Corporate Sales Guy

Ok no more tweaking – I’ve got it. If it wasn’t so cliche I’d yell out Eureka. Before I get into the simple GTD system that I’ve employed, I’d like to chronicle my journey through using a pc at work and a mac at home to using the mac in both places.

Note to non-GTD folks, this will seem really weird to you but I hope you will gather some usable knowledge from this write up.

I read Getting things Done by David Allen about a year and half ago after a good friend recommended it to me. I was immediately hooked, as work was overwhelming and I wasn’t keeping up at work or home and was tired of just complaining about it. Waking up earlier and earlier to try and keep up was running me down and at the time my team was down by a couple of people and I was making up the difference while we hired folks.

GTD experience #1

I was using a Windows XP laptop for work and I had a 12″ Powerbook G4 for home. For GTD I installed Netcentric’s GTD app for Outlook after downloading the whitepaper on how to setup Outlook for maximum productivity.

For those in a Microsoft/Outlook/Corporate world this was excellent. I loved it, only a couple of problems:

1. Outlook is bloated. Connecting to an Exchange server using sub-broadband speeds in obnoxious.

2. This was very conducive to doing work tasks but personal, family and someday tasks didn’t really have a place. (i.e.: fire up Outlook to put some tasks in on a weekend and then Wow – let me just see what this email from my colleague is!)

Otherwise the application was great, played well with Outlook and really followed the methodology closely. (of course being all windows, the BB sync’d fine)

GTD experience #2

With my personal tasks being neglected and not moving forward in my family, spiritual and community service areas I decided that the GTD frame work must reside outside of email especially Outlook.

It was about this time that Apple released the Macbook Pro with it’s Intel chip. Parallels was becoming a true virtualization platform and folks were claiming that Windows XP performance on their macs was beyond usable. Coming from the Virtual PC 6/7 world I was beyond but made the plunge by purchasing a Macbook Pro Core Duo 2 and a copy of parallels. I used Outlook with the Netscentrics GTD app for Outlook running on Windows XP running on Parallels and was using Kinkless with Omnioutliner Pro courtesy Ethan Schoonover and OmniGroup respectively.

Overall Experience:

I am in sales, my work and personal life blend frequently. Having two GTD applications does not work. Contexts mean nothing between 2 different operating systems and 2 different programs.

I dropped the Netcentrics plug-in for Outlook and began to put everything into Kinkless. Even spanning 2 operating systems this was a little better but having a single button to click to bring an email into a task as I had with the Netcentrics application I started hating the jump between operating systems. Again, being in sales is a very full time gig, tough to leave things at the office.

GTD experience 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and so on

I thought there was something more universal that so I basically ended up installing almost every GTD application that I found on Merlin Mann’s wiki page. There are some cool things out there. I really liked Tracks and Thinking Rock.

GTD experience #3

While traveling overseas and still working for my US based company I got frustrated with Outlook with it’s partial header downloads while I was on a 256k DSL line (which is high end for the country I was in) and then begin to wonder what I really use Parallels/Windows XP for. Here’s what I figured out:

1. Outlook

2. Visio

So my 3rd incarnation of GTD on Mac I end up dropping XP all together. I fire up Entourage 2004 and get it working with my corporate exchange server. I drop another $95 on Apani’s VPN client so I can use our Nortel Contivity based VPN (which I wish was was Cisco since the client is free) which lets me into the intranet. This is excellent because all my work is based on one operating system. Additionally, there are some cool scripts for Entourage that allow me to push emails into instant tasks in the various GTD programs I am trying out at the time. I am still fumbling with Kinkless and other GTD applications and for a brief stint I get frustrated and go back to a paper based system. Also during this period I try the to-do application on my Blackberry as well as Remember the Milk which I love since I can access it from my Blackberry and my computer. I even installed the Quicksilver script and twitter so I can quickly add tasks to it. But I still wanted something local that allowed me to work even while offline. I even start using Firefox so I can use Google gears to do Remember the Milk offline.

The setup of RTM just doesn’t do it for me and some mis-labeled tags cause me to miss some actions.

GTD experience #4

I completely fall in love with iGTD. I love pushing Entourage task by hitting F6 and using the same F6 to push things from my personal email ( I use mail app for personal email accounts). I love the ability to highlight things in safari and then have them appear as tasks in iGTD. I love the ability to link files and notes as well. This is it, I’ve found the answer and even send a small donation over to the author. Additionally the frequent updates he releases is like a never ending surprise of cool new features and fixes to the small little glitches that will sometimes cause small annoyances.

I have no complaints about iGTD at all, what thwarted my attention was a powerful mixture of refinement and nostalgia.

GTD experience #5

I get the email from Ken Case from Omnigroup telling me that I could now download the alpha of Omnifocus. Omnifocus at the time wasn’t as slick and feature filled as iGTD but it was the best of Kinkless, the best of Omnioutliner and had lots of potential – I couldn’t resist. Daily and almost bi-daily updates were provided for alpha testers and features would magically appear and disappear. I started using Omnifocus as my primary application but really felt that it had a ways to go.

GTD experience #6

Pen and paper, I’ve struggled with trying to combine personal and work like onto one machine with the ability to blot out work on the weekends and late evenings. I am not very happy but I seem to be able to focus on the biggest items of the day and get them done. I use the GTD principals when it comes to dealing with email and contexts but I always feel like there’s a task I’ve forgotten.

GTD experience # 7 and final

Somewhere in all these iterations I read Getting things Done for the 3rd time. It takes that many readings of almost anything for me to get a concept clearly. I decided to stick with Omnifocus which is extremely stable and had plenty of features for me to use. I now instantly pull email from Mail (personal) and Entourage 2008 (work) into to-do items. I sync Omnioutliner with the iSync services on my mac which are then picked up by the Blackberry when I sync.

Note on Blackberry sync with Macs. No offense to the Pocketmac folks but it seemed that using this app would swap my work and personal email and phone numbers for many contacts. I would email someone at work and then get upset when they didn’t reply within a couple of days. It turns out that I had emailed them on their personal email account which the don’t check with the frequency of a work email. I went with the missing sync for Blackberry which was pricey at $39 but has been flawless in performance to date.

So here’s my final, current and hopefully last setup:

Mac OS X Jaquar, Blackberry 8700, Omnifocus and the Missing Sync. Works great and now I have to use this great setup to actually get something done! I wish you the best in your quest to figure this out but overall there are a few things to keep in mind:

-Simple is better

-Try to separate personal and work life to some extent.

-Have your tasks with you when you are out and about.

-All these things are useless if you don’t review your goals, tasks frequently

-Don’t tinker once it works. I and many others tinkered because these newer programs weren’t developed yet

-Don’t get caught up with the tool and focus on the freedom of getting these items knocked out.

Best of luck to you!