Personal Project Management

My GTD (Capture)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 06:40:00 +0000

Physical In Basket - Kitchen
Physical In Basket - Office
iPhone
Day Planner
Outlook
HP Flatbed Scanner with sheet feeder.

In looking back over the past posts, I realize that I spent way too much time messing with the tools and not nearly enough using them. It is entirely too much fun building and designing the "perfect" system, only to have it collapse under it's own weight. I found that in light use, the complicated system exceeded my expectations, but as soon as the inputs began to come in fast and furious, I would fail at the basic precepts of GTD. My in baskets would begin to overflow, not because I couldn't keep up but because the very act of classifying and dealing with them became too onerous and I out off cleaning them out daily. No more daily Inbox Zero! So, back to basics.
My physical inboxes are pretty standard, just places to hold the things and keep them off the kitchen table and my desk. Not that my wife and children are consistent in using them just as inboxes. Often, during my evening routine of bring everything down to the office to process, I find things that seem to have taken up regular residence in there. And I do it too, I admit.
My phone is just a iPhone 4, OneNote is installed but I rarely use it. I do have pictures of the consumables my printer uses so I can look when I am in the store and can't remember just which toner cartridge I need. I am currently using Instacorder to record voice notes and email them to my self so I can capture any errant thoughts and ideas that may make it into a project. I would like something that transcribes the voice notes into the body of the email like I had on the old android phone, but haven't found one that I like yet. I could use Toodledo to enter any Next Actions but I have found that waiting to process the ideas until later on allows me to be more objective about "if" something really needs to be done. The rest of the apps on the phone I will go over in the "Do" post when it is written.
I do carry a day planner with an 8.5x11 note pad and a printed version of my Outlook calendar in it in my briefcase for those times that I am not digitally connected. Those times are few and far between as wireless tech has come a long way in the past little bit. That being said, I will use it in meetings, where it is a bit distracting to have someone talking into their phone as a note taking method.
I have upgraded to Outlook 2013. When I did, I took my Twitter feed, my Facebook feed, and my "leisure" RSS feeds out. I moved my RSS feeds to Google Reader, before they closed, and then found Zite for the iPad and fed my initial feed list to it. The magazine it created more then satisfied my leisure reading needs, and when Reader closed down, I was only minimally affected, as I had not actually viewed my feed list in some weeks. Twitter and Facebook reside in my browser, and are accessed only when I have some free time. I do get some email news letters, but my they are moved to a separate folder in Outlook and I can access them with the iPad far more comfortably when I am in relaxation mode. The links from Outlook and IE to OneNote work just fine, and I am not one to collect articles as much as I once was. In fact I don't keep anything from my leisure reading any more unless it suggests a new project or helps an existing one along.
Any important documentation, usually snail mail, is scanned into OneNote through the scanner, sent directly to the unfiled notes as a pdf image and OCR'd by OneNote. It is usually filed right away as that falls within the two minute rule of processing.
And that pretty much wraps up the capture portion. Simple and as frictionless as I can make it.

Blog Reboot

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 07:10:00 +0000

Well, after losing all the photos and screenshots from my earlier posts, and after having not not posted for well over a year I have decided to reboot the blog.

A few things have changed in my GTD set up and I will begin with my first post in "Series 2" by reposting my processes and set up from the beginning. As well, I seem to be drawn to the current "Life mapping" craze that is currently going on, so there may be a post or two on the tools and measurements I use to track my progress on the various projects I undertake. After all, if it is not tracked, measured, and reviewed on a regular basis, there is no way of knowing if it is meeting your expectations,or moving you toward your goals. In short, it isn't a project.

I hope to gradually transition the blog to a slightly broader scope after that, with a focus on the habits of success, my own personal career management, as well as any related subject I happen to find interesting at the moment. As a voracious reader, I will probably toss out a few of my opinions about the current book of the month, as well.

See you in a week!

Bruce

White Flag

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:59:00 +0000

After messing around with Evernote for six months or so I have returned to Onenote. I just can’t live with out the task integration with Outlook. However, Outlook and I have been having our own little go round. But first I should fill you in on the goings on since the last update.

What spurred the move to Evernote was a change in phones. I traded the windows 6.5 phone in for an Android. I figured as I was already using Google Calendar to sync my iPad calendar, I may as well mix my Apple Kool-Aid and my Microsoft Kool-Aid with a good portion of Google flavoured Jim Jones drink as well.

At this point I will take you through my thought processes..because when I can’t really understand why I couldn’t leave well enough alone……

“Evernote apps are free on both ‘droid and the iPad. Cool. Free is always good!! Damn……. Lost the task integration…… that’s OK. Cheap will keep the pocketbook happy.”

“Tasks. No problem, Toodledo is syncing with Outlook so finding an app to sync the droid will be no problem. no really good free ones but a few and I only really look at the tasks to see what needs to be done.”

“Mail. No problem Exchange Active Sync on the ‘droid will complement the mail on the iPad and I already am using imap folders in Outlook for Gmail. I should really use the Outlook connector to bring in my Hotmail so I can have two active calendars. I’ll just add a shortcut to the favourites pane. Hmmmmmm. Shortcuts seem to go missing occasionally……weird.”

“I still do most of my Project organization in Onenote, and now they have a free iPod app. What??! I need Onenote 2010 to access it on the web?? Oh well, I was wanting to upgrade Word and Excel anyway. Why not. No, no, I don't need to buy Outlook 2010 as well. My copy is too customised now for me to have to figure it out again. Besides I can hide this expense from my wife for a bit. I’ll kill the premium subscription to Evernote while I am at it”

“I see Chromatic Dragon is not supporting the toodledo sync tool. The have a couple of links to other sync software. Hey… gsyncit will sync tasks with toodledo, my notes with Evernote, and my calendar with Gmail. Little bit of money but not too bad, maybe it will solve my missing shortcuts issue. I'll go back to Evernote too.”

Three minutes later

“Trial works well i should buy the full version. Done. My wife won’t even notice the bill. Whadda ya mean Outlook needs to submit a crash report? Hey where did my shortcuts go!!”

“OK, start disabling COM Add-ins one by one until I figure out which one is causing the problem. Figures….Gsyncit and Onenote don’t play well together. Well bye-bye Gsyncit. Let's look for another sync program. Here’s one….install….nope……uninstall….and another….and another. Well back to Chromatic Dragon and Google Calendar sync.”

Anyway to make a long story a bit shorter, even my return to Google Calendar sync failed. probably because I had stressed out Outlook beyond recognition.

So where am I now?

Two Days worth of cleaning to get Outlook 2007 working again. It is now connected to Office 365 through exchange. Tasks, Calendar, Mail, and Contacts stored in the Cloud. Office 365 is gathering up mail from all my accounts an pushing them to Outlook. iPad connected to same Exchange Server for Calendar, Mail, and Contacts. Tasks on iPad are through Exchange server with Task Task HD. Same with Droid, except Task app is called TaskSync. Outlook only is running Onenote, VBA, and Windows search plugins. (Holy Crap is it ever fast when loading and closing.) So everything syncs, and five hundred bucks or so later I am back to where I began.

She where does the white flag come in? With me now paying twelve bucks a month for office 365……the one expense my wife complained about. I give up.

GTD, why do I do this.

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:21:00 +0000

Lately, people around me have been wondering why I follow an organization system at all. After all, they claim that I don't need to, as my life, from the outside, appeared to be fairly uncomplicated. I go to work, go home, spend time with family, eat and sleep. My levels of responsibility at work aren't such that I manage any large projects, only a number of small ones. And like a true convert, I smile and nod, and tell them it is because of the system that I appear to have everything under control.

But for me the real reason is the scalability. The ability to accept more and be able to trust that little, if any, things get dropped. So to that end, here is a link to an article that I feel best presents the reasons why I follow GTD principles.

http://getentrepreneurial.com/archives/how-not-to-work-evenings-weekends/

Enjoy

OneNote comes to the iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:22:00 +0000

http://ht.ly/3GeBA

Can a true iPad version be far behind?

Expanding the Blog’s Scope

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 06:28:00 +0000

So, I initially implemented my GTD system in order to help me deal with being a mature (in body, if not attitude) student when I returned to university at age 35, wife and two small children in tow. One challenge was to get back into learning mode, something thing I was admittedly not too good at even when I was in my “learning prime.” Another was to help my wife adjust to a new city, as she had never been far from where she grew up for any length of time. A third was arrange baby sitters and daycare for when I was in school and my wife who is a Registered Nurse and works 12 hour shifts, either days from seven to seven or nights from seven to seven. With the current emphasis in the Hallowed Halls of University focused on group work, most of my time was pretty much spoken for. GTD probably saved my sanity and definitely allowed me to complete my degree.

Just shy of 40 now, Baccalaureate in hand, I have a new job as the business manager at Subaru of Lethbridge. Like my previous workplace, Subaru of Lethbridge is a closely knit, small organization. The job itself has managed to combine my previous automotive experience as a mechanic, my sales experience from when I moved from the back shop into the front office, as well as the university training I received with my degree. All in all, a reasonable fit.

GTD has a place there as well. The position I filled was vacant for better than six months and in that time the existing systems had deteriorated to the point of non-existence. It has been a huge challenge to create new systems to ensure the paperwork is done correctly, sent to the right people at the right times, and most importantly have a process in place to catch errors and omissions. I am fortunate to be working with open minded people who are willing to allow me to implement this “new-fangled GT whatchmacallit” into the processes. Perhaps most impressively my personal systems seem to have been able to handle the change in demand from the school to the workplace.

With that in mind I will broaden the scope of the blog to include a little more about my odyssey in the workplace, my hobbies of fishing and skiing, and I will share a bit about my efforts to create a little sunshine in the world. I have no idea where this will take us but say “hi” in the comments and come along for the ride.

iPad and GTD

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:01:00 +0000

Ok, so I bought an iPad yesterday. I spent the day adding and removing apps in order to make the thing usable in my GTD set up.

My Calendar and Contact list sync’s through iTunes, which is always running on my PC. Of course there is no native task app that will sync with Outlook so a little set up was required to get things up and running.

A quick web search led me to Daniel B. Curran Jr.’s blog, in specific to this page, where he details how to sync Outlook tasks with an iPhone using Toodledo. What I found to be the real PITA remover for me was the link to Chromatic Dragon’s Toodledo Sync application. Awesome application for what I want it to do. The application translates Outlook’s categories into contexts automatically. Almost no set up required, well maybe a little, but Daniel covers it so well, that I will not repeat his work. Go read his blog, and then come back. I will wait.

Back? Good. Wasn’t that easy?

The only thing I changed was to set the Mappings tab in Toodledo Outlook Sync to look like this:

I then added the Toodledo app onto my iPad rather then use the mobile site that Daniel recommends. I am still exploring all the in and outs of the application, so as I become more fluent in it’s use I will report back.

I have now, however, found myself back in a similar situation as I had with my Blackberry, no automatic sync. I will try out this system for a while and see if that lack will be a deal breaker in my iPad use in a business setting. I also may be going back to Evernote if I continue to use the iPad, as the interface is really well done.

My only complaint , so far, about the iPad is that it will not charge very well while plugged into my PC. This apparently is due to the power usage of the iPad which is a fair bit more than what a current usb port will provide. The new Macs can do it but the older ones and most Windows or Linux based PCs need to have the iPad in standby mode without the screen on in order to be able to charge it up. Most powered usb hubs do not have the power requirements yet either, but I am sure that will change soon.

So there it is. Drop me a note in the comments if you have any favourite apps. I have have a feeling the iPad will be used mainly as a media consumption device, but am open to any other uses you may come up with. Let me know.

Mind mapping

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:52:00 +0000

As of my last post, I had decided to keep using OneNote for three things; mobile capture on my Windows Mobile phone, reference material filing system for digital media, and project planning. My reasoning was to that by using tools that interacted seamlessly, I could avoid the friction in the system that had caused me to lose track of things a little bit. However, I was not at all impressed with the outlining features in OneNote, not that they didn’t work, but just that planning in that linear of a style was not how I approached problem solving,or any kind of planning for that matter.

Enter mind mapping. If you have spent any time on the web looking for an Uber-GTD system you probably know about the wealth of information surrounding mind mapping and it’s use in planning. There are a multitude of free programs like FreeMind, Personal Brain, and Compendium, as well as paid versions like MindManager, and MindView. Being that this was for personal use, and I had a hard time justifying another $350.00 for software to my wife, I restricted myself to trying freeware versions only for now. And really, after all is said and done, I am just learning how to mind map projects, so I don’t need a lot of bells and whistles…. yet.

Almost every mind mapping software and web offering out there has a lot going for it. And to be fair, many of the reasons why I abandoned certain platforms in favour of another, probably have more to do with my learning curve than any weakness on the part of the program. But that said, I returned to the first software I tried, and I believe that I have found the product that fits my needs very well, Xmind. You can find a review of the software here that explains many of the benefits and features. My favourite is the drill down feature, which allows you to view only the downstream portion of the mind map from wherever you have chosen.

In addition, because OneNote will allow you to copy hyperlinks to a note or a section, and you can paste those links into Xmind, you can easily move between your planning software and your reference software. (Note the small Globe to the right of the XMind task, and the corresponding page in OneNote.)

However , one major drawback to XMind, and most of the mapping software that I tried was the inability to print a text version of the mind map. I initially thought that I would be able to map out a project, view it in an outline view, export the text to OneNote and Flag the tasks from there. In fact this was one thing that I thought was going to be a deal breaker in my use of XMind, and I kept trying one software product after the other, almost to the point of distraction. I would use a new one only to find either a similar issue or some other that would add to the friction in my set up.

It’s funny, as soon as you quit working so hard at figuring things out, not giving up mind you, but to just stop beating your head against the wall, solutions to things usually present themselves. As it turned out I was so focused on what I perceived to be the solution, I was ignoring XMind itself and whether or not it could integrate with Outlook. When I started looking at that, I found an plug in called XMindLook. This $50.00 plug in will sync XMind’s tasks to Outlook’s tasks, eliminating the need to print or transfer anything to OneNote. In fact the plug in appears to have been designed with GTD in mind.

My thirty day trial comes to an end soon, and I think I will be purchasing the software. As the software was not, however, designed to be used with the macros I employ in Outlook, I will have to make a few more adjustments.

More to come…….

New Tools, Modified Layout, and Apology

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:01:00 +0000

First I will start with the apology. It has been a horrendously long time since my last post. Life went a little sideways, but my GTD system stood up to some fairly heavy abuse. Suffice it to say that the runway level was considerably busier than it normally is. Thinking positively though, it provided my system with a stress test of sorts, and I found a few friction points in the system that needed a little work.

My Blackberry did not work as well as i would have liked it to. Not having an exchange server to push all the appointments and tasks to it over the air, I relied on manual sync. While this worked when the task load was light, under heavy stress, I found I would forget to hit the Sync button and stuff got missed. Capture and reference were issues as well. I tried to migrate to Evernote from OneNote in order to get a mobile capture other than just voice notes to no avail. My Blackberry was not supported by Evernote mobile, so capture was still a bit of a kludge. I also lost the task integration with Outlook that OneNote offers. Additionally, access via the mobile site was difficult on the small screen, so back to OneNote I went.

That left me in the same state as before. After a lot of internal debate I exchanged my Blackberry with an HTC Snap, a non-touchscreen Windows Mobile device. (I had a touchscreen, as a PDA it was great, as a phone not so much!) Out of the box the today screen was not acceptable so I had to update it to SBSH’s Facade app in order to view tasks and appointments properly. This solves both my sync issues and my capture issues. Active sync is almost real-time in updating and OneNote Mobile is installed as well, allowing voice, photo, and text capture. So far, so good. (BTW, I checked Evernote’s site and there is no Windows Mobile app so it is still a bit of a kludge for capture.) The larger screen is a little nicer as well.

I did play around with reQall as a capture as well. I had several issues with the Outlook plug in changing my all day events to normal appointments, but the capture worked well. I have it set up as a speed dial for when I am driving and need to get a thought out of my head.

When I was migrating back from Evernote to OneNote I did take the time to make a few modifications in how I organized OneNote. My Reference section group now has Section Groups for 0-9, ABC, DEF, and so on with everything filed under the company name (ITunes, Amazon) or if it is a web page, what it applies to ( Vista tweaks, GTD hacks). This is modeled after the paper filing cabinet set up in David Allen’s book. I found that under my old system I had to remember just where in the system things were which for me me kind of eliminated the “mind like water” goal GTD’ers are pursuing. The Life Planning Section Group became a tab, and I added another tab for Procedure Lists.

Procedure lists are something that I use fairly often and want to have quickly found. Until OneNote allows for a proper tagging and search function I will place them here. When I no longer use them on a regular basis I will move the tab to the proper Section group (PQR) in the Reference section.

For now, this is working again. I am still working out project planning, experimenting with mind mapping and the like. Updates as they happen.

Outlook and GTD (Another Macro)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:56:00 +0000

In my hunt to further my automation of Outlook with in my GTD set up, I found another macro on the Davidco forum by member PDJunieB that will allow you to bulk delete all the completed tasks in one step. At the time I was looking for something that would just automatically move them to an archive folder when they were marked complete, but after thinking about it for a minute I realized that the steps were already captured in OneNote as the action steps of the various projects, or they were just the housekeeping tasks for my weekly review. No need to keep more than one copy of them so getting rid of them is just fine.

The Macro is as follows:

Sub DeleteCompletedTasks()
Dim myTask As taskItem
Dim i As Long
For i = Outlook.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder.Items.Count To 1 Step -1
Set myTask = Outlook.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder.Items(i)
If myTask.Class = olTask Then
If myTask.Complete Then
myTask.Delete
End If
End If
Next
End Sub

For me this worked beautifully, Junie if you ever trip across this post, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! You lowered the PITA* factor in Outlook yet another notch!!

* PITA = Pain In The A**

Life Planning and GTD

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:36:00 +0000

I recently took the weekend off and went downhill skiing with some friends in Fernie, BC. For a little light reading I took David Allen’s book “Ready for Anything” Besides learning how out of shape I am (Oh look. Another project just popped up!!), I also read as far chapter six, in which David addresses the issue of priorities and why GTD does not begin with them, and instead focuses on getting rid of the open loops that tie up our psychic RAM. I liken it to being taught to swim in a small pool, with a life guard and an instructor, so you can master the basics and increase your chances of success, rather than jumping into the deep end of the pool by yourself and suddenly being in a sink or swim situation with survival on the line. Some people can do that and be successful at it, but I am not one of them. I like everything well planned, and well prepared for, but how can one plan for the future if you can’t manage your day?

I am, by nature, a big picture thinker. I worked out my long term goals, based on who I want to be, what I want to have, and where I want to be living, a long time ago, in great detail. But life has a funny way of being unpredictable. Major events happen that completely change everything. Before I started practicing GTD, these events would create a complete failure in the trust I had for the system. Why go through all the planning and organization, if some random event, over which I had no control, could so completely upset everything? I have no issue with redoing things, but starting everything from scratch, in fine detail, all over again, seemed to be such a waste of time. I found that I needed to overcome a huge internal friction just to re-do all the planning, and so I put it off for a long time. And life still continuously sent me mini projects that got dropped, or were done poorly while I sulked about my “bad luck”. Not good.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I very often do not have the luxury of being able to prioritize every task at the moment it enters my domain. In fact, most things that cross my desk need to be done, and are therefore not only important, but critical. Add to that the need to coordinate various schedules for team members and assign tasks based on each members strengths to get the best result possible, and the time for detailed analysis and priority setting for each task as it goes in to the inbox is not available at that time. GTD’s structure of every thing into the inbox first, then process with Do, Dump, Delegate, or Defer (however you choose to do so) later, has allowed me to accomplish everything (usually) that is dumped in my lap at the daily level. In the case of really critical issues, so far, someone has flagged then as process now, but those by definition are the life changers mentioned earlier.

Because my daily stuff was being accomplished, I gained trust in the fact that I could, in fact,plan in finer detail, but only for the next week or so, and not so effectively further out. I gradually learned that the longer term stuff could be completely left alone for a period of time before needing to have the next actions detailed and it would still get accomplished. Limiting the detail in longer term planning has given me the freedom to plan for the future with far more effectiveness and flexibility. My longer term goals are now more vague, and as deadlines for them approach, they are developed with greater and greater detail. This means I spend less time planning and more time doing. The system is able to bend a little, and thus is robust enough to handle major issues. There has not been the enormous outlay of time at the beginning, and so if a major, unplanned event happens, it is less work to change a few objectives rather than a few hundred next actions. This revelation was, to to me anyway, extraordinarily liberating.

This is not to disparage long term, detailed, goal setting. I still use it, I have just found that, for me, I can maximize it’s effectiveness when the steps to achieve the goal it produces can be automated. Things like saving for retirement, getting a university degree, or anything that requires time to accomplish but the next actions are repetitive, automatic or assigned are perfect for this type of planning. A second type of long term, highly defined goals that lend themselves to this is when the next actions result in something that can be repurposed. For example, a travel trailer savings fund can be spent on a trip to Mexico if and when a huge deal shows up. Yes, you still have to decide if taking the deal is right for you by weighing the pro’s and cons, but it is the ability to repurpose the results of your planning is what matters, the freedom in being able to choose.

So that is how I plan things. Obviously some projects are handed to me that aren’t as flexible as I would prefer, but as long as my system can handle the strain I will just process them as best I can. The level of task granularity increases in stages with the greatest level having a time horizon of a one to two weeks out depending on the goal. I still have a plan based on who I want to be, what I want to have, and where I want to live, but it is phrased as objectives, with far less detail than I used to put in. The only down side is my reviews have become critical if I want to maintain any control of my schedule and any direction in my life. But that is being done anyway, right?

Right?!?

Outlook and GTD (Review)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:03:00 +0000

As a GTD follower, I am a big user of lists. I have lists of what to do to winterize my boat and trailer, a list of consumables my computer needs, a list for commonly replaced parts of my vehicle that I do myself, basically I have a list for anything that might need to be referenced later. Most of these lists are stored as notes in Outlook so I have them on my Blackberry when I need them, as it syncs with Outlook every time I plug it in. (If only there was a OneNote version for Blackberry….)

However I found for many small, repeating projects, like the weekly review, I needed a checklist to ensure I had completed everything, but to have that many tasks at that level of detail was overwhelming when it was always showing. (A collapsible, hierarchical task list native to Outlook would help… Microsoft…..Anyone?) In fact I found that when the list was too full , I avoided even turning on my computer unless I really had to, thus making the whole system fail because I no longer trusted that the system could keep me on track.

I experimented with putting the checklists first in Word and then in OneNote and linking a task to it but I found it too much hassle to print the check list off and manually check everything off as it was done. (Most of the tasks were done on the computer and it broke my working rhythm.) If I left the list completely digital, I either had to copy it to a new page before I started it (which I forgot to do on a regular basis) or I had to go back and un-check all the tasks when I was done. Either solution felt a kludge.

So back to net I went where I found an article by Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, that detailed how to put a macro in Outlook that would generate any number of tasks when it was run. Furthermore, it could assign a category and a due date, so if I got called away in middle of processing, I could easily see which tasks needed to be done without manually opening every task up and setting it myself. I am a big fan of automating repetitive tasks in order to simplify my life as much as possible, so this was right up my alley.

Unfortunately, I am unable to find a current link to Mr. Hyatt’s post, so with his permission, I am attempting to recreate his instructions here. His blog can be found here and there are a number of helpful and interesting reads there. For what I get right in this post, thank him, and any mistakes that occur are mine to accept.

This is the macro I am currently using

____________________________________________________________________________________

Sub WeeklyReview()

' Declare the variables:
Dim oMyTaskItem As TaskItem

On Error GoTo WeeklyReview_Error

    'Create Weekly Review Task #1:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 1. Clean Office and Gather Inboxes"
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

    'Create Weekly Review Task #2:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 2. Mind Sweep"
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

    'Create Weekly Review Task #3:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 3. Process Inboxes"
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

    'Create Weekly Review Task #4:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 4. Review Calendar "
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

    'Create Weekly Review Task #5:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 5. Review Current Projects"
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

    'Create Weekly Review Task #6:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 6. Review @Waiting For list"
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

    'Create Weekly Review Task #7:
    Set oMyTaskItem = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    oMyTaskItem.Subject = " 7. Review Someday/Maybe for Project Development"
    oMyTaskItem.Categories = "@ Computer"
    oMyTaskItem.StartDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.DueDate = Date
    oMyTaskItem.Save

Set oMyTaskItem = Nothing

On Error GoTo 0
Exit Sub

WeeklyReview_Error:

MsgBox "Error " & Err.Number & " (" & Err.Description & ") in procedure WeeklyReview of Module Utilities"
End Sub

____________________________________________________________________________________

You can easily add or remove tasks as you see fit just by copying and pasting more lines between the last “oMyTaskItem.Save” and “Set oMyTaskItem=Nothing”

You can also change the Categories if you need to. As I am not a programmer I am not sure if the date could be changed programmatically but there are numerous Outlook programming sites out there, the one I looked at the most was Sue Moshers’s site outlookcode.com. The forum is very friendly and helpful. (The geek in me is always looking for more ways to automate Outlook!)

Also, please note that there is a space between the first quote and the task number in each “oMyTaskItem.Subject=” line. This is because if there wasn’t, and the number of tasks was larger than 9, Outlook would sort them by the first digit in the to do list. Thus you would see task 1 then 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,2,20,21 and so on. It wasn’t an issue for this list as there is only seven tasks, but some of my work tasks are larger and it drove me nuts to have them out of order.

The instructions on how to add a macro to Outlook, and to create a button for easy access are posted here, so I won’t get in to any detail. If there are any questions I am more than happy to try and answer them, but as I mentioned earlier, I am not a programmer, or a “power user” so I may not be the most qualified to help.

So, to sum up my work flow, I have a recurring Appointment set for Friday evening called “Weekly Review.” When the time comes,I hit the Macro button named “Generate Weekly Review” and I have a list of tasks added to my To Do list. I do them in sequence, check them off as they are finished, and my work is done.

My next post may be delayed. Between my small business, university classes, and family responsibilities, I’m finding the I need to prioritize my commitments to be sure I succeed at them all.

Hmmmmm, maybe when I return that will be the topic of my next post, how I prioritize things.

Outlook And GTD (Process Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:54:00 +0000

The next section in my GTD system returns to Outlook in order organize the tasks by context, and one again I have a a macro that enables a search folder to look through out my PST and actually show the tasks that I have entered. And once again the net has proven to be a huge help, specifically Simon Guest’s post here. In it he supplies a macro that when run, builds two search folders that will show us both our tasks, and mail that is categorized by whatever we want. Simon writes much better than I can and is far more fluent with Outlook so rather than regurgitate his post, I will just recommend you read it there. After you have installed the macro as per his instructions come back and I will show how I use his work.

If you have followed Simon’s instructions you now have created a series of search folders. If you added the second macro, available in the comments, you also have shortcuts to the folders already on your shortcut bar. Simply drag the shortcuts underneath the “Next Actions” Header and you are done. Personally, I have deleted the “mail” search folders, because I use the “Create Task From Mail” and Create Appointment From Mail” macro we created in the Outlook and GTD (Process Part 1) post. As a housekeeping note, I can safely delete the original email as a copy is attached to appointment or task I created.

When you are finished you should have something that looks more or less like this;

As you can see I have created a search folder for each of the contexts I currently use, I have also changes the properties to show all items and not just the unread ones.

I have one other button on the GTD Toolbar in order to help me process. It is the “Generate Weekly Review” button. Like everything else I have cobbled together, this one came from someone other than myself. In this case it was Michael Hyatt who provided the light. Way back in 2004 he wrote a blog post on how to add a macro to Outlook 2003 that I followed to the letter that worked well in Outlook 2007. The post has since vanished, although Mr. Hyatt has several other interesting posts about GTD and many other things at his blog here.

Basically what the macro does is create seven tasks with a due date of today, and a category of @ computer to kick start my weekly review. With any kind of luck, I will post a link to Mr. Hyatt’s article in the near future.

Until then, it is time for me to focus on “Do”

OneNote and GTD (Process)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:51:00 +0000

There are as many ways to set up OneNote for GTD as there are individual Microsoft Office installations. Over the course of exploring other peoples GTD systems I read the blog posts at Seven Breaths, Manage This and more recently GTD Times and tried to implement something similar. But what I found was that most of my projects had next actions that took place at several different places (contexts) or the layout did not fit how I approach a project, so I set things up a little differently (Isn't that the beauty,(and the curse) of GTD, to be able to customise to such a great degree!!). I look at OneNote as primarily a data base for my projects and a holding system for my references (the next actions are all handled in Outlook). There are times when I want to see my projects in terms of what area of my life they impact, career, relationships,etc. But at other times I want an overview of what projects are being done currently, in the next year, etc, and I needed a system to facilitate this.

Set up

I have a single Notebook, with a tab (section) for Current Projects, a section group for “Life Planning” with a section for 1-2 Year Goals, 3-5 Year Goals, 5-25 year goals, a tab for Someday/Maybe, a section group for my journal, and a section group for references, broken up in sections with as much granularity as is needed for clarity. This basically means I have grouped the working portion of my projects according to how often they are reviewed. For my own situation, most projects are short term by the time they are fully planned out, so that is why I have the every thing longer than a year separated from current projects. (see screenshot at the end of this post)

I have created a tool bar with tags for each of the areas I want to be sure to focus on in my life (the 50,000 ft range), Spiritual, Physical, Relationships, Career and Development, Finances, and Contribution. This way, if I have a project that fits more than one area of focus it is tagged with both tags and I no longer have to button hole a project in only one way (My projects rarely fit into neat and clearly defined categories). Also on this tool bar is the “All Tagged Notes” button so I can easily see at a glance all the projects are fit under a certain category in the tags summary pane. The other tool bar I have open is the “Outlook Tasks” bar. I have set all the buttons to show both image and text. The process for doing all this is very similar to the one outlined in my previous posts for Outlook so I won’t go into that much detail here.

Using

I have use one page for each project and the title of the project is tagged with one or more of the “Area of Focus” buttons I set up as above. To date all of my projects have been able to fit their next action steps on a single page, but there are sub pages available if I need to plan or need to add a sub-project. Links to the reference section are easily implemented by right clicking any where on the reference page you are linking to and pasting the hyperlink in your project.

I do not flag all of my next actions as Outlook tasks. I do flag NA’s with an “@ OUT” or an “@ Phone” context as I usually need to know to do these things when I do not have access to OneNote. Because OneNote tags do not map onto Outlook categories automatically, you do have to open the Outlook task after flagging it as an Outlook task and set the category of the task manually, but you can do this within OneNote so it is only a small annoyance. I also flag smaller sub projects as Outlook tasks rather than each next action because I found that too much granularity in the task list caused me to focus more on the organization of the task list and less on actually doing the project. By this reasoning I also only flag those subprojects due in the next week. This also allows me to drag the sub-project task from the Todo Bar in Outlook onto the Calendar and be able to block a reasonable amount of time without having it too crowded by a large number of small but related appointments as it would be if I did it for each and every next action. But each next action is created in OneNote so if I do need it I can view it. It would be better if Outlook supported hierarchal tasks……but…

The title of the project is tagged with the appropriate areas of focus. I can hit the “All Tagged Notes…” button and get something that looks like this.

During my weekly review I assign the next batch of sub-projects as Outlook tasks for completion in the next week.

So to recap, reference material is sent to OneNote, either from Outlook, from the send to OneNote button in IE or from the print driver that is installed and thus any print enabled software on the computer. It is filed if it is a reference material, or developed into a proper GTD project and the next actions are sent back to Outlook and categorized by context. The project is then moved forward into the DO phase.

Next we will return to Outlook and set it up so we can look at these tasks we just created in their own search folder.

Outlook and GTD (Process Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:05:00 +0000

Now almost everything should be hitting Outlook and it should be as far from inbox zero as you can possibly get. Now we will get to the hard part, well not really hard, but nit picky stuff. I am going to assume you have added all your recurring events to your tasks list and have reminders set appropriately. As well, I am going to assume you have a general knowledge on how to navigate Outlook’s various features. Also, because I use OneNote, I will assume that you will use it too.

This method of organization relies heavily on the use of Outlook’s categories, on the use of the search folders to find the categories, and the shortcut bar to minimise the amount of screen real estate dedicated to organizing our inbox.

Outlook’s categories are used as contexts. Physical places where I typically do the work has the “@” prefix before the place, @ Home, @ Out, @ Office, etc. If I am waiting for someone else to do something, but want to keep track of it, I prefix their name a “^” symbol, thus ^ Spouse, ^ Kid, etc. I do not have a “someday/maybe” category in Outlook because those are typically projects by nature and are kept in OneNote. I also use categories for items that are for information, but there is no prefix, for example, Bills. So the task “pay power bill” has two categories attached to it, both @Computer and Bills. This is so I can search (using a search folder) both the “Bills” category for a quick overview of my bills, and also will let me see what I need to do when I am at the computer by opening the “@ Computer” search folder.

All my tasks are synced with my Blackberry with their software, and I can filter the task view to just look at the “@ Out” tasks or any category I need at the time. This means that I now have a list of things to do while I am out that is easily accessible.

Now lets set up the automated portion of your reading, namely emails and RSS feeds. First, Set outlook to open to the calendar window every time I opened it. (Tools—> Options—> Other Tab—> Advanced Options) Click the “Browse” Button next to “Start up in this folder:” and select you primary calendar. Also while you are here make sure the “Sync RSS feeds to the Common Feed List” is checked if you use IE for feeds. Be sure the Task working hours per day, and week numbers fit your schedule and click “OK” and “OK” again. to exit options.

Next click “view” on the menu bar and ensure the navigation pane is “on.” Also ensure the “Todo Bar” is “normal” and the task list is checked. ( I unchecked the rest, but you may prefer not to.)

Next, click on the Shortcut link at the bottom of the Navigation Pane. Click “Add New Group” and label it “Next Actions” Repeat three more times, and label the new groups Incoming, Reading, and Filing Cabinet. I organized the groups so that Next Actions is at the top of the list to indicate that this is a time management system and not an email system, but you are free to organize them how ever you want.

Next click the folder list icon at the bottom of the Navigation Pane ( It looks like a folder) and browse to the search folder list. I deleted all the existing search folders and started from scratch, but once again if the folders are searching relevant things for you just use them. One thing to remember, Search folders do not span multiple PST’s. If you have different IMAP or HTML mail set up each will have it’s own PST file and will need to have its own Search folder set up.

To create a search folder for, say Twitter and Facebook, right click on “Search Folders” and then “New Search Folder…”

The new Search Folder window will pop up. Scroll down to “Create a Custom Search Folder” then click “Choose…” (Do this rather than use the ready made criteria because if you want to modify the criteria at a later date you can.) Now the Custom Search Folder window appears. Give your folder a name, say “Tweets & Updates” and then click the “Criteria…” button. You can now browse the tabs and pick which attributes you want this search folder to search for. For simplicities sake, I will check “only Items that are: unread”

Click OK and you are back to Custom Search Folder window. Click “Browse…” and un check the root folder and the “Search subfolders” box. Next expand the RSS Feeds and check the Folder of the Feeds you want to view, in this case the Tweets folder and the XXX Friends Status updates folder.

Click OK all the way back out and you now have a search folder that will show you all the unread tweets and status updates from Facebook. (For instructions on how to get the Status updates from Facebook Click Here.)

Rinse and repeat for each grouping of feeds you have and slice and dice the criteria until you have a search folder system that works for you. I read blogs from about twenty or so sources, with each one posting on average five or six posts a day. This is in addition to the tweets and status updates from Facebook. The Feeds cover a variety of topics, so I have a search folder named by the topics covered for each group of related feeds that only pulls from those particular feeds.

You can also use Outlook’s rules to move any mail from newsletters, or mailing lists to their own folders from the inbox, and then add the mail folder to appropriate search folder just the same as you did for a feed.

Next, right click on each of the search folders you created and click properties. Be sure the button to the left of “Show total number of items” is checked, and click OK. Do this for each inbox you have as well.

You now have a group of search folders that spans your PST file and organizes your Blogs and mailing lists into a more manageable layout. Remember to do this for each PST file Outlook accesses, or use Outlook rules to move the message to the appropriate folder in your Personal Folders PST.

Next, click on the shortcut button at the bottom of the navigation pane again and click on“Add New Shortcut” , Navigate to the search folders and click on your newly created search folder. Repeat for each search folder you created. You can now Drag and Drop the search folder shortcuts to the appropriate group heading . and you are done. Now all your reading material is organized and any new material is be automatically sorted and presented in a more meaningful manner.

Add a new shortcut for each separate inbox you have, and place them under the “Incoming” Heading. I also have a shortcut to each junk mail folder and deleted items folder placed under the “Filing Cabinet” header so I don’t forget to empty them or scan them quickly for misplaced mail. My set of folders looks like this:

There is one last thing to note. Unless you intend to keep every last feed, status update, and tweet forever, you should change the auto archive setting for each folder the mail actually gets delivered to. For most feeds and tweets I have set the root folder to automatically delete each feed, tweet, and update after they are more than three days old. I accomplished this by right clicking the folder and choosing properties.

Then click the “Auto Archive” tab and set the folder up as follows

Every time you subscribe to a new feed you must do the above step. By default, regardless of what the auto archive settings are, new feed folders are set to never archive. Very quickly you will have a PST folder that is so large Outlook hangs if you are following a number of prolific writers.

Finally, after I set each folder up with how long I want to keep it I set Auto archive to run every day. To find this setting click on the Tools Menu, click Options, click on the Other Tab and Click on the “AutoArchive…” button. Then set your options to look like this:

The primary thing here is to be sure that the checkbox at the top is checked and it is set to run every day.

If you want to keep a specific post or email, simply highlight the post in the main window and click the send to OneNote button. It will now be in the unfiled notes section in one note ready to be tagged and filed in your reference section in OneNote.

If an email or post requires just a single next action or just the scheduling of an appointment, it is a pain in the butt to send it to OneNote and then back to Outlook. So to deal with that you can do one of two things, just flag it so it appears on the todo list or create a task or appointment with a macro. I prefer to use the macros because I can then be sure the task will have a proper subject. The task list is about next actions, and next actions begin with a verb. (“Do something” or” Call someone” for example.) After much mucking about on my own, I found numerous helpful people on the web who had done something similar. So with much trial and error I now have two buttons on their own tool bar named “ Create Task from Mail” and “Create Appointment from Mail”

The Create Appointment macro, I found here, and the Create Task macro I found here. ( The task macro was written for Outlook 2003 but I have found it to work in 2007 as well.) There are instructions on how to add the macros to Outlook here.

Now we need to create a toolbar to put those macros where we can easily access them when we need them. Click Tools –> Customise.

The Customise window appears, Click “New…” and name your new toolbar (I left it as custom 1because I already have a GTD toolbar), and a toolbar will appear to the right of the window.

Click the Commands tab and highlight Macros category. Drag you newly created macros onto the tool bar. You should now have a tool bar that looks like this.

Right click on each of the buttons and rename them to something that is less wordy. You can change the button image if you like. You can also drag to “Send to OneNote button to this tool bar as well. Then when you are done modifying click the close button at the bottom of the Customise window. Drag your new toolbar up to the other tool bars reside and place where it is accessible to you, and we are done with the set up, for now…. (insert evil laugh here).

So what have we accomplished. A mail, blog post, tweet or status update comes into Outlook. It is sorted into the appropriate search folder automatically. Those items that are just short term reading or not important information can be left alone after they are read because they are cleared out automatically in a day or so. There is a one button action if you need to book an appointment, there is an action button if you need to assign a next action, and there is an action button (send to OneNote) if it needs to be kept for future reference or is needing to be developed into a full project. A little more processing in OneNote is all that needs to be done and the process section of GTD is done.

Now while I could stay with Outlook (there will be another macro or two before we are finished) for the next post, I think I will move on to OneNote so that the processing step will be complete before I go on to Do.

Outlook and GTD (Capture)

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:13:00 +0000

This post is all about how I capture everything and move it into Outlook for processing. The actual processing is usually rather quick, but getting it set up is at least its own post, and perhaps two, and takes a fair bit of time to set up.

Outlook is my primary window for social networks (Twitter and Facebook), my News Aggregator, and my email client for POP3, IMAP, and HTML mail services. I am not running an exchange server, however I do use the Outlook Connector from Microsoft to bring in my Hotmail account. Gmail is brought in as an IMAP folder rather than POP mail to keep the PST file Outlook uses smaller. POP mail from my ISP is pretty standard and needs no explanation.

Outgoing items to Twitter and Facebook are enabled with two add-ins from TechHit; TwInbox and FBlook. I however prefer to get the updates from Facebook friends and my tweeps in Outlook as a message so I can use organise them properly, and automate them as much as possible. To get the status updates from your friends as a message, you need to use these instructions to get an RSS feed for Facebook. TwInbox put the tweets in a separate folder as a note so nothing else is needed at this stage of the game.

Speaking of RSS feeds, I use IE8 for browsing for many reasons but an added perk is when I find a feed I want to subscribe to, it is automatically added to the feed list in Outlook when I subscribe in IE.

In my previous post, I made passing mention to Note2Self, my mobile capture on the Blackberry. It has become my “ubiquitous capture device.” With it I can record a voice message and the program emails it to me. This allows me to capture on the fly and be sure that all of my ideas (mind clutter mostly!) is in a single place.

Most of my non-electronic inputs (read snail mail) usually hits one of my physical inboxes, but surprisingly, very little of it is immediately actionable. Most of it is recurring items, the reminders for which are already set up either as tasks or as appointments.

As each monthly item (bills are a good example of this) came in I entered it as a recurring monthly task with a due date and a start date (a week before it comes due) and gave it two categories, @Computer and Bills. The paper bill goes into the “outstanding bills” folder in my vertical file folder on my desk until I actually make the payment. Credit card statements go here too as they need to be paid. Bank account statements go into the “reconciling” folder with a task set to “reconcile statements in quicken” as that recurring task with similar categories. Automatic withdrawals are set up as all day events on my calendar categorized as “Bills” rather than tasks as they require no action on my part, although if finances are tight you might want to consider including a task to check balances a few days before each one comes due so you have a reminder. Everything else is either reference, and filed in the filing cabinet, or recycling and filed in that box.

This pretty much covers the things that are “pushed” to me. For the things I need to “pull” I set a recurring task to “download XXX and process,” and give it appropriate categories. For example my kids monthly school calendar, which tells me when there is no school, early dismissal, etc, etc, is posted online only. I also use a reminder task to “get so and so’s schedule”
if I need to have it entered on my calendar for information purposes.

(Yeah , yeah, I know. Technically when I am processing a “pull” action I am actually executing a next action, but the only difference between that and “pure capture” is that I don’t have a recurring daily task that says “open mail.” Besides, the end result is more projects, next actions and reference material, so I am including it in the capture section.)

So now most, but not all (I still mess up and think “I’ll remember that!” but forget it moments after I think it.) of the information I use and read over the course of a day is in one place. Next, organising and automating.

My GTD Setup

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:18:00 +0000

This is going to be the first of a series of articles on my GTD set up and how I tweaked it to fit my needs. I follow the GTD workflow model of Capture and Process into Do, Defer and Delegate categories, and I will take a side journey into the realm of “Should-ing” ( how I determined which projects were the right ones for me to take on) as I explain how I use several tools in managing both life planning and how I deal with the everyday interruptions that inevitably occur.

Tools

Getting Things Done: The Art Of Stress-Free Productivity

The very first tool is David Allen’s book. The processes explained within it are some of the best when it comes to dealing with the things that come into my sphere of influence when they have little or no structure in and of themselves. If you haven't read it yet, you should, but if you just want a primer click here. He has written follow ups to the book that expand on areas, but for pure basics it is the best place to start. The remainder of my posts will assume you have a fair understanding of the GTD process so I will not do a rehash of this system, but will concentrate on the modifications I implemented.

My own set up has a decidedly electronic bent present in the implementation, even though most of my inputs are non electronic in nature. I will list the tools first and then go into the modification I made to each in follow up posts.

Planning

Planning is probably the weakest part of my GTD set up. I have really tried to find a perfect fit for me, but have been unable to do so. All the different tools allow for some, but not all of the functions I need. I am current working with OneNote 2007 to see if it’s tagging abilities will let me slice and dice the plans up to look at every project individually as well as by timeframe. I think I am making it too complicated, but any system has to be trusted and should be bent to the need of the individual not have the individual make all the adjustments.

Reference

My primary reference holder is also done with OneNote. It is here that I can contain most of the reference material I need to keep as well as plan my larger projects , and have the ability to link the action steps to my other tool, Outlook 2007. I have had OneNote available to me for some time now, but have only recently been using it as my main filing system for virtual documents. I have installed Microsoft Live Mesh on my computer, and through that, the OneNote folder is synced with the cloud so I can access the same files on my laptop if needed.

Another reference bin is a physical filing cabinet, with one drawer for the current items (bills, statements and other such what have you), one drawer for archive, one drawer for unused supplies (file folders). It is organised much like it is suggested in Getting Things Done.

On my desk is a vertical file holder that serves as a holder for the the short term recurring items, like monthly bills, and for the project folders that are frequently updated. For example, through out the year personal income tax receipts are kept in the filing cabinet but that folder gets moved into the vertical holder when there is less than two months to go until the filing deadline.

Capture and Process

Outlook eventually captures and sorts everything that happens on the daily level. It has been customised to a fair degree and as such it deserves its’ own post. I have two in baskets in my home, one by the phone in our main living area and one on my desk in the office. I carry a Blackberry with Note2self installed on it to get the random ideas into my inbox at home. As well I carry a Dayrunner zippered binder when I run errands. It is here in Outlook that the Calendaring and Action lists get pushed to the daily action plan. Applying the GTD methodology is where I have spent the most time to date in modifying Outlook.

The next post will deal with Outlook and the modifications I made to make it usable for me.

Twitter feed!

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:10:00 +0000

I have connected to twitterfeed so that any new posts I make will result in a link back to my blog. After all there is no point to having a blog where you want to share things with the world if no one knows it is there.

The next step is content.

I an a voracious reader of personal development literature, and follower of GTD principles. I have taken a lot from several sources on the net and I have modified and amalgamated most into my own personal system. I will post how I have done that, and what tools I use.

I have also returned to University(hence the GTD system)at the age of 38 and will soon be looking for a job.

I also follow the stock markets and am interested in what affects them from a macro perspective. (although Nassim Taleb has shaken my belief in the ability forecast.)

So I should have lots to talk about. Let's enjoy the journey.

First post

noreply@blogger.com (mustardb) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:54:00 +0000

With this blog I am going to try to collate a selection of topics I find interesting to me. This is a learning process so I will be likely incoherent at times as I figure out code and absent other times. I intend to integrate Wave into the blog so we can have interactive discussions when the technology releases.

Wish me luck.