Work productivity, time management, organization, tools and tips

I use d3. It cribs the concepts in Kinkless GTD and puts them in a tiddlywiki. It also prints to index cards effortlessly, so it's a hipsterpda variant as well.

Viewing by project or by location is indespensible. I can't imagine going back to any system without that ability.

I have, and am truly a fan. The outliner program is a great way for collecting thoughts. One thing I have noticed is that I am "on top of things", but my progress might be hindered by the sheer need to do maintence to my system. The daily, weekly, monthly review section is invaluable. I have customized it quite a bit. Can't beat the price, but you'll need omnioutliner. (Mac only 69$) I haven't seen anything better except for maybe the beta of "inbox". Still I'm pretty locked into KGTD right now.

Erik,
Thanks for this tip! I like the small size and portability of the tiddlywiki-based system. It also looks almost infinitely customizable.

Reality,
The maintenance part of GTD, as you know, is the most critical. It's possible that having too much maintenance to do is a subtle hint that there's too much on your plate.

What is "inbox"?

Inbox: I found it at Lifehacker. It crashed the very first time I used it. However, it seems to offer all the benefits of KGTD in a nice interface. Also it seems to create a database of your files. I stuck it on a harddrive, and might look at it again, if I start hearing more about it.

INbox

I thought a bit about what you wrote. On the contrary, my plate isn't that full, but I am my own worst enemy. My daily review had things in it like: floss, Spanish word of the day. Good things, and I would indeed forget to floss if it weren't for the reminder. However, I was getting too detailed, (don't forget to breathe!). So I went in and made a bunch of things optional. I created my daily review in the 7 habits Covey spirit of including that which was not urgent and important. I have made a lot of progress on my Japanese, and my workout has been consistently observed. However, I'm finding my larger projects with a cloudier area of where to start, are slow to progress. I also started avoiding the daily review, because it was eating up so much time. The very system itself was a pain to maintain. So based on your advice, I started to make the review a bit more palatable, and make optional parts of it that I seemed to be ignoring anyways.

Reality,
Great! I'm glad I could help.

My next question is about your cloudy projects. Do you have really do-able next actions assigned to them? Knowing the best place to start on a project is actually less important than choosing one discrete action that you won't hesitate to do because it's immediately understandable and you're willing to and capable of doing it. Getting a project done is a series of such actions.

Claire,
d3 is really portable. I keep mine on my iPod and have it as one of my homepages at work and home.

I don't know if that's the best approach though. At first I found that I too was spending to much time micromanaging. My response was to leave d3 on my work computer.

I only looked at it at the end of the day when I would update and print them out again (I'm blessed with a laser printer that prints on index cards located right next to my desk). For anything I needed to capture I would print the generic "to-do" cards from the DIY Planner and fill in as I would notes to an in-basket.

That was probably the most organized I've been. I gave myself time to maintain my system but wasn't a slave to it. In retrospect I should probably do that again. I quit that practice because I tried to manage too much, too specific.

My problem with GTD is that capturing things tends to accumulate "cruff" which is difficult to separate from the real stuff.

I should elaborate on what I wrote. I wasn't a slave to it, meaning that I wasn't spending all of my free time managing my system. BUT - I found that the time I gave it at the end of the day kept growing and growing because I was trying to be too specific.

You can actually sense it happening with Tiddlywikis because the bigger it is the more sluggish the response time is.

I absolutely agree - The Time/Design people say "The Power is in the Process", and Eric Mack puts it this way: "Methodology + Technology = Productivity".

Fantastic blog - thanks so much.