Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is the new year, and while I am not one to make New Year?s resolutions, this seems like as good a time as any to try to turn over a new leaf.

My problem, like many of us, is that I have a hard time keeping up with my different tasks. I have tried many different approaches to tracking tasks, and what it comes down to is that I need to have the tasks that I need to complete staring me in my face.
By that I mean that I need to be able to see what tasks I have at any given time. I can do a pretty good job of setting priorities, it is making sure that all of the tasks that I need to accomplish are someplace where I can see them, and remember that I need to do them.

I know that part of this is establishing habits. I need to focus on what I need to do during the day, and then do it. Again, the problem is keeping the tasks in front of me. I am one of those people who puts stickies on my monitor when there is something that I need to do. That works, but is inelegant, and I have to be in front of my monitor to keep them in my sight.

I have a PDA, an HP IPAQ. That works great for keeping me on schedule, but the whole task thing is a problem.

Finally, at work I use a PC, and at home a Mac. I would like to have something that would let me use both. Also, I want something that is not dependent on synchronizing through a website. My company is concerned about security and that would be a big no-no. If there is a compelling solution that is Mac dependent, I could probably make the case to get a Mac for work, and then run VMWare Fusion to run the PC specific stuff.

The solution must be something that allows rapid entry. I need it to be as invisible as writing on a pad. However, that being said, I don?t want anything that relies on handwriting entry on a PDA. Typing is fine, I can type faster than I can write clearly, but the typing must be something that is as unobtrusive as possible.

Like many of you, I have been CRIMPing for years. This is different. I have had some new responsibilities added to my job. It?s exciting stuff, but it means that I need to be able to enter, keep track of, delegate, and also complete tasks better than I have in the past.

Training is not something that I need. I have done different time management courses, and what it boils down to is me keeping stuff in front of me so I can?t forget it. So, no classes.

Finally, another problem that I have is that I have a tendency to wait until a deadline is about to hit me, and then I do the work. I need to be able to keep things like this in front of me, work on the job a bit at a time, and preferably track progress.

I know that these are big issues. I don?t know if there are any simple solutions out there. I also know that part of the solution is modifying my own behavior. I can do that, but to do it I need to keep the new behavior as simple as I can, and as easy as I can.

Given the cumulative experience of this group, I am hoping that you can help me.

At any rate, I put my plea to the group. And given the information put forward by this group, and also the questions that are asked here, I am hoping to gain some insight in to how to solve my problem.

Jim

Jim,

Reading your post I thought "the story of my life!" but I won't go into it now; I am sure that others here will recognise a part of themselves in your post.

So, sticking to the way that a software tool can help you, I will shortly describe my own approach which I have been fine-tuning for some time now and it seems to do the trick.

1. The main characteristics of my ideal task management software are:
- Outlining, to breakdown my projects into specific tasks
- Filtering, to show only certain tasks, e.g. next, pending, by priority, by date etc.
- Importing/exporting to be able to view my tasks on various devices.

I have found two programs I am happy with: ListPro for Windows (and Windows Mobile) and Projekt for Symbian. Unfortunately they don't work with each other. I have ended up with Projekt because I can do my task planning on my phone while I commute. Since you have a PDA, ListPro may be advisable.

I've also read good testimonials on Natara Bonsai (Windows & Windows Mobile)

Other programs that could do the trick are NoteCase, a cross-platform outliner (Windows, Mac, Linux & Nokia Maemo) and InfoQube (Windows only). MindManager 8 and Personal Brain 5 (beta) have added filtered views but I think they represent financial overkill for task management.

2. When I work, I have the outline on filtered view, so I only see the tasks that I need to see. That is the basis of my keeping focused.

3. Following a webinar on Mission Control, I added a Capture Tool --one piece of software into which all my little notes go- namely Evernote. When I do my task planning, I go through them and turn them into corresponding tasks or organise them accordingly to other iformation management programs.

I should add that since making my project outline and being able to view my task list anywhere, I have almost reached the state of nirvana described by David Allen in Getting Things Done, i.e. a sort of 'offloading my brain' (motto courtesy of Tasktop).

Cheers
Alexander

For me, the key to effective task management is outlining. I find I need to drill down and list each small individual step that it takes to complete a task, otherwise there's a tendency to just stare at a list of tasks and not want to get started on any one since it may well be overwhelming or require several pieces of information I need to assemble, and it's not obvious where to get started. Outlining works great for this, because you can arbitrarily add detail/subtasks to tasks.

This concept of breaking tasks down into individual steps is a big part of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system. In the book, it's much more important than "contexts", which are what people normally associate with GTD. Contexts let you filter/view your todo list by what's possible right now. i.e. You might have a "computer" context for tasks you can accomplish at your computer. Beyond these two concepts, I don't recommend buying or reading Allen's book. It's dry as all get out and nothing earth-shattering. If your main problem is procrastination/waiting to get started on things, it won't help anyway. (There are a variety of good books on procrastination though.)

You should definitely try OmniFocus on the Mac. The previous version was a little complex, but 1.5 is quite accessible and changed my mind about the application. It's a very comprehensive outliner/task manager. A particular strength of OmniFocus is how you can narrow down the tasks it presents you with at any one time by marking parts of your outline as having to be done in parallel/sequential order. Unfortunately, mastering this adds a bit of complexity to the program, and the interaction with contexts takes a bit of time to understand. But it is quite a nice application now. It also has a syncing, full-featured iPhone/iPod Touch application for mobile use which doesn't require syncing through a website. The iPod Touch isn't too expensive and it meets your discreet typing needs (though the lack of a physical keyboard is a bit of a pain, but it's not awful).

If you find OF too complex, be sure to give Things a try. It also has a companion iPhone/iPod Touch application. Its downside is that it isn't a single-pane outliner, but it has a user interface that many people find intuitive, some novel ideas (particularly in postponing tasks), and a splendid recurring tasks implementation.

If you're a computer geek, give Emacs org-mode a try. This does everything OF does, as well as a superset of what Ecco used to do (with a few restrictions), and you may well actually be able to run Emacs directly on your current Windows Mobile PDA -- I'm not sure about this though. Unfortunately the user interface is inaccessible for anyone who's not familiar with Emacs.

-- Chris

Jim,

I too have a Mac at home and a PC at work, so I've looked at some cross-platform solutions. One that seems elegant and simple is to use TaskPaper on the Mac:

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper

and its PC counterpart, ToDoPaper:

http://widefido.com/products/todopaper/

First, the disadvantages:

1. You've got to buy two different programs at $30 each (although I do think they offer specials at times).
2. You have to depend on two different programers to keep their programs up to date.

But here are the advantages, as I see them:

1. These are simple, elegant programs, easy to learn and use.
2. They each create a simple, sharable text file that the other reads just fine, so you can use a web cloud program, a USB drive or just e-mail the file back and forth to yourself. You can download the text file to your Palm device and refer to that, as well.
3. The system is fairly flexible. Implement a hardcore GTD program or something less stringent. Whatever works for you.

Now my disclaimer: I don't do this myself, because I personally do not like having to do lists. I've always been pretty good about keeping it in my head. In fact, when I do write down what I need to do, I am usually not disciplined enough to check my task list regularly, and therefore -- ironically -- I'm more likely to forget what I need to do. BUT, if I were to begin tracking my tasks, this is the system, and these are the programs, I'd try first.

Hope this adds some grist to your mill.

Steve Z.

Chris Thompson wrote:

If your
main problem is procrastination/waiting to get started on things, it won't help
anyway. (There are a variety of good books on procrastination though.)
-- Chris

Chris,

What do you recommend reading?

--Ken

If I may barge in, my favourite book against procrastination is The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. He's also produced some powerful audio programs.

I would also suggest that you take a look at the Zen Habits blog at http://zenhabits.net

Alex wrote: "If I may barge in, my favourite book against procrastination is The Now Habit by Neil Fiore."

Neil's book is THE book on procrastination and how to deal with it :-)

Franz

I agree about The Now Habit. I believe a revised version of that book just came out a couple months ago. There's also a good book by Burka and Yuen. For more serious problems, look into anything C.R. Snyder has written on approach/avoidance-based psychological coping or see Kantor's book on pathological avoidance. Fiore and Burka/Yuen are basically this branch of psychology in "light" form.

-- Chris

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

If I may barge in, my favourite book against procrastination is The Now Habit by Neil
Fiore. He's also produced some powerful audio programs.

And while we're at it: IMHO, the best book on writer's block is "On Writer's Block" by Victoria Nelson (published in 1993). It is a revised and greatly overhauled version of her 1985 book "Writer's Block and How to Use It".

Franz

Thank you for the reading suggestions. I apologize for "hijacking" this thread.

--Ken

Jim

I've found out the hard way that (for me at least) a successful task management implementation must start with understanding the wider context i.e. where your tasks are coming from. Are your tasks coming from another person (e.g. your boss) or from yourself? How do they usually get to you - by email, verbally, your own ideas etc etc.

Once you understand the context, the trick is to design a hardware/software solution that best fits the context. Too often I tried to implement a task management approach because I liked the look of particular software. This usually involved moving data around between applications. Unsuprisingly, I soon stopped doing it - and felt guilty for doing so.

After I realised that most of my tasks were coming out of emails, my personal solution was to make more effective use of Outlook using the Linenberger approach. I haven't looked back.

So it's horses for courses. Build something that works for you and your situation.

Jack

I knew this was a good place to raise the questions, both because of the helpfulness of everyone here, and also because I figured that many of you had struggled with the same issues and found some solutions.

Alexander, Chris, and Stephen: As you might imagine since I frequent this site, I am fond of outliners. Stephen, the pointer to Taskpaper and TpDoPaper are good-I'll check them out. Part of my issue with outliners is the ease with which I can enter info. As I said, the more transparent the better.

Chris-Procrastination isn't really the issue. I don't resist doing the tasks, I just need to be able to keep them in my focus. However, I will check out The Now Habit, thanks for the suggestion.

Jack-My tasks come from all over the place. Partly emails, partly stuff that comes up in informal discussions, partly meeting stuff. For email, I have been using Clearcontext. It runs in Outlook, and does a great job of allowing me to file things, and also to set up tasks based on emails. The problem has been figuring out how to keep those emails in my foreground. If I had a way to set up my lists and then have them pushed to me like an RSS feed that might be a handy to do things.

I have also followed the GTD phenomenon. I haven't been able to make it work for me, but part of the reason may be that I haven't really done the full Monty. I haven't sat down and done my collecting, and all the rest. It seems that my time isn't such that I can stop and do that and then start things up again with everything broken down into Next Actions.

Anyone with experience with sliding into GTD slowly, and have any suggestions? Or do you have to go the full David Allen route to make it work?

These have all been good suggestions. Thanks a lot for your input. I will be mulling this over for the next few days, then I will be trying to implement something. Once I have something figured out, I will let everyone know where I am headed.

I've managed to be fairly successful for a long time by keeping things in my head. Unfortunately, now I don't just have my own work to deal with, I have two teams that I am leading, a lab with a bunch of people I manage, and long term, strategic issues that I have to deal with. I am really hoping that you can teach an old dog new tricks, 'cause this old dog needs to make some changes.

Jim.

Jim wrote:

...................
For email, I have been using Clearcontext. It runs in Outlook, and does a great
job of allowing me to file things, and also to set up tasks based on emails. The problem
has been figuring out how to keep those emails in my foreground. If I had a way to set up my
lists and then have them pushed to me like an RSS feed that might be a handy to do things.

I also use the Outlook/ClearContext combination. It is particularly powerful when used with a task methodology such as the Linenberger approach. If you haven't seen it, have a look at; www.michaellinenberger.com/clearcontext.html.

In short the approach is to extract the tasks immediately from the emails and then clear the in-box by archiving or deleting the emails. The system then presents the tasks to you inside Outlook according to the way you have priortised them. There is a book that outlines the system in some detail and is the most practical productivity book I've read for years. You'll see it on the Linenberger site.

Anyone with experience with sliding into GTD slowly, and have any
suggestions? Or do you have to go the full David Allen route to make it work?

David Allen's books have been very important in developing time management theories since the 1980's. However, as I've said before on this site, I have a great deal of scepticism about the messianic aspects of his theories and the fanaticism of some of GTD's devotees. The paperback is worth a quick read and there are condensed audio versions available on CD.

As for whether it is all or nothing, some aspects of GTD remain powerful, irrespective of whether you want to try and implement a total GTD approach. Recent approaches from people like Michael Linenberger and Mark Forster specifically credit Allen for particular concepts which they then use and develop into their own "systems".

My suggestion FWIW is to be an ideas thief and use the bits that appeal to you and work for your personal environment. Be wary of one system that claims to have all the solutions. It doesn't exist.

Hope that helps

Jack