My "Getting Things Done" System

Finally, after all these years, I think I have a system. I have never been more buried in email than in the last few months. I used to LOVE email, obsessed with it, checked it constantly- drove my wife nuts. Now, I am quickly beginning to hate email. My obsession(s) have simply grown to texting, instant messaging & tweeting. I can't have my info fast enough. And I surely don't want to miss anything.

To support a greener lifestyle and reduce clutter, I try to work in a paperless. environment. I have been looking for an electronic way to capture and store, "my stuff". I have a ton of it and you never know when you might need it. Believe it or not, I find that I need alot of it often.

So, one of the best self-help books I ever read was given to me by my good friend, Jeff. Getting Things Done is hardcore, I am not as good as others, but I have learned to keep my inbox to a minimum. GTD says zero each day, my goal is less than 20. There is quite a bit more to GTD but this was a huge takeaway for me.


Anything I want to store as part of an ongoing "project" goes in Evernote. I have developed a very simple system for organizing. I use the notebooks in Evernote for projects or sub-projects. I name them by @projectname ( I wish they had subnotebooks). The way to organize data in Evernote is via "tags". I didn't get it initially and I am not sure I am 100% sold, but I am running with it. So, I place multiple tags on each posting in a notebook, usually with a #subject, *contactname, keyword. Seems insane, but it remembers all my tags, so many of the @, #, * are very similar. I simply pick them from a list. So, lets say I have a call scheduled with *jim. I can sort by "*jim", all the topics are then listed by #subject and I have all my notes, clippings, attachments (with Evernote Premium) and things that are high priority I tag with a #1. Seems complicated, but it is working really well. Any files stored other places, no problem, hyperlinks handle that.

Now, all "other" email, not pressing,"FYI stuff" I delete and use Xobni to search, sort, find attachments etc. It is the coolest "find" of last year. I saw a post thought the name was cool, INBOX backwards and it is a SCORE! Go grab it, trust me.

Working in the CAE world on multiple computers and being a globetrotter I deal with massive file sets (CAD, CFdesign, images etc), bigger picture stuff then stuff I'd store into Evernote. I used to carry around a 100GB external drive and though I was bad ass, found that this did nothing but get filled with data. So, I still have that (3 actually) but for the important documents I use 2 systems. The first is Live Mesh. Very cool way to flag a folder on one machine, upload the content to the web and include a folder on another machine. So, I have the data in 3 locations, seems like overkill, but it allows me to work seamlessly on local drives (external drives) are shady when dealing with CAD and Simulation files. Live Mesh is free and allows 5GB, not too bad. Live Mesh used to be all I used when I had a Windows Mobile phone. As there was a mobile version as well.

BUT I just jumped on the iPhone bandwagon and Live Mesh is no dice for iPhone. I also use my beloved Ubuntu Netbook, doesn't play nice with Mesh. So, I use my trusted box.net as well to share mostly Office docs back and forth among all my devices. It has an awesome iPhone client and Open Office works like a charm on my netbook.

Last but not least is Jing Pro. I used to be a fancy SnagIt/PPT guy, still am for some things, but my new way of communicating is to use Jing to grab a quick screen capture and pop it up to my free screencast.com account and shoot you the link. It is like receiving an audio/video voice mail, text or email Nothing more powerful to clicking a link, I am talking to you and showing you exactly what my question is, no heavy file transfer etc-- just a simple link. Jump in for free with Jing, upgrade to Jing Pro as needed.

When I read all of this back, it even looks overwhelming to me. BUT, I feel like my efficiency has gone WAY up, everything is nice and orderly. No major effort keeping everything in synch, all the tools seem to just do it for me.

I am not sure that David Allen had this in mind when he developed GTD, but this is how I make it work for me.

What's your system like?

Microsoft is Earning Some Street Credit with Cloud Computing Initiative

I never really had a strong opinion one way or the other on Microsoft. There are others that have really strong opinions. MS is often the butt of a joke and often the scapegoat of many digs. Apple has been making fun of them via commercials for the last few months/years. Microsoft has recently countered with their own campaign and, as expected, received even more criticism. I have to admit, I thought the commercials weren't that bad. Even the Seinfeld/Gates version. Maybe its me, but I thought they made their point.

Recently, I installed Vista on my 32bit laptop and more recently, on my 64bit desktop. As expected, I struggled to get started as Vista seems to have more rules and gotchas than XP etc. But once you get the hang of it, I really like the interface and the workflow. So, more and more, I am digging Microsoft.

This week is the big Professional Developers Conference where MS rolls out all of their new plans for the future. Click on the logo to see streaming and recorded video sessions. Man, all kinds of really cool things are coming. As expected (by me at least), MS is thinking in the clouds. They are rolling out a variety of really cool cloud computing offerings. My favorite one right now is Microsoft Live Mesh. Think of it as an online synchronization, storage service.


So, I created a Live Mesh account online. I then "added" my devices (laptop and desktop, both with Vista) to my account. Apparently, windows mobile and Mac devices are coming soon. Mesh provides 5GB of storage space online. Surprise, surprise it didn't seem to like Firefox. I can create folders in my Mesh account and choose to have them sync with each or all of my devices. In other words, I can work on a file of any kind on my laptop, save it to the designated "sync" folder and as long as I am signed into Mesh, it will automatically sync it to the folder online, as well as my other devices selected. If I am not connected, it will synch the next time I'm online. Mesh also provides Remote Desktop capabilities. So, I can use it as a conduit to access files between computers and other devices. Performance for Remote Desktop is fairly slow at this point. But Mesh is in its early phases and I expect performance to improve with time.

For a guy that works on a variety of projects both in the home office, while at our corporate office or simply while traveling, Mesh is an awesome tool to enable working in a Virtual environment out here in the clouds.