Simplicity Is Bliss

I fiddled around quite a bit with my perspectives in OmniFocus and at one point in time I had more than 15 perspectives, which was absolutely useless. Hence I took some time to bring it down to the minimum of perspectives I need. Here they are. I do not use "Flagged" and "Completed", but they are default perspectives of OmniFocus that you can not delete.

             

Click here to download:

OmniFocus_perspectives_revisti.zip (675 KB)

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Dealing with file clutter remains a challenge for all of us that like to increase their personal productivity and review, filter, sort and file new documents or downloads as effective and efficient as possible, but at the same time make sure we are able to retrieve them in at least the same time.

Sticking with Finder

Personally, I've tried many solution to deal with file clutter. I went from "heavy-weight" file management solution like Yojimbo, Together or DevonThink to more "light-weight" ones such as Shovebox. None of them really did the job for me as I've either seen to slow performance, have been over oder underwhelmed by the the available features, but most of the time I just missed the Mac OS X Finder, which I think is still the best file management available.

The simple and minimalistic, but efficient solution

Hence I wanted a minimalistic, Finder-based document management approach that complied with the GTD methodology and delivered the greatest possible integration with Mac OS X. Finder was the choice, however, what I missed in Finder, and that was really the only thing I missed, was the ability to tag files. So my solution to deal with file clutter involves Tags from GravityApps to apply tags to all my documents (Tags goes way beyond this, by the way). In addition I was looking to make the entire process as keyboard centric as possible, especially the part where I move the documents in the appropriate folder. LaunchBar, a Quicksilver equivalent, does a great job for me in that respect. Watch my screencast above to get a glimpse of my simple solution in action.

You will also see how I organise my documents and especially dealing with reference material, being the GTDer I am, in the video.

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"...There are many like it but this one is mine. My Weekly Review is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my Weekly Review is useless. Without my Weekly Review I am useless."

There have been many posts on GTD Weekly Reviews and so I felt it would not create any harm if I would post mine as well. As stated in the modified quote from Full Metal Jacket above, it is the Weekly Review that works for me. Friday is where I have a standing appointment with myself to do my Weekly Review in a 2h timeframe. Usually it takes me a bit less, but that allows me to also review other aspects or higher planning levels like Areas of Responsibility or Goals.

I use a OmniOutliner Pro template and create a fresh checklist from it every time I do my review. The structure of the checklist is pretty straight forward.

Getting clear

This is where I collect all loose papers and files including

• Business Cards, that hide in my briefcase or collection file
• Receipts and everything else that piled up in my purse
• Papers and notes I took in meeting and stuffed into my collecting file
• Everything else that is in my notebook bag and does not belong there
• Pictures I took with my iPhone (download to iPhoto)

Next step is to clear all my inboxes including

• My Mail.App inboxes (Business account and GMail account)
• My physical inboxes in the Office and at Home
• Messages on my business and mobile voicemail
• All notes and snippets I collected with Evernote which go automatically in my Evernote inbox notebook
• All downloads and attachments which all live in my Downloads folder
• News articles from RSS feeds that I have flagged in NetNewsWire

Finally I start emptying my head (limited to five minutes) by

• Taking a blank paper and sit down
• Reviewing the GTD trigger list

Getting current

This is the big review galore which includes

• Reviewing past (last week) and future (4-6 weeks out) calendar data in iCal
• Reviewing my recent digital meeting notes which I collect using a Finder Smart Folder
• Reviewing my next action list by context which also includes the '@Action' folder in Mail.app
• Reviewing my waiting for list which also includes the '@Waiting' folder in Mail.app
• Reviewing my project list and moving all project that do not have a next action into Someday/Maybe
• If I have any relevant checklists, I also consultant them at this point

Getting creative

This is where I use all remaining time to ponder around Someday/Maybe and higher planning levels

• Reviewing Someday/Maybe list
• Being creative and courageous looking at what really has my attention on my job, environment and family

My Weekly Review checklist is now working for me since a long time. Individual needs and environment may be different, but hopefully my Weekly Review provided some inspiration for you.

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Collectors, yes, collectors. That is what we all are when we start out with Getting Things Done (GTD) or any other productivity method. We collect everything around us and put it on our task, project or someday/maybe list. And this is not a bad thing, but it is just the beginning. Unfortunately many of us just stop at this stage. While it is understandable that the act of "collect" already provides some relief, David Allen put it very well in his recent book "Making it All Work"

If you try to skip this stage of thinking [clarification], you will never see any light at the end of the tunnel, and you'll be continually compensating by trying out the latest gadgets that still somehow don't provide what you need, the way you need it. Once you really integrate this clarification process into your life- and work style, you will find yourself comfortable with a wide range of tools that can genuinely work for you. If you haven't applied this process, nothing will seem to serve you very well.

What are all those things on your lists?

It is less about having everything nicely written and collected in your (currently) favorite list manager, it is about making sense of all those items, your commitments that go with them and eventually what they mean to you and your life.

Being a collector type may cause you big trouble. Since you grab everything around you without any sort of reflection, you may very easily be overwhelmed by what all seems to be on your plate. In essence you just transformed unstructured (mental) clutter into structured clutter by writing it on a list.

While having it on a list is good, otherwise you would not be in a position to clarify it, just putting it there and think you just became productive is just damn wrong. This is where you need to evolve to the next stage and apply the process of clarification to what is on your list. This, by the way, is also why the god of productivity invented the Inbox, a place where the clutter goes, and when it leaves the Inbox, the clutter has some meaning (and if it is only 'rubbish').

Clarify what comes your way

So here is something where no tools what so ever can help you with: The simple 'taking some time and think about it'-step that is required for every true productivity approach.

1. Put it ALL to the Inbox first. Pretty simple, ain't it? So why haven't you been doing it? Instead you just put it on one of your list right-away. Just because something seems to naturally require a call or belong to a certain project, it is not enough of a reason to blindly put it on the corresponding list.
2. Take Inbox processing serious. If you fail at the beginning the rest of your productivity setup will be a disaster. Even though Inbox processing should be on your daily schedule, you should take your time and process your Inbox(s) seriously. Look at things and make decisions, take your time and think about them and never ever put them back into the Inbox.
3. Figure out what the stuff at hand means. What is it that you have collected into your Inbox? Is it a small thing that can be done rather quickly? Is it potentially a large project? Does it help you with any of your goals? ... There are many questions to ask yourself and that help you reflect on what landed on your plate.
4. Take your time. This is maybe the most important advice when it comes to Inbox processing. Many of us just quickly scan through the Inbox and put things on to lists where we feel they belong and this happens in fractions of seconds thanks to all the tools and scripts we have installed. But figuring out what a particular item in your inbox means to you takes more time. Not that much that you'll be processing your Inbox for hours everyday, but enough too make sure your downstream productivity is excellent.
5. Think about your Areas of Responsibility. If you are a good GTDer you have sorted out your 20.000ft perspective and know, or at least have a list, of your Areas of Responsibility. A quick cross-check of stuff coming your way and whether it falls into any of your Areas of Responsibility already applies a good filter. You certainly want to make sure you work on things that are within your responsibility, and if not you at least make a conscious decision to work on something outside of them.
6. Make your goals your first priority. A even more effective filter is thinking of your goals (30.000ft) when skimming your inbox. What helps me moving forward with my goals and what not? This massively reduced the amount of tasks that you take on and you will find yourself moving far more things to Someday/Maybe, delegating or simply trashing. Productivity ain't no fun if you don't get back satisfaction from reaching the goals you set - so make them your priority.
7. Get down to the essence of the stuff. Take your time and brainstorm a bit what it is and means that you have in front of you. You don't need to fire up your mind mapping tool every time to do this, it is efficient to just take that minute or two and think about what that is that came your way. Sometimes what has been considered a small (2 minute) tasks turns out to be more of a project and sometimes even something that impacts higher levels of your planning. Just writing it on some list and go on may not reveal this fact to you.
8. Figure out what it really takes. That's where David Allen would virtually put the "Natural Planning" flag up into the air. It is really important to understand what you want to get out of a something you take on (or delegate!) and consequently look at all the aspects that need to be considered (here is where mind mapping may actually deliver great value!). Once you are done with this you will have such a solid understanding of the subject at hand that it'll simply come natural to you to organise the activities required and come up with a crystal clear, physical next action. And that's what you can put on one of your lists.
9. Manage your commitment. Every time you take something on, you are making a commitment. Very often with somebody else like your manager our your spouse, but every single time also with yourself. There are clear quality standards and expectations you have of yourself and you'd like to keep up with them. By making to many commitments you'll either lose control of your time management or you sacrifice your standards. None of this should happen if you clarified what it takes to complete a project or task and how this resonates with the already existing commitments.
10. Defer and delegate MORE. All of the above may not help you that much with stopping that constant flow of stuff coming your way. But by clarifying it better, you can make more conscious decision of what to pursue actively and what to defer. Stuff that isn't your responsibility or does not support any of your goals gets delegated easier when you clarified it before. In essence good clarification of stuff will help you to move more things into Someday/Maybe or Waiting For.

The disservice of Tools

Although I have said earlier that no tools can help you with this type of clarification and me being a great fan of productivity tools and list managers (as you can tell from my blog), I believe that when it comes to clarification many, if not all, of the tools are actually doing more than not helping you with it, they provide a disservice with all the keyboard short-cuts, integration and automation. Hence you need to take the decision yourself to first clarify what is in that Inbox before hitting that key that pulls it straight to one of your lists.

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I've recently published an Applescript that, with some help of MailTags automatically adds emails by which you delegated tasks to OmniFocus. Since only minimal adjustments in the code were required to make it work for Things as well, I've modified the script accordingly. Please refer to the original post for more details on functionality and background information since I'll keep it short in this post.

Script Functionality

1. Based on a specific MailTag in Mail.app you can invoke a outbox rule which will start the script (I use "@Waiting" in MailTags as well and simply applied it to those emails I write which need to be tracked for response)
2. The script adds a task with the title "<recipient> to come back re <subject>". The text in the middle can be configured in the script and if you have more than one recipient (CC and BCC recipients are ignores) the script will take the first recipient and add "and x more" automatically.
3. The task includes a link back to the original message in the notes section (and the actual mail body, if desired), is automatically assigned with a "@waiting" tag (configurable) and placed into Things' inbox
4. If you have Growl installed and running, the script will give visual feedback once the task has been created

Installation of the script

1. You will need MailTags from Indev to later built the proper Mail.app outbox rule
2. Download the script and copy it into your standard script directory, e.g. ~/Users/<your username>/Library/Scripts/
3. Modify the script configuration based on your needs and setup
4. Create a outbox rule in Mail.App that invokes the script if specific conditions, i.e. MailTags Keyword of the message is "@Waiting", are met

Customising the key parameters

Inside the script you can and very likely should change some configuration properties to match your requirements and setup.

• property mailBody : true - You should change this setting to 'false' if you do not want the entire body text of the email to be pasted into the Things task's note section.
• property MidFix : "to come back re" - Change this text to whatever you like to see in the task title between the email recipient's name and the email's subject.
• property myWFTag : "@waiting" - This variable needs to exactly match the name of the tag in Things that you'd like to use for "Waiting For" items, i.e. "@waiting".

Creating the outbox rule in Mail.app

Next you need to create a outbox rule in Mail.app that looks similar to the one below. Again MailTags will be required to perform this action.

With this last step you should be up and running. Enjoy and please let me know how this script works for you.

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For a change I know that I am not alone if I say that I keep arguing with my GTD and productivity setup. There are many blog pages and white papers filed with good advice and best practice setups and I may have read 90% of all those. And of course there is the fact that GTD and productivity isn't about tools or setup and I have personally acknowledged this here and here. Still, something is complicated in this digital world with all those nice tools everyone tries to sell or even give to us for free - it messes up everything, really. Back in the days where you did not have much of a choice but had to go with those limited tools available and where not every day a RSS feed article or a Twitter message told you about the latest and greatest, things felt better or at least simpler, somehow.

What comes in goes strange places

Actually, when I recently engaged in reviewing my capturing behaviour and tool-set, I realised things go strange places. Some tools I use for purposes they aren't designed for and generally my capturing did not have any structure to it. Does capturing require structure? When you are living a digital lifestyle I would tend to say 'yes'.

First you should look at what you are capturing and in which context you are doing this. For me, I see the following capturing behaviours:

• Surfing the web finding different snippets
• In phone calls or meetings capturing information, decisions and actions
• Being somewhere having a thought or idea
• Being out and about and spotting something of interest
• Brainstorming a new project or concept

These are roughly the categorise that sum up my capturing behaviours. Before we look into those in more detail, we first need to see what it is that we'd like our capturing to improve upon.

Keeping capturing straight-forward

When I started to look at improving and simplifying my capturing, I set out the following goals that I wanted to achieve:

• As few capturing/collection tools as possible
• As few inboxes as possible
• Simple and straight-forward storage and retrieval
• Best and only one tool for the job at hand

Next I started at looking what I currently use for capturing and how I use it. Without going into this long and somewhat depressing list of failures and expensive software licences, I quickly found out that I used tools designed for rather structured capturing, e.g. OmniOutliner, for unstructured notes and that the amount of tools I use just causes the same type of content to end up in different places. So I had the need to look into this more deeply, a band-aid would not do.

Think through Capturing

You need a way to structure this special review and I decided to brainstorm a bit about my capturing setup which resulted in the below mindmap.

Putting structure to my thinking and my needs helped me quickly to revert some decisions and create a as-simple-as-possible setup for my capturing needs. Large parts of it are digital and that is just because most of the time I am either in front of my Mac or have my iPhone with me. But still paper is part of the system and sometimes remains unbeatable.

Build a use-case based setup

Inst ead of working tool-centric I thought more about my capturing use-cases and what will best help in those cases. Keeping my overall goals for capturing simplification in mind, of course.

• Meetings - I don't find it very polite to use your notebook during in-person meetings (whether internal or with customers) so my choice for this will always be paper with the exception of workshops where you may use Mind Mapping or other software to work straight on the screen as a group. You may also encounter flip or white board drawings which you either need to capture on paper as well or use a camera to make a photograph of it (more on this later)
• Conference Calls/Web Conferences - In 90% of all cases I would be in front of my computer for these occasions. Hence I would be able to use simple digital capturing using a text editor, word processing or some note taking tools. If I, for whatever reason would like to use paper, that should be fine as well.
• Phone Calls/Somebody dropping by - The classical unrequested interruption that happens everyday. Although I divert people to my voicemail very often and catch them later, I still pick up the phone quite often and of course talk to my colleague that drops by my desk for a minute. You typically just capture small snippets and actions in these type of conversations - so paper would be the best and easiest tool to use.
• Surfing the web - This encompasses everything online from news sites, blogs, research to Twitter and Facebook really. And I tend to find very different types of content on the web: Quotes I'd like to remember, inspiring designs or pictures, articles I'd like to read when I have time, things I may want to buy, feeds I'd like to subscribe to and so on. Making a single tool choice here is difficult since the content may be very different and consequently I looked at how I would use the content itself. Snippets of text or images is something I need to review and see what they mean to me specifically, websites I will be using more often need to be bookmarked, feeds I want to read should be subscribed to in my RSS reader and articles that I want to read need to be made available to me when I have the time. As you might tell this is the most complex use-case and it also reveals the complexity of the digital lifestyle itself.
• Ideas - they can come everywhere and at anytime. Either because you have been juggling some thoughts over a latte or something somebody said or you see triggers an idea and you need to be ready to capture this. There are many forms of capturing those: Write down some words, take a picture, record a video or a voice note. All possible these days.
• Brainstorming - when you sit down for a few minutes or even hours and think something through. You are not yet in the position to fully structure the endeavor, but you just want to do a mind sweep and see what all surfaces on the specific topic. That's where I love using Mind Mapping.
• Structuring and Planning - This very different to all other use cases since it represents a combination of capturing and clarifying or reviewing - in essence bringing structure to things. This is what I do when I plan a (GTD) project using a Project Charter - I need something that allows me to bring my thoughts and considerations into a clear and in a best case, standardised structure. Outlining does exactly that for me.

You might find more or at least other use cases for yourself when brainstorming this, but once you have them you should be in fairly good position to determine the tools of choice (as few as possible) and the places the captured content goes to (as few as possible again). Here is what I ended up with.

Capturing tools - not for tools sake, but serving the use-cases

• Paper for Meetings - serves it well. If I have to take a image of a Whiteboard drawing I either scribble it down or use my iPhone to take a image note in Evernote - paper goes into my physical inbox and the image into my Evernote Inbox notebook
• Minutes from conference calls or web conference are capture as simple text notes in Evernote on my Mac and go to my Evernote Inbox notebook
• Quick notes or actions from 1-on-1s (call or somebody dropping by) go onto paper and into my physical inbox
• Snippets I find on the web like quotes, images, text or entire URLs are captured into my Evernote Inbox notebook
• Websites I need to use more often (e.g. online tools) do not got to any inbox since the two-minute rule applies: Make a bookmark in Safari right away
• Feeds I'd like to follow also don't see any inbox and are subscribed to in less then two minutes using my RSS Reader (NewsFire)
• Articles I find and like to read later go into Instapaper, my digital version of a @read/review file (not fully substituting it since I may also have printed white papers or presentations I need to review). With it's iPhone App Instapaper makes those articles available for offline consumption, i.e. on a flight, as well
• Ideas, whether in text, audio or visual form are captured using Evernote's iPhone application and go straight into the Inbox notebook
• Brainstorming happens using Mind Mapping software (MindNode Pro) and mind maps either go into my file inbox on my Mac (see simple GTD filing on the Mac) or right into the support material folder of the project subject to the brainstorming
• Structured notes or plans are done using OmniOutliner and without exception always related to a project and consequently also get filed into the support material folder of that project

Hang on, where is the list manager here?

Spot on, the unavoidable list manager is missing in those use case and tool scenarios. While I use OmniFocus and I am quite happy with it, I do not use if for any of the scenarios above. It only becomes a inbox if I have a clear action trigger like "Buy beer for the party". For all other occasions I prefer to first clarify what I have captured and what it means to me before creating an action or project in my list manager.

The bottom-line of Capturing in GTD for me

So in summary you will find that I actually have three inboxes for notes: Physical, Evernote Inbox and a Mac OS Inbox folder. Bookmarks, RSS Feeds or articles go straight where they belong and do not hit a Inbox at all. Where you may find this being still too complex, it is as simple as I could get (and you should not get any simpler than that, Albert Einstein once said).

In terms of tools I rely on paper (not Moleskine, but junior legal pads where I can rip out single sheets and toss them into my physical inbox) and Evernote. The remaining tools like browser bookmarks, Instapaper, Outlining and Mind Mapping software are also important, but more purpose bound.

So I ended up with three inboxes (next to my email and voicemail inboxes) and two to six capturing tools that cover 90% of all ubiquitous capturing needs. I'd be very interested to see how your setup differs from mine and how you get along.

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Taking it seriously with GTD projects isn't always easy. While you'll be able to grasp the concept of projects in GTD fairly quickly, you'll have a number of challenges to adopt your way of working. By definition, everything that takes more than two steps and has your attention qualifies as a project. The majority of these projects, say those with four to five action steps, are fairly straight-forward and don not require a lot of brainstorming and planning, i.e. getting tires changed on your car. But then again you have these really large projects that first need some cutting (creating smaller sub-projects) and more serious planning and organisation.

For those projects I, for a long time, struggled to get myself sorted. Of course I use a task list manager and of course I store project support materials in a separate folder. But this alone did not help me to see things through and so I came up with the idea of a Project Charter and a simple way to link all things together.

Creating a project charter

My project charter is nothing more than a simple OmniOutliner Pro template that structures the information and holds some simple check-lists for myself (which I delete once the charter is done).

So here is what the Project Charter contains:

• The three natural planning steps: (a) Why am I doing this and what are the guiding principles, (b) What is the desired outcome and (c) what are (brainstorming) roughly the things that need to get done
• Links to project resources: Link to the Project Folder in Finder where I keep all the stuff that belongs to the project and links to any other relevant resources like online work spaces or web pages
• Project Team (Core/Extended): Links to the Address Book cards of all project members, so I can easily look up their details and call
• Key customer stakeholders: People involved from the customer organisation

As you can see not an awful lot of information, but that is by design. I wanted to keep the barrier as low as possible so that I actually create a project charter for every major project. Again, you may not want to do this for every single project, specifically not for those that you feel comfortable and in control with, but the bigger once deserve this level of attention, planning and organisation.

Of course you can use other tools such as Word, Pages, Ponies Notebook, ... to do the same thing. OmniOutliner just happens to be my tool of choice and so is The Hit List (THL) from Potion Factory when it comes to task management. What I like about both is the linking capabilities. Again, OmniFocus or Things provide similar functionality, so you should be okay adopting this in your environment.

Linking with your Task Manager

Most important to me is that I have things available in the right context and without any effort to find or open. So I tend to interlink things where ever possible. The project charter and the project folder get inserted into THL as simple tasks (unfortunately the only way you can currently do this in THL) that always stay on top of the project task list.

As you can see the alias links get inserted as small icons into the notes section of these two tasks. Not assigning any context like "@email" to those tasks makes sure that they do not show up in any of my context task lists where I usually perform my actions. But whenever I need to access this information, I can quickly change to the project list from the context task list by using "Show in List" from THL's context (right-click) task menu.

Download the Project Charter Template

Download the OmniOutliner 3 template or the OPML version if you use another outlining tool. To use it as an template in OmniOutliner Pro open the file and "File > Save As" OmniOutliner Template in your template directory. You should then be able to create new Project Charters from this template by "File > New from Template > Project Charter".

The simplicity of this approach works perfectly to me and I am curious if anyone of you came up with different solutions for the issue of "keeping it all together".

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