Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

Ok, it’s time for me to face reality : I have a team, I have too much work, I have to get serious about my productivity.
So let’s go web shopping for Productivity secrets ! … and let’s face a second reality : I love to dig for information, try software, in a word, loose my time playing with new toys, not sure it is good for my current issue .
Being a proud arrogant froggy, I feel really uncomfortable with the zillion of anglo-saxon self-management craps we can found everywhere, promoting the same mantra every time :”If you really want it, you can do it”.
Then I found a great community around a great Guru with an interesting approach : David Allen and it’s GTD, “Getting Things Done”. For me all the great “teaching” books has to be easy to read, all the depicted ideas have to appear as simple and good sense ones, and above all make me feel that, with an hour of thinking, I could have come up easily with a fair amount of those “brilliant” ideas . The Allen’s Book is one of those. It’s not one of those change-your-lifestyle-with-mine approach, but a more personal one, Allen seems to say : “Ok, you are good at what you are doing, I’m good at productivity, let me give you some tricks I’ve learn, and see if it fits”. Ok, I like that.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying tools, tuning my setup, reading web blogs, etc…

1. I’ve lost A LOT of time studying
2. I’ve lost A LOT of time tweaking a system that may fit my needs, even learnt VBA to tweak Outlook and adds macros…
3. I’ve lost A LOT of time … because I began tweaking my system before discovering my needs
4. I have a A LOT of FUN doing that

Now it’s time to use it …. ahum, do I really need that? Is that all? Only few categories in Outlook? those four added buttons?… Yes I think it is, the real step, as always, is in my mind, not on my laptop: what I’ve learnt, tools stay tools, a mean, not a finality, and many time, especially in computer science, we tend to forget that!
My day to day practice is changing (albeit slowly), following those common sense principles:

• Even if it may sounds obvious, GTD made me really think about what has to be DONE, how to translate “stuffs”, ideas, meeting outputs into actionable items : giving time to extract tasks from this information magma, on a systematical basis, is, for me the greatest contribution from Allen.
• Power of delegation without loosing control.
• If something takes less than 2 minutes, DO IT NOW.
• Track, write and forget : once actionable items are extracted, store them in your system (delegate or deferre them) … and be confident in your system, forget: it gives you the freedom to think about new ideas, longer term goals … precisely what I was missing, as I was overhelmed by short-terms goals and views.

Those four points may sound like GTD propaganda, blablabla … but, to be honest I’m myself surprised to follow them naturally, with few efforts. David Allen gave principles, few details, and I think, like Kathy Sierra in her great post Making happy Users, that fewer details equals better identification and appropriation of the ideas. Check also Metagrrrl Post about a similar GTD point of view.
Does it really helps my productivity? Not sure at this time. So does it help me ? definitively, cause I have less and less of those “little-things-to-change-to-improve-to-say-to-write” in mind, leaving room for more important thinking.

I’ll certainly add some other posts about my setup, my outlook/evernote customization, desktop search etc.

As a side effect of all this self-teaching I’ve discovered many great blogs and posts, particularly those GTD few ones:

• Working Smart
• Office Zealot and The Latest Getting Things Done Blogs
• GTD Wanabe
• The famous 43Folders

And a special mention to the excellent Creating Passionate Users, that has nothing to do with productivity, but is one of my preferred read, waiting eagerly each new post with a mixed feeling od admiration …and yes jealousy for the Kathy Sierra’s style sharp mind and clever comments, thanks Kathy for sharing your talent! Do not miss her posts about the Devil’s advocate or Making happy Users.

For english readers … sorry for my style but, hey, I’m french

Thomas