New Slice of GTD Life recording

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
There's a new Slice of GTD Life recording available. This time we hear from Suzanna Makkos, who says GTD has made all the difference in her success as a working mom. She works as the Executive Vice President for Comedy at Fox Television. She's on the board of Girls, Inc. in Los Angeles, a non-profit that provides girls with life-changing support and real solutions to the unique issues they face. Her primary email, calendar, and list manager is Outlook, along with the TaskTask app on her iPhone. Takeaways: On email, she says most people could delete a lot more. According to Suzanna, most backlog beyond the last few months is non-actionable, so she challenges you to just delete it. That ship has sailed. Speaking of that, she says that GTD has helped her progress from bailing the ship to sailing the ship. She's also a fan of having agenda lists for all the significant people in your life.

https://gtdconnect.com/multimedia/audio.php?titleid=782&trackid=1408
 
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sesteph6

Registered
This was a great Slice! Great interview John, and Suzanna was hysterical while giving me some really good ideas! Of course now the downside is that she got me thinking about using outlook again for my system!
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
This was a great Slice! Great interview John, and Suzanna was hysterical while giving me some really good ideas! Of course now the downside is that she got me thinking about using outlook again for my system!

Yep, I had a blast talking with Suzanna.

David Allen Company has been a Lotus Notes shop for 20+ years, but I'd probably land in Outlook if I were to change.

Also, I took Suzanna's delete challenge and cleared out some ancient email reference folders. It wasn't backlog, more like a file purge.
 

patrickkamin

Registered
Thanks for the great interview!

It's always amazing to hear the excitement when talking about GTD.

And I agree with you Suzanna - my action and waiting_for email folder are also the single most reason why I accomplish Inbox Zero every day.
 

raeowens925

Registered
I absolutely LOVED this interview. Suzanna had such great enthusiasm which has really motivated me to do so much more with my system and not to hold myself back.
She stated that she resisted deleting emails and I have struggled with that for so long. I have so many emails going back to 2010 and it has been such a struggle to delete them.

Also, I struggle with capturing things when I am in the car or doing other things when I don't have my system around.

Excellent interview
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
I absolutely LOVED this interview. Suzanna had such great enthusiasm which has really motivated me to do so much more with my system and not to hold myself back.
She stated that she resisted deleting emails and I have struggled with that for so long. I have so many emails going back to 2010 and it has been such a struggle to delete them.

Also, I struggle with capturing things when I am in the car or doing other things when I don't have my system around.

Excellent interview

My best reason for having capture tools available is that they make my relationships better. I can get things off my mind and be present with my wife, or colleagues, or friends, or our two dogs. For capture in the car, it seems like the only safe and reliable option is voice-activation of the smartphone. Or when Kelly and I are driving together, the driver often asks the passenger to capture something.

Are the emails that go back to 2010 stored in reference, or do you consider them backlog that needs to be clarified in some way?
 

raeowens925

Registered
My best reason for having capture tools available is that they make my relationships better. I can get things off my mind and be present with my wife, or colleagues, or friends, or our two dogs. For capture in the car, it seems like the only safe and reliable option is voice-activation of the smartphone. Or when Kelly and I are driving together, the driver often asks the passenger to capture something.

Are the emails that go back to 2010 stored in reference, or do you consider them backlog that needs to be clarified in some way?

Hi John,

I am going to have to use my voice activation on my phone. I need to get used to it because I hate having something come up in my brain and I don't capture it right away.
Also...the emails are mostly backlog.
I am one of those people that Suzanna mentioned who has multiple email addresses; however, I am working on moving down to only 1 email address. In one of my old email addresses, it has 7800 emails and the oldest emails are probably from my sister in law...pictures of my niece when she was an infant or toddler...and my niece is 6 years old now. I want to move them all because I want to get rid of that old email address.. Just is one too many for me.
 

Suzanna

Registered
Thank you for your kind words about the slice! I wanted to say that I started a folder in my outlook that is just PHOTOS. Then when i did the backlog i sorted by size (pictures are usually biggest) and then just dragged those into photos. One of my LONG TERM projects is to go thru all old emails with photos and see which ones I want to save/print.
 
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