Recaps

Recap: 43 Folders' Corvette Summer

Merlin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:41:14 -0400

Welcome back, friend. Per what I wrote in your yearbook back in June, I hope you had a nice summer and stayed sweet and cool. You look great. Did you lose weight or something?

Somewhere along the way over the past few weeks, I seem to have got my game on again here at 43 Folders. I wrote a few items that I’m proud of and that lots of people seemed to enjoy. I’m once again posting about stuff that means a lot to me, and I’m feeling good about the site and where it (and I) will be heading over the next year. (More on that soon)

But, if you were tanning on Ibiza or building houses with Jimmy Carter and missed out on my wordy comeback season, here’s a few articles I hope you will enjoy.

It’s nice to have you back; I found the Vette, and I’m pumped for Fall.

Making Time to Make Series

Link: Making Time to Make

One of the reasons I’ve started really enjoying writing for the site again is best summed up in my favorite thing I’ve written recently – a three-part series on public attention management for creative types that I called, “Making Time to Make.”

It’s been a while since I’ve had such clarity about what I need to do with myself (and, perhaps, more importantly, what I need to be okay with not doing with myself). And these three posts captured what I wanted to say.

If you’re in a big rush and only have time to read one thing out of all these links, jump to the third and ﬁnal article in this series, Making Time to Make: One Clear Line; that’s got lots of tips and what have you.

Here’s links to all three:

Making Time to Make: Bad Correspondence - Aug 4 2008 - “As I read all this, I hear a man saying (at least in my words), ‘I can either be a guy who writes novels, or I can be a guy who answers email. Realizing I cannot be both, I’ve made the decision, and now I live with it.’”
Making Time to Make: The Job You Think You Have - Aug 5 2008 - “Thing is: if the amount of time you devote to lite correspondence with individual people exceeds the amount of time you spend on making things, then you may be in a different line of work than you’d originally thought you were.”
Making Time to Make: One Clear Line - Aug 6 2008 - “For myself, I think it’s critical to set reasonable expectations about how, when, and where people can expect to have authentic, honest-to-God contact with us…”

Rest of the Best of the Summer

And here’s a few more of the posts that people seemed to like over the past few weeks.

Free Books for your Amazon Kindle - Jun 6 2008 - My favorite places to ﬁnd free material for Summer’s favorite new toy
NYT: Businesses Fight the Email Monster They Helped Create - Jun 14 2008 - Big Companies are starting to get the email problem. Now they’re just trying to ﬁgure out what to do about it.
Guide to Better Napping - Jun 17 2008 - Link post to a fantastic infographic on ad hoc snooze-taking.
Kurt Vonnegut on Writing Better - Jul 14 2008 - Writing advice that’s as practical and down-to-earth as the guy who offers it - a humble man who obsessed over every page he ever wrote.
On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving - Jul 24 2008 - A controlling metaphor that helps explain why I advise people not to save their peanut shells.
Foo for Bar: Kicking Ass with Outcome-Based Thinking - Aug 08 2008 - Simple formula for distilling any mystery meat need into a Project + a Next Action.
Ideas, Execution, and the Rare Auteur - Aug 11 2008 - More thoughts on why ideas are just a multiplier of execution.
What Makes for a Good Blog? - Aug 19 2008 - I still owe Six Apart a list of favorite blogs, but, weirdly enough, this list of things I look for in a good blog was the most popular thing I wrote this summer. Go ﬁgure.
Social Networks: The Case for a “Pause” Button - Aug 26 2008 - I love you, but sometimes I need “me time.” And I need you not to know it.
Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics - Aug 27 2008 - My snarky (but honest) shortcuts on quickly sussing out whether a book is worth your attention. (Hint: most don’t make the cut.)

Like I say, welcome back. In case it fell out of your pocket on the train to Paris, here’s our site’s free RSS feed.

See you in study hall.

”Recap: 43 Folders' Corvette Summer” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 02, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43 Folders: Best of GTD

Merlin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:23:09 -0500

NPR: Tech Junkies Crazy About ‘Getting Things Done’

As an insufferably huge public broadcasting nerd, I was happy to hear (via our pal, Ryan) that 43 Folders was mentioned in tonight’s All Things Considered story about Getting Things Done.

Since this may be the ﬁrst time some folks have visited the site, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite GTD posts from the past four years. We talk about lots more than GTD here, but it’s deﬁnitely a lot of my readers’ favorite topic.

Thanks for stopping by. Ton of links after the jump…

Getting started with ‘Getting Things Done’ - “So you sprint from ﬁre to ﬁre, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human ﬂexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your ‘stuff’ has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?”
How does a geek hack GTD? - “So I wanted to start a conversation about how geeks handle their lists, their projects, and their agendas–not so much in terms of the tool they use to store the information, although that’s fair game–as with how they segment the information and decide when to break it into pieces.”
Next actions: Both physical and visible - “But, for me, turning anxieties into projects and projects into discrete physical behaviors has a lot of appeal. It takes all the pressure off your brain and puts it back where it belongs: on your eyes, on your hands, and on that fat ass you need to get into gear.”
Does this ‘next action’ belong someplace else? - “I’ve noticed that there are often items on my ‘next actions’ list that hang around a lot longer than they should. I scan and rescan and sort and add and delete, but there’s always a few stragglers who hang out there for a week or more. Eventually this starts to vex me, and I try to debug why things aren’t getting done.”
Mental dialogues, yak-shaving & the triumph of the ‘mini-review’ - “My mini-review falls somewhere between the glances I give my lists throughout the day and the comprehensive weekly review I do each weekend. It’s basically a 10-minute metamoment where I stop working and just try to re-focus on my goals, and the tactical adjustments needed to get them moved forward today.”
What are you ‘waiting on?’ - “The thread that runs through all of these is that the onus is on me to a) make sure these items represent part of a commitment I’ve made, and b) make sure they actually get done (even if it’s not my direct responsibility); otherwise, they should get moved onto my ‘Maybe/Later’ list, right?”
A Year of Getting Things Done - (3-part series: 1, 2, 3) - “I recently realized that this month marks one year since I started using Getting Things Done in earnest. With the calendar year closing, it seems like an apt time to look back at what’s worked, what hasn’t, and where I’d like to see GTD heading in the future.
Choosing a daily GTD action plan - “I employ an informal Getting Things Done action strategy that’s similar to the one Chris lays out in his post. I often have a theme for a given day, where I choose an approach that’s suited to my mood, my energy level, and the kind and amount of work on my TODO list. (I’m especially a fan of days where I knock down ‘mosquito tasks’ as Chris calls them.)”
Fractal Implementation, or, On the Dangers of David Allen’s Finger - “This is my stake in the ground about GTD: if you can stay focused on drawing from its best practices to get more of the important things in your life accomplished, then you’ll be a happy kid. For real. But if, like a seeming majority of people I encounter these days, you allow yourself to obsess endlessly over the minutest details of implementation and maintenance—well, you’re screwed. You’re wasting your time.”
Inbox Zero: Processing to zero - “The more email you have been neglecting in your inbox, the more drastic and ruthless your processing must be.”
Do a fast “mind-sweep” - “By and large, you’ll discover, your head is ﬂooded with this stuff that you aren’t or haven’t been doing anything about. Not coincidentally, this is almost always stuff that represents some kind of incompletion, functional fuzziness, or procrastination on your part.”
Simplify your contexts - “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.”
Folders for organization and action - “But, as ever, if you’re fussing and thinking and ﬁddling and wondering about this stuff, you aren’t doing it, and dammit, that’s what this is all about.”
Priorities don’t exist in a vacuum - “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.”
6 powerful “look into” verbs (+ 1 to avoid) - “Decisions can only be delivered after you’ve nourished them with timely and thought-provoking information.”
Productive Talk Compilation: 8-episode podcast with GTD’s David Allen - “Hope you all enjoy hearing the whole series, in order, all in one place. There’s some nuggets of GTD gold in there, if I do say so myself.”

”43 Folders: Best of GTD” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 19, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Best of: Our Favorite Videos

Merlin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:05:24 -0500

Back at work killing time? Sure you are. After all, it’s nationwide “Thumb up your butt” week, right? You bet it is.

So, from the archives of 43 Folders (and the on-hiatus Merlin Show), here’s four of my favorite videos of stuff I’ve done. Hope you like ‘em.

“Inbox Zero” Google Tech Talk

58 minute presentation at Google’s Mountain View campus; July 23, 2007
(original post)

It’s amazing to me that this little fellow has now been watched 213,000 times (If you’re counting, that’s over 23 person-years of viewing time. yikes.)

Anyhow, I really like how this turned out, and it’s been very cool to hear how many people this has turned on to the idea of doing something more responsible with their email.

Share this video…

Interview: Jonathan Coulton

10-minute interview with internet troubadour, Jonathan Coulton
original post

I conducted this interview with the wonderful Jonathan Coulton right around the time I found out I was going to become a father. Have to say that, given my mood at the time, I found what he had to say inspirational.

I’d love to catch up with Jonathan again some time and see if his email mojo has gotten any more satisfying for him since we talked.

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Merlin Show Interview: Jeffrey Veen

16-minute interview with Google’s Jeff Veen
original post

Jeff’s been a swell pal and great guy to work with (I managed projects for him back in the day). In this particular instance, Jeff’s insight into how to move aside the BS and get to the kernel of things is not to be missed.

Share this video…

IDEO “Know How” Talk

1-hour conversation at IDEO’s Palo Alto campus; September 9, 2007
(original post)

Sure, I was high on the Theraﬂu, but this gave me the chance to talk about the idea that’s most got my attention right now: “How do we deal with the lack of scarcity in our electronic world?”

Many thanks to my pals at bOING bOING for putting this on lots of people’s radar screens. Much appreciated.

Share this video…

”Best of: Our Favorite Videos” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 27, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Merlin & Leo: Gentle introduction to GTD

Merlin — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:20:46 -0400

The Tech Guy Labs - Leo Laporte, “The Tech Guy” [2007-03-31]

On last Saturday’s Tech Guy radio show, Leo Laporte and I talked about some of the basics of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. For most regular visitors to 43 Folders, this is going to be very introductory stuff, but I think it may be useful to folks who are getting started or are just curious about what “GTD” even means.

My segment appears from about 00:59:30 to about 1:08:45. Here’s a link to an MP3 of the show, plus a few of the items that were mentioned in the segment:

Tech Guy Labs: 64k MP3 of the 3/31 show
43 Folders: Getting Started with ‘Getting Things Done’
43 Folders: Description of ‘43 Folders’ (tickler ﬁle)
43 Folders: Introducing ‘The Hipster PDA’
43 Folders: 8-Part audio interview with GTD’s David Allen
43 Folders: Best of GTD posts
Amazon.com: Getting Things Done, which is David Allen’s book that started it all

”Merlin & Leo: Gentle introduction to GTD” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 09, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Getting started (or reacquainted) with Quicksilver

Merlin — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:22:20 -0400

Hack Attack: A beginner’s guide to Quicksilver - Lifehacker

Adam Pash has written a terriﬁc introduction to Quicksilver that I recommend for folks who are still scratching their heads about what all the fuss is about.

Part of the challenge is the “layers of the onion” problem. There’s no explanation of what Quicksilver does that’s at once brief, accurate, exhaustive, and easy for new users to immediately grok; it really does reveal its delights over time, through repeated usage, and in proportion to your willingness to learn and experiment. Adam does a good job of acquainting new folks with the basic idea and the setup, then he walks through a few of the many bits of fu that have made this app the phenomenon that it is.

Quicksilver can be used to launch ﬁles and applications, manipulate data, and seamlessly plug into almost any application on your Mac so that you can perform actions as soon as you think of them in a few short keystrokes.

Also from our own archives, here are a few popular Quicksilver items from the extended 43 Folders family (including 4 video tutorials). And seriously: if you really still don’t see why QS is different, do watch the videos; writing about Quicksilver is like singing about a magic trick.

Merlin’s Quicksilver Video Tutorials

“…writing about Quicksilver is like singing about a magic trick.”

MacBreak 12: Quicksilver - “Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann show you how to turbocharge your interactions with your data and applications using Quicksilver.”
MacBreak 17: Quicksilver Tips - “Merlin Mann’s back sharing more productivity tips with Leo using Quicksilver.” This segment focuses on how to control iTunes via Quicksilver.
006: HOWTO: Quicksilver: The Comma Trick - “Learn how to create a temporary stack in Quicksilver, so you can do stuff to (or with) a big pile of objects all at one time.”
008: HOWTO: Quicksilver: Application Menus - “Learn how to access drop-down menus in every application via Quicksilver.”

Our favorite Quicksilver resources from elsewhere

quicksilver:tutorials [docs] - This is the mother lode. The best Quicksilver meta-resource anywhere.
A Better OS X In Just 10 Minutes - Dan’s post is what got me to try Quicksilver
Howard Melman’s ‘Quicksilver User’s Guide’ - A wonderful piece of PDF documentation. As far as I know, this is the closest thing there is to an end-user Quicksilver manual, all in one place.
Howard Melman’s ‘Quicksilver Quick Reference’ - An unbelievably useful PDF cheat sheet of most all the Quicksilver commands in one place. Print. Post. Refer. Learn.
Quicksilver Changes Everything at The Apple Blog - Another good entry point

”Getting started (or reacquainted) with Quicksilver” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 28, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

5 Favorite 43 Folders Podcasts, 2006

Merlin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 10:30:13 -0500

43 Folders Podcast

I’m a far from proliﬁc contributor to the personal podcasting scene, but 2006 brought several episodes of the podcast that people seemed to enjoy and that I’m pleased to have made.

If you’re new to 43f’s podcast (subscribe for free) or just want to amble down memory lane with me, here’s my ﬁve favorite episodes from this past year. Unexpurgated, unedited and, as ever, featuring candid depictions and the occasional swear; because sometimes productivity talk is just NSFW.

The Perfect Apostrophe - (MP3)

powered by ODEO
In terms of the amount of feedback I’ve received, and for my own personal reasons, this confessional commentary on procrastination (and why the godforsaken O’Reilly book never got written) is my hands-down favorite. To this day, I get amazing notes from people about this one.
The Richard Scarry Book of the Future - (MP3)

powered by ODEO
2006 was the year in which I really grokked that knowledge workers aren’t issued hats to identify what we each do. Each of us has the opportunity to deﬁne our job plus the challenge to manage all career inputs and outputs. Each of us is the untrained trafﬁc cop for our life and career. This was the most downloaded episode of the year (grabbed ~75k times).
It’s just a cup - (MP3)

powered by ODEO
Avoid fractal productivity spirals by learning to see your productivity system no differently than your morning coffee. When a ritual become invisible – requiring a minimal amount of effort and maintenance to adequately get the job done – you know you’ve got something right.
Productive Talk Compilation: 8-episode podcast with GTD’s David Allen - (MP3 | Enhanced M4A)

powered by ODEO
It was a thrill and a pleasure to hang out with David Allen for a few days, so, at least for me, the mini-podcast series that resulted from our meetings was gravy. That said, over the course of this 90-minute mp3, David had more fresh and useful and telling ideas to share about GTD than I’d heard collectively in the 3 years since I read his book. So grateful that he shared his time so generously.
First-time Sex & the Beauty of 1.0 - (MP3)

powered by ODEO
This episode from September was one of the most popular episodes this year (owing in part, no doubt, to its salacious title). But, I’d like to hope the point won’t be missed, because it applies far beyond software and “productizing” – there’s no indignity to not being perfect the ﬁrst time. Plus, sometimes, seeking simply not to end up crying in an emergency room can make for a surprisingly romantic third date.

Subscribe:

”5 Favorite 43 Folders Podcasts, 2006” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 29, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Productive Talk Compilation: 8-episode podcast with GTD's David Allen

Merlin — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:05:34 -0500

Productive Talk Comp.: Episodes 01-08 on Odeo

As promised, here’s the single-ﬁle compilation of the Productive Talk podcast interviews I did with David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. The ﬁnal version’s eight episodes clock in at a considerable one hour and twenty-six minutes, so this should give you plenty to listen to while you’re in line at the DMV.

Some editing misadventures stole the time I’d set aside to write up my ﬁnal comments on the series, but those will be coming along soon, I promise. In the mean time, as I said in the podcast ep., I want to sincerely thank David, Rick Kantor, Robert Peake, and Zircon Skye Studios for their participation and help with the Productive Talk series. David in particular was unbelievably generous with his time, and I’m very grateful to have had this opportunity to interview him.

Hope you all enjoy hearing the whole series, in order, all in one place. There’s some nuggets of GTD gold in there, if I do say so myself.

Please note: the version included in the podcast feed is a lowly but compatible MP3 ﬁle; Apple-y folks with iPods and sexy AAC support can grab this tastier m4a version, which includes chapter markers that make it easy to ﬂip through the individual episodes quickly.

You can learn more at Odeo.com, download the MP3 version, or just listen from here by using the Flash player below:

”Productive Talk Compilation: 8-episode podcast with GTD's David Allen” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 28, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43F Recap: Best of iCal Tips

Merlin — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 08:47:26 -0400

Wow. It’s been over nine months since I quit Entourage in favor of the kGTD/iCal productivity tag-team. In that time, I could have had an infant, ﬁnished a school year, or been responsible for a couple failed sitcoms. (I mean: if I had a uterus, was still in college, and were, say, McLean Stevenson)

Yes, friends, I do still spend a lot of my day shaking my hammy ﬁst in impotent rage at iCal’s numerous shortcomings, but I’ve reached a kind of détente with Apple’s stock calendaring app, and along the way I’ve discovered some modest ways to squeeze more drops of Cupertino-y goodness from its moist Jolly Rancher-like pages. Here’s a few of my favorites.

Getting more out of iCal - “The truth is, iCal works great with kGTD (mostly of course), and once you make your peace with the perplexing stasis of its feature set, there are some not-bad hooks and affordances hiding in its pastel, roundy corners. Here’s a few I like.”
HOWTO: Flag “penciled-in” events in iCal - “When I create the event, I just put a Spanish-language question mark “¿” (hit: OPTION-SHIFT-?) in front of the event’s title. Like so…”
Schedule (and choose) a dash in iCal “If you start the name of the task with the number of minutes in the dash, you have a very easy to way to see items that can be knocked down quickly (hint: sort “To Dos by Title”).”
Dr. Contextlove or: “How I stopped worrying and learned to love iCal” - “But why bother with organizing these into meta-groups? Ah, because it makes it so easy to reveal or hide all the tasks that I can work on at a given time, just by ticking the group’s little click box.”
Kinkless GTD .83: Enhances Quicksilver and iCal integration, much more “I really like to plan in kGTD and then do out of iCal since it reduces the amount of ﬁddling and meta work temptation. That doesn’t mean, however, that I wouldn’t beneﬁt from a little extra backward integration.”

”43F Recap: Best of iCal Tips” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 30, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Inbox Zero: Wrapup + Open Thread

Merlin — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 07:30:59 -0400

43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

So, that’s a wrap for Inbox Zero. I hope you’ve found stuff to make your journey to zero a bit easier and less stressful, and that you’ve discovered the resolve to parlay your newfound inbox emptitude into an ongoing quest for email fu.

Doubtless I’ve missed things or neglected to mention one of your favorite tricks. Got a good tool, trick, or attitude change that has helped you keep your inbox empty? Share it in comments.

And in case you got to the party late, here are summaries and links to all the Inbox Zero articles from the entire series:

Posts in the Inbox Zero series

43F Series: Inbox Zero - “Clearly, the problem of email overload is taking a toll on all our time, productivity, and sanity, mainly because most of us lack a cohesive system for processing our messages and converting them into appropriate actions as quickly as possible.”
Inbox Zero: Articles of faith - “When I ﬁrst suggested the email DMZ and said there was a way to get your inbox to zero in 20 minutes, I wasn’t lying. But I was using a deﬁnition of “empty” that may not square with your current conception of the email world. So let’s start with a few of my own articles of faith to ensure we’re on the same page going forward.”
Inbox Zero: Five sneaky email cheats - “In the words of the great Lucas Jackson: ‘Yeah, well, sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.’”
Inbox Zero: Where ﬁlters will and won’t help - “[F]ocus on creating ﬁlters and scripts for any noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items which can be dealt with all at a pass and later. ”
Inbox Zero: Delete, delete, delete (or, “Fail faster”) - “Just remember that every email you read, re-read, and re-re-re-re-re-read as it sits in that big dumb pile is actually incurring mental debt on your behalf. The interest you pay on email you’re reluctant to deal with is compounded every day and, in all likelihood, it’s what’s led you to feeling like such a useless slacker today.”
Inbox Zero: Schedule email dashes - “If you can get away from being driven by email’s motor and ﬁnd a way to deal with your work mindfully and on your own terms, you may be startled to see how much easier it is to keep that inbox at zero.”
Inbox Zero: What’s the action here? - “Focus on ﬁnding the fastest and straightest path from discovery to completion, and your inbox fu will be strong.”
Inbox Zero: Processing to zero - “You’ll never stay ahead of this stuff if you don’t recalibrate starting today. Give each message as much attention as it needs and not one iota more. Remember the contextuality of triage: if you keep trying to care for dead and doomed patients, you’ll end up losing a lot of the ones who could have actually used your help.”
Inbox Zero: What have you learned? - “Try to learn from what you’ve just experienced, and reapply your new wisdom to the way you treat email every day – nay, every time that little “new mail” chime sounds. You’ve just come out the other side of productivity bankruptcy and have, perhaps for the ﬁrst time, a clean record and a fresh start.”
Inbox Zero: Better Practices for staying (near) zero - “As a person who has done the near-impossible and managed to establish a temporary beachhead against the occupying email army, you are your own best expert in what needs to change to keep things together, but I’d like to share a few things that have helped me stay email-sane (most of the time).”

”Inbox Zero: Wrapup + Open Thread” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 05, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43F Recap: Best of Getting Things Done

Merlin — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:08:26 -0500

Today, I’ll be attending David Allen’s GTD: The Roadmap here in SF. Although, I’ve been yammering about Getting Things Done for months, this will be the ﬁrst time I’m getting the story straight from The David. Really looking forward to that.

I know new folks arrive here every day, so it seems like an opportune time to look back at some of my favorite GTD posts from the earlier days on 43F. They’ll be familiar to many of you but — as someone who re-read Getting Things Done this weekend — I think it never hurts to go back and review.

Also, I’ll report back soon on what I pick up today.

Getting started with ‘Getting Things Done’ - “So you sprint from ﬁre to ﬁre, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human ﬂexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your ‘stuff’ has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?”
How does a geek hack GTD? - “So I wanted to start a conversation about how geeks handle their lists, their projects, and their agendas–not so much in terms of the tool they use to store the information, although that’s fair game–as with how they segment the information and decide when to break it into pieces.”
Next actions: Both physical and visible - “But, for me, turning anxieties into projects and projects into discrete physical behaviors has a lot of appeal. It takes all the pressure off your brain and puts it back where it belongs: on your eyes, on your hands, and on that fat ass you need to get into gear.”
Does this ‘next action’ belong someplace else? - “I’ve noticed that there are often items on my ‘next actions’ list that hang around a lot longer than they should. I scan and rescan and sort and add and delete, but there’s always a few stragglers who hang out there for a week or more. Eventually this starts to vex me, and I try to debug why things aren’t getting done.”
Mental dialogues, yak-shaving & the triumph of the ‘mini-review’ - “My mini-review falls somewhere between the glances I give my lists throughout the day and the comprehensive weekly review I do each weekend. It’s basically a 10-minute metamoment where I stop working and just try to re-focus on my goals, and the tactical adjustments needed to get them moved forward today.”
What are you ‘waiting on?’ - “The thread that runs through all of these is that the onus is on me to a) make sure these items represent part of a commitment I’ve made, and b) make sure they actually get done (even if it’s not my direct responsibility); otherwise, they should get moved onto my ‘Maybe/Later’ list, right?”
A Year of Getting Things Done - (3-part series: 1, 2, 3) - “I recently realized that this month marks one year since I started using Getting Things Done in earnest. With the calendar year closing, it seems like an apt time to look back at what’s worked, what hasn’t, and where I’d like to see GTD heading in the future.
Choosing a daily GTD action plan - “I employ an informal Getting Things Done action strategy that’s similar to the one Chris lays out in his post. I often have a theme for a given day, where I choose an approach that’s suited to my mood, my energy level, and the kind and amount of work on my TODO list. (I’m especially a fan of days where I knock down ‘mosquito tasks’ as Chris calls them.)”
Fractal Implementation, or, On the Dangers of David Allen’s Finger - “This is my stake in the ground about GTD: if you can stay focused on drawing from its best practices to get more of the important things in your life accomplished, then you’ll be a happy kid. For real. But if, like a seeming majority of people I encounter these days, you allow yourself to obsess endlessly over the minutest details of implementation and maintenance—well, you’re screwed. You’re wasting your time.”

”43F Recap: Best of Getting Things Done” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 21, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

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