Background

Anyone who uses Outlook tasks and notes and an iPhone knows the pain of not being able to sync tasks and notes over-the-air from Exchange to the iPhone. I was surprised when I first realized that the Exchange client oin the iPhone only syncs email, calendar and contacts and does not sync notes and tasks. I was surprised because I assumed it would be like any other Exchange client and sync tasks and notes as well. Initially, not being able to sync notes did not seem like a showstopper. But over time it became more and more problematic as I was unable to access notes from Outlook that I have become dependent upon.

Evernote

A colleague introduced me to Evernote (see evernote.com). Evernote is a service that allows you to save notes containing various types of media to a central, cloud-based service. The notes are available for viewing and editing using a variety of applications including: traditional web, iPhone, Windows dand Mac. Best of all, the service and clients are free if you do not exceed a (fairly generous) disk space allotment. Notes that are created or edited on any platform are quickly and efficiently replicated to all clients.

Moving Existing Notes

Evernote has two built-in mechanisms to import data:

1. Import Evernote import/export files
2. Extract notes from Microsoft OneNote

I found myself in a bind. I had over 125 notes in Outlook 2007 (I was not using OneNote) and could not find an existing way to import these Outlook notes other than to copy and paste each note, one-by-one, into my Windows Evernote application. So I wrote a program to convert the Outlook notes into a format that can be imported into the Evernote Windows client (Note: as of this writing, the Mac Evernote client does not support this import feature).

My Outlook to Evernote (OL2EN) program takes an exported Outlook 2007 Notes file in Windows CSV format as input and creates an Evernote compatible import/export XML file as output. The Evernote import/export file can then be imported into the Evernote Windows client.

The complete steps to get started and import your Outlook 2007 notes are detailed:

1. Download Evernote iphone client from the Apple App Store (the app is free)
2. Download and install the Evernote Windows client from the evernote.com site (the app is free)
3. Create a free account on evernote.com. You can do this from iPhone application or on evernote.com website.
4. Export notes from outlook in windows CSV using the following steps:
   a. Click on Notes in Microsoft Outlook 2007
   b. Select File | Import and Export…
   c. Select ‘Export to a File’ in the resulting Import and Export dialog and click Next
   d. Select ‘Comma Separated Values (Windows)’ and click Next
   e. Make sure that ‘Notes’ is selected in the hierarchy and click Next
   f. Type in a location and filename (ending in .CSV) for your Outlook notes export CSV file and click Next
   g. Leave the default mappings on the final dialog and click Finish (your file will be created)
5. Create an Evernote XML import/export file using my tool using the following steps:
   a. Download the OL2EN application and run it (note that it requires the Microsoft .NET runtime)
   b. Run the program and select the CSV file you created in step 4 in the ‘Outlook Export File’ field
   c. Type in the name of the Evernote XML file you want to generate in ‘Evernote Import File’ field
   d. Leave ‘Ignore header row (first CSV row)’ checked as the first CSV entry from the Outlook 2007 export is a header row
   e. Click ‘Generate’. A success dialog should indicate how many notes were converted.
6. Import the Evernote import/export XML file using the Evernote Windows client application using the following steps
   a. Start the Evernote Windows application
   b. Select File | Import | Evernote Export Files…
   c. In the resulting File Open dialog, browser for and select the Evernote import/export file created in step 5 and click open. If the import is successful, you will see a success dialog indicating the notes were imported into a separate notebook inside Evernote. Contratulations! In the event of a failure to import, your import notebook will be empty and you will not see a success message. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any information provided by Evernote, but is is likely that the XML file is malformed.

OL2EN is free to use for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you find OL2EN useful or want me to add any additional features, or run into any errors, please post a comment. OL2EN saved me from a lot of typing. I hope someone else can make use of it as well…

Who doesn’t have clothes in their closet that they never wear? It is hard to decide what I will not wear and therefore should donate, but fortunately, I learned a trick that I can turn hangers backwards for all clothing for which I don’t think I will wear. If I end up wearing any of this questionable clothing, when it is returned to the closet, I will hang it with the hanger positioned normally (i.e. not backwards).

After a few months (or however long I want to wait) I can determine what clothing I did not wear because their hangers are still backwards. Clothes that are left on a backward hanger can safely be donated/given away because they are definitely not being worn. This approach allows even a pack-rats the peace of mind to get rid of any unnecessary clothing. The benefit is that I can get rid of clothing that takes up valuable space in my closet, but more importantly, it makes dealing with my closet easier because I don’t have excess clothes to pick through.

I’ve found that my brain is most at ease when my GTD lists of next actions (ToDos) and projects are most abundant because that means (or at least has the feeling) that everything is out of my head and in my system. This allows my brain to stop thinking about what I need to do and allows me to focus on getting things done. However, as my GTD system grows (i.e. more projects and ToDos are added to my system), it seems as if it becomes exponential difficulty to simply scan my context-specific list of ToDos when trying to determine the most appropriate next action.

During the course of my day, my ToDo list is constantly changing. I’m adding items that I’ve identified and removing items that I’ve completed. With just over 350 tasks in my GTD system, it can take several minutes to scan a list of @Computer-Broadband related next actions when the list has over 50 items. Just the thought of scanning through 350 next actions is painful!

In order to keep my GTD system complete, but not bloated, I need to prune my list of next actions and projects from time to time. GTD suggests moving unnecessary next actions and projects to the Someday Maybe list/category. My problem, like with clothes in my closet, is that it is very difficult to make the mental leap that an item is not needed and should be moved to the Someday maybe list.

To combat this resistance to prune an item, I use a similar technique to the backward hangers in the closet for my GTD lists. Although there are many ways you can approach it, during a special, monthly review, I put a trailing asterisk on next actions and projects for which I have not acted upon in at least a month. If, at some point, I act upon the action or project, I remove the asterisk (similar to returning clothing to the closet with the hanger oriented normally).

Once a month, during my weekly review, I review the items with asterisks (see example above). If it has been at least a month since I dealt with the project or next action, I move it to the someday maybe category.

The beauty of this technique is that it helps me be aggressive at keeping my next action list to a minimum. (GTD practitioners will understand that we ignore the someday maybe list except during our weekly reviews). Minimizing the clutter and bloat in my lists allows me to more quickly understand what is truly important. By using this technique, my GTD system is much less bloated and I enjoy scanning my shorter lists easily throughout my day.

For Christmas my wife and kids bought me an iHome iPhone alarm clock. My first impression was good, I thought it would be nice to have a home for my phone at night and be able to listen to music in our bedroom.

But, what I didn’t realize was that it would be incredibly convenient to capture todos/thoughts while lying in bed prior to falling asleep. I’m not sure if this is common, but all sorts of things fly though my head when I’m relaxing at the end of the day. I think of things I didn’t get completed (not too many!), but also have many creative thoughts.

Prior to my cool new iHome alarm clock, I kept a notepad and pen in my nightstand to capture thoughts, but it requires the light to be turned on to see what I was writing. With the backlit iPhone right by the bed, I can capture notes in the dark and, best of all, my GTD next actions are already in my official GTD system and don’t require any further thought.

Aside from GTD, it would be a shame if I didn’t mention how great this iHome alarm clock really is. Like the iPhone’s visual voicemail, which is easy to maneuver and use, the iHome has a visual display for setting the alarm…and the alarm time is always visible on the display, so I always know whether the alarm is set and if the alarm time is correct.

Regards,
Matt

There are several Getting Things Done (GTD) two minute timers available. Most are commercial, but there are a few other free products. I’d like to introduce the first open source GTD two minute timer, YAGTDT. I’m hoping the GTD community will help me make Yet Another GTD Timer (YAGTDT) the premier two minute timer available. YAGTDT is completely free and does not contain any adware/spyware. You can download the program binaries here.

Below is a screen shot of the simple and intuitive user interface:

My thoughts behind the timer and its use:

I try to implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) as best I can. One morning I started to wonder how well I implement the GTD principles. I wondered how well I deal with everything that comes at me during the day (things come at me via email, verbally, physically in my inbox, via telephone, …) and how well I evaluate and determine if I need to do anything and if so whether it is truly actionable.

According to GTD, if I encounter something new (or have the same thought more than once) that is actionable, I must decide if I want to:

a) do it right away
b) delegate it
c) defer it

GTD further defines: If I want to do it and it takes less than two minutes, I should just do it right away. If I want to do it and it will take more than two minutes I should put the item in my GTD system and evaluate its importance and priority along with the other items I need to do. If I want to defer it, I need to put something in my system or calendar to remind me of the next action to take against this deferred item at a later date.

As I pondered about my use of GTD, I began to wonder what could really get done in two minutes? Not what could get done in approximately two minutes, but actually two minutes. And I started to think how little time two minute really is. And (yes, this is pretty sad) I wondered, for example, if setting up a meeting that requires finding people and a conference room in a corporate directory takes more than two minutes.

Well, after I experimented I found that 120 seconds is not always enough time to schedule most meetings. And, surprisingly, most emails that need to have some formality or that are more than just two lines cannot really be written, reviewed and sent in two minutes.

So this was an interesting realization and it sparked my interest in a task timer. I searched the web and found that a few timers existed, but nothing that was free and had the ability to customize the task timeout. The YAGTDT is fun to use and makes my day more interesting by challenging me to finish tasks in under 2 minutes. You simply set the timeout for a given task (2 minutes by default for GTD) and begin your task. When the task timeout expires, depending on your configuration, you will hear or chime or see a dialog stating the timeout. Because I time many tasks throughout the day, it keeps me focused (and in some sick way challenged because I’m constantly battling against time).

Personally, I would not recommend that anyone pay money for a task timer for their computer because YAGTDT is freely available to download and use (see binaries link below).

YAGTDT is very intuitive and straightforward. It defaults to a 2 minute timer. However, as Dave Allen once said in a seminar, two minutes is the GTD suggestion, but you may choose to use a 1 minutes rule or 3 minute rule. If I could do anything in 3 minutes, I’d prefer to do it right away! I don’t think 2 minutes is magic.

As a result, YAGTDT allows you to configure the timeout for a task. And, it has a few preferences that allow you to customize whether a message box pops up and whether a sound is played when the task timer expires. All of these options are available from the options link (note that this link is unavailable while the timer is counting down…you must stop the timer to change the options). Your preferences are saved and will be your new defaults every time you run YAGTDT.

From a technical development perspective YAGTDT is straightforward and therefore not too interesting. It is developed in Visual Studio 2005 using the C# programming language. It is a WinForms (Win32 Windows) application and it uses the .NET 2.0 framework. Eventually I’d like to move the project to Silverlight or WPF. I will be posting the source code for YAGTDT shortly.

System requirements: .NET 2.0 framework (download from Microsoft)

There is no installation, simple download the binaries and copy them to a location on your computer. You need to make sure you copy all 3 files (.exe is the program, .ini is the configuration file with your preferences and .wav is a sound file). If you experience any issues, you probably do not have the Microsoft .NET runtime installed. Please download it from the link above and try again to run the program, YAGTDT.EXE.

And if you encounter any problem that persists, please email me. Please leave me some feedback on the tool.

Regards,
Matt

I have to admit that I resisted using the subproject feature in the NetCentrics Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In for some time. The concept of subprojects seemed overly complicated and I didn’t see the justification to make the system any more complicated. In the GTD books I’ve read and the Dave Allen seminar I attended never mentioned subprojects…

However, just recently I encountered a multi-step project that I needed to accomplish for a non profit organization. I already had a top-level project representing my ongoing work with this organization, but this new multi-step project was quite involved and needed to be executed flawlessly. So I realized that it was time to check out subprojects and get an understanding for how they work.

I started by googling, searching the help file and looking at the NetCentrics support site, but could not find much information beyond how to create a subproject, so I resorted to figuring it out by creating one.

I created a subproject by clicking add on the subprojects tab of the project dialog. The following screenshot shows the resulting subproject on the subproject tab (click to enlarge):

After creating the subproject I was surprised that I could not interact with it. I assumed I’d be able to double click its name in the subproject list and it would open into another project window and that it would behave like any other project. I was wrong. The NetCentrics subproject is really just a description of the subset of work. It is not an entity all its own like a typical top-level NetCentrics project.

The way you use the sub project is by associating tasks to the subproject after selecting its parent (top-level) project. I had to enable the “GettingThingsDone 2″ toolbar from the view menu (note that you need to be in the Task window to see this toolbar option) to see the subproject toolbar. Below are the two GTD toolbars:

GettingThingsDone Toolbar (click to enlarge):

GettingThingsDone Toolbar 2:

You can also assign tasks to a subproject when creating a task from an email:

With a subproject, I had to tweak my weekly review slightly. Instead of viewing/reviewing my projects using the “Active Tasks By Project (GTD)” view I use the “Active Tasks By SubProject (GTD)” view. This view still displays the tasks by project, but also pulls in any sub projects. Below is a snippet of the view of tasks by subproject (click to enlarge):

In summary, I plan to create more subprojects for GTD projects that are ongoing concerns. For example, my first subproject had to do with a specific project within a longer-term project (my ongoing involvement with a non-profit organization). I can see other uses for subprojects within other ongoing projects in my personal life and in my career.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) weekly review is a key piece to Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done process. If you are not familiar with GTD, I’d highly recommend you visit Dave Allen’s company website. The weekly review is a weekly process to validate the information (things you need to do) in your GTD system is complete and accurate.

If you follow GTD you will learn quickly that a significant number of questions for GTD newbies revolve around the weekly review. And, in order for the GTD system to work and for the GTD practitioners to achieve a “mind like water” state, it is critical to trust that the GTD system contains everything that you need to do.

In order for the system to be complete, it must be regularly reviewed. Once you have a GTD system that you trust, and you are reviewing it regularly, it means you will automatically always know when you are doing the most important thing that you should be doing at that point in time (based on your physical surroundings). As a result, the weekly review is a critical activity.

I’ve been a GTD practitioner for about 2 years. Within the 2 years, I’ve had spans of time where I’ve been good about doing my weekly review…and spans of time where I’ve been pretty pathetic with my reviews. And, as I can attest, without regular weekly reviews, the system does not provide nearly as much value.

A friend told me about the Netcentric Outlook GTD Add-in about 1.5 year ago. At that early time in my familiarity with GTD, I tried the add-in but didn’t understand the value it could provide. At this point I was focused on the basic fundamentals of GTD and didn’t think I needed any fancy tool (and the $69 price tag turned me away too).

Late last year I thought I’d try the Netcentric Outlook GTD Add-in again (btw, I’m using Outlook 2003 on Windows XP SP2) to see if it would efficiently associate projects and next actions. In this second evaluation (with my head at another place and my GTD system pushing its limits in Outlook) I was very impressed by two features:

1. Ability to easily and painlessly link Next Actions to a project (key for weekly review)
2. Ability to create actions when processing emails in my in-box

The remainder of this blog will be focused on item #1 above and how it relates to the way I go about performing my weekly review. The GTD weekly review will be a bit personalized for different practitioners, but must contain the following:

• A review of all projects and next actions (not necessarily all someday/maybe items)
• A review of the prior week’s and the upcoming short and long-term calendar

The review assumes your physical and electronic in-boxes are empty and that all loose papers, notes, etc. have been processed. Finally, the weekly review may include a brain dump where you get everything out of your head (using trigger lists) and make sure there aren’t items missing from your system.

Reviewing the calendar is pretty straight forward, and if you are like me, you will typically find something that was planned on your calendar from the prior week that did not get accomplished for some reason. Or I’ll find something on my calendar that makes me realize I need to do something else…or there is a follow-on task to perform for the work I performed the previous week. And looking forward at the detail of my upcoming two weeks and a quicker scan of my calendar out about 6 months is pretty easy and quick to accomplish. If while examining my calendar I find something that requires an action or planning, I create the appropriate project and/or next action.

It is important to not do work while executing the review. This may sound ridiculous, but the temptation to just do some simple tasks (e.g. send an email) while performing the review is quite strong.

But reviewing projects and next actions is not so trivial. If you don’t have a system that ties your next actions to projects (and I didn’t for a long time) it is tedious and time consuming to know whether all next actions for a given project are in my system. My system currently contains 98 projects and 442 next actions (this does not include my 126 someday/maybe items). Of the 442 next actions, the bulk are associated with a project.

Technical Add-in Note: The Add-in works by creating an Outlook task for every GTD project and every GTD next action. The projects are put into an Outlook “Projects” category and project names are also saved to a special XML message (settings information) file that is posted in a Settings folder in your Outlook Inbox. The add-in has a mechanism to create new projects which takes care of creating the Outlook task as well as updating the add-in’s XML settings information. If you add a new Outlook task and assign it to the “Projects” category, it will not be recognized as a project by the GTD add-in. The proper way to create a project is to select “New Project” from the add-in’s “Open Projects” Dialog.

So the way I do my weekly review of projects and next actions is to first review all projects and their associated next actions and then to review next actions that are not associated with a project.

I start my review by choosing the Outlook task “Ordered Tasks by Project (GTD)” view (as displayed in the following diagram) to simplify the process of walking through all my projects and reviewing its associated next actions.

I review every project title, one-at-a-time, in the “Ordered Tasks By Projects (GTD)” view to see if any are not bold. Note that this view is created by the installation of the Netcentric Outlook GTD add-in and is not part of the standard Outlook installation. A bold project is good because it means that the GTD add-in recognizes the Outlook task as a GTD project.

Tasks that are not bold are bad because it means that the task is not recognized by the GTD add-in as GTD project. Any non-bold projects need to be promoted to an actual project in the add-in by double clicking the non-bold project (Outlook task) and once it is opened, selecting “Add New Project” from the GTD add-in as shown in the following screen shot. (Note: The reason I sometimes end up with Outlook tasks in the Projects category that are not recognized by the GTD add-in as projects is because I also manage my tasks via NextAction! on my BlackBerry 8800.)

When you open projects that are bold, the built-in Outlook task dialog is opened. From this dialog, click the open project button (highlighted in red) in the following screen shot.

The open project button launches a custom dialog (see below) that contains information about the project (in my example the project name is “Mitigate Radon”) and contains a list of associated tasks for the given project (my tasks are “Discuss timing of work” and “Seal basement floor/wall joint”). This is the dialog from which you can think about the given project and add (by clicking Add Task Action), edit (double click the row for the given next action task) or delete (open the next action task and delete it as you would delete any Outlook task) tasks as you see fit.

After I have reviewed all projects I then review next actions that are not associated with a project by selecting the task “Active Tasks By Project (GTD)” view. This view groups all next actions by project and creates two groupings of “none” projects. All “none” projects are next actions that do not have an associated GTD add-in project. Some of these next actions are someday/maybe items (which I only review about once per month), but the remaining next actions need to be reviewed weekly.

I review each remaining next action, one-at-a-time, in the “Active Tasks By Project (GTD)” view. I double click each next action to open the default Outlook task dialog. Sometimes the next action’s title, notes, priority, due date or category needs to be adjusted. Other times I realize what once was though to be a single next action really needs an associated project. And there are times where I need to delete a next action because it is complete. (Note: I don’t use the completed concept in Outlook tasks. Although it would be gratifying to see all the completed tasks, I feel completed tasks just create more distractions. So I delete tasks when they are complete.)

The weekly review can be a daunting task. I hope this information helps someone make their review a little easier. It still takes time and dedication, but once you get into a rhythm with the weekly review you can execute it faster because you know the content in your GTD system better. Once you regularly execute a weekly review, you are on your way to “mind like water”!