On the 2nd of June 2006 I wrote an interesting post about Getting Things Done:
For a while now I've been using a system for all my tasks/jobs/work/stuff through Microsoft Outlook, and though the system was very good, it didn't seem to work quite as well as it could have.
So under recommendation from 43 Folders I decided to get the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. Most of the stuff he talks about is very similar to the system which I was already (kind of) using. Which is great! It means I was going down the right track!
The big difference now is that I'm not trying to be totally digital. It's just too hard to attempt to keep everything on the computer when a great deal of the tasks/jobs/work/stuff isn't on the computer in the first place. Having a system that is ridged like was actually slowing me down.
Now I've got real paper inboxes both at work and at home. I take paper notes and have a paper reference system. I've even sorted most of my other junk into boxes. It's really nice to know that everything you need to do is in your system, be it paper or digital. It frees up your mind to think about other things!
[...] However, due to me running Windows Vista Beta 2 I'm unable to sync my phone and calendar between work and home anymore. Which is a damn shame, but it's going to be interesting to keep my system going while I overcome this problem.
Since writing that post in 2006 things only got better. It was interesting for me to read back about how I had problems getting the sync with my phone to work. Since then I've changed to using a hosted Exchange service - so far I've had almost zero downtime. My only issue is battery power in my phone. Which doesn't matter because I have fantastic webmail, and It's good to know that I could also use a Blackberry or an iPhone to do these kinds of things, though the Exchange task support is limited - at least on the iPhone.
I am still using the computer for my tasks, though I try to keep them fairly basic. Things are collected through the day by writing things down or storing them directly into the Exchange server via my phone or through Outlook. I review my notebooks regularly and I add and remove tasks from the main task list on the computer as needed.
But the biggest change is using notebooks more. Get yourself a nice pen (or pencil, if you are me) and write your thoughts down, make plans for the future and capture anything interesting going on. That habit alone has made my life so much more interesting. But it wasn't about 'Getting Things Done' at all, it was about all parts of life. (Though I have read the book a number of times!)
