Once-a-Day Email

This is the fourth post in a series on Extreme GTD.

I get around 600 emails a day at work. With a lot of hard work on automatic filters, I can get that down to about 300. I don't subscribe to any Internet mailing lists, so all 300 are real work emails.

The way I have learned to deal with this, without spending my whole day reading and replying to emails, is to process them only once per day. I find that this is easiest to do in the morning. I wake up very early, get to the office before anyone else, and power through the whole lot in one sitting. I also process my in tray and notebook. It takes about 2-3 hours to do it properly.

Then I close my email for the rest of the day.

You would think that this would be a problem, but it's surprising how little difference it makes to my interactions with other people. But it makes a huge difference to me. After my email sprint in the morning,

• all my inboxes are empty,
• I am completely up-to-date on everything that's happening,
• all my next actions lists are updated, and
• I have scheduled my actions for the day.

It's awesome.

Part of my secret for getting through email quickly is a view I have set up in Outlook* which is very similar to the "conversation view" in Gmail. (Any email application that allows grouping of emails by conversation/thread will work well, especially if it has the ability to show a small preview of the first couple of lines of text.) Since I don't read email during the day, all the conversations that I am CCed on carry on happily collecting into conversation threads.

As I go through my emails in the morning, it's very quick to see which conversation threads will probably not require my attention, and just delete the whole thread in one keystroke. Gone. There are also usually a large number of threads that could be important, but I just expand the thread and scan the preview lines. This is great for picking up when someone suddenly directs the conversation to me - the first line is "Will, Do you..." So this trick helps me whittle down 300 emails to about 100 fairly quickly. But the real beauty of this is that it's amazing how many conversations end by themselves without me needing to get involved.

I think people don't seem to notice that I'm only reading email once a day, because if I reply, it's usually before they arrive in the office in the morning, so no email goes unanswered for more than 24 hours. About 2-3 times per week, someone will ask me, "Did you see my email?" Although I have my Inbox view closed, I still have Outlook open, so I can quickly look if I have to.

My advice: Don't knock it 'til you try it. You might be surprised at how well this works.

* I will post about my Outlook GTD set-up in a later post.

Real Contexts

This is the third post in a series on Extreme GTD.

As I've mentioned before, the absolute key to GTD is Processing, which is thought-driven. Everything else, including Contexts, are just tricks. Contexts is a trick specifically designed to avoid thinking, or at least to minimise it.

So it is perfectly possible and acceptable to not use Contexts in your GTD system. In fact, I recommend avoiding Contexts in the beginning. You need to feel their absence in order to understand what they're good for, and how much you can get done without them.

The key to using Contexts effectively again comes back to effective thinking during the Processing step.

The trick I use is to ask myself, "What is stopping me from doing this next action right now?" there are three types of answers to this question:

1. It's not really the next action. If so, I haven't finished the Processing step. Think of the next action and repeat.
2. It will take more than 2 minutes, but otherwise I could do it right now. Great. Put it on the actions list with no Context.
3. I need to be somewhere or with someone to do it, but otherwise I could do it right now. Great. That's the Context. But wait - there's a catch...

When I find an action in the third category, there is still some thinking to do. How will I remember this action when I'm with that person, or in that place? There's no point in adding the action to my Outlook tasks folder if I won't have it with me when I'm next there. There's no point in putting envelopes I have to post in my "Out" tray if I'm not in the habit of checking it before I leave the house. The key is to really think about what is the best way to remind myself of this action when I'm next in that Context.

One example of this that has worked really well for me lately is to use my notebook, which I carry around with me whenever I'm not at my desk. Lately, nearly all my time is in meetings away from my desk, so entering actions in my Outlook was pretty much useless, except for actions that could be done at my desk.

I use my notebook for capturing notes during meetings, and I always start a new page for each meeting, with the title of the meeting at the top, and the date. The difference now is that I start the meeting page before the meeting has happened - as soon as I have a next action that can be done at that meeting. Then, on the day of the meeting, instead of starting a new page, I go to the page I've already created, and there is the list of things I need to bring up.

The same trick works for people instead of meetings. If I need to speak to somebody to get it done, and an email won't do (really think about that choice), I start a new page for that person and write it down there. Then whenever I'm either one-on-one with that person, or happen to be in a meeting with them, I can flick to their page in my notebook and make sure I cover the actions.

The handy thing about the notebook trick is that I can write the results of those actions right there, and I will see those notes when I next do my Processing.

Another important point to note about actions that require a Context is that it's easy to use them as an excuse to not finish thinking during the Processing step. You know you've made this mistake when you see the action on an actions list but when you're there, you find you haven't got a good way to approach the subject. A warning sign is when the person you're talking to doesn't understand what you're asking them. To get around this problem, my trick is to mentally visualise the meeting, and try to think of the first few sentences I will say. That's usually enough to help shake out the real next action.

Missing iPhone API: Alerts

Imagine this: a TV listings app that can make your iPhone alert you with a sound when your favourite show is about to start, even if you don't have the app running. A to-do list app that can give you pop-up alerts when a task is due or needs to be started. A turn-by-turn directions app that can speak directions through the speaker/headphones and display a map image when you get to the right point in your journey.

The Calendar app can already do part of this - ie. it can pop up alerts at a scheduled time and play a chime. This API should be made available to app developers, and extended to include triggers based on location as well as time. And same as the Calendar alerts, they should include a button that takes you back into the app.

For example, OmniFocus for iPhone has an incredible feature called "Nearby", that will search your to-do list for actions you can do near your current location. But it would be really handy if it could proactively tell you, rather than only when you open the app.

It would also be really handy if you could configure the alert to use speech services to speak the text via the headphones if they are plugged in. (This is a general wish for all pop-up alerts, including SMS.) Because if the headphones are plugged in, the phone is usually in your bag/pocket.

Turn-by-turn directions apps would be useful for walking/biking/transit - not just driving. It would be great if they could let you use other maps and still alert you when you need to turn a corner. For this it would be very handy to allow display of images as well, like the new MMS feature in 3.0 does.

How to Stop MobileMe from Deleting Trash After 30 Days

MobileMe email has the annoying "feature" that unlike Gmail, if you "delete" an email, it only stays in the "Trash" folder for 30 days.

Here is a simple workaround for this problem:

1. Log into the MobileMe Mail site, and add a folder called "Archive" (or something else if you prefer). Move all your existing deleted emails in your Trash folder into Archive.
2. If you use MobileMe with Mail.app, right-click your MobileMe Inbox and select Synchronize MobileMe. Your new Archive folder should appear somewhere on the mailboxes pane. Select the Archive folder, and then go up to the Mailboxes menu and select Use this mailbox for > Trash. On my system, it changed the name of the folder to "Deleted Messages" when I did this.
3. If you use MobileMe on your iPhone, go into the Settings app and then Mail, Contacts, Calendars > MobileMe > Account Info > Advanced > Deleted Mailbox, then select your Archive folder.

This might actually make the new search on server feature useful!

Disclaimer: I just followed the above steps today. In theory it should work, but the above is untested. I will post a follow-up if I have any problems...

If Radiohead Made an iPhone Game

They'd make Eliss. This is really cool. A nice departure from the cartoon-like offerings that usually populate the top-ranking game genre for iPhone, Eliss starts by fooling you into thinking it was made by iPhone newbies who had travelled here on a time machine from 1981.

But secretly, it was made by visionaries of style from 2136.

Addictive.

How to Store Japanese Contacts in iPhone

I live in Japan. I have an iPhone. I speak/read/write Japanese, but my primary language is English. Here's how I store Japanese people in my address book in iPhone.

• First Name: family name (since this is used first by Japanese)
• Last Name: personal name
• Phonetic First Name: family name in kanji
• Phonetic Last Name: personal name in kanji

With this method, the Japanese name is visible in kanji in the main contacts list, but is listed alphabetically by the romaji version of their name.

GTD Problem: Knowing When Things Will Get Done

This is the second post in a series on Extreme GTD.

Part of GTD's power is having a complete and exhaustive list of everything that you need to do. Even though that list is usually huge, it's still very comforting to know that you aren't forgetting something while you get your stuff done.

However, one big problem I've found is that even if you trust that you will eventually get these tasks done, the reality is that most of the time, it is necessary to tell people (or at least to know) when they will be done.

GTD itself doesn't offer a solution for this. There is the Weekly Review, which in theory should give you the opportunity to figure out what will be done within the next 7 days, but most of the time I find that knowing when I will complete a task is most useful at the moment that I make the commitment to do it.

The solution I have been using for this is to schedule all my actions onto my calendar, effectively blocking out the time I will need to do it. This goes directly against David Allen's advice about treating the calendar as "sacred territory", but I have actually found it to be very useful.

The first and obvious benefit is that I know exactly when I will do the task. It also blocks out the time required to do it, so that other people (or myself!) cannot book meetings during that time, which protects the action.

Another, more subtle, but extremely important benefit is that it forces me to be realistic about how much I can do in a week. In my Weekly Review, after I have collected & processed all my stuff, I go through my actions list and one by one schedule all of my actions into my calendar. I usually leave a couple of hours a day open so that people can schedule some meetings with me, but this will depend on how many actions I have to complete during the week.

If I find that I completely fill up a whole week and still have actions left over, I am forced to make some tough decisions about my commitments. The choices are many: I can leave less time open for meetings, delegate some actions to others, re-negotiate or refuse some actions, or just simply decide that some actions can be left for the following week (a kind of mini-Someday/Maybe).

Re-negotiations can be made on-the-fly as the week goes on. If something unavoidable or urgent comes up, I schedule it as normal in the calendar, and then move the displaced action somewhere else. If there is no free space left in my week, I have the same choices as above.

An even more subtle benefit is that it removes the need to check my actions list during the day. Instead of completing one action, then having to scan through my very large list of actions to try to figure out what to do next, my calendar just tells me what to do. Zero thinking - which is ultimately the whole point of the GTD philosophy. At the end of the day, I am exhausted, but I have crammed all the "Doing" that is possible in a single day.

I actually find this is an important trick to help me to trust my system. The "trusted system" phrase in GTD is really key. If you don't trust your system, you will be reluctant to put your actions into it and truly forget them. For me, knowing that the action is on my calendar, and a little reminder will pop up when it's time to do it, gives me the level of trust I need to move on and think about the next piece of stuff.

One word of warning however: This trick doesn't work very well when I haven't done the Processing step properly - ie. I haven't really boiled down the stuff to the very next physical, visible action. If my calendar pops up and tells me to do something like "approval for software purchase", it trips me up. So far, I've been dealing with this by doing the real processing then, but if I have committed that the task will be done by then to someone then I also have to re-negotiate with that person, which uses up more energy.

I highly recommend this technique to anyone who has to tell people when things will be done. Do not ever tell someone that something will be done by a certain date/time until you have verified on your calendar that it can actually happen. Tell them you'll get back to them with an estimate if you need time to brainstorm/process. Otherwise you will just get stress for yourself and disappointment for the other person.

Extreme GTD

I've been using GTD for almost 3 years now, and although I've been on and off the wagon several times, on each iteration it gets better and more effective. And, just as the book predicts, each time I make an improvement in efficiency and organisation, I get more responsibility and work dumped on me.

Recently, due to some other factors at work, this has been taken to an extreme level. I'm working consistently 14-hour days, plus 8-hour days on Saturdays and Sundays. My calendar is blocked wall-to-wall with meetings from 8:00am to 6:00pm every day, up to a week in advance, and now people are just double-booking to see which meeting I turn up to. I get an average of 600 emails per day, and even after filtering for system-generated alert emails and such, it's still around 300 per day. At any one time I have about 100 active projects, about 4 of which are major strategic initiatives. And that's just my work life.

If this isn't GTD under extreme conditions, I don't know what is...

Recently, I've gone through another iteration of GTD detox, by listening to the audiobook version of the GTD book three times in a row, and I had an epiphany about GTD:

The only fundamental concept in GTD is to do all the thinking up-front.

All the rest of the book is just extra tips and tricks for managing the results of that thinking. You could almost leave all the rest of it out and still be effective if this one, all-encompassing rule is always followed. Of course, the other stuff is useful too, but this epiphany has led me to make some incremental, yet significant adjustments to my GTD system, to help me cope with the extreme conditions I am facing every day.

This is the first post in a series of posts I will be doing about the tricks and "ah-hah!" moments that are helping me survive. Here is a list of the posts so far:

1. Extreme GTD (this post)
2. GTD Problem: Knowing When Things Will Get Done
3. Real Contexts
4. Once-a-Day Email

Blogging via Email

 

Before I completely diss posting to blogger via email, I thought I should try it out first...

 

BlogPress Blogger client for iPhone

I found a very positive review of BlogPress, an iPhone app that can post to several blogging services, including Blogger. This post is my first attempt at using it.

So far, it seems a lot like posting via email - in fact the interface mimicks the iPhone email UI in a lot of ways.

One nice feature is the ability to control how images are inlined in your body text. Unfortunately however, there doesn't seem to be any way to add formatting (like bold or italics), or even to add links, except by hand-typing the HTML tags on the iPhone keyboard. :-(

Still, nice to have another option for blogging on the dunny. ;-)

An iPhone Battery that Doesn't Suck

I just bought the Mophie Juice Pack Air for my iPhone 3G. Very nice. It combines an external battery with a hard case.

They say it roughly doubles the battery life of the iPhone, and makes the iPhone use the external battery's power first, so when it runs out you take it off and your iPhone is still fully charged. Thoughtful.

Obviously, it adds some size and weight to the phone, but only slightly more than most hard cases. It also maintains the look and curves of the iPhone inside, so it just looks like you have a large iPhone.

Another nice feature is the Mac-style battery status meter on the back, with the button and 4 LEDs so you can see how much power the external battery has.

It allows you to sync to iTunes through the case, but I wish its external USB attachment was a standard iPod 30-pin dock connector... Oh well.

Still, a very nice product, and not a bad price considering its competition.

The Neat Freak's Guide to Gaining Mastery Over Cables

If you're like me, you've probably got a large collection of cables and cords for connecting gadgets to other gadgets, that have slowly accumulated over the years. You've probably also got them all mixed and tangled up in a couple of boxes somewhere in your house.

I've made several attempts in the past to "organise" my cables into some kind of order, but that can be like trying to herd cats. They are awkwardly shaped, some are soft and pliable while others are stiff and hard to bend, they are all different lengths, they have differently sized plugs at their ends, etc.

Wire ties don't help much, since they only keep one part of the coil under control, while the rest can still get messy. And they do little to stop cables from getting tangled up with each other.

The solution: Cling Wrap. Yes, the stuff you use in the kitchen to wrap food before you put it in the fridge.

Step 1: Fold your cable to the length you want to store, and lay it down on some cling wrap (without tearing off the cling wrap from its roll).

Step 2: Start rolling the cable forward, wrapping it in the cling wrap. Don't worry about squeezing the cable into submission before you start rolling. Once you have got one or two rolls done, the cable is trapped.

Step 3: Squeeze the cable inside the wrap as you roll forward. Try to make it as compact as possible, and the wrap will hold it in that shape. If you've ever seen a spider catching an insect in its web, you will know what I mean. Each roll makes it more impossible for the cable to escape the tight, neat shape you've squeezed it into.

Step 4: Tear off the cling wrap once your cable is tightly wrapped and can't escape its clutches. Tidy up the loose ends, and voilà! It's like shrink-wrapping your cables in a nice, neat tubular shape. If you want to make it easier to identify the cable inside, you can write on the cling wrap with a felt marker.

The beauty of this trick is that the cable is visible, so you know what it is, and the cling wrap can be easily ripped off when you need it. The cling wrap itself is almost worthless, so there's no qualms about wrapping and re-wrapping it again and again if you need to. It's also a lot easier to replenish your supply of cling wrap than those wire tie things.

Step 5: Get some shoe boxes or similarly sized plastic baskets. (Make sure they'll fit on your shelves or wherever you want to store them.) Categorise your cables to your heart's content by putting them in separate, labelled boxes/baskets. This will give you really fast access to cables when you need them, and keep them neat and tidy when you don't.

Extra tip: You can also use this trick to keep cables tidy when they're actually plugged into your gadgets (ie. basically to shorten them).

I hope you enjoy this tip. Post a comment if you do, or if you have another good trick for beating cables into submission.