Processes

Howard Rheingold, (Re)Sliced

wood.tang — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:12:55 -0500

Howard Rheingold, online pioneer and dapper man of the mustache and Indiana Jones hats, has started a new video blog to update his seminal 1992 essay, “A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community,” with how he spends his time online with today’s technologies. The ﬁrst video is a little remedial, but what caught my eye is his promise to clue us in to his daily process, including not only his ofﬁce time, but time spent on hobbies like painting and gardening. Looking back at that sentence, I know that sounds about as exciting as getting a ﬂu shot, but I’m a sucker for watching how smart people manage their days. Should be worth a watch.

Reading back through that old essay, one thing that made me stop was his explanation of how he found his online homebase, The Well:

I found this digital watering hole for information-age hunters and gatherers the same way most people ﬁnd such places – I was lonely, hungry for intellectual and emotional companionship, although I didn’t know it. While many commuters dream of working at home, telecommuting, I happen to know what it’s like to work that way. I never could stand to commute or even get out of my pajamas if I didn’t want to, so I’ve always worked at home. It has its advantages and its disadvantages. Others like myself also have been drawn into the online world because they shared with me the occupational hazard of the self-employed, home-based symbolic analyst of the 1990s – isolation.

I’m curious to see his updated thoughts on isolation of the self-employed, “symbolic analyst,” because as someone whose daily companions are usually a toddler and a dog, I can tell you that it still exists 16 years later.

”Howard Rheingold, (Re)Sliced” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 09, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Productive Talk 02: David Allen on patching GTD "leaks"

Merlin — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 07:02:26 -0400

Productive Talk #02: Patching Leaks

43 Folders and The David Allen Company present the second in a series of conversations that David and I recently had about Getting Things Done.

In this episode, David and Merlin talked about ways to patch the leaks in your GTD system – including the role of ubiquitous capture and scrupulous review. (10:33)

Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here:

Links

”Productive Talk 02: David Allen on patching GTD "leaks"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 12, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

GTD: Priorities don't exist in a vacuum

Merlin — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 20:02:15 -0400

If you’re a fan of Getting Things Done, you’re familiar with the Four Criteria Model for choosing tasks. It’s where the rubber meets the road in GTD, because it’s the way you decide, in the moment, how any one of those wonderful tasks you’ve been tracking in your big system actually gets done.

As common sense as it seems to GTD’ers, this model is one of the more controversial aspects of Getting Things Done for a simple reason: it posits that priority is not the only factor in deciding what to do at a given time. It’s just one of four factors, which include, all told:

Context - Where are you? What tools are available? What are the limits and possibilities unique to this moment?
Time available - Do you have, for example, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, or 30 hours available to you right now? What tasks could you accomplish given the time you have?
Energy available - Are you full of energy, is your ass dragging, or are you somewhere in between? Which of the tasks on your list could you ﬁnish, given that energy level?
Priority - If you had access to all the tools, opportunities, time, and energy you needed, what’s the most important or time-sensitive thing you could do right now?

When I’m helping coach people on getting it together, they’re often puzzled by this seeming bit of new-agery – partly, I suspect, because most of us have been conditioned all our lives to think that pre-ordained Priority stamps always trump everything, all the time, always, forever, in all cases, end of story. But is it true, reasonable, or even physically possible to always work this way? Can you will yourself into doing only your identiﬁed high-priority items anytime, all the time?

Nope, and I’ll show you one reason why.

Stressful times for Worker Bee

Let’s look at a few challenges that, over the past six months, have faced a notional Worker Bee, leading him to generate high-priority tasks.

You learn you got a citation from those choads in the Homeowner’s Association, and they declare that if you don’t remove that El Camino from your front yard today, they’ll start ﬁning you $200 a day.
Your favorite client emailed you a freakin’ week ago, and you still haven’t responded. You fear that your relationship will be permanently damaged if you don’t respond this morning.
Your bank account is overdrawn and you have to make a deposit or else the late fees and penalties will go up and up and up.
Your sister leaves a voicemail saying that if you don’t pick up the crap you left in her garage, she’s throwing it out tomorrow. Your Boba Fett action ﬁgure and Dungeon Master’s Guide are in that garage, and you can’t bear the thought of losing them.

All extremely high priorities to this person, and for good reasons, each. So he has to do them all the second they come up, right? Well, maybe.

Worker Bee buzzes into high-priority action!

But let’s look at some additional factors in the worker bee’s life that affect the immediate do-ability of each of these high-priority tasks – things for which raw priority may not account.

#1 The errant El Camino citation comes up while you’re in Kazakhstan, and the only keys to the car are currently in your right hip pocket – which is also currently in Kazakhstan. How will you move the car right now? You can’t. The context is wrong and, by extension, you don’t have the time (to ﬂy overseas) to take care of it by sundown today. **BZZZZZT!**
#2 The late email you wanted to send is brieﬂy on your mind as you sit in the Emergency Room holding your sick kid. Well, for one, your priority just got changed for you. And for another, you don’t have a computer or smart phone with you anyhow. No dice, Superdad. **BZZZZZT!**
#3 That stupid overdraft shows up via BlackBerry while you’re on a quick break from a marathon meeting with your bosses. But you don’t have either your checking account number or your bank card with you, plus you’re due back in that career-deﬁning meeting in 20 seconds. **BZZZZZT!**
#4 Your beloved geek toys’ endangered status update arrives at the very moment you’re vomiting yellow, half-shrimp-ﬁlled goo thanks to the food poisoning you just picked up from that leftover quart of paella. If you weren’t blowing golden chunks, you might be able to make the trip to her house in time, but for now, it’s probably a non-starter. **BZZZZZT!**

So, did I cheat to start with just priority and only later give you the contextual details? No, not really. That’s actually the point.

Priority mania considered harmful

On some level, this happens to you every day, but even the hugest priority can only be seen clearly in terms of the big picture. Priorities don’t care who they compete with, and, from one vantage point, that’s kinda what makes them priorities.

Hell, Priority Task Number One (ﬂagged “HIGH PRIORITY!!!”) could give a ﬁg whether “HIGH PRIORITY!!!” items 2 through n ever get a single gulp of oxygen. Priorities, left to their own devices, are selﬁsh bastards. That’s their job.

But, remember: priorities represent a snapshot in time and space – they may escalate, de-escalate, disappear, or, more often than not, they’ll be subject to getting bumped by both bigger priorities and by the immutable limitations of time, space, and being a corporeal (sometimes vomiting) human being. Sucks, but it’s life, right?

Sidebar: Flag burning

Consider how often you use the “HIGH PRIORITY!!!” ﬂag not as a practical planning tool, but as a way to try and motivate yourself. Is it really the priority that’s set to “HIGH” — or is it just your anxiety and guilt about being behind right now?

Negotiation skills

The ﬁrst thing to know is that in GTD, there are three ways of resolving a problematic commitment – you can either:

complete it (jump on a plane; borrow a computer; cancel the boss meeting to fetch your bank card; drive while barﬁng copiously all over yourself)
renegotiate the commitment (sweet-talk the ultimatum givers; plan to apologize later to the client; reschedule the meeting)
break it (suck up the fact you’re getting ﬁned, losing a client, or never seeing your Dungeon Dice again, then just pick up the pieces later on)

You can choose how you deal with high-priority items that can’t be done when and how you’d like, but you’ll never bend the space-time continuum. Plus, you’ll probably strain your lower back trying.

Who’s ﬂagging who?

This is not by any means to say that priorities aren’t important. I mean, that’s why they’re called priorities. But you have to take care to understand the larger picture at all times, and to not become so obsessed about priority-centric planning that you create impossible situations and unreasonable expectations for yourself. It’s a sure path to serial procrastination for one thing.

When you’re self-aware and honest enough tomorrow morning to say “Screw it, I’m going to sharpen pencils for 10 minutes” or “You know, this deadline is impossible without ﬂipping my life upside down” you’re turning a corner. You’ve begun to permit yourself a broader understanding of the real world, in which, as the sole trafﬁc cop for your life, you are in the unique position to decide what’s do-able at any given moment.

“But…I’m, like, important”

I imagine I’ll hear from people in comments who have the kind of incredibly important job where Horrible Things happen if they don’t prioritize the shit out of everything and do it all ﬂawlessly each day. Or maybe they work in Candy Land, where lollipops grow on trees and any perceived priority can be made to trump reality as easily as delicious nectar can be sipped from a ﬂower. But, for the rest of us, I stand by the point: obsess single-mindedly over priority at your peril.

Unless you can always satisfy the big red letter commitments you’ve created for yourself – as well as the ones that are constantly being generated for you by others – an obsession with priority alone is pointlessly stress-inducing, unhealthy, and unrealistic. The truth is that sometimes you have crap days, pencils need to be sharpened, or maybe you just don’t have the tools or energy to do what you want the second you want. That’s life, pal. Deal.

So, instead of having an aneurysm about it, just rally, and do what you can with what you’ve got. That’s all any of us can really do, and faking it in order to feel more productive (or more important) gets you no place fast.

”GTD: Priorities don't exist in a vacuum” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 01, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Patrick Rhone: Excellent productivity whitepaper

Merlin — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:41:42 -0400

patrickrhone.com: Org-Fu Überpost - Productivity Whitepaper

I’m a little late to the party on this one, but if you also hadn’t spent much time with it yet, I suggest you check out Patrick Rhone’s whitepaper on his version of a GTD system.

Some high points:

paper-based capture and task tracking via a Moleskine notebook
sexy “dash/plus” notation system for identifying item status (scroll way down for an image showing all the characters he uses)
Backpack for tracking projects and tasks
OmniOutliner Pro for “vertical mapping” of higher-level outcomes (20,000-foot view and up)
inbox kept at zero in Mail.app
further details on physical note-taking using notebooks

Great and thorough post – and, for what it’s worth, this is exactly the kind of thing I’m hoping people will post to the new “Projects” forum on the 43f board – in my experience, people really enjoy hearing about implementation systems and love discussing how they can be improved and tweaked.

Good work, Patrick.

”Patrick Rhone: Excellent productivity whitepaper” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 18, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Process email faster with Mail Act-On

Merlin — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:56:00 -0400

My usage of Mail Act-On, while far from novel, has revolutionized the speed with which I can blow through email processing.

If you’ve never seen it before, Mail Act-On is a very clever Mail.app plugin that lets you create key commands that execute Rules you’ve generated in your Preferences. Sounds pretty dull, right? Absolutely. Until you start putting this stuff into action and learn how painfully slow all that draggy mc drag drag business is. Here’s how I’ve set mine up.

Step 0: Remap “`Caps Lock`”

First off: do yourself the biggest favor ever, and make that stupid “Caps Lock” key into something more useful. In the months since I ﬁrst mentioned remapping this typewriter relic using third-party utilities, the folks behind OS X have been kind enough to bake it right into the Keyboard & Mouse PreferencePane (“[Apple] > System Preferences... > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard > Modifier Keys”).

As your attorney, I advise you to immediately map “Caps Lock” to “Ctrl” since it’s about to make your life a little better, thanks to Mail Act-On – which relies heavily on the “Ctrl” key, as you’ll see – although you’ll get way faster at many key commands as a result. Plus it doesn’t bend your pinky up all weird.

Okay, with that nonsense out of the way, let’s go make some rules.

(Important: If you’ve never set up Mail Act-On rules before, there’s a few things you’ll need to know, so be sure to ﬁrst check out the FAQ).

To archive

This ﬁrst one is really basic, although it’s certainly the one I use most – moving selected messages to my Archive folder.

That should be mostly self-explanatory, except remember that you can only add currently-visible mailbox sub-folders to a Mail.App rule. If you can’t ﬁnd the folder you want, cancel out and make sure it’s ﬁrst visible in your mailboxes and folders list over on the left (ﬂip the little “reveal” triangle until you can see the folder you want).

Next up, it gets a bit more interesting.

To respond

This one is a workhorse; it takes the selected messages, ﬂags them, and moves them into my Respond folder.

As I’ve said, I use a combination of ﬂagging and mailbox location to create Smart Folders – that way I can quickly glance, say, messages I’ve received 3-7 days ago that still need a response.

Handy way to catch up or just to make sure things don’t fall between the cracks.

To respond…some time

The next one shows a really simple example of how you can make Mail Act-On work in concert with its muscle-bound big brother, Mail Tags.

In this case I’m adding a priority tag that – again with Smart Folders – gives me control over what kind of un-responded email I want to see. This rule gets a workout whenever I get mission-critical epistles like “Will you review my $500 Windows app?” and “You should totally link to photos of my kitty!”

Like most GTD-ers, I don’t like to rely too heavily on prioritization as its own thing, but if I’m traveling or whenever things get really hectic for a few days, I need a fast way to separate the wheat from the chaff, and this helps a lot with that.

I’m really just scratching the surface on what you can do with Mail Act-On – I’m sure there are power users out there who are doing much sexier stuff with it – but I wanted to make sure people know that this is most deﬁnitely not just for geeks and high-volume email users. In my opinion, this is functionality that should (and eventually will) be included as a stock feature in Mail.app.

As I said in Inbox Zero, excellent processing is one of the ninja email moves. And for even the most casual user of Mail.app, Mail Act-On can make that road to ninjahood so much faster and less annoying.

”Process email faster with Mail Act-On” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 15, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ask 43F: Handling notes in scattered places

Merlin — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:45:35 -0400

Shiran Pasternak writes to ask:

I’m overwhelmed by various note-taking tools you’ve recommended in the past (so it’s your fault). I use, fairly arbitrarily, either TextMate, OmniOutliner Professional (purchased for kGTD, of course), and Notational Velocity…

My main problem is how to retrieve the notes, given that they exist in these scattered applications. Should I then migrate all my notes and use just one of these (or another I may have missed)? Or, should I use a combination of the tools? If so, can you offer heuristics for when to use each note-taking application, and also, if possible, some ideas for how and when to retrieve notes?

This is a really good question – especially given how many people are suffering from the ﬁrst-world problem of having way too many cool Mac apps to choose from for this kind of work. The short answer is to slim down the number of tools you’re frequently using, but to then be sure you also do something smart and repeatable with everything you’ve captured. The longer explanation…

Most of us eventually get pretty good at capturing the informational detritus in our lives – we have innumerable ways to park ideas, track bugs, create to-dos, and so on. In addition to the apps Shiran mentions, there’s also the limitless possibilities of index cards, white boards, web applications, et cetera, on and on. The primary hang-up, in my experience, comes from using so many of these “collection buckets” that it becomes time-consuming and confusing to ﬁnd, process, and do something with all that stuff in a frictionless way. All the capture in the world is useless unless there’s an equally intuitive way to then do something with it.

So, ﬁrst of all, try to limit the number of tools you entrust to data capture. I’m not saying you should just try to forget about something if you don’t have your favorite capture device handy, but at the same time, try not to scatter your stuff among silos that a) don’t talk to each other, b) you don’t frequently check, process, and empty to zero. Candidly, this is what I like about my combination of text ﬁles, kGTD, and The Hipster PDA – I never have to think twice about where something goes.

If I’m at the computer and need to capture basic ideas and reference stuff, it gets Quicksilvered into a text ﬁle
If I’m at the computer and need to track a task, I add it to Kinkless
Anything else anywhere else goes into the HPDA (for processing back at home base)

Your mileage (and devices) may vary, but I encourage you to aggressively thin the herd of whizzy gadgets and apps you use down to the one or two that work best for you. And most deﬁnitely don’t tear ass to every new bauble that pops up on del.icio.us that promises to revolutionize your brain and your life.

Which brings us to the all-important second point: you must empty and process all your collection buckets on a regular basis. Or you will go insane. I promise. Only you can decide what “regular” needs to be, but, chances are, if you’re not sure where something is right now (i.e. which bucket you left it in), it’s because you aren’t processing and reviewing often enough. A text ﬁle, in my case, is often the ﬁnal destination for a piece of information, so that’s not a problem, but leaving tasks, ideas, and notes in untended baskets can be almost as stress-inducing as not capturing them at all. Process the crap out of everything once, empty the basket, then review the processed results as often as necessary. Having fewer of these buckets, as above, makes this emptying a less trying experience.

And, ﬁnally, remember that reference materials in particular (like notes, future plans, and other non-actionable items) are only as useful as your ability to locate them when they really matter. Like I’ve said before, when thinking about where something goes, try to envision the time when you’ll need to ﬁnd it in the future. Where will you be when you need it? What tools and access will you have? What name will you search for? Are there other materials that need to always live with this item? For the retrieval, then – depending on how you answered all those questions – the answer might be Spotlight, Google Desktop, incremental searching – or even just ﬂipping to an A-Z cabinet of ﬁle folders. It just depends. But you’ll be much better suited to ﬁguring this out once you’ve chosen your favorite capture, processing, and parking methods and stuck with them. Otherwise there’s not really one answer. And that’s probably the problem.

Capturing, by itself, will always give you a short and satisfying burst of stress reduction, but it doesn’t absolve you of the need to make sure those captured items then get quickly placed into the spots where the really need to live. By minimizing your collection points, processing and reviewing regularly, and using smart planning for storing it in the right place, you can build a leak-free system that runs like a Swiss watch.

”Ask 43F: Handling notes in scattered places” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 12, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Percolating your blog drafts

Merlin — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 11:14:51 -0400

Let Your Blog Posts Marinate (4 Steps to Forming Great Ideas) at LifeDev

Good advice on developing a tunnel for how you draft stuff that will eventually go on your blog. I think #3 (“Let it develop”) – while it could beneﬁt from a bit more explanation – is the really interesting part. Try not posting immediately, and return to the draft later on:

It’s hard to say how long this step lasts. Sometimes it’s all over in 15-20 minutes. Sometimes it takes weeks. The important thing is not to rush the process.

5ives: The text ﬁle behind the curtain

I do something similar with 5ives, where this kind of process is really conducive. I have a running, two-year-old collection of ideas, partial lists, orphan titles and lots of “one fun line I could build a good list around.” Goofy as many of them are, some actually sat around since the site began until they evolved to the exact choices, wording, and order that I liked.

Tip: Use text folding

Since this kind of collection method can get messy (over 100 partial piles of junk in one text ﬁle), I like to use text folding inside TextMate. This makes it easy to “roll up” lists in such a way that just the title shows, then you can individually click a little “reveal” arrow to see the hoisted contents. Something like this (note the arrows in the gutter):

The beauty part is that I can still append text to the bottom (or prepend to the top) using Quicksilver since it’s all just plain old text. Neato.

[ via Gina on Lifehacker ]

”Percolating your blog drafts” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 24, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Interviewing with "The Sawatsky Method"

Merlin — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 07:34:27 -0400

I enjoyed this recent ATC story about the interview skills guru, John Sawatsky. “The Sawatsky Method” contrasts sharply with the confrontational attack dog methods most of us associate with people like Mike Wallace:

Sawatsky’s rules are simple, but he says they get broken all the time: Don’t ask yes-or-no questions, keep questions short and avoid charged words, which can distract people. In his seminar, Sawatsky points to Mike Wallace of CBS’ 60 Minutes and CNN’s Larry King as examples to avoid. In Sawatsky’s illustrative clips, King favors leading questions that generate curt answers, while Wallace’s rapid patter fails to get a subject to speak candidly.

More on Sawatsky here and here, including this gem:

The best questions, argues Sawatsky, are like clean windows. “A clean window gives a perfect view. When we ask a question, we want to get a window into the source. When you put values in your questions, it’s like putting dirt on the window. It obscures the view of the lake beyond. People shouldn’t notice the question in an interview, just like they shouldn’t notice the window. They should be looking at the lake.”

Even for non-journalists, if you need to conduct the occasional interview, Sawatsky’s got some golden tips.

”Interviewing with "The Sawatsky Method"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 17, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

What would you ask David Allen?

Merlin — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:19:06 -0400

Forums - Ask David any question

Over on the DavidCo forum, Lisa asks:

If you could ask David Allen any one question about GTD, what would it be?

It mightn’t surprise you to know I’d want to learn a bit more implementation and about how David sees contexts working best for people whose work mostly happens in one place (recently).

But I’m especially curious to hear what you guys would ask, given the chance. What would you ask David Allen about Getting Things Done?

”What would you ask David Allen?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 08, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Back to GTD: Simplify your contexts

Merlin — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 05:24:49 -0400

This post is part of the periodic “Back to GTD” series, designed to help you improve your implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

As we’ve noted before, GTD contexts lose a lot of their focusing power when either a) most of your work takes place at one context (e.g. “@computer”), or b) you start using contexts more for taxonomical labeling than to reﬂect functional limitations and opportunities. As you may have discovered, these problems can collide catastrophically for many knowledge workers, artists, and geeks.

Part of what makes the Natural Planning Model so attractive are the decisions that can be guided by contextual limitations (“I’m near a phone” vs. “I’m at the grocery store” vs. “I’m at my computer”). While it’s deﬁnitely a kind of “ﬁrst world problem” to have, facing the unlimited freedom to chose from any of a bajillion similar tasks from similar projects with similar outcomes is not nearly as fun as it ﬁrst sounds. Consider the contextual hairballs of certain jobs and tasks:

Developer - Much of the work is writing new code, ﬁxing old code, or testing code. All of these require essentially the same tools and environment, so how do you apply real contexts?
Writer - Needs to research, draft, revise, and edit manuscripts. While the “Write book” project will break down nicely into multiple sub-projects and tasks, how do you satisfactorily “context-ize” this physically identical work?
Designer - Whether coming up with a print layout, web design, or what will become a physical artifact, how do you segment the work further than “@photoshop” and ”@illustrator”?

This causes many of us to fashion more or less phoney-baloney “sub-contexts” that reﬂect some facet of the parent (e.g. “@computer” might contain “@email,” “@web,” “@code,” “@print,” and so on). While this makes terriﬁc sense from a logical standpoint (and it can certainly have its uses), it doesn’t reﬂect the true meaning of a context, at least in my own mind: “what tools, resources, opportunities, and limitations are unique to this situation?” or put slightly differently from the perspective of choosing tasks at a given time, “what are the things I can’t work on now given where I am and the tools to which I have access?”

More and more, I think the solution may be to toss out or consolidate any contexts that don’t have unique functional attributes. I mean, by all means, keep them if they’re working for you, but if you ﬁnd yourself spending more time deciding where to ﬁle tasks than actually completing them, you might consider dialing your contexts back as far as you can stand. For the geeks in particular, consider having two and only two computer-related contexts: “@online” and “@computer-anywhere.” If you have other contextual needs, add them in with care, then periodically revisit to make sure you aren’t maintaining superﬂuous parts.

If you feel a gnaw about the loss of your old contexts, try to shunt some of the mental load into sub-projects and better verb choices in your tasks. Where you once had (as I did) an “@print” context, consider whether an “@computer” task of “Print Jim’s email” might be sufﬁcient for the job. Remember, maintaining fewer buckets is always a good thing.

As you doubtless have learned, this is ultimately all about choosing valuable work and then tracking it as simply as possible via carefully-worded task reminders. No amount of meta-crap can magically transform junk tasks into stuff you really want or need to do. Contexts can help shape your day, but they’re less than useful if they don’t track realistically to the demands of your work.

”Back to GTD: Simplify your contexts” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 31, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"