What Do You Carry With You?

Levenger in the UK

gtd-php: a web based, open source implementation of GTD

Life Hacks Live : Danny O'Brien
Originally uploaded by up4.

Life Hacks Live

Cory has posted his excellent notes from our talk at ETech today.

Danny: I had a TV show in deep cable called 404 NOT FOUND. We obsessed with the segues, “That was a cold way of chilling your computer and another cold thing is penguins and now Linux” — we used to obsess about these.

The good thing that came out of this was before commercials, my co-presenter Dave Green would turn to the camera and say, “And now, a few short films about capitalism.”

And now a few short presentations about Life Hacks. I’m using a 10 minute timer to ensure that I talk as fast as possible.

Does anyone know of any software/freeware that can be used to manages lists for GTD on a Windows Mobile 6 Standard aka smartphone device?

The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus demo at the San Francisco Apple Store

My peeps at OmniGroup mentioned this, so I'll slide it in as well. I'll be appearing with my OmniBrethren at the Stockton Street Apple store on Thursday June 21st to demo OmniFocus. Huzzah:

[Merlin will] be talking about productivity tips in general and discussing how OmniFocus fits in his workflow, so it should be more fun and interesting than your basic software demo. You should definitely come by and say howdy.

Be there.

Second, I heartily second Linda's suggestion that you email (omnifocus-wwdc at omnigroup dot com) if you're interested in doing an informal OF meet-up at WWDC.

If you don't come, Ken and I will have to sit there and stare at each other and maybe talk about D&D. Please, don't make us talk about D&D.

Update 2007-06-11 09:32:34 - OmniFocus at WWDC is scheduled. According to a recent Message of the Day in the OmniFocus beta:

We'd like to invite anyone attending WWDC to join Ethan Schoonover, Merlin Mann, and the OmniFocus development team for an informal gathering on Wednesday evening. We'll be meeting from 6:15pm-7:15pm in the "Commonwealth Room" "Olympic Room" on the 2nd floor at the Westin Hotel, one block from Moscone. (Please note the change in venue!)

This should be a lot of fun. If we can wangle A/V equipment. we'll do a demo of the latest version or OF, plus we'll be available to answer any questions about OmniFocus and just generally hang out.

Nota bene: I believe that this is for WWDC pass holders only. So I apologize in advance if there's an iPortcullis in place, and really encourage you to come to the event at the Apple Store next week if you're around.

Update 2007-06-12 23:24:49: Note room change above. We're now in the larger "Olympic Room."

Google Groups : 43 Folders [How big is a project?]

Good thread on the Google Group about what constitutes a project, especially in terms of the GTD sense of the word (defined in the book as “a desired result that requires more than one action step”).

I also used to find it confusing that there seemed to be an implication that you should only have one “next action” per project, which, gratefully, was completely a misreading on my part; you should have at least one next action per project, but you can and should have as many captured next actions as you know of.

As I read it, the important part is that, if they’re on your TODO list, they need to be the next physical thing you could do to keep things moving—as opposed to stuff that can’t or shouldn’t be done yet for whatever reason (time, dependencies, waiting on other people, etc.). That deeper “back of the envelope” planning should happen in project support materials so that your TODO list is exclusively stuff that’s tee’d up and ready to go.

Related posts:

• 43 Folders: Does this “next action” belong someplace else?
• 43 Folders: Choosing a daily GTD action plan
• 43 Folders: Mark Taw on GTD contexts and next actions

How to deal with too many mail accounts?

Related to "Thanks. No." and email filtering, I wonder how hard it would be for Mail.app, etc. to have a rule by which messages with more than n recipients in the "To:" line could be flagged for (depending on your preferences and courage) filtering, auto-archiving, or deletion. Maybe via AppleScript?

I've heard from several friends who filter all non-work email for which they aren't the exclusive "To:" recipient, but it would be handy to have some flexibility in what your own magic number is -- plus of course what you'd then do with emails that exceed your limit would be up to you.

But in an edge case, for example, if I get an email that went to [>=90 TO: recipients] and [<=25%] of the recipients were in my Address Book, the message would be flagged as "possible friend spam." (And, yes, I was once on a "Hey, this is funny" list that went to 96 people multiple times each day. Good times.)

So, any thoughts? Bonus points if it's a rule that's easy for non-geeks to recreate in GUI apps like Mail.app, Entourage, and Outlook, etc. Comments open for brainstorming.

(In related news, as I mentioned on MM.com, I'll soon be opening a thread on the Board to take suggestions on improving Thanks. No., so keep your powder dry on that one.)