Another productive week draws to an end. I submitted a major piece of work that I had been creating over the past couple of weeks. You cannot beat the feeling when you hit the submit button and the work is complete. Kind of like checking off those tasks on your task list.
Here are my collection of links for this week.
- My first link for this week is a link to the new Paper Based Coordinators from the David Allen Company. These are paper based planners for Getting Things Done. I use electronic systems to Get Things Done although I do rely on my Moleskine for note taking when out of the office. I first heard about these from the GTD-Times post.
- My second link is a link to the GTD Dictionary from Organize IT. I have been following this dictionary for a few weeks and they are good little definitions of frequently used GTD words. This link points to the tag for the dictionary so contains all the posts.
- My third link is a link to a blog post from the Flipping Heck Blog about why the Four Hour Work Week does not work in the real world. I love the 4HWW but also agree that a lot of it is pretty much unusable for most in the real world. I am sure it helps to sell books, and I did enjoy the book and must review it soon.
- My fourth link is a link to a post from John Gruber of Daring Fireball about how he implements his email system to get things done. Good read from a fantastic blog.
- My fifth and last link for this week is a link to the Getting Started in Productivity, Abbreviations post from the Simple Productivity Blog. Just stumbled across this colorful new blog. Check it out and see what you think.
I am looking forward to some more GTD Application Reviews that I have already done and I am getting ready to post this week. They include apps such as Zenbe and GTD-Free.
Hope you are all still enjoying the blog!
Thanks for the link to my post about the Four Hour Work Week 🙂
I had an interesting email exchange with Dave Crenshaw (author of The Myth of Multitasking: How doing it all gets nothing done) as he gives some similar “advice” to Tim Ferris on scheduling email and phone call return times.
Essentially his view is that you’re not necessarily tied to some of these techniques but rather using them to manage other people’s expectations of you – although I’m still not convinced I could use it in my job!
@Katy:
I have recently gone to checking my email twice a day, after reading the 4HWW. I do use AwayFind so that people can get me if they need me but so far it has worked out real well and has saved me a load of time from needlessly checking email.
I have the book to re-read then i am going to see what else I can learn from it.
Thanks for your comment.
I manage a software business and deal with customer support. I have taken to checking my support emails and forum traffic on 1 hour to 30 min. increments. I have filtered my mail folders though so that I can separate out such emails. This is a new development for me and is working well.
Interesting to see the different needs out there. Anything outside of support can wait for me…but support issues are the highest priority and must be dealt with quickly.
I am surprised that more people don’t use rules in their email inbox. It helps me get a head start on an inbox zero situation!
Troy Malone
Pelotonics.com
Thanks for the shout-out! I will be doing a series of “beginner” articles soon, based on some feedback I received. The article you mentioned was based on the same feedback. The user didn’t have a clue what any of the abbreviations or standard lit in the field were.
@LJ:
Be sure to let me know when these are done and I can cover them. Also, if you ever fancy guest posting just let me know.
Thanks for the comment,
Andrew..
@Troy Malone:
Inbox rules really can help. More often than not, when I look at peoples Inbox’s, they are just one long list of emails. No wonder that people simply cannot manage their email!
I have found that looking at peoples email organization is a good indicator of their general organization.