GTD on the Cheap
aarondesk
write up my own take on this. Using some of these ideas has saved me
money, as well as eased my guilt of living in a materialistic society.
Anyways, here goes.
Cheap options
1. Manila Folders. $4/100 at Wal-mart.
2. Sharpie (Fine tip). $1. Dave recommends a labeler, but I've found
I like a Sharpie more for folders. The labeler just took too long and
peeling the labels was a pain.
3. Notebooks, loose-leaf paper, pencils, pens, and other supplies.
You can get these pretty cheap around the fall time when school's
starting.
4. A gazillion software packages. There are a lot of options out
there for calendars, list management, to do lists, or whatever. The
cost of electricity is just about all it takes to run an electronic
GTD implementation.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
5. Produce boxes. Stop by the produce department of your local
grocery store. If you're lucky, you can get some fruit boxes (apple
are the big ones) that can serve as storage for folders, or can even
be cut down for an Inbox.
6. Recycled paper. I always seem to have a stack of paper that I've
printed on, but no longer need. I've started using them to make lists
(usually daily to-do lists) or take random notes. If you're not
against dumpster diving, you can probably get a stack of paper from
office recycle bins. An even better idea, skip the Moleskin and make
your own[2].
If you have any more ideas or comments, please chime in.
Aaron
[1] http://blog.crankingwidgets.com/2007/04/16/cheap-gtd/
[2] http://www.instructables.com/id/ENWQ7Z9F176TTFJ/?ALLSTEPS
Mike De Bruyn
After having read the $20 GTD implementation[1], I felt compelled to
write up my own take on this. Using some of these ideas has saved me
money, as well as eased my guilt of living in a materialistic society.
Anyways, here goes.
Cheers,
Mike
WastedDesigns
perfect size for file folders (letter in one direction, legal the
other.)
@Mike: You forgot to factor in the cost of the kids :) I have picked
up a couple of these over the last three years, and let me tell you...
while the initial investment is realitively inexpensive, the long term
maintenace really starts to add up.
Konrad Neuwirth
> Best of all, take the time to train your memory. No more writing things
> down. Saves tons of time and supplies and you don't have to sew books. ;-)
But GTD is exactly about not memorizing! About having everything out
of your brain so you can have mind like water.
There's a few tricks to improve your memory in O'Reilly's Mind
Performance Hack (an easy read), and you can also find things about
memory and how to train it in the Mentat Wiki,
<http://www.ludism.org/mentat/>.
Konrad
PS: After fiddling and fiddling with online todo lists, palm todo
lists, anything I'm currently back to just plain paper, using normal
writing sheets, one "general todo list" and for projects, one
project-related page. I also scribble ideas, open questions and
everything onto those sheets and when it's time to review, rewrite the
page to get back into something orderly. This so far has worked well
-- for about a month and a half.
aarondesk
wrote:
> I have not done it myself, but if you were REALLY desperate to lower costs,
> you could invest in a gum eraser (cheap) and use pencil (preferably .7mm or
> .5mm retractable so you don't need to sharpen) and then erase your items on
> your cards/paper and reuse until you wear a hole in them. LOL ;-)
He, he. I guess that would work. Messiness, however must count for
something, and I tend to get messy when I write and erase.
I'm trying to simplify my life and my GTD. I've found that there are a
lot of complications in life that are really unnecessary. How many of
us have played with the latest, greatest GTD software or
implementation, only to change it 2 weeks later? I think sometimes,
the simpler, the better. Even when it comes to office supplies (I
consider visiting the office supply store a hobby of mine) and other
tangibles.
Aaron
Mike De Bruyn
@Mike: You forgot to factor in the cost of the kids :) I have picked
up a couple of these over the last three years, and let me tell you...
while the initial investment is realitively inexpensive, the long term
maintenace really starts to add up.
--
Cheers,
Mike
Mike De Bruyn
Hey,
> Best of all, take the time to train your memory. No more writing things
> down. Saves tons of time and supplies and you don't have to sew books. ;-)
But GTD is exactly about not memorizing! About having everything out
of your brain so you can have mind like water.
There's a few tricks to improve your memory in O'Reilly's Mind
Performance Hack (an easy read), and you can also find things about
memory and how to train it in the Mentat Wiki,
http://www.ludism.org/mentat/.
Konrad
PS: After fiddling and fiddling with online todo lists, palm todo
lists, anything I'm currently back to just plain paper, using normal
writing sheets, one "general todo list" and for projects, one
project-related page. I also scribble ideas, open questions and
everything onto those sheets and when it's time to review, rewrite the
page to get back into something orderly. This so far has worked well
-- for about a month and a half.
--
Cheers,
Mike
Evan Edwards
> That is what DA thinks. But I don't share his paranoia about forgetting
> things
I believe his point is that if you are pausing to memorize and retrieve
information, it is a break in your workflow. "Mind like water" means that
you are in pure action mode, without having to remember anything. It is
similar to a guitarist who pauses in the middle of a song to remember how
that chord goes versus one whose "fingers know the song", and can hold a
conversation while playing.
The whole "get everything out of your head" isn't because you might forget
something, it is so your head can focus on the tasks themselves rather than
remembering. That state of non-remembering is pure action rather than
spending mental time organizing the flow. That's also why you zip through
inbox/NAs top to bottom without looking at the actual list... the review is a
different mental state. Keeping things in your memory forces a mental shift
to review after each action.
I'm not defending DA's theories, just clarifying them as I understand
them. Also, keep in mind that mentats were just human computers used by the
leaders and policy makers as resources rather than being leaders
themselves. ;)
--
Evan "JabberWokky" Edwards
http://www.cheshirehall.org/
615.517.6900
Dennis C. During
is that:
1. Our memories are unreliable
2. Our ‘prospective’ memory for future actions is worse, if we have more
than one thing to remember
3. Our memory degrades with age, stress, number of items to be recalled,
etc.
4. Our confidence in our memory far exceeds its actual capability although
the gap may decline with age.
Dennis C. During
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law
into contempt." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American women's rights advocate
(1815-1902)
"What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." - Richard P.
Feynman, Nobelist, physicist, raconteur, bongo player, safe-cracker
dcdu...@gmail.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SelfExperimenters/
HT
Use them for capture, contextual action lists and reference. Use
lined, graph cards and some colored (reference cards). Small
enhancement: Cut plastic page lifter from 3 ring binder down to 3 x 5
size and use as backing for stack of cards. Facilitates stand-up
writing and minimizes card damage when stack rides in my back pocket.
On May 16, 8:26 am, "Mike De Bruyn" <mikes.mail.li...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Aaron,
>
> You can lower your costs even more by getting 3x5 paper pads. I got a bunch
> (maybe 12 pads of 100 pages each) from Sam's Club for just a few bucks. I
> like the paper better than the cards because they are thinner and so take
> less space. I sandwich them between two index cards and clip them with a
> binder clip.
>
> I have not done it myself, but if you were REALLY desperate to lower costs,
> you could invest in a gum eraser (cheap) and use pencil (preferably .7mm or
> .5mm retractable so you don't need to sharpen) and then erase your items on
> your cards/paper and reuse until you wear a hole in them. LOL ;-)
>
> When I was learning Chinese and had to practice characters a lot, I got one
> of those kids "magic pads" ... the kind where it is black wax on a board
> with a frosted sheet over it and the stylus is just anything pointed. You
> write, do, pull up, write some more. It has some obvious limitations but
> for VERY temporary "scratch" work, it can't be beat. They last forever.
>
> If you can't find a pencil or pen, you can get free crayons at most
> restaurants (if you take your kid, but then you have to factor in the cost
> of dinner ;-) ;-) ;-)
>
> Best of all, take the time to train your memory. No more writing things
> down. Saves tons of time and supplies and you don't have to sew books. ;-)
>
Mike De Bruyn
On Thursday 17 May 2007, Mike De Bruyn wrote:
> That is what DA thinks. But I don't share his paranoia about forgetting
> things
I believe his point is that if you are pausing to memorize and retrieve
information, it is a break in your workflow.
"Mind like water" means that
you are in pure action mode, without having to remember anything. It is
similar to a guitarist who pauses in the middle of a song to remember how
that chord goes versus one whose "fingers know the song", and can hold a
conversation while playing.
The whole "get everything out of your head" isn't because you might forget
something, it is so your head can focus on the tasks themselves rather than
remembering.
That state of non-remembering is pure action rather than
spending mental time organizing the flow. That's also why you zip through
inbox/NAs top to bottom without looking at the actual list... the review is a
different mental state. Keeping things in your memory forces a mental shift
to review after each action.
I'm not defending DA's theories, just clarifying them as I understand
them.
Also, keep in mind that mentats were just human computers used by the
leaders and policy makers as resources rather than being leaders
themselves. ;)
--
Cheers,
Mike
Mike De Bruyn
What's even more to the point is that, whatever DA may believe, the evidence
is that:
1. Our memories are unreliable
2. Our 'prospective' memory for future actions is worse, if we have more
than one thing to remember
3. Our memory degrades with age, stress, number of items to be recalled,
etc.
4. Our confidence in our memory far exceeds its actual capability although
the gap may decline with age.
--
Cheers,
Mike
Dennis C. During
From: Mike De Bruyn
Hi Dennis,
On 5/17/07, Dennis C. During <dcdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
XX What's even more to the point is that, whatever DA may believe, the
evidence is that:
XX 1. Our memories are unreliable
X Not mine. ;-)
I hope that you don't mislead anyone into thinking that memory is reliable.
XX 2. Our 'prospective' memory for future actions is worse, if we have more
than one thing to remember
X Not true. Memory capacity is unlimited, so far as we know.
You failed to note that I was talking about prospective memory, which is
what GTD and similar systems concern themselves with.
Prospective memory is memory for future actions. What would be critical
would be remembering something at the time we needed it. This is incredibly
unreliable. In all efforts to observe the phenomenon in naturalistic
settings people desperately attempt to write things down so that they can
remember. When tested, people's ability to remember something at a
particular time without an aid of some kind is hopeless unless they have
only one thing to remember with minimal mental load from other tasks.
Raw memory capacity is high, but certainly not unlimited. We remember a
sketch of a 'forest' and fill in details from our generic knowledge of
forests. We remember what we usually did on Wednesdays two or three years
ago when someone asks us what we did on some particular day (or we remember
what we usually do on Wednesdays before Thanksgiving, if that is a better
model of the specific Wednesday we're being asked about.
I honestly can't imagine what actual scientific evidence you have for your
statements.
3. Our memory degrades with age, stress, number of items to be recalled,
etc.
Untrained memory does seem to suffer, but trained memory does not. As to
number of items, that seems to have no bearing on anything. People can
easily remember lists of unlimited length so long as they use the proper
techniques.
What does this have to do with the kind of things we're talking about on
this list ? We're trying to keep track of multiple lists of items the
content and status of which changes daily.
As to age, how long has it been since you learned to tie your shoe laces?
Forgotten how yet? Forgotten the alphabet? Forgotten the gazillion steps
in driving a car that confounded you when you first learned how to drive?
The amount of material you have learned over the years is amazing. Some
things (like riding a bike) you may not do for decades and then just get on
and do it. The human mind is pretty incredible.
Procedural memory, 'muscle memory', is also basically irrelevant to what we
are talking about in this group.
4. Our confidence in our memory far exceeds its actual capability although
the gap may decline with age.
Not really true of trained memory.
I think your e-mail is good evidence to the contrary, anecdotal though it
may be.
But I do grant that people generally hold those ideas about memory, because
they have not taken the time to learn how memory works and simply trust that
things will somehow stick. For many people, the best technique they learned
to memorize is repeating something over and over, hoping it will stick.
That is not an effective technique so it is no wonder that they decide
memory is unreliable.
But one should do whatever one is comfortable with. It is probably best not
to experiment in unfamiliar areas.
--
Cheers,
Mike
Lvood
interesting comments! I think that most people like Dennis, myself or
even D. Allen have an "untrained" memory after your definition.
I forget things often quickly, so writing them down anywhere helps me
a lot remembering them later when it's time to create an "action"
concerning this "thing" and the best written down notes are worth
nothing without regularly having a look at then.
This combination of "write every thing down" and "regular reviews"
might be the "magical effect" of GTD on most people. I am just trying
to build up a GTD implementation for myself and even if a lot of it
doesn't work smoothly yet, I try to write every idea down in a
discrete number of places (special text file in my PC, the yellow post
it in my shirt pocket or directly in Thinking Rock or Outlook Tasks -
I know that that's not ideal yet!!) and so I know where I have to look
for my idea when I remember "there was something - but what the hell
was it?".
Furthermore, I was always succcessful learning things when I had
written them down. For learning something in school (no matter if
facts of history or formulas in physics) I had to write a "cheat
sheet" whith all the important facts very condensed in a structured
layout and that helped me a lot memorizing them because this visual
aid seemed to help me a lot. I'm not an expert in how the human brain
works, but I think there are several types of people and I seem to be
onen of the "visuals". If I just hear something, I forget it very
quickly.
OK, so I think for most "normal" people writing everything down at a
place you're sure you'll find it again and reviewing the notes
regularly might be the most important kick for many GTD users.
You say, you don't need paper to "save information" in your brain and
your talking about a "trained memory". That's very interesting - can
you tell me how/where to get such a trained brain? ;-)
Seriously, how did you train your memory?
Martin
On 20 Mai, 06:15, "Mike De Bruyn" <mikes.mail.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
Lvood
drumdance
> a lot remembering them later when it's time to create an "action"
Ditto here. Also, memory is not just about the contents of the item
you remember, it's about remembering at the right time. So I remember
that i need to take something to the office, but I may forget it at
the moment I'm leaving the house. Therefore, it helps to put that
something in front of the door so I'll literally trip over it if I
forget.
This has been on of my most useful takeaways from GTD. When processing
my inbox I look for ways to guarantee that I will remember something
at the right time. To cite a trivial example, I put a note in my
soccer shoes that has the word Gatorade on it. Thus, when I'm getting
dressed for my soccer game, it's almost impossible for me to forget to
put the Gatorade in my soccer bag. I literally can't put on my shoes
without doing this first. This is the kind of thing I used to forget
all the time. Now that's very rare.
-Derek
Dennis C. During
Weekly Review is that, if you actually do one, then you have a 'default'
time at which all of these items come out of the inbox and other places.
You don't have to remember any of those items at any particular
item-specific time. So when you are doing processing during the week, you
only have to decide whether or not some new item needs action before the
weekly review. If it does, you put it in the queue, possibly in the tickler
system. Otherwise, it can wait for the weekly cycle. Benefit: reduced
memory load.
Dennis C. During
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law
into contempt." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American women's rights advocate
(1815-1902)
"What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." - Richard P.
Feynman, Nobelist, physicist, raconteur, bongo player, safe-cracker
dcdu...@gmail.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SelfExperimenters/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: 43Fo...@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:43Fo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of drumdance
> Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 12:32 PM
> To: 43 Folders
> Subject: [43F Group] Re: GTD on the Cheap
>
>
>
Mike De Bruyn
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike De Bruyn
Hi Dennis,
On 5/17/07, Dennis C. During < dcdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
XX What's even more to the point is that, whatever DA may believe, the
evidence is that:
XX 1. Our memories are unreliable
X Not mine. ;-)
I hope that you don't mislead anyone into thinking that memory is reliable.
XX 2. Our 'prospective' memory for future actions is worse, if we have more
than one thing to remember
X Not true. Memory capacity is unlimited, so far as we know.
You failed to note that I was talking about prospective memory, which is
what GTD and similar systems concern themselves with.
Prospective memory is memory for future actions. What would be critical
would be remembering something at the time we needed it. This is incredibly
unreliable.
In all efforts to observe the phenomenon in naturalistic
settings people desperately attempt to write things down so that they can
remember.
When tested, people's ability to remember something at a
particular time without an aid of some kind is hopeless unless they have
only one thing to remember with minimal mental load from other tasks.
Raw memory capacity is high, but certainly not unlimited.
We remember a
sketch of a 'forest' and fill in details from our generic knowledge of
forests.
We remember what we usually did on Wednesdays two or three years
ago when someone asks us what we did on some particular day (or we remember
what we usually do on Wednesdays before Thanksgiving, if that is a better
model of the specific Wednesday we're being asked about.
I honestly can't imagine what actual scientific evidence you have for your
statements.
3. Our memory degrades with age, stress, number of items to be recalled,
etc.
Untrained memory does seem to suffer, but trained memory does not. As to
number of items, that seems to have no bearing on anything. People can
easily remember lists of unlimited length so long as they use the proper
techniques.
What does this have to do with the kind of things we're talking about on
this list ? We're trying to keep track of multiple lists of items the
content and status of which changes daily
As to age, how long has it been since you learned to tie your shoe laces?
Forgotten how yet? Forgotten the alphabet? Forgotten the gazillion steps
in driving a car that confounded you when you first learned how to drive?
The amount of material you have learned over the years is amazing. Some
things (like riding a bike) you may not do for decades and then just get on
and do it. The human mind is pretty incredible.
Procedural memory, 'muscle memory', is also basically irrelevant to what we
are talking about in this group.
4. Our confidence in our memory far exceeds its actual capability although
the gap may decline with age.
Not really true of trained memory.
I think your e-mail is good evidence to the contrary, anecdotal though it
may be.
--
Cheers,
Mike
Mike De Bruyn
Hi Mike,
interesting comments! I think that most people like Dennis, myself or
even D. Allen have an "untrained" memory after your definition.
I forget things often quickly, so writing them down anywhere helps me
a lot remembering them later when it's time to create an "action"
concerning this "thing" and the best written down notes are worth
nothing without regularly having a look at then.
This combination of "write every thing down" and "regular reviews"
might be the "magical effect" of GTD on most people.
I am just trying
to build up a GTD implementation for myself and even if a lot of it
doesn't work smoothly yet, I try to write every idea down in a
discrete number of places (special text file in my PC, the yellow post
it in my shirt pocket or directly in Thinking Rock or Outlook Tasks -
I know that that's not ideal yet!!) and so I know where I have to look
for my idea when I remember "there was something - but what the hell
was it?".
Furthermore, I was always succcessful learning things when I had
written them down. For learning something in school (no matter if
facts of history or formulas in physics) I had to write a "cheat
sheet" whith all the important facts very condensed in a structured
layout and that helped me a lot memorizing them because this visual
aid seemed to help me a lot. I'm not an expert in how the human brain
works, but I think there are several types of people and I seem to be
onen of the "visuals". If I just hear something, I forget it very
quickly.
OK, so I think for most "normal" people writing everything down at a
place you're sure you'll find it again and reviewing the notes
regularly might be the most important kick for many GTD users.
You say, you don't need paper to "save information" in your brain and
your talking about a "trained memory". That's very interesting - can
you tell me how/where to get such a trained brain? ;-)
Seriously, how did you train your memory?
--
Cheers,
Mike
db
Douglas
> I like a Sharpie more for folders. The labeler just took too long and
> peeling the labels was a pain.
One of the things I found is a great help is some small labels (the
ones I have are 1 1/2" x 2 3/4" labels) that you can get at walmart
(if you know of anybody that has an old box of tractor-feed labels
laying around, those will work too).
They work great for making it easier to read what's on them, and
they're cheap (just a couple bucks at walmart).
For my todo list, I've taken to using a steno pad and a pencil with my
new job.