What is the point?

[mandaris]

How many of you are using this for tips and tricks versus looking for
a way to "push things around on your plate"?

[kwames...@gmail.com]

Sorry I don't quite understand what you are trying to say

[Bryan Ewbank]

"Pushing things around your plate" is what a kid does when they don't
want to eat their vegetables :-)

Here, it means (roughly) "are you improving your productivity",
instead of "are you avoiding work by continually changing your
process"...

Hope this helps,
-bryan

[C.K.S]

Ok I fully understand now. The answer for me is yes and no. The issue I have been having and I believe many have this issue is the ubundance of information we receive in our daily lives. Many must "mutitask" at both work and home. We have work email, personal email many carry mobile phones, note pads, organizers, and some a pda also. We input information in all these mediums and worry about overlooking somthing.

The issue is all these can comunicate with one another the contacts on the computer won't syc with the ones at work you put then all in the phone but it makes you feel like your trapped in a little box, or you there comes a time when you have a contact in your phone but not on the computer. The work email and the home email won't talk.

We are all looking for that all in one solution some thought the iphone would do it, some thought the Google phone would do it, but either they miss the mark or you have to shell out extra cash to get sup stand syc and connectivity. 

What we seek is an all in one fire and forget system, when someone steps up and makes that then food pushing stops and productivity begins.

I am currenty working to assemble a group to build this all in one solution. That candle all things an indiviual may consider important information and no matter where they imput it they can access it anywhere. Mac tried but they charge and you have to have an Iphone, google tried but they left out key features and making mac mail, gmail, and outlook communicate is still like bringing down the berlin wall.

All that aside we are still left to a linier methode of organizing all our data. Its time to move into mind mapping and digital file storage combined. This is what I plan to tackle.
C.K.S
253.228.3613
kwameshearrod.com

On Dec 22, 2008 8:40 PM, "Bryan Ewbank" <ewb...@gmail.com> wrote:


"Pushing things around your plate" is what a kid does when they don't
want to eat their vegetables :-)

Here, it means (roughly) "are you improving your productivity",
instead of "are you avoiding work by continually changing your
process"...

Hope this helps,
-bryan

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 20:15, kwames...@gmail.com <kwames...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Sorry...

[mandaris]

My problem (or maybe just the way I feel) is that a lot of people
(myself included) get so caught up in the tools, that we loose track
of what the end results should be. Maybe it's the tools that I've
used, but I don't feel that they promote anything other than
collecting and organizing "stuff". Sure we can all do something after
that, but I feel that we loose track of the vital review step.

How many of us do a review before stuff starts to pile up again?
How many of us find ourselves in the same place we started out in but
in worse shape because we cling to a notion that our tools will help
us?

I know I have this problem and I want you to know that if you feel the
same way, you're not alone.

My whole goal of this discussion is to get all of you to think about
what you want to do and whether or not you are actually doing it. I
hope this kicks off your own personal end of the year review and you
start the next year with a clear focus!

Happy Holidays!

[kwames...@gmail.com]

I thing you are very correct. determining what the end state should be
is one thing many people fail to do. That is probably one of the most
valuable things I have learned from the getting things done method.

[rickdude]

Yet another person in a similar boat here. For me, a key thing is
keeping healthy and getting enough sleep. If I do that, I can
generally keep my systems going fine; if I feel a bit run down, the
last thing I feel like doing is a weekly review.

In retrospect, I think I made a mistake when reading GTD for the first
time in latching on to the ubiquitous capture part above everything
else. I remember when reading that bit that it really resonated with
me, as I had recently lost track of some articles that would have been
really useful for a paper I was writing. That skewed my adoption of
GTD. One result of that was a del.icio.us collection of several
thousand articles, due to my fear of losing something that would be
useful later on. That collection is pretty much useless to me, as it's
way quicker to use Google to search anew than to browse or search a
delicious collection. This unbalanced adoption of GTD was misguided
because it increased greatly the amount of stuff I had to process
without really increasing my ability to process it.

Maybe this is another example of clinging to the notion cited below,
but I think the electronic tools available, despite their recent
advances, particularly on Mac OS X, are still in their infancy. Here
and there, we see key features that are yet to be all implemented in
one tool. Apple Mail has a great system for associating ToDo's with a
mail message. Things has a great tagging system that allows you to
deal with tasks without a rigid Project system. OmniFocus has a great
Project-SubProject-Task hierarchy. LifeShaker incorporates graphical
innovations reflecting the insight that lists aren't always the
easiest or most natural way to view tasks. Midnight Inbox has great
ideas for collecting Mail and text documents that might represent
hidden ToDo's or projects. Several of the apps work with the iPhone.
But if you want something that has a graphical alternative to lists, a
tagging system, great ways of gathering projects hidden away in mail
messages, and seamless synching with the iPhone, you've got to roll
your own. And if you prefer Do It Tomorrow to GTD, I don't think there
are any electronic tools that specifically implement that system.
Another problem is that, even if there is a system that meets your
needs exactly, you're unlikely to find it without spending countless
hours evaluating the alternatives. On an individual level, I think for
now we're all better off working with paper and pen. But if we all do
that, no-one will develop the next generation of tools that I believe
will go way beyond paper in efficiency.

[Dave]

yea, some of this stuff does seem a bit much for me too.

I think people just need to :
KISS - keep it simple stupid
and write down ( paper, pda, computer or wherever) the MIT -most
important tasks for your day in order of importance.

I am reading the book 30 days to a simple life. its got some great
ideas in it about having a simple, peaceful life.
http://www.amazon.com/Days-Simpler-Life-Cris-Evatt/dp/0452280133

[Michael Grant]

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 11:56 AM, mandaris <ahero...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My problem (or maybe just the way I feel) is that a lot of people
> (myself included) get so caught up in the tools, that we loose track
> of what the end results should be. Maybe it's the tools that I've
> used, but I don't feel that they promote anything other than
> collecting and organizing "stuff". Sure we can all do something after
> that, but I feel that we loose track of the vital review step.

The one tool function I feel a sore lack of is personal-scope project
management. There are plenty of individual-task managers out there,
and most of them do offer some level of grouping or hierarchical
structure, but I'm not aware of anything that really allows the user
to focus on the project level without spinning off into PMBOK-land. I
don't need Gantt charts and workgroup resource scheduling and whatnot,
but I do need an effective way to focus on a project as such. Without
that, none of the other elements of my system quite seem to work
smoothly, so I do spend a lot of time, energy, and money exploring
every new tool that comes along.

Michael

--
You have to be happy with what you have to be happy with what you have
to be happy with.

[George]

Omnifocus is superb at helping you just focus on a single project, or
any combination of projects that you choose.

George

On Feb 3, 9:46 am, Michael Grant <mgr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Michael Grant]

I'm using OmniFocus and like it very much for task management, but I'm
still looking for something that can provide a more structured
approach for planning and organizing individual projects -- again,
without getting into the industrial-strength "project management"
domain. Part of the problem is that I don't have a real clear idea of
what exactly I'm looking for, but I do feel like there's still
something missing in OF. I guess I want something like an "OmniPlan
Lite".

Michael

[gary oliphant]

Hi Michael, It seems to me your trying to put the 'cart before the horse'.  You need to find a planning technique that suits your way of thinking.  Once you've identified your technique, looking for a tool will become more straightforward.  Try researching the planning methods and techniques that are out there from all the various project management methodologies.  There's no point me telling you what I do because we have all use our own methods
Good Luck, Gary

2009/2/20 Michael Grant <mgr...@gmail.com>