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1576

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: i'd like to buy some discipline please.

« Last post by urlwolf on September 19, 2006, 05:41 AM »

I'm spending way too much time comparing systems and reading around.
I think it'd be easier to do a 'shareware trial'...
For 30 days, just do 'to the letter' what the system says.
Do not try to add new stuff
Do not compare it with others
Believe it as if it was DOGMA

(I know this is tough. We are all trained, and like to, compare things and test hypotheses).

After 30-days of being a true believer... evaluate. Was it worth it? If yes, stick to the system. If not, uninstall from your brain. Try other things, or nothing at all.

That's all the discipline you'll need.

1577

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 19, 2006, 05:27 AM »

Thanks, brownstudy, you really know well all this time management literature.
Some more thinking outloud trying to come up with good questions.
Sorry for the scketchy nature of the writting...

There are several interrelated areas:

• Difference between having long-term projects (by definition, unfinished) and having a backlog
• Difference between checklists and todo lists
• Place for maybe-one-day items?
• If we do a brain dump, some stuff would be really low priority, and it'll stay floating on a lists for a long time without being actioned. Is that a bad thing?
• Dangerous combination: the brain dump of GTD produces trillions of tasks, and the 'no priorizing' approach of GED tries to do them all (believing that the important stuff will get too clogged if the small stuff is unactioned).

   

After reading http://www.lifehack....y-wntgd-instead.html
Important problem: the cost of maintaining the system
      "without effective project-priority I wouldn’t recommend GTD to ANYONE. You risk getting dragged down by the enormous job of maintaining the system."
   
      - Jens Poder
   
      I add more tasks than I actually complete in a day. That means that my tasks will be probably unmanageable at some point. Long lists like that must be pruned, otherwise the  weekly review won't be efficient.
      
      This is a common issue:
      "a huge problem with particular implementations of GTD. People build up monster actions lists that are difficult to review and revise."
   

So... it looks like combining GTD and Forster's ideas may be dangerous.
How do we ask Forster about this? As you see, I have trouble formulating questions...

1578

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / What Needs to Get Done (WNTGD)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 17, 2006, 01:31 PM »

http://www.lifehack....y-wntgd-instead.html

I think this post was very good. We try to clear out as may items as possible from our lists without considering what are the really important ones.

1579

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 17, 2006, 12:39 PM »

Ok, some obvious Differences with GTD:

In GTD if an item is in your list it is not a commitment, it may be there as a reminder, a 'maybe one day' thing. In DIT all items in the list are commitments. They all have to be done. This has the added advantage of NOT having to prioritize your lists.

But, how are 'maybe one day' things integrated in the DIT system? If you have to write everything on paper (one of the lemmas of DIT), some of these things will not be really commintments but 'maybe one day' things.
How do you action those?

My guess is that you have a monster list (a la GTD), and two smaller lists (today and tomorrow) that draw from the big one.

I also think that the monster list would be called a backlog

Another problem that both systems have is that both systems have is time Estimation: For these systems to work,  you need to be pretty accurate estimating how long it'll take to finish something. This is rather difficult, again, when you are programming or writing a scientific paper.

Probably, what the Forster and Allen would say is that one needs to especify actions so they are doable and easily estimated (e.g., write 2000 words today, or work for 4 hours on that paper). This is not an ideal solution, but it may work.

Thoughts?
   

1580

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 16, 2006, 09:31 AM »

Here is one thing that troubles me about GED.
In GED, Forster recommends to do small time slots for different tasks, and rotate them. E.g., 5 min task X, 5 min task Y, 5 min task Z...

For writing, programming, etc (all tasks where you need to use your brain a bit) there is a huge cost for stopping/ressumming the task (at least 15 min in some cases to get in 'the zone' again). Breaking and ressuming tasks like these would not work for me (I haven't tried).

What do you think?
Anything else you want to ask related to this?
How can this be ellaborated into a good question?

1581

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Suggest Questions for our interview w/ David Allen (Getting Things Done Author)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 13, 2006, 01:23 PM »

wow. Congrats.

1582

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you organize your email?

« Last post by urlwolf on September 13, 2006, 12:26 PM »

Another vote for opera M2.

1583

Living Room / great tips for doing a good podcast

« Last post by urlwolf on September 13, 2006, 07:01 AM »

http://www.podcastpi...x.php?showtopic=8104
Just found this. It makes sense.

1584

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 13, 2006, 05:17 AM »

Hi,

Mark Forster, author of 'Do It Tomorrow' (DIT) and 'get everything done' (GED) agreed to be interviewed.

We will have a set of twin interviews with David Allen and Mark Forster, who could arguably be the current top two time management gurus. Some members of this forum are using both GTD and DIT systems (with some doing hybrids).

So do you have questions you'd like us to ask him, about DIT or time management in general? Please post them here.

1585

Living Room / Morals, free market, and what you can expect when you pay for software

« Last post by urlwolf on September 08, 2006, 10:30 AM »

Has this happened to you? You bought a piece of software, and thought it was a very good deal. You used it and were satisfied. Then, suddenly, you find that there is a piece of Freeware or opens source software that competes with the commercial app. You bought… and does the job much better.

How often does this happen? Should you feel bad about having paid for a license that you will never use for a good reason? Should you get refunded if you are still about the time the demo license would have expired? Is freeware/OS soft setting the standards for commercial software?
Do companies have the moral obligation of providing value over and above what freeware/OS soft provides?

Let's assume they know they provide an inferior product. Is the market stupid enough to let the company exist?

Thoughts?

PS: We have a post here about how companies can inflate reviews by paying people. If this practice is common, I can see how a very good sourceforge project may go unnoticed having more value than a commercial one.

1586

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENT (SEP 5, 2006)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 07, 2006, 01:16 PM »

Is anyone here a member of GTD connect?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Orchant/?p=196

I'd be interested in hearing what you think.
Certainly this looks completely in disagreement with the dc philosophy in that it creates two 'classes' of GTD users. That's my thinking at least.

1587

General Software Discussion / is life without clicking possible?

« Last post by urlwolf on September 07, 2006, 09:58 AM »

http://dontclick.it/

1588

Living Room / Re: story/idea note keeper

« Last post by urlwolf on September 07, 2006, 07:51 AM »

I think oneNote would work for this.

1589

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENT (SEP 5, 2006)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 07, 2006, 04:56 AM »

I think the thing I like about this system so far is that everything that needs to be done gets popped into a pool, out of which I can select what I want to do (when there's time).

I understand that priorities are not part of it for the purist, but like some others, I think I'd prefer to record a priority (just to help me differentiate between the tasks).

But the big pool of tasks has some real benefits: if you choose the one you most want to do then you're more likely to be most productive on that one rather than the one you're don't want to do. That's not always true of course, and it's open to deceiving yourself... but the point of it all is that we are wanting to get stuff done and not just make a show!

-Perry Mowbray (September 07, 2006, 04:32 AM)

Hi Perry,
May I pop in again with the dangers of the infinite resource pool:
https://www.donation...34.msg35405#msg35405

Although it's nice to have all your tasks in a large list that keeps growing, and it's certainly a feeling of liberation, the next thing you know is that you are cherrypicking tasks that are easy, or you feel like, etc, and a good chuck of tasks never get done.

So as much as I like the collection idea from GTD, I think infinite pool and cherrypicking are issues.

1590

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENT (SEP 5, 2006)

« Last post by urlwolf on September 06, 2006, 05:43 PM »

momoman,

for knowing where your time went...
I use tasklog by Skrommel and Visual timeAnalizer. that last one seems to be replaceable by titlelog, another ahk created in this forum by dboogey.

TaskLog logs the overall activity I'm doing.

I have the following categories:
Pause,writing,reading,programming,surfing,mail,stats,planning,realLifeChores
I have a different icon for each one.

Visual timeAnalizer tells me how much time I spent browsing, and where, and it also counts how long it took me to read which pdf, write doc X, code script Y, etc. It is very visual.

Let me know if that helps, I can give you more detail...

1591

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / post here your findings: the best list of time management resources

« Last post by urlwolf on September 05, 2006, 01:36 PM »

List out all the sites you know that talk primarily about hacking your life through little improvements, software to maximize your time, Getting Things Done, and other means to bring your life to some better level of personal balance.

from listible

Feel free to post here your your findings (in this thread) and why you like them /find them useful.

1592

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by urlwolf on September 05, 2006, 07:32 AM »

Here is a few reviews for oneNote:
http://en.wikipedia....osoft_Office_OneNote
http://www.sagatug.o...iews/OneNote2003.htm

These are for the old version 2003.

1593

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: i have the last laugh.

« Last post by urlwolf on September 05, 2006, 05:36 AM »

congrats, it must be a nice feeling.

1594

Note Taking Software / Re: Preview Version of SuperboyAC's Notetaking Software Roundup Now Onlline

« Last post by urlwolf on September 05, 2006, 04:51 AM »

Nice review! will read it with more detail later (dc credits your way, this must have being quite an ordeal).

BTW, what happened to oneNote? It's the one I use right now and I have seen several people defending it in the long thread... I think it's a major player that shouldn't be ignored. The outline features are outstanding. I'm talking about the 2003 version, the 2007 one seems to be much improved (I cannot say).

1595

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GOE - GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - DAY 1 ASSIGNMENT

« Last post by urlwolf on September 04, 2006, 04:39 PM »

I think that GTD is an attempt to completely disregard the traditional "to do" list.  No priorities, no dates, no timing.  The image I have in mind after reading the book is that you should see yourself as having endless free time, and a lovely menu of possible ways to spend it based on your time and energy.

This is a very interesting thought. I did just that (assume that my time is infinite) and the result is I have a backlog of projects started with people that are still expecting me to finish them anytime now.

I think it is a very exciting idea (it's all about intellectual curiosity, right) that you have a menu of things to pick from. But it is doomed to creating a backlog, and the projects rot if you do not work on them actively.

I think Mark Forster gets it right when he spends the first 2-3 chapters of his books showing you that your time is not infinite. In fact, it is very reduced, and most of us have activities that demand more attention than we can possibly allocate.

1596

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GOE - GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - DAY 1 ASSIGNMENT

« Last post by urlwolf on September 04, 2006, 04:42 AM »

I'm using todoList (TDL) http://www.codeproject.com/tools/ToDoList2.asp and I'm completely in awe with all the things it can do. The timing of tasks is great.

1597

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: What is the Great DonationCoder.com GTD Experiment of 2006?

« Last post by urlwolf on September 02, 2006, 08:30 PM »

Ok, guys, here is my review of toDoList:
https://www.donation...57.msg35213#msg35213

Note the naming crash of this application and our very own app's tool also reviewed here at donation coder.

Sorry about the crosspost .

Just so you know, we (Nudone, Mouser and me) have been considering the posibility of 'standarizing' the data collection and scoring as a plugin for this program. It's kind of a big issue to ask people to use the same program, but it would mean a lot of integration and simplicity for the people involved in the organization of the experiment.

1598

General Review Discussion / Mini review: toDoList

« Last post by urlwolf on September 02, 2006, 08:22 PM »

Hi,

I have written a mini-review for toDoList. I was supposed to do that in Aug but now it's kind of timely with the GOE - GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT. It's here:

http://www.academicp...oductivity.com/blog/

I wanted to start this blog (it has been in the back-burner for a while), and also test the new microsoft write post editor. Plus, I find that I spend quite a while mucking around with the code in this textbox, so all the circumstances converged.

I really like this program (as can be seen in the review )

1599

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GOE - GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - DAY 1 ASSIGNMENT

« Last post by urlwolf on September 02, 2006, 08:29 AM »

Ok, i have two spiral notepads that I use already.
This worked before. But I'm trying to go paperless for the simple reasons that (1) I'm most of the time if front of my computer, (2) I move around a lot and carrying paper is weight (3) it's hard to search, and easy to misplace (4) it is very laborious to do any timing on it (more on this later).

I found that one thing that will help me a lot is to improve my time estimation. I suck at it right now. So I set it so I have to give an estimation and record the actual time I took for every task I do. We'll see  how it goes.

1600

Living Room / Re: how tall is Cody?

« Last post by urlwolf on September 01, 2006, 07:12 PM »

Ok, I hate to be rational here and poo in everybody's parade, but if cody carries a coin, and we all know the approximate size of a coin, then cody's size is determined by that. I'd say palm-sized.