Road to Black Belt - Part 1 replay now posted

[kelstarrising]

Hello!

I just posted the replay of today's Webinar on the Road to Black Belt - Part One in audio, video,and to the members-only podcast.

This 3-part Webinar series is aimed at those of you who have at least a foundation or basic understanding of GTD in place (hence the quick pace and focus on fine-tuning, not getting started.) The next two are on Collect & Process (May 14) and Review and Doing (May 21). Sign up through the links on the home page of Connect.

Cheers,
Kelly + Meg

 

[vijay]

great webinar

Thanks Kelly & Meg. Very valuable seminar. Picked up atleast three actionable organizing tips from the webinar.
Thanks to my ultraportable laptop my workplace has moved at least for half the day from my formal study to my bed. I noticed while listening to the webinar that my physical support trays and folders were not duplicated 'enough' next to the bed. ...so one of my action items it to populate / duplicate some of the support physical structures at my bedside.....I guess I will soon lose the use of my spine but will get even more done

Another tool that you might know but worth mentioning is an outlook add-on called 'sendlater'.. it allows me to send email reminders to myself and others in the business at various intervals..daily, weekly, yearly and any other customizable interval on an ongoing basis.

At present I have about 50 such 'sendlaters' that go to me and my staff automatically at various intervals....it works even if my outlook is closed ...Now since email is something everyone looks at or is expected to ( unlike calendars which are in the personal domain), I get a number of cyclical processes 'enforced' by using it such as purging office filing cabinets (quarterly), vendor bills paid (weekly), backing up of office computers (daily)..and so many others including for weekly review to myself.

I cc myself on all reminder mails to others and expect things to get done and they usually do. Pretty simple and very useful for handling most maintenance ( areas of responsibility ) cycles .

 

[kelstarrising]

Thanks Vijay!

Glad you got value from the Webinar.

I had not heard of SendLater. Thanks for mentioning.

 

[hikerpa]

I was really sorry to miss this seminar and so glad that I can catch it on replay. This is one of the best parts of the Connect Memberships. Looking forward to next week's seminar.

 

[Mardo]

Road to Black Belt 1

Thank-you Kelly and Meg. Wonderful job. I was surprised you started with organize but so very happy that you did!
I have definitely fallen off the GTD wagon, major parent care commitment, plus a very full time self employed career,a house and office to maintain, a huge tree fell during a storm and left a huge hole which resulted in major work and expense in the back yard, but I now have a waterfall and fish pond with 4 goldfish. Also putting up a fence screen since the property in back of my backyard is now having a house built. On top of this I decided to download omnifocus since it is my understanding that the next Mac office version will have outlook rather than entourage. I use Entourage and the project feature a lot.Haven't spent enough time evaluating omnifocus yet although I do like it So I decided to have my lists, project notes etc on paper. I got the David Allen GTD organizer that I bought when it first hit Staples and transferred it into a beautiful purple leather notebook from Levenger but didn't really commit to it and as result instead of mind like water i have mind like hurricane. So your topic was so on point with me. I looked at my desk and realized I had mixed lots of stuff in the in tray and my pending files holder was also filed with misc stuff. So I am organizing,keeping clean edges as to where things go and I am doing my homework.I look forward to the rest of the series.

Kelly, Connect has taken mega leaps forward since you have been at the helm. The content, the webinars, the extra functionality of the site. Terrific. Thank-you

 

[Nick10]

Thanks Kelly & Meg, you did great on the webinar and it is really useful.

But I stumbled about one thing. You mentioned, that you put eMails in @action support or @waiting for folders inside outlook, and did not use these folders as action reminders. Do you really put every action, regarding this eMail, which could not be done in under 2 minutes, on your action list?

At current I put eMails in @action, @waiting for (if delegated or awaiting reply), @someday/maybe, @tickler and @read/review, or file it for reference. I print @Tickler eMails and put a hardcopy in my tickler file. I then work out of these outlook folders to get things done.

Although I noticed some downsides of this system. I have to scan these folders a couple of times during the day, to decide what to do next. And I am losing track of project related eMails, which stay in the above mentioned folders until filed in an outlook project named reference file.

But putting every eMail based action on my next action list, seems a lot of unnecessary work. By the way, I use OmniFocus.

Kind regards,
Nick

 

[Oogiem]

2 questions

I actually got to watch/listen to this, a rarity for me.

I would love some additional info on 2 items

Pending
Can people talk a bit more about how they use their pending trays or folders? I'm unclear when it would be used.

Physical items
Can people talk a bit about how they organize action support stuff that is physical items that are way too large for a typical inbox tray?

 

[kelstarrising]

This article I wrote on managing email summarizes how pending comes into play. Essentially, you have two ways to use pending folders:

- Action + Waiting For (these used when the item in the folder is your only action reminder)
or/
- Action Support + Waiting For Support (these hold supportive information to support taking an action that's tracked on your next actions or waiting for lists

For large items, I keep them where they are and note that on my Action lists. So Oogie, keep the sheep in the field and your system would simply say, "Shear the sheep (see barn)".

So happy to hear this feedback on the Webinar. Thanks!

 

[Oogiem]

For large items, I keep them where they are and note that on my Action lists. So Oogie, keep the sheep in the field and your system would simply say, "Shear the sheep (see barn)".

...laughing...
Well actually I was thinking of things like one that just came in. I got about 300 prints back from the mail order place I send my digital files to. My next action is to sort and label the prints for my scrapbook projects. I have a good system for storing the pictures in their respective scrapbook material (project support) and I can easily pull them out when I work on the scrapbook but I don't have a good place to store them while I wait to do the next action. I don't like to mix them in to the existing scrapbook files because I get confused when I do that. (Tried that once and it was a real disaster) They've been processed in that I already have decided what the actual next action is for them but there is no "pending" place to put them.

Right now they tend to sit on my desk adjacent to my inbox.

Which is why my desk gets so messy and full of junk. It's not really junk it's just physical things too big for a pending folder that are project or action support.

ps Shear the sheep is a full project ;-) I actually have a checklist for it as there is a lot that has to be done to get ready for it.

 

[LFSCO]

Email folders

I use @action and @waiting for folders inside outlook. Any email that can be handled in under two minutes gets done as I'm processing the mail box. Any email that can't be done in two minutes gets dragged down to the task tab and is set up as a next action there. The nice thing about this is that the email is included in the notes of the task. I use Outlook, so I don't know if you can do the same thing in Omnifocus.

Kate (new to GTDConnect)

But I stumbled about one thing. You mentioned, that you put eMails in @action support or @waiting for folders inside outlook, and did not use these folders as action reminders. Do you really put every action, regarding this eMail, which could not be done in under 2 minutes, on your action list?

Nick