this product as I am a Raving Fan of it and believe that it can save you time.

I get a lot of free invites and requests to check things out but after a few days, I did manage to log in to the account that had been created for me and check it out. I am happy to say that I was very happy with what I saw.

From the AwayFind website:

Awayfind is not just a web tool,
it’s a blueprint for escaping email, with a handbook and a community to ensure your success.

In a nutshell, AwayFind is a web application that provides you with a web contact form that you can use in your email signature or auto-responder that enables people to contact you. There is also a methodology and associated free eBook once you sign up with simple, clear instructions on how to configure the system in order to reduce the burden email puts you under.

So, somebody sends you an email. Your auto-responder thanks them and tells them you are not checking email frequently so if their matter is urgent to please contact you via the AwayFind contact form. If the matter is not urgent, the email stays in your inbox ready for you to read it at your will.

If the matter is urgent, they will fill in the contact form and you will be contacted immediately via your preferred method.

To get started with AwayFind you need to head over to the AwayFind site and sign up for a free account.

Once you have an account you can login and from here you get your AwayFind Inbox and a very simple control panel. The first thing you want to be doing is editing your contact form.

This contact form is the form that you will direct people to in order to get in touch with you and it is the key component of the AwayFind service.

You can really personalize this form with your own details and logos to make it look an extension of your corporate branding.

Once this is complete, the next important step is to set how AwayFind reaches you. This is the method of contact once somebody completes the AwayFind web contact form. This is an important part. If you are not checking email, there is no point using your main email address as the contact method. It kind of defeats the purpose.

The way I use this is twofold. I have entered my cell phone number so that I get an SMS message and I have also cleverly entered my MobileMe email address.

As I use an iPhone and MobileMe, these emails are pushed to me and it does work pretty neat. I do not use the MobileMe address for much else so I know when I get an email on that account it is an important one. I sometimes have data and no cell coverage and sometimes cell coverage and no data. So, I always know I will get the urgent message.

Once AwayFind is configured you need to set up your mail server to send the auto-responder, for which instructions are available via AwayFind for the major mail server vendors. AwayFind even produce some sample auto-responders for you to use.

So, how have I got on with AwayFind?

Well, I have been using AwayFind for the last month or so. I check email twice a day, or when I need to. I have stopped mail notifications and I manually check email on my iPhone.

I am totally free of “notification twitch”, that common complaint suffered by anybody who has ever owned a Blackberry!

I get on average two or three urgent requests a week. I have had no complaints out of people who email me, just curiosity about the system and how much time it is saving me.

If you want to save time and check email only twice a day, or less, then you either risk missing the occasional important time sensitive emails or you sign up to AwayFind.

I do realize that this will not work for everybody as unfortunately some people would not get away with this in their working environment due to the outdated attitudes of their superiors. However, give it a try, make them try it and I am sure, that you will see the benefit of the system.

I know this has sounded like a long sales pitch, but it is a subject that I am passionate about and I am full of enthusiasm for AwayFind. I wish them every success.

Have any of you tried AwayFind?, any views about the service or methodology? I would love to hear.

Thanks.

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

AwayFind – Increase your Email Productivity

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Email Productivity Experiment
Email Productivity Experiment – Update 1
Email Productivity Experiment – Update 2
Email Productivity Experiment – Update 3

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post on the subject of Email Productivity. In my last post I had hit a few problems with my rigid system due to the fact that I was working on a news story and therefore I had a requirement to check email much more than I would have normally done as I was getting very important information via email that required immediate action.

Unfortunately, whilst doing this it also meant that I collected my other email at the same time as well, totally blowing my email productivity system out of the water.

What I had achieved so far was to reduce the amount of timed I checked email from 62 times to 4 times during a working day. I loosely worked out that this was saving me around 93 minutes in my working day. Now, that is a pretty nice saving!

The only issue was, if somebody needed to get a hold of me between the times I checked email, they couldn’t. Obviously if they had my mobile phone number they could try that but I do tend to screen mobile calls from unknown numbers (another good post topic). So, the system fell down during the time when I was receiving time sensitive emails that required my attention.

During my normal working day, there are not that many times when somebody MUST get hold of me as a matter of urgency. I estimate that this requirement may be once every two or three days, when my input is required at that point either to answer a critical customer request or to provide information to the sales team in order to close a deal.

So, I needed a solution that allowed me to check email less frequently, but still provided a way for urgent emails to get through.

As a matter of sheer co-incidence, I was contacted via Facebook by a reader of this blog about a new web application and servie that he was launching called AwayFind. Sounded very interesting so I checked it out.

AwayFind is based on a principle from the Four Hour Work Week book by Timothy Ferris. I have read this book and loved it, although a lot of it is very impractical in my opinion I still picked up some great snippets from it. The review of the book has been in draft post format and I am just waiting for my third copy of the book to arrive as it is that good I keep giving it away!

Here is the blurb about AwayFind from their website:

AwayFind is a communication tool that bridges the gap between emails and phone calls. AwayFind enables people to reach you with critical information via a web link to your AwayFind Contact Form. Just place this link in your “out of office” auto response message or your email signature. This Contact Form routes messages to your cell phone or delegates them to your co-workers. When traveling with limited cellular or internet access, you can also quickly login to AwayFind and read only your critical messages.

I started to use AwayFind but must admit that I expected a few people to hate it. We were in the middle of migrating company email from IMAP to the Google Apps cloud services so it was a perfect time to start using AwayFind.

Now I am not going to go into too much depth about AwayFind as I am drafting a full review that I will link to from here once the review is ready.

The service from AwayFind auto responds to people who send you email letting them know that you do not check email frequently. There is a URL provided in the auto responder that points them to your branded AwayFind page.

From this page users can send you a message that can be delivered to you in a number of ways such as Email or SMS Text Message.

I have been using this system now for the past three weeks and it is fantastic. People have commented on how good it is as they do not expect an immediate response but they have a mechanism of getting a hold of me with their urgent requirements.

I now check email two to three times a day, when my schedule permits. Email does not control me, I control it..

This pretty much wraps up this mini email series. I went out looking for a solution and I think I found one that fits my working life and practices. I am going to attempt to write a little email productivity eBook that I will provide via this site covering my problems and solutions. I am also going to review AwayFind in great detail along with the way I have implemented it.

I hope you have enjoyed this mini series, please let me know your thoughts and comments.

Thanks.

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Email Productivity Experiment – Update 4

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Email Productivity Experiment
Email Productivity Experiment – Update 1
Email Productivity Experiment – Update 2

After the last installment of this series, I had changed my email collection timer from the default 5 minutes to one hour. I had seen quite an increase in productivity as I was working on emails in batch rather than what seemed to be every five minutes.

I decided that the next step was to check my email four times during the working day. These times were to be at 0900, 1200, 1500, and 1700.

There is no automated way to do this within Mail.app, the default mail client on the Mac and the one that I use so I had to turn off the automatic mail collection setting and set this to manual. So, from now, I received email when I manually clicked on the Get Mail button within Mail.app.

For the first few days this was going great. I informed the people directly involved with me that I was only checking email at these times and if something was urgent, then they needed to tell me in another way.

It generally worked out very well. Just like with the one hour gaps, the time between email on a three hour gap soon came around and I was amazed at how fast time was going in between email. It was nice and actually felt quite liberating to be free of the feeling that you have to check email.

All this was very well and good until I stumbled across a little item that resulted in me working very closely with the BBC and other journalists for just over a week on what became quite a well covered news story, even making the front page of Digg!

Because of this, I found most of my good work go straight out of the window as I had to check my mail frequently as I had to answer time sensitive questions. So, I found myself checking mail very frequently to ensure that I had not missed anything from any of the people I was working on the story with.

This has identified to me that strict email systems like these have to give sometimes, unless that is I can find a way around this. Some way of being able to filter the mail before I get it to my mailbox so that if I am working on something like this in the future I will be able to selectively receive mail. I could use a second address but that is not really an elegant solution so off I go looking for a way to achieve this.

Just out of interest, the story I did was posted here on the BBC website and was covered on many other technology and security news sites. The hits to our company website at RandomStorm sure did increase as you can imagine!

The report went live on Monday and it has been a very busy week. I am back to checking email once an hour and aim to go back to the four times in a working day from next Monday.

This has been a great lesson to me about flexibility in systems and the fact that sometimes the system has to give. It was in my interests for it to give as it was a priority for me to ensure I gave a speedy response to questions asked.

I am looking forward now to improving this.

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Email Productivity Experiment – Update 3

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Email Productivity Experiment
Email Productivity Experiment – Update 1

Well, I have had a rather busy week this week and not had a great deal of time scheduled for writing. I have however being able to implement a few changes to my email system and track the outcome. It is always great to schedule things like this when you are at your busiest so you can get a real grasp of how effective the changes have been. This week has been a great week for this next test.

In the last installment of this series, I tracked over a few days the number of times that I checked email in a normal working day. I was quite shocked to find out that I had checked email 62 times during the working day. Wow, that is a lot of email!

Using a distraction penalty of 90 seconds, this works out to just over an hour and a half of wasted productivity due to checking email.

So, what I have tried this week is very basic and I have just set the default mail collection time from the default five minutes to one hour. So, instead of Mail.app checking for new email across my 8 email accounts every 5 minutes, it now only checks for new mail once an hour.

I was very skeptical if this would work for me as I am rather a heavy email user and my time is always requested from many people within my organization. But, I gave it a try.

As I was very busy, and not twiddling my thumbs, the first few hours passed like a dream. I must admit that I even forgot about email and then remembered on the hour when my new mail notification would sound and I would merrily go and check my email. What I found is pretty obvious. Rather than dealing with the odd email every five minutes, and also the annoying ones that bypass the spam filters, I was working in batch. Working in batch really does save you time. I was getting roughly 15 emails every hour. I could skim through these, delete what I did not need, archive ones that required archiving or clipping ones that required more thought into my OmniFocus inbox for processing during one of my processing sessions.

So, how did I do. Well, I checked email 23 times during the day. This is a great improvement from 62 times and I did actually feel that it made my day more productive. I have been really busy and focused all week and I must admit that the time between email seemed to fly and I found myself using it as a time marker, often remarking that the last hour had flown by.

62 to 23 is a reduction from 93 minutes to 34.5 minutes of distraction (based upon a 90 second penalty) therefore saving me an hour a day of productive time!.

Wow, what a simple way to save an hour a day!

Why did I check the email 23 times and not 10? (as I normally work 10 hour days). Well, I did find myself being asked about topics and emails that had been sent at times throughout the day and I just could not resist being the odd one out in the office so I did find myself hitting the Get Mail button to check for new mail in between a few of the hourly regular checks.

This is an area where I need to improve and I plan to stop the automatic collection next week as Mail.app will only allow you to set one hour mail collection as the maximum default. I plan to check mail at 0900, 1200, 1500, and 1700. 4 times a day from 62 times. Should be fun!

I have had some fantastic comments on the last two posts and I hope you all keep the comments up on this post as I love to read the ideas you are all having about saving time and becoming more productive when dealing with email.

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Email Productivity Experiment – Update 2

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