Gtd / productivity tip: Don’t check email at night!

One of the wonderful, or not so wonderful thing that internet devices has brought to our lives is always having a Internet connection, and allowing us to check email anytime.

For me, the iPhone has literally plugged my head into the Internet. And I find myself always wanting to check email. Check in the morning. Check while waiting for the elevators. Check before I go to sleep...

It has become and addiction and is starting to prove to be a distraction.

Yesterday, I came by a book by Naoyuki Honda, a Japanese productivity expert. Inside his book, he has a nice productivity tip - don’t check email at night. His primary reason, if I recall correctly, is that at night, you don’t have a specific time where you end and stop work.

In other words, you don’t have a deadline to stop working, and you fall in the trap of getting absorbed into the work that the emails lead you to do, and distracts you from other tasks like reading a book, studying, watching news, or simply resting.

I like this tip, and I’m going to try hard to NOT check emails after I get home.

Ok, so I don’t open my email software on my desktop. It’s all ok, right? Oh no, yes, iPhone has push emails! So, do we really need push email? My life was fine without it before, so I’m sure I can handle. On that note, I’m turning off push.

That’s right! I control my emails, not the other way around.

Maxing out your iPhone Mail app with IMAP mail services

At work, do you file and categorize your emails on your computer? With an iPhone, you can accomplish that on the go as well. In other words, you see an email on your iPhone, and you put it into folder A. When you get back to your office or home, in your mail application, that email will be inside folder A.

The trick here is to use an IMAP mail service so that the folder structures for your mail are synced on both your computer and iPhone. MobileMe and Gmail both have IMAP support. First make sure you have your mail application to be set up for IMAP. MobileMe, by default, should be set up for IMAP on your PC and Mac. Gmail users can use both POP and IMAP, so make sure you're using IMAP. Make some folders. On the iPhone once you setup your account with IMAP settings, you will see the folders.

For Gmail users, here are some references for you:

• Getting starts with IMAP for Gmail
• Setting up Gmail for iPhone and iPod touch

And just in case and for reference, here's how to set up MobileMe email on your PCs.

Isn't it amazing that your email can be synced on your phone, computer, and web?

Yahoo users, beware!
Be careful with Yahoo though. If you manage your email on the web at Yahoo, then you’ll be fine. If you download your Yahoo emails to a mail application, Yahoo doesn’t support IMAP on mail applications. Come on Yahoo, where's IMAP?

File your Delicious bookmarks on iPhone with Yummy

Recently I’ve been looking for apps that allows me to accomplish work with my iPhone.

Here’s one task I do on a daily basis:

1. I get a lot of emails with links from my friends and co-workers.
2. I file these bookmarks away to my Delicious account so I can share with others.
3. and I archive those emails.

With 1 and 3, it can all be accomplished with the Mail app. Task 2 is the problem.

The first solution I tried was a free app called Bookmarks. Bookmarks let’s you view and add Delicious bookmarks. The problem is that it won’t present a list of tags you use for Delicious. I don’t remember my tags, so this presents a problem.

Enter Yummy. It’s a paid app for $1.99. And it’s solved the above problem. When adding a bookmark in Yummy, you can load up a list of tags you use on Delicious, and simply select the tags you want for the bookmark. No typing whatsoever!

In a nutshell, what’s so great about Yummy for me

1. I’m in Safari, I find a site I want to bookmark.
2. I tap on the bookmark button and tap on “Add Link To Yummy” (see Yummy’s site for details on how this works)
3. Yummy loads, and a New Bookmark view is loaded with the site info / URL you were looking.
4. Tap the tag icon to bring up your tags and select the tags you want
5. Press done, and it’s bookmarked

The only improvement I would wish for right now is to have the tag icon a little bit bigger on the New Bookmark view. Other than that, this is an app I recommend if you file and tag bookmarks to Delicious. Thanks!

GTD tip: Using todos to find files

In a previous post, I mentioned how you can use your calendar as a reference / index to find files. The key point here is making sure to include the date in your file name. The idea is that files and notes would be tied to events and meetings on your calendar. Therefore, it would make sense to search your calendar to that event, retrieve the date, and use the date to key up your files.

I realized that another good place to to help you find files is your todo app. If you are descriptive about your tasks and todos, you can use that to search for tasks, which in turn can lead you to the files you're looking for.

For example, in Things for Mac, I can search for a completed task, and it will show me the completion date. Once I know the completion date, I can then pull up materials within that date range. Of course, the important point is making sure you name your files with dates.

So to recap...

1. make sure you file names have dates
2. when you can't find the file and Spotlight has failed you, go to you todo app, and search for the task
3. hopefully, you find the task, and have the date of completion
4. now knowing the date, search again by the range of the date.

GTD tip: Spotlight your Google Docs in the clouds with Precipitate

GTD and searching comes hand in hand.

The GTD involves filing information and tasks away for later retrieval. And retrieval = search, right?

Extending Spotlight to the clouds

I love Spotlight; having the ability to search across all my files and mails on my computer is one I can't live without. There are still limitations such as not being able to search through images, videos, or sounds without tagging them properly. The other limitation is not being able to search the cloud, which is essential today because we have more and more info in the clouds. For example, I have a set of bookmarks on Delicious.com and stuff on Google Docs. Hopefully one day, we'll be able to do that with easy configuration and out of the box.

Using Precipitate to Spotlight Google Docs

Until then, you can use Precipitate to search your Google Docs and Google Bookmarks right from your Spotlight search window. Very neat if you are a heavy Google Docs user.

Thanks for reading, and hope your found this tip useful!

Source: CNET

Two Google tips to help you research and find info

I've worked on quite a couple of research projects at my previous consulting jobs. I thought I share two Google tips that I find to be helpful during my researches.

1. Use quotations for your key words. For example, if you are searching for iPhone 3G, instead of typing iPhone 3G, try adding quotations to it like: "iPhone 3G". This way, it will pick up that exact phrase in your searches. This works extremely handy when you need to narrow down search results. In addition, you can also pair quoted phrases together to narrow results even more like: "iPhone 3G" "tethering on AT&T".
   
   
2. Search for something thru a specific site. Sometimes instead of searching through the big ocean of Internet, it might be easy to pinpoint a site (i.e. specific news site), and search through only that site. To do that, simply put this in your search query - site:domainname.com. For example, to search for Coke at TechCrunch.com, you would enter: Coke site:TechCrunch.com . And voila, you'll get results of Coke that's on TechCrunch.

Hope that helps, and thanks for reading!

GTD Tip: Use Evernote to search text within images

Search technology has really come a long way.  If you have one of the latest Macs, you can instantly "Spotlight" (search) a keyword, and it would go through emails, files, and your calendar to find stuff at ridiculous speeds when compared to old operating systems.  

But there's still one thing missing.  It can't search inside images.  So if you take snap shots of your documents and business cards, they won't come up in your search results unless you name them properly.  I'm eagerly awaiting the day where text recognition technology in images comes to the consumers.  

Until then, I suggest everyone to take a look at Evernote.  This software is available on the web, desktop, and phone to let you takes notes, snap shots, and even serve as storage for files.  The best benefit of Evernote to me is the text recognition technology.  So you take snapshots or scan images of, let's say, business cards, it will become searchable.  

The downside is that these images must be synced and processed by Evernote's servers.  I am not comfortable with having a lot of business and sensitive documents out there in the clouds so I'm currently not using it.  But I am sure many will find it useful and handy.  

GTD Report: 2-3 months later

After adopting GTD for a few weeks now.  Here are some thoughts and impressions:

• Tasks pile up!    With tasks piling up, even with all filters and tagging, it's still overwhelming.  I found myself using the project list to help me focus on the tasks I need to do.   
  
• Since under GTD I organize stuff on a weekly basis into the reference system, I am more exposed to my organizational structure, and am often reminded of how I organize my stuff.  For some reason, it gives me a little peace of mind.
  
• A lot of time is often spent on processing.   The bottleneck is naturally the "collect" phrase.  So the idea is collect less - really think if something is worth collecting before you collect.  Also, bypass the collect pool and process certain items immediately so that the collect pool doesn't grow.  
  

Some better tools I would have:

• Notes and todos live in separate places.  Todos live in Things and notes (i.e. Word files) live in the file system.  Really wish there was a way have a way to view them all in one location.
  

That's all for now and thanks for reading!

GTD Tip: Using a calendar as a file index to find files

I saw this productivity tip on TV by Koyama-san, a productivity guru and author of a Japanese book called Idea Hacks. His tip helps us find files faster. Here it is:

• First, when you save and name files, always put the date in front. For example, “2009-05-12 Presentation”. Regarding the date format, use a format you prefer, but remember to be consistent. Having the year in front gives you the benefit of sorting by file name chronologically by year.
  
  
• Second, let’s say you are looking for a presentation file for a client meeting. You’d go to your calendar (i.e., iCal, Google Calendar), and search for that previous meeting. Once you find the meeting or event, you will also know the date. In turn, you can use the date to look up your file or search for it. 
  

Usually, I would just use Spotlight to search for the files, but if I can’t find it, this tip is always a good backup solution to find a particular file for an event or meeting.

This would also work with physical files as well. Just make sure you put a date on your folders and arrange them by date. Once you find the meeting date in your calendar, you can easily locate the physical folder.

Guide to GTD: Setting up a reference system on a Mac

Now that operating systems contain quite advanced search capabilities, some people might not even need a system to organize their files. You can simply put everything you need in one folder, and add Spotlight comments to retrieve them later. If you are a Gmail person and are used to tagging your emails, the software Tags lets you tag files and folders on your Mac.

As for me, the first thing I do when I need a file is to use Spotlight. However, I still can’t find everything through searching. So I still have a file system in place though I limit the layers of folders. Having files in an organized manner also gives me peace of mind =)

My Setup
Digital files are stored in a folder called the Cabinet. Inside the Cabinet are subfolders. I categorize my materials by their type. For example, receipts, letters, statements, and etc. My logic is that if I’m looking for something, in my mind, it probably goes something like this - “I’m looking for [some type of thing] for [some purpose or subject]”. For example, I’m looking for the invoice for January’s hosting. Therefore, I would go to the invoice folder and look there.

Here are some of my folders:
Agreements and Contracts

• Documents
  
• Forms
  
• Instructions and Manuals
  
• Inoivces
  
• Letters
  
• Meeting Notes
  
• Projects
  
• Receipts
  
• Statements
  

Searching by A to Z
Unlike physical files, where you can only organize in one way, digital files can be organized in several ways using things like tags and smart folders.

I have a a folder called Cabinet (A-Z), and inside the folder are Smart Folders of A to Z. This enables me to look through things alphabetically. For example, clicking into the A folder will bring up all the things that start with A in my Cabinet folder.


Normally, if you try to create a Smart Folder, it will attempt to search across the entire computer. In this case, we want to limit the scope of the search. To do so, first go to the folder where you want the search to take place. Type something in the search box in the Finder window. A bar will appear that will give you the option to search “This Mac” or the folder you’re currently in. Select the folder you want to search and click the + button to the right. This will bring up a criteria for search that you can configure. In the case of setting up an A folder, set it up so that it searchs for name that begins with “A”. Click the Save button to save it as a Smart Folder.



Searching by kind of files
I also set up folders where I can search by the kind of documents. For example, Word documents and presentations.

I put these Smart Folders in a folder called Cabinet (Kind).

Folders Outside of the Cabinet
Other than the cabinet folders, there are two other reference folders on my desktop.

• Frequently used files - For example, files that I use to keep track of expenses.
  
• GTD - This folder contains information about my GTD setup such as a list of my collection points.

Summing it all up
It is important to always remember the reference system is not a place to store potential actions or tasks. If you do, you have to make sure to review those folders.  For me, the Projects folders is such a folder.   Ideas are also things that imply an action that you may want to do, so you want to make sure you revisit ideas if you place them together with other reference materials.  

Hope you found this post useful! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next post!

Guide to GTD: Collecting

The GTD process starts with collecting stuff.  Stuff includes:

• stuff that could be useful in the future
  
• stuff that imply a task or action
  
• stuff that needs your attention
  

The goal is to make sure all your stuff is consolidated in as few locations as you can.

Collecting in the real world
For actual papers, bills, letters, and other stuff in the real world, I just simply dump them all into an physical tray. This is where everything goes.

The other collection point is my notebook where my ideas and notes are stored. I take my notes in a report pad that has pages with the Cornell Method layout. As you can see in the photo below, each page is separated into three sections: 1) note area, 2) key word area on the left column, and 3) summary area on the bottom.


If you can’t find a notebook in this layout and would like to try this layout, here’s a web tool where you can create and print your own.


For the digital world, it gets complicated
Unlike the real world, ironically, the digital world is not that simple. I’d wish I could have one inbox on my computer where I can dump everything and view them efficiently later, but I haven’t found a great solution like that.

In the digital world, stuff have types, and we manage our stuff in different software. Emails in email software. Notes in note-taking software. Documents in our file system. Tasks in our task management software.

I’m still looking for that perfect solution that lets me view and manage emails, notes, and documents all in one centralized location.  I think Midnight Inbox is pretty close to getting it right.  There are lots of great GTD software out there, and I'm sure we'll see something that ties everything together nicely.  

For now my digital setup is:

• Inbox on the file system (Mac)
  
• Inbox on Things (Mac and iPhone)
  
• Inbox in Mail (Mac and iPhone)
  

Taking notes on the iPhone
For now, I’m trying to use Things, a task management software,  to capture notes. I actually prefer the Notes application on iPhone because of its simplicity and fast loading time. However, that would increase my collection point to two on the iPhone, so for now, I’m going to try to use Things to capture notes and tasks.

Evernote, a really cool software, is worth mentioning. It allows you to capture notes and sync them across computers and devices. After testing it out for a month or so, unfortunately, I’m deciding to leave it our of my set up. My reasons are:

• the iPhone app takes a while to load
  
• it becomes an additional collection point
  
• it stores data and stuff on servers, and there are some business docs and data that I’m not comfortable of putting in the clouds

However, I think it’s a really useful software, and it might work for you.

Collecting stuff on Mac
Mails are collected in the Mail application on my Mac. Files such as documents, presentations, and bookmarks are all dumped into an Inbox folder. Actions and tasks are captured through Things.

Taking notes on Mac
Currently, I’m not using a single software to capture notes. There are several ways I refer to for taking notes:

• sending myself notes via email, which will end up in the email Inbox
  
• writing up a note in TextEdit, Pages, or Word, and putting them in the Inbox folder
  
• notes that should be viewed frequently or notes that could suggest a future task are usually done in Together, and putting them in the right place / category at that moment (I will discuss how Together fits into my setup in a future post)

Sub-collection points
Lastly, I'd like to talk about sub-collection points, which is a terminology that I made up. These are places that just accumulate stuff. For me, these are:

On my Mac:

• Desktop (out of habit, though I try to drop everything into the Inbox, files just accumuluate here)
  

Real World:

• wallet - receipts pile up here
  
• business card holder - business cards of contacts pile up here
  

They key is to make sure to have the sub-collection points processed or dumped into main collection points (i.e., inboxes) on a regular basis. If sub-collection points aren’t consolidated, that prevents you from collecting everything and creating a loophole, which means you may forget something or some task. To make sure you do this, you will need a system for recurring/repeating tasks to make sure you do this. This will be covered in a later post, of course.

Takeaway points
Hopefully the above gives you some idea on how you can approach setting up a system to collect stuff. No matter what system you use, just make sure the system can consolidate everything into a few centralized places.  

In the next post, I will be talking about setting up a reference system, and following that, I will talk about how I'm processing all this stuff I'm collecting.

That’s all for collecting. Hope you find it helpful and thanks for reading!

SWG’s Guide to GTD on Mac and iPhone

I took most of my blogging time for the past two weeks to try to accomplish one of my resolutions this year: implementing “Getting Things Done” (GTD).

What is GTD?
For readers that don’t know, GTD is a methodology and framework by David Allen to help you manage your tasks at home and work. The core workflows of GTD is:

1. Collect
   
2. Process
   
3. Organize
   
4. Review
   
5. Do
   

You can find more information at Wikipedia’s entry on GTD and David’s Allen’s book, Getthing Things Done.

My interpretation of GTD workflow in detail

Collect
So basically, in the collection phase, you are devising a system that can capture all the things that goes on in life.

Process
In the processing phase, you have to sort that pile of stuff into three piles

1. trash
   
2. things that have reference value
   
3. actions or things that may suggest an action 
   

While your sorting, if you come across any actions that can be done under two minutes, do it at that moment.

Organize
In this phase, you have two piles from the previous step:

1. things that have reference value -
   These are things that should be filed away in a reference system.
   
   
2. actions or things that may suggest an action -
   Most likely, you will end up with a big list of actions.  The list will probably have too many items for mortals to comprehend, and, therefore, we must break down this lists into multiple lists so that we can comprehend. After these actions are organized, we are then able to make sense of them and extract the actions or tasks that should be done. The critical part is trying to devise a system so that you actions are properly captured and get visibility at the right times. In other words, actions needs to be reviewed so they are not just buried and get forgotten. 
   

Review and Do
These two phases lets you find out what you should do next, and then do them.

The tools
For me to implement GTD, my setup involves the following tools.

Hardware

1. iMac
   
2. iPhone
   
3. physical inbox tray
   

Software

1. Things for iPhone and Mac
   
2. Together for Mac
   
3. iCal
   
4. Mail
   

For the next few posts, I’ll be writing about my experience implementing GTD. In particular:

1. Collection points setup
   
2. Setting up the reference system
   
3. Processing and organizing actions and tasks
   
4. Recurring actions
   
5. Critical tasks to allow GTD to work
   

Hope you will enjoy this series of posts and find it insightful! Thanks for reading!