Getting Things Done
I’ve been reading a lot about David Allen’s Getting Things Done techniques for better organization and acheiving more structure for working. Merlin Mann writes a great blog, 43 folders with lots of tips for organizing your life. Check the del.icio.us tag gtd for other articles people have found. For computer “nerds”, read this article in particular for how computer users are harnessing the gtd system.
For me, I’ve created a series of text files (@_nextactions.txt, @work.txt, @home.txt, etc) to track all my items and they open in my text editor by default and I try to keep them open most of the time. For quick access, in WinXp I have a folder as a toolbar in my start launcher. Right-click toolbar >Toolbars> New Toolbar…> and add the folder with all your text files. This keeps you from losing focus and context switching too much.
Also, for when I’m mobile and don’t want to lug my laptop around I use Documents To Go software to synchronize my text files to my palm. When I add, delete items on the go, the updates go directly to my main files. It would be great it I could rsync those files to a webserver as well and then use the data in the files as the basis for a wiki page for editing from even more locations.
I have folders in my email to sort @read-later, @response, @waiting, etc. I’m trying to empty my inbox as much as possible and not “live in it” all day.
I hope I keep using the system for a while. So far, I’ve got some good lists going…I just have to make sure I work on the items I put in it.