Comments on: Book Report: Getting Things Done

By: Book Review: Getting Things Done « Outside of the Triangle

Book Review: Getting Things Done « Outside of the Triangle — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:36:31 +0000

[...] up from David Allan’s renowned book Getting Things Done. Based on some feedback I received and a post from Pete Johnson I resolved back then to buy and read the book for myself. I have just finished it and can honestly [...]

By: Managing meeting cancellations | Nerd Guru

Managing meeting cancellations | Nerd Guru — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:36:13 +0000

[...] get one of these cancellations two meetings from now and I’ll remember it in my head (a GTD no-no) and erroneously assume we aren’t meeting that [...]

By: Neel Banerjee

Neel Banerjee — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:22:05 +0000

Great tips! I have started to implement my list of items in Google Notebook. My first idea was to use OneNote, but scrapped that idea since I want something that is portable and easier to access. I have a google account an accessing my action list is a breeze now. Although the notebook has the ability to add labels, its search feature is a bit tricky. I choose to add a label of “not done” to every actionable task (along with other helpful labels). Then I search for label:{work, not done} and I have a list of all the work related tasks. I can then refine the search further.

I know Outlook has categories that you can label you messages with, but it was very difficult for me to use since I already had a folder system to organize mail. The category approach calls for keeping all mail in one big folder and applying categories to each message. Then you can run searchs or populate search folders with items that match the category.

By: Pete Johnson

Pete Johnson — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:41:00 +0000

@anon again. A better approach to that tip that someone told me about is to set the properties on your Outlook folders so that it shows the number of items in the folder as opposed to the default of showing the number of unread items in that folder. I switched to that recently and it's working better for me.

---Pete

By: David Daly

David Daly — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:50:00 +0000

I heard about Getting Things Done from someone who happened to be on the same training course as me. Like you I was initially sceptical but soon I was converted. I have not yet added the “wave 2” folders but I have become ruthless about deleting messages! It looks like I may have to read Getting Things Done and see what other wisdom it contains!

By: Pete Johnson

Pete Johnson — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:55:00 +0000

@wendee and jonathan, thanks for the kind words.

@anon, great tip. I never thought of using unread that way before. Based on this suggestion, I marked everything in "@ACTIONS" and "@WAITING" as unread and it does give a nice one glance view of how many things are in there. Thanks!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:23:00 +0000

Good article ... The key is to start with broad high level categories and then if you notice one category is getting too big then sub categorize it. If you try to micro categorize the system fails. I mark the items ‘unread’ in the folders because MS Outlook displays a count of unread messages – this makes it easy for me to see how many items need my attention.

- Your dotted line report

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 17:55:00 +0000

Great ideas. I did the same thing a few years by using an email organizer product and it has made a tremendous difference.

By: Wendee

Wendee — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:37:00 +0000

Ohhhhhh, cool. I like that you're posting what you did, rather than what the book's about; would be happy to read other specific success stories. The procrastinator in me hasn't gotten past the "get everything out of your head" and getting rid of all the piles part.

[sigh]