I found this interesting while re-reading David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. It’s the six steps of natural planning: Defining purpose and principles Outcome Visioning Brainstorming Organizing Identifying next actions According to Allen, this is the way in which our brain plans virtually any task. What I found thought-provoking here, is that we probably process…
I use Pocket to store my “read later” articles that interest me as I peruse my Twitter timeline or browse the web. I’ve written about this process in the past. I tend to hoard articles for later reading; it’s a personal flaw that I readily admit. Unfortunately, between work and owning a toddler, I’ve noticed…
It sure has been a busy New Year so far. January was especially hectic as we started to pack for our move to North Carolina in a few weeks. In addition to this, I headed down to Orlando to get my Scrum Product Owner certification, which involved a two-day course in managing product development in…
Inarguably, one of the most important pieces of the GTD methodology for time and task management is the weekly review. This critical ritual involves the practitioner ensuring that inboxes are emptied, reviewing his or her lists and making necessary adjustments to projects and tasks so that contexts, priorities, next actions and other elements are accurate. All…
I saw an article recently that hit home with me. The article, titled The Not-to-Do List — 7 Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Productivity and Happiness , was written by John Meyer, Co-Founder and CEO of Lemonly. Here are Meyer’s seven recommendations for things you should stop doing, along with my thoughts: 1. Touching emails more…
I’ve been using OmniFocus for about a year now and it seems like the right time to post a comprehensive review of it and how it’s worked for me. I’m an extremely diligent GTD (Getting Things Done) practitioner and frankly, both my personal and professional lives would be a mess without it. GTD is a time-…
I get asked quite frequently about my task management workflow in general, and specifically how I keep projects organized and quickly/easily refer back to discussions in meetings or emails from months earlier. Here’s a look at how I have things set up. And I’ll add some additional posts about the actual setup of individual tools…
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
As I’ve said in the past, one of my biggest gripes about Apple’s Mac OS X is that I spend so much time on Windows machines (where I am that stereotypical geek who knows all the speedy keyboard shortcuts) that I never really become more efficient with using my MacBook Pro. Personally, I use QuickSilver…
As part of my paperless office project, I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Mobile Document Scanner a few weeks ago. Aside from the fact it had a rating of 4.5/5.0 stars on Amazon, the scanner is very heavily recommended in productivity forums for integration with Evernote. To be fair, Evernote also makes a really slick…