After becoming a Book Review Blogger I have had the privilege of reading books I normally wouldn’t read. To my shame I had never read a Max Lucado book. He has written many books and reading Fearless was my first encounter with one of his books.

The book is written in a very easy to read style, fresh approach and every chapter is well crafted. The only drawback for people who don’t speak English natively, he uses quite a lot of new words or at least words I never had heard of. So I had to grab a dictionary every now and then.

I was impressed by his case that fear is an ever growing problem in our current society. It struck me that it is so evident but also very sad to envision the consequences of the rise of fear is so many lives of people around us. There are circumstances where you will experience fear but fear isn’t the end. There is more.

This book doesn’t fit in the self-help category books with quick solutions and fixes to all fears and anxieties. Sorry for that. Instead Max draws from his own life and others to make clear that yes life sucks at moments but fear doesn’t have to imprison you.

I especially liked the honest way in which the author writes about his own fear and his relationship with God, the Ultimate source of relief for fear. With Him you can look fear in the eyes. The book has encouraged me in looking for new ways to deal with fear and hopefully help people around me to do the same.

It has been a while since I started using Evernote as my primary tool for doing GTD. For those of you that just now stumbled upon this blog here is a link to the page where you can find all previous posts on Evernote and GTD.

Since upgrading to the premium version I find myself mailing in more and more documents for projects and it is just great to be able to have all the current files for a project in one place.

With the new iPhone version typing text notes is greatly enhanced because I can now use the landscape keyboard. I still miss a good list view on the iPhone app but the landscape mode makes it already better to navigate and use.

I have had some issues with Evernote. Errors with very large pdf files and errors with mailing documents to my Evernote account. Because these issues were messing with me wanting to have complete trust in the system I contacted Evernote support. They rock. In both cases they understood the problem and provided a good solution.

One of the things that amazes me is that as far as I know the guys at Evernote didn’t know GTD when they originally developed Evernote. It is so funny to see that in my case Evernote turns out to be the perfect GTD app that supports all the importants aspects of GTD. It enables me to keep things under control and have the right perspective on all things in my current reality, both personal and professional.

If you have any question about Evernote and GTD please leave a comment and I’d be happy to answer them. If you have found a great way to use Evernote for your GTD setup, please share them!

Just a short post to point you to a great magazine about Productivity. It is a free pdf download. It covers great topics and it looks very professional. In this latest issue you can read about:

• The art of saying No
• How to optimize your life and claim a couple of hours a week back
• Setting SMART goals
• Mind- mapping
• Working in groups

I highly recommend it.

In some of my posts I have been describing how I use Evernote as my GTD cockpit. Another part of my trusted daily GTD system is my Dropbox account. Some time ago I made a separation between general reference files and what I call documents at work.

The general reference files on my computer do have their own directory structure. There is a basic three folder approach. Work related files, my own private related files and a knowledgebase directory. I don’t have a lot of subdirectories, I am on a Mac and completely trust Spotlight to find whatever file I need based on a couple of words from the original document. The work and private related files are mostly project related and are from projects that are already finished. Time Machine and Mozy make sure that data is replicated on an external disk and on the Internet.

For work at hand I use a free Dropbox account. The basic idea is that you can store 2 GB of files in your Dropbox and you can access that data through the Web on every computer that has Internet access. But the real power lies in the desktop clients, currently for Mac and Windows. When you install Dropbox on the client you will have a folder set up on your local computer. Any file you drop in that directory gets automatically synced to your online storage. You can attach more that one computer to one Dropbox account so files are replicated on the different computers. You don’t have to be online to be able to access the files.

I have Dropbox installed on my iBook G4 for when I am on the road. At home I have it installed on our Intel iMac. I can work on all project and other related files from both computers and know that I have the most up to date version of the file. Because Dropbox has an excellent iPhone enabled web interface I also can view my files from my iPhone. When working on a client computer or a public computer I have access to all my files through the Dropbox webinterface.

Dropbox also has the ability to roll back revisions of documents. So you can even revert back to files in case something went wrong. Even if you delete files from your Dropbox you can restore them in the Web Interface. I have been using it for months now with no problems so far.

In this screenshot you see the directories I have in my Dropbox account. The @Home and @Work folders hold files for projects I currently work on as well as other context related files.

Read&Review holds files (mostly pdf files) I want to read when time permits. The Reference folder holds reference documents I want to have at hand always. The photos folder is for well photos and the public folder is for sharing files with others.

Dropbox gives you two options when you want to sign up: the free account gives you 2 GB of storage and the $99 dollar a year (or $9,99 a month) paid subscription gives you 50 GB of storage.

But here is a catch for you. They have started a referral program. If you sign up for a free account using this link you will get an extra 256 MB of storage free. I will also get an extra 256 MB of storage. I have found so far that 2 GB of free storage is enough for my use of Dropbox in the GTD workflow I have setup. But having some more space won’t hurt

I regularly purge my Dropbox by archiving project related files from projects already finished.

So if you want to give Dropbox a try, here is a good change!

I was visiting the Making it all Work seminar featuring David Allen in Amsterdam yesterday. The seminar was organized by the David Allen Company and Life Architect. It was my third time that I visited one of David Allen’s seminars. I also listen regularly to the audio version of the seminar. It was as usual a very good seminar, relaxed, focused and entertaining. It looks like it doesn’t cost him any energy. Because I know what it is to have to present in a different timezone, it is amazing how he does it. With humor but with great persuasion he tells his story about productivity. You can read elsewhere on Internet about the content of the seminar.

There are two things I want to write about in this post regarding the seminar. First, David demoed his own system with Lotus Notes with the eProducivity addon from Eric Mack. He also showed his extensive use of MindManager. By doing this he showed first hand how it works in his own personal and professional life. I must say this was quite powerful. It resembled much of how I have set up my own system in Evernote.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the story behind the story. When you have been introduced to GTD and have a good understanding of the practicalities of GTD it is fundamental you get the basic and fundamental theory behind it. Completely in line with his new book, Making it All Work, David pointed to the fundamental behavior changes that are needed to really get GTD and stick to it.

Couple of quotes to illustrate what I really got out of this seminar:

“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen

“Psychologists say Distributed Cognition, I say Write it down” - David Allen

“A successful executive solves bigger problems that he or she creates!” - David Allen

And as always during a seminar like this all kind of new ideas, tasks and projects have surfaced and are now in my trusted system waiting for the right timing.

When I first started out with Evernote in a GTD way I struggled with using the rights features for the right GTD use. I tried using the tags as contexts but this didn’t work out in a way I liked. I have to be honest that early on the tags feature of Evernote was somewhat unpredictable in my case where I mixed the Windows and Mac client together with the iPhone app and the occasional use of the web interface. But even after those glitches were solved by the guys from Evernote I still didn’t completely trust that system. Not that it wasn’t reliable but it just didn’t work in my workflow.

In the meantime I have found a great way for tags in my GTD setup. I use the tags as temporary labels for project support material entries. I use it for web clippings, all kinds of documents (see below about Premium). It is my experience that I have at most about 20 active tags. When the project is done I simply delete the tag.

Saved Searches

This feature of Evernote is used for several lists that I use every now and then. I have a saved search that lists all the notes that contain interesting books, films or music. Also Saved searches provides me with a list of restaurants. I have for each saved search a dedicated word that is used for generating the list from all my notes across all notebooks. For books to read the keyword is simply: booktip.

Premium feature

There was one thing in my GTD workflow that didn’t quite worked. In a lot of my actions and projects I have to deal with documents, spreadsheets and other files. With the premium (aka payed) version of Evernote you can use these kind of files in your notes. What I particulary like is the ability to mail documents to your Evernote account. I explained the feature of mailing to your Evernote account in an earlier post on Evernote and GTD.

When I receive a document that I need to review I mail in to my Evernote account address. Before sending the mail I change the subject line of the forwarded mail with a meaningful action like this:

Read quarterly report for the budget meeting.

All mailed entries are routed to my Evernote Inbox and are processed from within Evernote. The automatic syncing of documents is just amazing. Always the most actual version of the document is available on whatever device or computer I work on.

This is the last entry in this series on Evernote and GTD. Since this is my primary GTD setup, every now and then I will write about new cool things I have figured out. For your convenience I have listed the entries below:

Evernote and GTD (1)

Evernote and GTD (2): Collecting

Evernote and GTD (3): Collecting with the iPhone

On this first day of a new year I would like to take the opportunity to thank all readers for their comments, emails and reading of  my blog. About a year ago I started with this blog and I had written down some goals for this blog.

At first I aimed at writing 4 posts a week. Well, I didn’t succeed. I also wanted to experience fun when writing and communicating through the blog. I can honestly say that through my blog I have met and interacted with a lot of people I never would have come across if I didn’t have this blog. It was great fun writing the posts I have written.

Some of the posts on productivity I want to highlight:

• Make a productive visit to your local library!
• Too much info, do something about it.
• How I take regular breaks to stay productive
• Doing more and more GTD stuff online
• My Weekly Review, perfect start for the weekend!

On a personal note 2008 was at times though as you can read here:

• Complexity brings stress in your life
• Getting back on track…

But in all I feel privileged and blessed. That is also why I am looking forward to 2009 with anticipation. I sure hope that this will hold true for all of you, both in your private and business life.

What I never would have considered myself started when someone sent me a book to review. This has started off a series of book reviews and I definitely am going to do book reviews this year. Primarily on productivity but also on other topics since I love reading that much. Here are two reviews I did last year:

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
• A Dutch perspective on the Faith of Barack Obama

Of course I will keep on writing on productivity and will continue with the series on Evernote. So keep on reading!

One last goal was to generate at least the costs for maintaining this blog by putting Adsense ads on the blog. This goal has been reached, that is exactely the amount of money needed for the domain and hosting was provided through the Adsense income. Because of the fact that I am so pleased with Mozy as on no-hassle online backup service I can recommend them. I am an affiliate for Mozy as well. If you sign up for their free or paid backup service I get a commission and you get 10% of your first annual or biannual subscription of MozyHome Unlimited or MozyPro signup. Just click on the logo below and use JANUARY as your promo code.

This is the second post in a series on using Evernote in a GTD setting. In the first post I discussed the setup of Evernote for use with the GTD methodology. In this second post I will start with the collecting of information into Evernote.

Collecting is a very important step in the Getting Things Done methodology. I am running OSX as my primary OS and have an iPhone. So I use my Apple laptop and my iPhone for getting stuff into Evernote. In this post I will focus on the Mac side of collecting stuff into Evernote.

If you are running Windows and have a Windows Mobile phone some of the things you read here will not apply although most actions are also available on those platforms. In a later post I will also briefly mention those Evernote clients as well. But for now I stick to the ones I use most.

Getting info into Evernote on OSX

You can set up your computer in a way that makes it possible to sent info to Evernote from all programs. This is one of the best features of Evernote. When you install the OSX client also a Clipper is installed. This nifty tool sits in the top menu bar. It gives you access to two important tools to get info into Evernote:

Paste into Evernote will paste the current selection of the clipboard to Evernote. Clip screenshot into Evernote will give you a rectangle with which you can select any portion of your current screen as an image into Evernote. Evernote uses a recognition technology that identifies text on images and pdf files. So when I take a photo of a business card the info on that card can be found by typing the name of the person or the company that is on the card.

On the website of Evernote you will find instructions on how to install a webclipper in your web browser. This will gives you functionality to clip complete web pages or parts of web pages to Evernote. So when I am browsing and find some info I need to take action on I will send it right from the browser to my default notebook (in my case “1. Inbox”) in Evernote. The same is true for all other programs I work with. If there is some text in a Word document that holds an action or some important information I select it and past it right into Evernote.

But sometimes a task just pops in your head while you are working on something else. For that I have installed a Quicksilver script to quickly add a todo item to Evernote. You can download the script Clip to Evernote here. And a direct link to the latest version of the script: download. Before you can use this script you need to edit it and read through the instructions. Make sure you set at least the default notebook setting and read through the instructions on how to use it.

When I work at a document and someone walks into my office with a task for me I simply activate Quicksilver, press period and type: title:Call Fred at 1231245. I then tab to the action field and enter clip to Evernote.

A last way of getting info in Evernote for this post is using the mail address that is provided with every Evernote account. You can mail to that address and the info is added to your default notebook. I use it for sending complete emails to my Evernote inbox when the mail contains actions. I also forward account information and other mails with information to my Evernote account mail address. You can find you Evernote account mail address in the web interface settings page. It looks something like this:

In the next post I will describe how I use the iPhone client of Evernote for collecting stuff and actions in Evernote. As always your suggestions, questions or remarks are welcome. Simply comment on this post.

Evernote and GTD: Setting up Evernote

I have been thinking about writing about my setup for quite some time now. Now that our building project in our home is almost finished I have time to get started with a series on how to make the best use of Evernote when you are using the Getting Things Done method for organizing your work.

This first post deals with setting up Evernote for best use. I have created a special account for this purpose on the Evernote web site. For now I will explain things from the perspective of the web interface of Evernote. In later posts I will discuss the different clients that are available.

If you have created your free account you are set to go. Because of the nature of the GTD process in most cases the free account which gives you 40MB of bandwidth a month is enough. But if you are a more heavy user you can always upgrade to their premium plan.

To get going all we have to do is creating a set of notebooks. In the picture below you can see what notebooks I have to make Evernote the perfect GTD tool:

The first 5 notebooks resemble the five stages in GTD, Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do. In Inbox (the default notebook) the collecting takes place. Everything that is added to the system first is stored in Inbox. The Next Actions notebook is a place holder for actions you are going to do during the day, the Do part. In Projects are notes stored about the projects you are doing at the moment. Notes/References contains notes with information you want to have at hand. And Someday/Maybe is for storing actions that you would like to do sometime but not now.

The notebooks with the @ in the name are used for holding actions that are context based. Archive is used for archiving actions and projects that are done. General Reference is just one big notebook for all kinds of info.

TeamProject1 is an example public notebook, in a later post I will explain how you can use Evernote to collaborate with your team members.

Evernote as list manager

My primary use of Evernote is as a list manager. A notebook is just a collection of notes with in most cases just a title. See the example below.

For some information I use one note to collect a number of items. For instance the @Agendas notebook contains notes for every person that I see regular in a work or home setting. On the lists of those persons I keep track of things to ask them, to track actions I have delegated to them and sometimes to hold specific info on that person.

But I also use Evernote as the place to store all kinds of info. Account information from websites. Information on several subjects of interest, business cards and a lot more. More on that in later posts.

You are all invited to share your use of Evernote in a GTD setting in the comments.

It happened. I have switched to the iPhone 3G. When the first iPhone hit the market I resisted because I couldn’t imagine that the new shiny gadget from Apple could help me out in the daily tasks I was so accustomed to with my Treo. I have been a palm user ever since I can remember.

My latest Palm device, the Treo 680, was a perfect combination of a phone, a calendar and task manager. I could read email, read my news feeds, view documents. In short it suited my needs.

When the iPhone 3G was first announced I was still under the impression that it wouldn’t meet up to my daily needs. I love gadgets but I am a very practical person. The device itself isn’t enough, it has to help me out in my workflow. When the device was announced in the Netherlands I had to wait several weeks due to heavy demands for the device. The news about bad coverage and other problems made me doubt for a while but when the call came that my reserved iPhone was waiting for me I just went ahead. Mainly because I wanted to buy a mobile internet solution anyway and the deal here in the Netherlands is very atractive (30 euro for 150 minutes and 150 text messages and unlimited data (3G and when available tmobile Wifi))

One of the main reasons to switch now is that my life isn’t that packed with projects that a failing system would hinder me. I have enough on my plate (12 projects and about 60 next actions), but there have been busier times. So I could take the risk of having to fiddle a bit fitting the new iPhone to the way I work best.

Whenever I get a new computer, phone or whatever gadget I prefer doing a complete cold-turkey switch. That is: bring over the data and turn off, sell or destroy the old device. In this way I am forced to figure the important things out and not take the easy fall back scenario to the old and trusty one.

In short, the transition has been great, the iPhone feels like a glove. It took me less than an hour to be up and running with my email, calendar, tasks and contacts. I will blog more about my iPhone experience but here are a couple of noteworthy things I have encountered:

1. Smooth transitions between the different aspects of the iPhone.
When I listen to a podcast in the car and someone calls, I just make the call, end it and I am taken back to the podcast. I never have been able to get the Treo do that.

2. Visual voicemail
This is so handy. I used to hate voicemail. For the simple reason that calling your voicemail and going through the silly voice response system is ugly at best. Now I have a list of voice-mails and can see instantly who left a message.

3. The screen
Surfing the web, reading email or documents is so much better to do on this screen in comparison to the Treo screen.

As with all technology there are things to wish and problems/errors to live by. That is also true for the iPhone. It’s not perfect. Humans aren’t perfect so the things humans create aren’t perfect either. That is just a given fact. I am happy with the result.

The thing I miss most is the ability to edit word or excel documents preferable in Google Docs. I won’t be using the iPhone to write long articles or an ebook. But being able to edit or proofread texts and fill in a spreadsheet for expenses for instance would be a great addition. For now I have created a workaround for a couple of documents with the Google Forms option.

More on how I use Evernote and other workflow things will follow, write a comment about what you would like me to cover about the iPhone and GTD.