Two calendars, two sets of lists

A

ArcCaster

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Suppose you have a work policy where all calendar and related stuff is automatically deleted when it beomes a year old.

Currently, I think it is useful to look back more than a year.
But hey, I am new to GTD. What do you think? Should I try to set up my GTD system within these one-year constraints, or should I set it up on my home computer, and still run some of the system at work, where we use the Calendar as groupware to schedule meetings etc.
 
Obviously you can do what you want with your personal information, but violating your company's data retention policy is a good way to get fired. (Usually these policies exist in part as protection against lawsuits. Data can't be subpoenaed if it doesn't exist. So companies tend to be very unamused when employees have their own ideas about what to save.) So I'd recommend keeping all data subject to this policy at work, where the corporate servers will (presumably) delete it for you on schedule.

Otherwise, whether to partition yourself into home and work systems really depends on the amount of overlap between the two. Some people draw a hard line between the two, some people use one combined system.

Katherine
 
Good points, Katherine.

I agree.

Sounds like I was a little vague.

Perhaps a better question might be, if data disappears when it becomes a year old, does it matter?

I hear of people creating checklists -- do this in the fall, do this in the winter. I can imagine creating such a checklist by looking at a calendar or a todo list of what I've done in previous years. In the case of truncated calendars, I would have to create such a checklist as I go, because I can't look back far.

In project planning, I draw a lot on 'history'. That is, what did I do last time, how long did it take, and how is this time different from last time.

Perhaps I need to capture 'lessons learned' as I go, rather than let them lie there waiting for me to go back and capture at some future date.

Hey, perhaps this is a whole new way of being, with no procrastination allowed :)
 
If I felt it was being deleted for space considerations rather than legal considerations, I would do an end of month printing of information I would want to refer back to.
 
Knowing why is important

If the policy is in place for legal reasons then know the specific legal issue addressed. E-mail is not something you want to retain too long for a lot of reasons. Tasks and appointments might not be the same issue for your company's management.

If the issue is space then set yourself with a separate archive file. If you're using Outlook/Exchange then set up a separate .PST file. If you are using a more traditional mail system you can very easily move tasks to a backup file. Take the tasks and appointments off line and save space.d
 
ArcCaster;52212 said:
In project planning, I draw a lot on 'history'. That is, what did I do last time, how long did it take, and how is this time different from last time.

Perhaps I need to capture 'lessons learned' as I go, rather than let them lie there waiting for me to go back and capture at some future date.
Click to expand...

That's what I would do. Not because of data retention policies, but because "someday" never comes: you'll never have time to go back. And even if you do, you'll have forgotten the critical details over time. Moreover, this is the kind of hard won experience that you actually *do* want to keep in your head, or at least in some medium that you can take with you to your next job. The more you can extract the general lessons from the specifics of a particular project, the more useful and portable the information will be.

Katherine
 
That makes sense.

'Capturing Learnings' does not appear to be directly related to GTD. It is something I spend too little time on. But it also seems very important -- that is, if we can continually learn from our experience so as to do better 'next time', it seems worthwhile to formalize the process. Is there a part of GTD that addresses this? How do you approach it?
 
GTD is about organizing your stuff, not making you a better person. Though you can become a better person through GTD, of course.

Lately, I've been noting ideas and insights on a sheet of paper every day, and reviewing that last week's worth of papers every morning.
 
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