OK, so I read that guy's blog and then just went out from my Boston hotel room and bought the book he referenced, Getting Things Done by David Allen. And now I'm at home doing it.
I went out and bought the stuff -- file folders, in box, staples, rubber bands, etc. I'm still trying to figure out in my head where I'll keep lists and whatnot. I have two fixed offices (home and work), plus my work sends me out of town often enough that I need a portable office. I'm a big geek so the lists need to be kept electronically on one of the four computers I use regularly -- iMac at home, personal Unix server (flophouse.com), work laptop running Windows XP, and my Treo 600 phone running PalmOS. I also like to maintain some separation of "church and state" -- I use my personal email for personal things, work email for work things, and don't mix them. If I was a freelancer it wouldn't matter as much, but I've changed jobs frequently enough that I think this is important.
That would imply keeping two entirely separate sets of lists, but in order to make it portable I'd have to carry around two different devices for managing them. I'm going to end up treating my Palm as the master list source, but use Outlook on my work PC to do most of the data entry and "processing" of the inbox.
That also ends up implying (at least) four inboxes: work email, work paper, home email, home paper.
Well. I'm sure it'll all work out fine. I think the big emphasis, and the bit I'll have the most trouble with, will be on figuring out the "next action" for so many of these things. It's probably the case that my big barrier to productivity isn't having stuff organized -- it's my normal procrastination issues.
But it's probably at least worth a shot. The girl is out of town this weekend and I've got nothing else going, so I'm spending it at home. I just finished "collecting" - big piles of paper, all my Outlook todos printed out, 89 personal emails, 121 work emails. Now it's time to start processing.
Posted by dpassage at September 18, 2004 07:07 PM