Rhoneisms

I received a couple of comments on my post about Yojimbo putting forth Journler as a more feature rich and free alternative. I can’t argue against either of those points – It is a great app with an amazing feature set for the price (did I mention it was free). In any case, OK Scarfone has a great write up of how she has implemented GTD using Journler. I am pretty happy with my system but it might help others who are searching.

Do you ever have the need to create a quick little list or have a note, quote or piece of text that does not yet have a home? For instance, there are little text clippings that I like to keep in Yojimbo but, because I am on my Unbuntu box or otherwise at a computer but away from my main system, have to park them somewhere. Then there are the weekends when Bethany and I need to pound out a quick list of things we want to accomplish for that time – I just want to type it up, arrange it, print it out and take it with us. I think I have come up with a useful little Backpack hack that will solve these situations – The “Scratch” Page.
Here is the idea, create a page called “Scratch” and then give yourself permission to throw anything on there that wont fit anywhere else. This is not a place to keep these items. It is just a temporary parking space for those quick lists, text snippets and random files and images. And, just like a real scratch page, I delete them when I am done with them.

If you are one that finds yourself taking a lot of written notes, there are some pretty good tips at The Potential Blog. Although geared towards students, there are some real gems there for anyone. Here is my favorite:
“One of my favourite tricks is the use of square brackets ([ ]). If you get lost, bored or come up with an idea which could win you a Nobel Prize then stick it in square brackets. This works for stuff like “[I’m lost], “[NOTE: reread chapter 4]”, “[See lecture notes for quote]”, “[I don’t get this bit]”. This way your lecture notes will make more sense when you re-read them.“
The rest of the blog is worth checking out as well especially for students.
[via: Lifehacker]

Recently, I have found myself in the market for a new way to manage all the little info bits that come ones way in this great big digital world of ours. For years I have been using Notetaker for this purpose. It has basically functioned as a “digital commonplace” for me and I have written about my use of it before. In recent months, I have found myself growing away from it. I have begun to outgrow it’s “notebook” metaphor as it is not as flexible as I would like. In addition, it’s outlining capabilities are far outshined by OmniOutliner Pro so using it in this way feels redundant and is often confusing when switching between the two. Don’t get me wrong, it is a wonderful program and has served it’s purpose well for a long time. I think I have just grown away from it.
I think I have found what I have been looking for in Yojimbo. First off, this app is just plain beautiful. The very Apple like interface makes it a joy to use with very little learning curve. Everything just plain make sense. It allows me to quickly and easily dump information into it in a iety of ways. It allows me to search that information very quickly – even via Spotlight and Quicksilver. Notes default to plain text but invisibly and intuitively become rich text if you apply formatting. It can store URLs or archive whole web sites for offline viewing. Organize it all by grouping items into iApp style “Collections”. There are even some predefined “Smart Collections” that will auto sort your data based upon predetermined criteria. You can even encrypt individual items in your database. As for now, I have taken everything I had in Notetaker and several other places and dumped it all into Yojimbo and have been very happy in the few days since.
There is not much more I can say about this app that has not been said better already elsewhere. Check here, here, here and here for some excellent reviews. These reviews also mention several of Yojimbo’s shortcomings which, while a little frustrating, I can live with for now. Especially because the developers, Bare Bones Software, seem so committed to making it better. I mean, it is a young application (currently at version 1.2) that needs a little time to grow. I am willing to give it that time and hope that it will grow with me.

Leon Ho of Lifehack.org has honored me with being the first interview of a new series they are starting posing four short questions to productive people. I guess they are starting with the least productive and working their way up ;-).
Productive Interview Series: Patrick Rhone

As regular readers may know, I recently got married to my best friend and love of my life Bethany. What many may not know is that we did nearly all of the planning, setup and coordination ourselves for not only the wedding but also a reception of about 300 invited guests. Needless to say, between that and our regular life commitments we were swamped for months and had very little time to socialize with friends. Our friends are very important to us and it really does pain us every time we have to turn down a dinner offer or request to hang out but we just did not have a moment of free time for months.
In order to make sure that we got caught up now that the dust has settled, I put these requests on my Someday/Maybe list and treat them just like other tasks on that list (i.e. “Have dinner with Rodney”). During my weekly review I take a look at the friends I need to catch up with on the list and, if there is time open for the following week, move that request to a project or next action as appropriate (i.e. “Call Rodney to schedule time for dinner next week”).
There are still several folks on the list so, if you are one that should be, I promise to get to you… Someday/Maybe.
😉

Those of you who are familiar with Backpack know that it already had a feature called “Reminders” that let you set alarms that you receive via SMS and/or Email for ious things. Now that Backpack has a calendar, I bet many of you are wondering what the usefulness of the reminders are outside of the calendar. Lets take a look at what types of things should go on the calendar and what sorts of things reminders are good for that should not go on the calendar (which is crucial).
Use the Calendar only for calendar items. David Allen often refers to the calendar and calendar based data as “The Hard Landscape”. He even goes on to say, on page 41 of Getting Things Done, “The way I look at it, the calendar should be sacred territory. If you write something there, it must get done that day or not at all”. In other words, one should be highly selective about what goes on the calendar.
Why is this? Well, your calendar is filled with little contracts between you and yourself or you and someone else. If you schedule a meeting with someone, or lunch, or a vacation, or a daily workout, you have made a “contract” to be there at a certain date and/or time. Don’t show up and you essentially breach that contract – especially if another party is involved. You should really treat these items with that high level of importance.
So what should go on the calendar?

• Time-Specific Actions (Appointments) – Things happening at a specific date and time that you must attend (i.e. 3.7.2008 @ 12:00PM: Meet with Bob re: Strategy for Project X).
• Day-Specific Actions (Events) – Things happening on a specific day but not a specific time (i.e. 8.14.2008: Buffy’s Brithday).
• Day-Specific Information – This is information you may need to know on a specific date and, sometimes, may be tied to appointments or events mentioned above (i.e. directions to location of that meeting with Bob, notes for that project meeting, etc.)

These are all “hard landscape” items. Things that are happening at a specific time or are needed for specific appointments and events.
But there are some more “soft landscape” things that you might want to use the reminders for and should not disrupt the “sacred territory” of the calendar.
Reminders are meant for exactly that, just a quick little alarm to remind you of something. That is the reason that, by default, the reminder times are nebulous and not exact (i.e. “Later Today”, “In a couple of days” etc.). These include, things you need to get done later in the day like “Pick up milk on the way home” or in advance of an event but not by a specific time like “Make dinner reservations for birthday dinner” or maybe just a little nudge like “Don’t forget to pack your charger”. Sometimes, some action items that are time sensitive may benefit from a little timely kick in the pants.
Here is another possible use for the Reminders feature in Backpack – Future Options. In Getting Things Done, David Allen states, starting on page 171, that this category of items can exist on the calendar as well. I would argue that the Reminders feature is better suited to these sorts of items and more protective of the “hard landscape”.
Future Options are:

• Triggers for activating projects – If you have a project that you don’t really need to think about now but that you should revisit at a time sensitive date in the future (i.e. product launches, yearly reviews, what Buffy wants for her Birthday, etc.). Make a reminder for them and then put them on your project list when it pops up.
• Events you might want to participate in – Time sensitive events like conferences, seminars, etc. that you may want to wait to make a decision about until they are closer to the date (i.e. GTD Roadmap Seminar coming to town next month, “Bon Jovi Tickets go on sale today“). Set a reminder for it and if you purchase those tickets or book that conference it will then (and only then) become part of your hard landscape.
• Decision Catalysts – There are decisions that are significant and may need to made by a certain time but you are not, for whatever reason, ready to make them yet. Things like hiring a new employee or changing a job or career. Place a reminder to bring focus back to that choice and review it for action at a time where you are more prepared.

In other words, the Reminders feature allows one to be a little more creative with the sorts of things that are time related but flexible. Use it that way and guard the hard edges of the calendar with everything you’ve got.

As I suspected it might, Backpack Calendar has become my full time calendar. I just don’t know how the guys at 37 Signals continue to do it but they have certainly done it again. How is it that they manage to do everything right and make it seem so effortless. It replaces Now Up-to-date and Contact which I have been using for well over 10 Years now. I even used to work for Now Software and was a member of the development team. Now Software is full of great people who are committed to great software. All of this is to say that Now Up-to-Date remains in my heart and is still, hands down, the best non web based calendar client I have ever used on any platform (Although “Dates” on the Newton MessagePad is a close second).
Let me count the ways they just plain get it with the Calendar:
The Hard Landscape (6 Weeks) – The default view in the calendar is “Next Six Weeks”. While I never would have thought of this on my own, it seems to be exactly the right timeframe I need to see what GTDers call “The hard landscape”. I can see what events are coming up in the maximum timeframe most things are planned for. The current week is always on top with the current day highlighted in yellow. Events for the current day are listed in a right hand sidebar – right above the “Event Box” where you add events. Everything just seems to fit where I would have expected them to be.
Time Display – Times are not displayed on the actual calendar view itself. Times are displayed for the days events displayed on the right hand sidebar. Why? First, it reduces clutter and for a calendar to be effective it should be free from clutter. Secondly, it keeps you focused on the only times that matter and are displayed – the ones happening today. If you want to see what time an event is on any other day without switching to that day, simply hover over the event with your mouse and a yellow tool-tip will pop up with the time. Brilliant.
Navigating and Input – I love the idea that you can use one box for both entering events and navigating the calendar. Want to see what you have going on in January? Just enter “January” or the three letter abbreviation “Jan” and you are taken to that month. Type in “1 March 2008” or “March 1, 2008“ and you are taken there. Want to enter an event on March 27th. Simply enter “March 27 Mom’s Birthday” or “Mar 27 Mom’s Birthday” or “3/27 Mom’s Birthday”. It is easy and natural.
SMS and E-mail – Alarms for events are sent via SMS and/or to the e-mail address of your choosing 30 minutes before the event. I wish you could set your own “ahead time”. I am betting that feature is coming in the future because it exists for Backpack’s existing “Reminders” feature (which is different from the calendar and should be separate but I will cover that in a future post). That being said, 30 minutes seems like a good compromise for now.
iCal Support – Any shared calendar using the iCal standard can be added as a calendar to the Backpack Calendar. That means a myriad of possibilities. More than just subscribing to a US Holiday calendar or your favorite reality TV show schedule, that also means you can subscribe to other calendars out there like 30 Boxes and Google Calendar. Therefore, if you want to share calendars with someone on another service, that is available to you. Of course, you can also share any of your calendars which means as well that they can be subscribed to in iCal if you are on a Mac for offline viewing (Yes, that means that I am, to a small extent, using iCal as my client app – Global warming has no effect on Hell).

Apple made a number of big announcements at thier World Wide Developers Conference today. In case you missed them or are not familiar with what I am even talking about, there is plenty of good coverage elsewhere. I will not retread those well covered tracks because, while fast new computers, shinny new features and jabs at the fine folks in Redmond are fun, what really has me excited is the upcoming tranformation of Mail.app into a true productivity application. Looks like they have been drinking the GTD kool-aid in Cupertino.
The next version of Mac OS X, code named Leopard, will feature a greatly enhanced version of Mail that will also have to-do’s and notes integrated. What is even more is that the to-do fuction will actually be a system wide service so that any item, be it an e-mail, note, document, etc. will be able to be made into an actionable to-do.
This is huge. What Apple seems to understand is that the future is not only about how we access information, it is more about how we process it. It is about how we take all of these ious bits we have incoming from all directions and make them actionable. Allowing me to take any item and make it actionable – built right in and as part of the OS would be a godsend. Especially if that means any appplication will be able to take advantage of that. That seems to be the direction Apple is going.

So, Bethany and I go away on a (well deserved and needed) vacation and the whole world decides to come up with things I should be posting about. Of course now I am so busy catching up with the overload of stuff that I was so busy avoiding. Therefore, just some quick ditties about it all for now with more follow up on some of them (especially the first one) later:
Backpack Calendar Launch – 37 Signals finally released the calendar component of my fave tool Backpack. It is finally here and boy is it easy to use. You will now find it next to the pages link at the top of your Backpack pages. I have spent the past several minutes (yes minutes, it is that easy) dumping all of my upcoming events in there from my trusty Moleskine planner. To those of you who are already Backpack users and/or 37 Signals fans, it should come as no surprise that the calendar is nearly perfect. It is incredibly well thought out, straight forward, supports e-mail and SMS reminders, natural language input for events, iCal standard sharing, everything you need and nothing you don’t. I will give a complete review and how it is working into my Org-fu soon… Oh, and while we are on the subject, My Business Magazine has a great interview with Jason Fried of 37 Signals. Check it out.
OmniPlan (Beta) – The gold guilded gods at OmniGroup have announced and released a public beta of OmniPlan – A new project management application that, from my first glance, looks as easy to use and powerful as all of thier other products. As one would assume, it has all of the standard project management stuff. Gantt Charts, task management, resource allocation and assignments… The works. All of this wrapped up in the standard OmniGroup cocoa flavored painless to use wrapper. Well worth checking out for anyone with a project to manage.
43 Folders Series: “Back to GTD” – Have you fallen off the GTD bandwagon? Have you let your things get undone? Just need a little refresher to get you back to an inbox-state-of-mind? Then Merlin Mann has just the thing for you. In this series he will cover not only how to get your GTD back on track but also surmise how it got off in the first place so that it wont ever happen again. He kicks off the series with the best way to jump start your GTD – The fast “mind sweep” . Worth a read even if you have your org-fu neatly aligned because you never know what little yummy info nuggets Merlin may drop even on a well trained info-ninja.
Geek to Live: Quick-log your work day – Gina over at Lifehacker has some great tips for keeping a work log. While her guide is a little Windows-centric, the basic premise can be achieved with any tool. I have been doing this for a while now using PB Wiki. It really comes in handy at review time when I want to see where all of my time has been going or, at the least, why I seem to be working my ass off and nothing is getting done. Anytime I get an interruption, I log it. Anytime I get pulled away from one task to start another… Yep, log that too. That way, when the boss comes and asked why I have not gotten insert task or project here done, all I have to do is pull up the log and show her why.