RestartGTD

Great Old (2010) GTD Post! “Confessions of a recovering lifehacker”

bill@basicip.com — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:53:19 +0000

Just saw “Confessions of a recovering lifehacker” on Hacker News (best cross fertilized informational site I have found) yesterday and it has been ringing my bell ever since. What are we doing GTD for? When does GTD shade into being OCD? What do I want from the big picture of my life?

Check it out!

bill meade

Organize just for fun!

bill@basicip.com — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:11:02 +0000

Source: blog.jokeroo.com

Wow, school is out for summer! W000t! Now I’ve got a little more time to play with GTD. This post is about some frivolous organizing infrastructure. Hit delete now if you are not in the mood to smile!

Ran into a couple of Umbra products on Amazon that made me laugh. First, the Umbra drinking buddy. Which will allow guests to use identical wine glasses without sharing viable saliva. Always a good thing!!!!

Source: Amazon.com

Second, was the Umbra double-barreled invisible magazine rack, which seems ideal for the only room in the house where an 8 year old boy can have any privacy.

Source: Amazon.com

And as I was tripping over these two Umbra products, I realized that I already own a third umbra product, Umbra’s invisible bookshelf. I used these book shelves to add more capacity to my office library shelves. I have stacking foldable bookshelves in the office that are attached side by side. I attached the invisible shelves perpendicular to the sides of the folding shelves. Books of special honor go on the invisible shelves: Peter Drucker, Guy Kawasaki, Geoffrey Moore, Steve Blank, Eric Ries.

Source: Amazon.com

Have a great day … now that school is out, don’t forget to enjoy summer!! It is so summery in Portlandia, that it is almost not … raining!!!

bill meade

Short page on the howtos on how to drag and drop files into Evernote

bill@basicip.com — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:51:31 +0000

Source: Pyzam.com

Just added a short page to the howto which explains what I had to learn in order to successfully drag files into Evernote. A surprisingly large number of people who try Evernote, run into this speed bump. Exasperation early in trying a new software package, defeats many software packages. Evernote is not perfect, but once you know the drag and drop *trick* you have smooth sailing while you add your documents.

bill meade

Why and How to install Evernote Web Clipper

bill@basicip.com — Fri, 18 May 2012 06:02:02 +0000

Source: back2basics.hubpages.com

New article on: (a) why install Evernote’s web clipper and (b) how to install Evernote’s Web Clipper … in Google Chrome on the RestartGTD howto pages.

Source: Evernote.com

How to set up ScanSnap presets on RestartGTD Howto pages

bill@basicip.com — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:02:38 +0000

Source: http://www.beneaththecover.com

There is a new howto page up today about how to manage presets in Fujitsu’s ScanSnap software. The longer you have a ScanSnap, the more ways you find you can use your scanner. Not just for scanning to PDFs, but to email, to Evernote, scanning for electronic deposits, etc. This post shows you several setups and explains how they are similar and different, and how you can preset these setups so you can switch quickly between scanning tasks.

bill meade

How to scan business cards, step-by-step with YouYube Video

bill@basicip.com — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:37:08 +0000

Source: Purchased from ShutterStock.com

Hey!

FYI, I just added a static page on How Tos, where the first how to is on scanning business cards. This page includes a link to a home made restartgtd.com YouTube video of the business cards moving through the ScanSnap scanner. In my Getting (re)started with GTD classes, when the students see how fast the duplex scanning operates, they immediately flip the mental bit related to being able to catch up with paper. If paper (or business cards have you down) you may want to check out the video.

Resistance is futile, you need to buy a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner to get paper assimilated!

bill meade

Fantasy GTD Offices

bill@basicip.com — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:34:48 +0000

Source: Office Design Gallery

Introduction:

A little more snooping around the internet has produced the polar opposite of “No money down GTD.” These are real offices that are tricked out in spare no expense creativity.

GTD Friendly?

The idea I like the best is the IL CONTE OFFICE (scroll to the bottom of Office Design Gallery’s web page). Why?

Because the environment is mostly white, and does not have pictures of people, or clutter, directly in front of the work stations.
I think the fake tree branches provide a sense of separation. They are not vegetable barbed wire by any means, but still, there is a sense of separation providing autonomy of thought in these work spaces.
Desks are big.
IL CONTE just looks like an office that is “mind like water” friendly.

GTD missing?

3 Tray in-box. The surface of the desks are so clean, it seems like a 3 tray in-box would have to appear from out of the wall, or pop up from the surface of the desk. But, it definitely needs the in-box.
Project folder infrastructure. The 3 drawer floating sideboard might be enough to store project folders in, but I doubt it.
Monitor arm to get the iMacs up in the air so that 100% of the desk space can be used for arranging cards.

Why look at all these desks and offices?

In economics a distinction is made between “search goods” and “experience goods“. Search goods are products or services that you can observe characteristics that you need before purchase. For example, medicines. You know the milligrams of each medicine you need, so you can buy a generic that is equivalent to a prescription drug.

At the other extreme are experience goods where the characteristics of value are difficult or impossible to observe before purchase. Experience goods split wants from needs. Especially in new technology areas, at first people can only tell you what they want, not what they need. After people go over the learning curve with a new product category, they can articulate what they need. But, not until.

Example experience good: Jamba Juice.

One day while my wife and I were in Jamba Juice and Beth was in front of me in line to order. She was taking a long time deciding what fruit-mulch drink to choose. I heard myself say “Honey, these are experience goods, you can’t compute the best one to choose. Just start at the upper left hand corner and work you way down each time you come!” Beth was not offended, and we still enjoy discussing how to choose experience goods, from the top left or bottom right of the list.

So what?

Offices are experience goods. Desks are experience goods. GTD is an experience good. Each GTD sub-component is an experience good. You have to try each of these, try satisfying a want, in order to gather the information on what your true needs are. Wants are stepping stones to needs.

Economics also talks about “credence goods” where it is difficult for consumers to ascertain the impact of the good. Lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc. all tend to be credence goods.

Is GTD a credence good?

I don’t think so. Since starting GTD I’ve *felt* my productivity increase, then plateau as I figure out how to plug leaks in my system, and then rise once the leaks are plugged. After the initial rise-plateau-rise pattern, I’ve plateaued as I experimented by swapping out components (Evernote for paper reference filing).

I’ve also felt my level of stress reduce. Of course what I did with that was to take on more work so that my level of stress rose back up to historic levels. But at least I was getting a bunch more done for the stress!

Here are the tiny-poll results to date on the ways GTD improves productivity for other restartGTDers:

Enjoy!

bill meade

Traveling GTD Desk Zoo

bill@basicip.com — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 02:25:48 +0000

Introduction:

I stumbled into a great apartmenttherapy.com article from 2008 that was looking back at desks designed in 1996. All these designs and designers are new to me. They form a kind of traveling desk zoo for the enjoyment of restartgtd.com folk.

Source: apartmenttherapy.com

This sports fans, is a 35 meter desk! A single desk! Now THAT is space to spread out into! Called the “carte blanche love table” by designer Edouard François

Source: en.bulo.com

Fun Facts:

The cacti are called “vegetable barbed wire” and were incorporated to create a sense of private property and distance
Everyone works at the same table, but each person has their own space Genius!!!!
en.bulo.com has a bunch of other cool 1996 desk concepts in a collection called Carte Blanch

Carte Blanche Collection High Points:

For example: Bram Boo’s OVERDOSE

Source: en.bulo.com

Annabelle d’Huart’s Studiolo

Source: en.bulo.com

… and …

Source: en.bulo.com

Bulo’s motto is “LOVE YOUR OFFICE” and the above desks were developed around the following theme:

The basic idea behind the Carte Blanche concept, created in 1996, is to invite creative people to express their vision of the ideal workplace, free from any constraints.

Enjoy!

bill meade

No Money Down GETTING THINGS DONE!

bill@basicip.com — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:57:36 +0000

Introduction!

Taught my “Getting (re)started with GTD” class last weekend. One student needed to apply GTD without cash out of pocket. So, I’ve been thinking about how to get started with GTD without spending anything.

So, below please find the GTD office available for no money down (but you have to drive to pick everything up, so alas, there are time and gas costs included) available in Portland on 2012/04/25. *Note* the links to Craigslist don’t live long, but they worked when I wrote this post. More important items have the picture that was up with the post.

An office, for free?

Step 1: Get a desk. Portland’s Craigslist is a treasure trove of free desk options. For example:

Source: Portland Craigslist Free

Step 2: Get organizing supplies like:

hanging file folders (Urban League of Portland)
home fax machine (Sharp plain paper inkjet fax from Vancouver WA – home of HP inkjets!)
A wood credenza to boost your desk space up to 30 square feet and give you some drawers and cabinets to organize with

Office chair (on the first page of Freecycle there were 4 chairs and 3 desks with chair on offer)
Day Planner/Organizer: Freecycle:
“American Tourister day planner/organizer. 3-ring binder inside. Will hold a full notepad. Still has the calculator and a sharpie type pen inside. Inside pocket is torn on the bottom but is still very usable. Full-outside zipper.”
Desk Organizer
HP Laser Printer or Dell All in one printer
Stackable Paper Trays
Paper shredder
IKEA lamps
Pads of paper for lists, and phone notes
Old (but fully functional) Apple iBook (Barbie design)
Briefcase/Laptop carrying bag
HP ScanJet 5550c scanner (never used)
File cabinet
Manila file folders

With all the free stuff listed to this point in the blog post, you have everything you need to implement GTD with a manual system. But, you are not limited to a manual system. Using community provided computers (libraries, coffee shops) you can digitize much of your GTD system, especially the pieces of your system that interact with your colleagues and peers. So, on to step 3 …

Step 3: Take advantage of free electronic infrastructure.

Evernote free account gives you 60 megabytes of upload a month for no charge.
Google Drive/Docs Gives you an MS Office substitute, and a Dropbox substitute. Also gives you email, streaming music from the net, picture editing, and picture web hosting, etc., etc., etc. And, if you don’t own your own computer, this will allow you to share and store documents with your class mates and you can access your stuff from any web connected computer. *Note* Concordia University where I teach, allows students to check out Dell laptops with wireless in the library and at the computer help desk. We also have computer labs to provide access to the internet.
MicroSoft SkyDrive which currently gives you 25 gigabytes of cloud storage for 1 year for free. Sign up and then go to account upgrades and take the free upgrade from 5 gigabytes (normal storage available) to 25 gigabytes.
Kindle Reader. If you don’t own your own laptop, you can still download (thousands of) free Kindle books and read them with Amazon’s Cloud reader. If you have a laptop, you can download the free Kindle software (PC Mac) and read books on your computer and up to 5 other devices (phone, iPad, Cloud reader, etc.).

Conclusion:

The basic infrastructure you need to start implementing GTD is available all around you if you live in or near Portland Oregon. Probably, the bigger the city, the better infrastructure available. Even though I thought I “knew” about craigslist and free cycle I did not realize how rich these are as resources to get people booted up on GTD.

Hope this helps!

bill meade

Give clutter air!

bill@basicip.com — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:52:37 +0000

Just saw a creative inspiring post on apartment therapy. The idea is to use the Asker counter organizer from Ikea.

Source: Apartmenttherapy.com

Ikea Spotting has a similar desk arrangement with tons of Ikea storage tools that get the clutter up above the desk so the workers won’t see the clutter on the desk. This does not hold the laptop up with a dish drainer (Wow!), but you can imagine yourself sitting at this desk and getting things done.

Source: Ikeaspotting.tumblr.com

As I hypothesized in the post on the “good enough” home desk, I think that the surface of the desk being clear is critical to my clear headedness. Not saying that this is for everyone, but it works for me.

I would alter the above two desks by raising the hanging bars 6″ each. That gives you surface to 6″ up that is clutter free. Next, I would get all the device clutter (speakers, iPhone dock, iMac stand) off the desk with either arms or more Asker hangers. No wires. No clutter. No hangups to thinking with your hands on the desk surface.

bill meade