Category Archives: GTD General

General posts about the Getting Things Done methodology.

How to Get Rich – Felix Dennis Book Review

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One of the books I read whilst away in Portugal was the How to Get Rich book by Felix Dennis.

I bought this book a few months ago following an Amazon suggestion. The title intrigued me as wealth is something that I am constantly striving for and I read many books on the subject.

I must admit that I had not heard of Felix Dennis before reading the book although I had come across Dennis Publishing. Dennis Publishing has published magazines such as Maxim, Micro Mart, PCW and others including a range of Kung Fu magazines and books on people such as Bruce Lee. Felix has amassed a fortune of over $700,000,000 from his publishing empire and he now spends most of his time writing poetry on the island of Mustique in the Caribbean.

Now, when you look into Felix, the word eccentric comes to mind. He also slightly reminds me of George Best, and the way he led a lot of his life. Felix admits to spending around $100,000,000 on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. He was addicted to cocaine and high class whores for a good part of his life. Luckily, he has put all of this behind him.

The story goes that he wrote this book after reviewing “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, which he thought was utter bunkum and snake oil, just like every other self-help book he had ever wrote. He has an extremely low opinion of the self improvement lot and you can tell that a lot of his comments are directed towards Tony Robbins. So, he set about writing an anti-self-help book, one that told people how hard it was to make it and “bugger the glib insights!”.

The opening chapter proclaims that the book will improve your sex life!. It claims that if you make more money, it acts as an aphrodisiac and people are attracted to this so yes, it will improve your sex life.

The opening chapter really intrigues you to see what else is going to come later on in the book and I will tell you that it is all good.

Comments like “Teamwork is the glue that binds losers together” pretty much sets the scene for this book. It is a hard hitting no-nonsense guide that will scare the living daylights out of the majority of people who succumb and accept a life of wage slavery. However, the more entrepreneurial of us will nod our heads in agreement to many of Felix’s statements.

Now, I totally loved this book and have already read it twice. There are many truths in the book that ring true and the book was ideal reading for the place where I am at in my life right now.

So, if you are unhappy with the drudge of wage slavery and think you fancy taking the risks of going alone, then the book is definitely for you and I urge you to stop what you are doing and buy it right now. If not, it probably equates to a slouch potato reading a commando training manual!

Here are a couple of videos from Felix that I found on YouTube about the book, Check them out.

Felix on How to Get Rich

Reviews of How to Get Rich

OmniFocus, GTD for iPhone Update

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OmniFocus iPhoneI have just been reading a great post over at 43Folders about the impending release of OmniFocus for the iPhone.

It is worth a read as Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com has acted as a consultant on the OmniFocus project.

One new thing that this post brings is information about location aware contexts. So, this means that the iPhone can prompt you what needs to be done based upon where you are. Now, that sounds very cool to me and a feature that I am sure will be great to use. I eagerly await this release, hopefully on the 11th of July although I have not seen any firm dates yet.

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2 Weeks Holiday – 72 Tasks Collected and Processed

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Well, after a great two weeks in Praia Da Luz, Portugal, I am back!

Normally, as we all find, any lengthy absence from work results in a return where we dread turning on our computers to see how many emails have arrived and how many tasks we have to plan once back. In fact, it is true that most people need a good few days on their return just to catch up with processing the emails and also processing tasks that have arisen during their absence.

I am sure this has happened to you. And this, is only for the motivated and organised. The darker side to this is what happens to the not so motivated and organised people whom I seem to meet along the way. These people just leave the unread emails in their mail application. Every time the connect to the mail server, the number in bold increases letting them know how many of their emails still need to be read. Until, one day arrives where they select all of their emails with a CTRL-A or Command-A and then mark all as read, using the excuse “Well, they would have got back to me if it was important” type of attitude. I was amazed that a senior employee at my last company who was in an operational capacity had such an attitude. I once glanced at his email client and noticed that he had over 500 unread emails, and this is somebody who we were paying to run operations for a growing organisation. This made me re-evaluate my thoughts towards the employee and their effectiveness.

Mastering the art of email is a critical step in the quest for self organisation, and one which we are going to really promote here at DidIGetThingsDone.com.

So, how did I do?

Well, thanks to my EeePC and the fact that my Vodafone 3G card worked a dream in Portugal I did very well. I covered what I was going to do in a previous post which is worth a read if you are just joining me for this post.

I was able to check my email around three times a day without it affecting my family, and remaining under the radar of my wife, who understands that I lead a busy life but who cringed at the thought of my laptop invading a family holiday! Now, since I was on holiday I applied the 2 minute processing rule of the Getting Things Done methodology to my emails, that is, if I could action the email in two minutes I did, if I didn’t I processed it.

Now, I get a lot of emails, but a lot of these are junk due to the length of time that I have had my email account and some of these get through the Spam filter. So, most of the emails I deleted, some I replied to, and some I processed.

Now, since I was away with my EeePC and there is no OmniFocus for Linux so I wanted a way where I could process my emails in one shot, rather than having to do it when I arrived home.

In a previous post, I covered how to email actions directly to OmniFocus. By doing this, you can send an email that when Mail.app picks up, it automatically processes the mail based upon its content within OmniFocus.

So, I set up a mail account that OmniFocus processes but I did not collect whilst in Portugal, then, every email that needed processing got forwarded to this email address with the correct fields where appropriate.

In conjunction with this, I carried my Moleskine Cahier where practical. I collected quite a few tasks all of which I processed using the same process by emailing them to myself so that OmniFocus would process them on my return.

On my return from Portugal, I launched Mail.app and OmniFocus. After a few minutes, all of my tasks from my vacation where processed, and placed into the correct contexts. All ready for me to start actioning.

I have been home a few days now and already making great progress into these tasks.

So, overall, a great experience and nice to come home fully organised thanks to my simple Vacation Getting Things Done system.

How do you manage your tasks whilst on holiday? Would love you to comment so that we can all share this information.

Thanks, and look forward to hearing your comments…

OmniFocus – GTD For the iPhone

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OmniFoucs GTD iPhone
The Apple WWDC Keynote was yesterday, with Steve Jobs announcing the new iPhone to be released on the 11th of July along with version 2.0 of the iPhone software that allows third party developers to code apps for the iPhone.

I have had an iPhone since they came out in the US, and hacked it to work with T-Mobile in the UK as I had some time to go on my T-Mobile contract since I had a Blackberry Pearl on an 18 month contract. Still, I had one of the first iPhones in the UK and it turned heads before they came out in the UK.

I am sure you all know about the new 3G iPhone and the fact that it supports 3G, GPS, and a host of other new features such as MobileMe.

Now, I reported a while back about OmniGroup developing an iPhone version of OmniFocus. Well, today OmniGroup launched a micro site for the iPhone version of OmniFocus. I love OmniFocus and I am VERY excited about this new app for the iPhone as I feel this will be GTD Nirvana, at least it will be for my implementation of GTD. The site shows a few screenshots of the app and it is all looking very good. The capability to syn to your Mac directly and through .Mac (MobileMe) looks great.

I am sure other iPhone GTD apps will come out due to the demand for Getting Things Done. We will bring more information on OmniFocus for the iPhone as we find out about it.

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Getting Things Done on Vacation

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GTD Holiday
I go on Holiday tomorrow!

2 weeks in the sun (hopefully) visiting the Algarve in Portugal. It is a well deserved break as I have been working flat out over the past few months and it is one of those vacations that just jump up at you last minute.

I am looking forward to spending some quality time with my wife and children and hopefully getting some great snorkeling in the sea. My eldest son and daughter have their fins and masks ready so I have a few snorkeling buddies on this trip.

Running my own businesses, it is impossible to switch off, and not in my best interests to do so. This means that going on vacation brings with it a whole new set of challenges to ensure that I Get Things Done whilst out of my normal environment. Two weeks in this electronic information age is a real long time to be cut off so I have had to plan well to ensure that all bases are covered. My emails will keep coming in, and my phone will keep ringing. We are working on closing some of our largest deals right now so I have to keep my finger on the pulse.

Back in the office, my usual system consists of OmniFocus on my Mac combined with my iPhone and a trusty Moleskine Cahier in my back pocket, of course with the golf pencil. Wherever you may see me, there is never a Moleskine too far away. I know I have said it many times but the inclusion of a simple notebook into my method of self organisation has had the largest impact on my success. I can take those little notes, as and when they pop into my head. Everything is collected, I have a great hit rate at collecting tasks. All helps in reducing those pesky Open Loops that must be avoided at all cost!

The Mac is not going with me. The 17″ MacBook Pro is great but I don’t want to take it to a beach resort with me. The iPhone and a few Moleskine’s will make the trip. I am also taking my EeePC with me, armed with a 3G USB card that has just been enabled so I can use it in Portugal without it costing the same as a small car per MB! So, email, and web browsing will hopefully be available, and at broadband speeds. This will also save me some call costs as it will cost me 50p (around $1) per minute to call back to the UK from Portugal. I have Skype on the EeePC so I can call home for 1.2p (around 2 cents) per minute, and that is much better.

One thing I find whilst on holiday is that my mind goes into overdrive. I think because it has less things to think about, with the most taxing decision being what type of shellfish to eat that evening. So I always seem to have fantastic ideas, most that I want to immediately research, but can’t because I am on holiday. I have been known to fill a notebook on holiday, and even used to make notes well before my obsession with carrying one with me everywhere.

So, the reliance upon my notebooks becomes even more of an issue whilst away and it is always handy to have one ready to collect the ideas and thoughts that enter my head. Every time I go away I always have a great list of tasks that need adding to my system currently in use. This time, I am going to try to process whilst away and utilise the facility in OmniFocus where you can email tasks to it. Therefore, I am to email all of the tasks to myself on an account which only OmniFocus is tracking so when I get back to my Mac, hopefully all of my tasks will be entered with the correct contexts and due dates ready included. This will save me some time when I get home which will let me focus on other issues that will no doubt require my attention.

I have some great books to read whilst away, all of which I will review on this site when I return.

Blog posts may be scarce, if not at all but I may try to blog midweek to see how my ability to process tasks whilst away is going.

See you all in two weeks!

Andrew..

David Allen – Making it all Work

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The new book from David Allen is now available for pre-order at the Amazon bookstore.

The book is being hailed as the sequel to the fantastic “Getting Things Done” and aims to start with the GTD book left off. Concentrating on winning at the game of work and the business of life.

I have already pre-ordered this via Amazon and I am sure lots of other people will also be doing who have been involved with the GTD Methodology.

Here is some blurb from the David Allen’s website.

From the author of the bestseller “Getting Things Done,” comes a new book that will change your life. “Getting Things Done” hit a nerve and spawned a movement with businesses, students, and techies all the way from Silicon Valley to Europe and Asia. Now, David Allen leads the world on a new path to achieve focus, control, and perspective. Throw out everything you know about productivity—”Making It All Work” will make life and work a game you can win.

Getting Things Done Mind Mapping Templates

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I have just come across these Mind Mapping templates that follow the Getting Things Done Methodology. They are quite simple but good to make a start with.

They are based on MindJet MindManager. Download the Mind Maps directly from here.

OmniFocus 1.0.2 is Out

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I apologise for the OmniFocus related news yet again, this blog really is becoming a blog about OmniFocus, but the guys at OmniGroup have just released OmniFocus 1.0.2.

I am downloading it as we speak, and will report on the findings.

I am going away a week today for a two week well earned vaction to the Algarve in Portugal. Looking forward to the break and I have collected a few great books to read whilst away. I will write a few posts over the next few days and try to make time to blog whilst on holiday as my trusty EeePC is going with me.

So, the release notes from OmniFocus 1.0.2 are as follows

OmniFocus 1.0.2 – May 14, 2008
This update to OmniFocus focuses on adding support for additional languages, as well as fixing some stability and interface issues and other minor bugs.

Over the last few months, most of our attention has been focused on OmniFocus 1.1, where we’ve been adding support for synchronization, and on writing OmniFocus for the iPhone. We plan to release both OmniFocus 1.1 and OmniFocus for the iPhone in late June (if they’re ready!).

Additional languages
OmniFocus is now available in Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Simplified Chinese. Please let us know if you see any problems with any of these translations!

Stability
OmniFocus should no longer crash when dragging images from mail while editing.
Instead of crashing, just a log an exception when pasting rich text that has odd formatting properties and use defaults instead.
Fixed a hang occasionally seen when using a two-button mouse.
Worked around a Leopard bug (5728015) which would cause OmniFocus to crash after used the Help menu to search for a menu item.
Fixed a memory leak.

Interface
Improved OmniFocus’ memory of which windows were open the last time you used it. (OmniFocus used to sometimes open windows that you’d previously closed, or forget their current position or size.)
Right- or control-clicking on an item now changes the keyboard focus to that item before bringing up the contextual menu. This ensures that all the items in that contextual menu will be validated against the appropriate target item.
The reset button on the view bar should show up when making changes while a perspective is active.
Remove contextual menu items that were not applicable to sidebar items.
Updated some labels in Data Preferences.
Fixed a bug where the “Show in Context Mode” menu item would say “Show in Project Mode” until you first switched modes in a window.
When Software Update finds an update with the same major version as the currently licensed application (e.g. OmniFocus 1.x), it should now correctly indicate that the update price is free.
The license window will no longer continue to display “No license available” after a license is added.
Fixed the help link in the Mail preference pane on 10.4.
When a chosen keyboard shortcut is already in use by a menu item, we now present the full path that leads to that menu item.

Miscellaneous
The code used in OmniFocus is now signed for Leopard’s benefit. (For more information, see Leopard’s code signing release notes.)
Focusing on a project now saves any edits that are in progress.
When synchronizing with iCal, we now set an appropriate local time to incoming dates without times. This should help solve synchronization issues for people in New Zealand who are using daylight savings time (where the local date differs from London’s date when it’s noon in London). It also means that we’ll apply the default due time setting from Data Preferences to items created in iCal.
Worked around an operating system bug which could delay automatic backups after waking a computer from sleep.
License files will no longer be created with the “execute” permission enabled. (The files were never actually executable, and shouldn’t be marked that way.)
Removed a Console log message which would sometimes appear when executing AppleScript.
The online help now correctly indicates that you hold down Option to copy a file rather than linking to it when dragging.
Added logging to the Mail Rule processing script so that it’s easier to for users to determine whether or not it’s getting called by Mail.

New OmniFocus GTD Video – Perspectives

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My regular readers will know that OmniFocus is my current GTD system of choice. I am busy as hell at the moment and this is pushing my GTD and organizational skills to the limit!

One thing I love about OmniFocus is the size of it. I am always finding cool new ways to use it. Anyway, the OmniGroup have just released a new video on OmniFocus, that covers the use of Perspectives.

The video is not yet on YouTube, and only on the OmniGroup site as a Quicktime .MOV file.

The direct link to the movie is here, check it out and feel free to comment…