Productivity 101

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!

written by Fokke \\ tags: Dropbox, GTD

Photo by Cheeseworks

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.

written by Fokke \\ tags: David Allen, GTD

Tags

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

written by Fokke \\ tags: Evernote, GTD