Mind Like Monkey

Defining Contexts

If you’ve ever been on a ride in Disney’s Magic Kingdom, you have heard the following:

 

“Keep your arms, hooves, tusks and tails (and your hands, feet and legs) inside ride vehicle ”

 

When you hear that warning, you know you are getting ready for a fun ride. That’s what the next three weeks are going to be like on Mind Like Monkey, so quoting Disney’s Magic Kingdom again:

 

“On rides, stay seated with your tail down (you get this one right?)”

and enjoy this ride.

 

Contexts are one of those mysteries in the GTD world; they are complex and ambiguous and everyone is entitled to interpret them in their own way. That flexibility is one of the most fabulous things about contexts and also one of the trickiest., 

 

In Getting Things Done, David Allen defines Context Lists as: “the set of tools available or by the presence of individuals or groups for whom one has items to discuss or present.”From reading this definition, I am sure all your doubts are gone now and you’re asking yourself why you had trouble with this concept before. I’m kidding. Defining and understanding contexts was one of my biggest wins in GTD, and I made a huge leap in effectiveness from that moment on. To help you make a similar leap, let’s work on the original definition and create a new one.

 

First I’ll divide it into two parts:

 

1. “the set of tools available” 

 

2. “by the presence of individuals or groups for whom one has items to discuss or present.”

 

If we cut this definition in two, you will see that a Context can be a place, a tool or tools (this is what the first part refers to) or people (this is what the second part refers to). 

 

• Places: This are the physical locations you need to be in order to accomplish an action. This is the first kind of Context people understand, and actually the one I ask you to set at the beginning of this series, @Home, @Office and @Errands. 
• Tools:  These are the tools, such as software, or specific equipment you need to accomplish an action. For example, if you have a laptop and a desktop computer, there may be certain actions that can be accomplished only on one or the other, but not in both; this situation creates two separate contexts: @Laptop and @Desktop. Think now on this, you may need internet access to accomplish certain actions, but you are not connected all the time, so internet might be a tool context for you.
• People: This can be an individual, or a group of individuals, that you need to make decisions or have conversations with to accomplish actions. The “people” context is also referred to as Agendas in the GTD and people tend to understand this without much trouble. 

 

As you can see, the importance of the contexts is to accomplish an action. Nothing else matters. The reason you want to have contexts is to accomplish your actions as fast as possible, and in the best way possible.

 

Let’s see based on what we just said, a new definition and understanding for contexts.

 

Context refers to all those physical places or tools, such as software and specific equipment, or people with whom you need to interact, to accomplish an action.

 

 I hope that this new definition sets a better fundament  how you set your contexts. Remember keep your contexts simple. If you stop checking a context, you need to revise it, and most likely morph it into something else. For example, if you never check your @Home Context, you should ask yourself why not? Is it because you don’t want to do any of those actions, or because you don’t want to ever read again ‘Clean Garage’? If it’s the latter, then move ‘Clean Garage’ to someday maybe or another context if it’s relevant.

 

Now that the concept of contexts is clear (or at least less confusing), I would encourage you to spend some time thinking on the contexts you use. List all the physical places you frequent and make a list like this:Home, Mom’s Home, Office, Tool Shed, Garage, Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Target, Farmer’s Market, Wife’s Office, In-Law’s Home. You can even combine reasons you go to a particular place such as , Bank: Personal, Bank: Work. Basically any place that you go to often and where you need to be to accomplish actions.

 

After you make this list, do the same for the Tools (Laptop, Desktop, Phone, iPad, Table, Printer) the Software (Accounting Software, Excel, Word, Internet RSS Reader, Scrivener) and specific equipment that you use. (Laser Printer, Wood Cutter, Press, Power Drill).

 

Finally, list the people or groups of people, people that you need to talk on the phone, or face to face to accomplish actions: your wife/husband/significant other, kids, parents, bosses, direct reports, clients, customers, friends, school teacher, and more. Take time to think about this.

 

Once you have your three lists: places, tools, and people, we’ll move to the next step. Otherwise, please make the list, before continuing, I will be waiting…

 

Now that you have three lists, you want to identify the contexts that are key to accomplish actions, for example, you may have two contexts: Desktop and Home. Your desktop is at home but you don’t have that many actions on the desktop or at home to justify two separate ones, or you find that you never check a desktop list, but will check your home context. This is something really personal, and it’s worth to spend a little bit of time. You may have a work desktop and office context, but you only use the desktop when you are at the office so separate contexts of work desktop and office are redundant.

 

After you do thing through all your contexts in this manner, merge the three lists to make one lis;, this will be your tentative context list. After you have the list, try to purge it, remembering that you want as many context as you need and will use but no more than that. 

 

Finally, work on this list during the coming week on paper, when you do any planning, think about the context you will be using, that way you will be ready next week to create them in your system. Remember Albert Einstein said: “If I had twenty days to solve a problem, I would take nineteen days to define it.” So you have 7 days to define this list, and make it work for you.

 

One more important thing:

 

From now on, I grant you permission to create and stop using contexts as needed as well as name your contexts in attractive ways. If @Home doesn’t inspire you, but @MyCastle does, use @MyCastle. Be creative and have fun--that’s really important to keep the system working. Disclaimer, if you are going to use nicknames for people, make sure you keep that part private, calling some one the ScareCrow and showing them the list, may not be in your benefit.

Let the games begin!

This is the first in a week-long series as the primates look at computer games. Today is Tara’s turn.

There's a great episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called The Game. In essence, an addictive, holographic game threatens to woo the crew of the Enterprise into being controlled by a nepharious enemy. Will Crusher and his lovely girlfriend (played by a very young Ashely Judd, no less) are the only two people who are able to resist the temptation to play. My attitude toward computer gaming is exactly like Will's, I want no part of it.

I’ve never been into playing board or card games. Not even as a kid. So when the popularity of computer games began to soar, I wasn’t tempted. Now, I’m downright hostile toward any sort of computer or online game. My iPad and iPhone and laptop are all entirely game-free. Don't send me any FarmVille requests; I ignore those.

One of the reasons I’ve been adamant about staying away from all the various permutations on diversions is time. I’ve watched countless people waste oodles of hours. I maybe wasting my oodles, too, but I’d prefer my free time to be spend on hiking or reading or watching sports.

From a productivity standpoint, games can be a slippery slope. The reward system in your brain is being activated as you play and you’re getting little surges of the brain’s happy chemical, dopamine. Therefore, games invite a sort of sustained attention that includes a feeling of arousal--that is, excitement with a little hyperactivity thrown in. In many, this experience is so much more enticing than their work that it makes the games hard to put down. I’ve noticed that some folks enter something similar to hypomania, during which they seem not to be able to stop playing, even though fatigue or other demands are calling them away.

I recommend that if you play computer games, you do so mindfully. Pay attention to the effects they have on you. Set limits and boundaries. If you’re experiencing difficulty walking away from a game, or feel a strong urge to play, you may have a bigger problem than merely wasting your time.

Part 2: Learning to use the Project View (more cool stuff) (Updated)

*** Thanks for the comments. I miss two important details in this post, and thanks to the feedback I decide to add them to leave a complete post. The 2 updates are at the bottom as well as in the part they should have been. Thanks again!

 

Keeping your system simple is the key, and I cannot emphasize this enough. The key to a functioning system is not in having more than you need, and for sure is not in having less than you need, but in having enough of what you need so you can move fast.

This week, we will be covering a little more on the project perspective (view) of OmniFocus. I was originally planning to cover the Context Perspective this week, but after further consideration, we will wait until the next week to cover that. Again, keep it simple, you will survive one more week. 

I want to begin with were I finished last week: The Successful Outcome. This is one of those things that you may be sure you already understand, and because you think you already know it, you skip out on defining the successful outcome of most projects. Often, people who skip this step are busy and feel they don’t have time to “waste,” especially on something they think they’ll remember. If this is you, then you’re lying to yourself. Albert Einstein famously said: “If I had twenty days to solve a problem, I would take nineteen days to define it.” The problem is you are going too fast to define what it is you’re attempting to get done. 

Lewis Carroll in ‘Alice in Wonderland wrote: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there” That’s the problem of not defining a clear outcome, not setting aside the moment or moments to define what you need to get there, to make sure that you take the best road possible.

Let’s embark some fun stuff with Projects. Take a look at the screenshot on the right, and you have never seen this window, please stop reading, open OmniFocus. and create a project (or open one of your existent ones) and click on the ‘Inspector Button.’  You’ll find it on the upper right of any window.

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(Update 1) One of our readers, mention, that in reality the first thing you see is not the part that mention Type, Status and Context but this one.

The first thing you will see is a series of four icons. When you hover your cursor over each one, you’ll see their names appearing in the bar at the top of the window, to the right of the triangle that allows you to expand and minimize the Inspector window. From left to right, these icons are Action, Group, Project, and Context. For today’s post, you’ll want to choose the Project icon.

The next thing you’ll see is the Type of project, which we covered last week: Sequential, Parallel and Single Action. To change a project from one type to another, you can simply click on the appropriate Type. Next you will see Status, which you may also change here:Active, On Hold (Waiting), Completed and Dropped. If you want to learn more about each one of these types, please see last week’s post.

Below Type is a drop-down menu for Context. For now, I recommend that you keep this simple and limit yourself to 3 contexts: @Home, @Errands, and @Office. From the Inspector, you may only choose pre-defined contexts.

OmniFocus allows you to define a default context for your projects. For example, you may selected as a default that all the actions on a particular project are “@Office,” and OmniFocus will populate the context automatically of any action in that project as “@Office.” If some action does not belong in your default context, you can change it manually. I don’t use default contexts very often, because I believe you should not automate the thinking process; taking those seconds to think about the context tends to make a great difference for me.

(Update 2:) I forgot to explain how to select the ‘Default’ context, even that I talk about it, I didn’t explain how to make this default Context. 

In the drop-down Menu that said ‘Context’ select the one you want to be the ‘Default’, you wish to use for this specific project.

 

Below the Context drop-down is  a checkbox: “Mark complete when completing last item.” This is something I use constantly; there are many projects on my list that reach a point in which the project can be mark as complete automatically. For example, when I order something online, I will create a project and select this checkbox. . I recently got a present for my wife, and after the Waiting For item (which indicated the item was ordered and in route to me), was another action: Wrap present for my wife. After the item was received and the gift was wrapped, I didn’t need the project anymore,and in completing the last action, the project was automatically marked complete.

The next section in the window allows you to define timeframes of your project: when the project will start and when the project is due, as well as when it was completed. OmniFocus will fill the Completed date automatically when you the project is marked complete.

Start: The Start date of a project is to be used when you have planned the whole project or the beginning steps of it, but do not want the project or its contents to show in your Context Perspectives (Views) yet. For example, you want to order a gift for someone, but you don’t want to order the item until next Friday after you get paid. You can create the project, and list its actions but put the ‘Start’ date as next Friday, so nothing in the project shows in your system until that date.

Due: This is the date that this project will be due. I don’t tend to use due date for projects, but understand that if you select a due date, all the actions that are not finished in the project will come due on that day, and display in your system. In the future, we will talk more about due dates, but my recommendation for now is to avoid them, unless that due date is truly necessary.

The next section of the Inspector window, is the repeat section.

OmniFocus allows you to set a project to be repeated at various intervals, you set a project as Repeat every, Start again or Due Again.

Repeat every: This is used for projects that are repeated after X number of days, weeks, months or years. This allows some automation, if you are looking for that, so you can create a project that repeats every year to buy flowers for your wife for her birthday, for instance.

Start again: This is use to restart a project after completion. For example, if you need to send your accountant your monthly expenses for your company, you can create a project that contain all the steps required to do that, and set it to Start Again every X amount of days or weeks.

Due again: This is used to set a project due date at a certain interval. For example, you know that you need to submit your expenses before Wednesday to be paid on Friday. You can set this project to be due every Wednesday morning, since after that day, it’s going to be irrelevant until the following week.

 

Finally, at the bottom of the Inspector window is a review section which we are not going to cover today. We will get it at a later time, when we begin working with the review of your projects.

Next week we will begin working with Contexts, and it’s going to be fun. I hope that these posts, have allowed you to get a better understanding of what it’s possible with Projects in OmniFocus.

 

________

Update:

One of our readers, mention, that in reality the first thing you see is not the part that mention Type, Status and Context but this one.

This is the first thing you see in the Inspector Window, for this post, we should be in the third button, the Project one. The Others in Order are: Action, Group, Project and Context. We will get later on into more detail of these ones.

 _______

Update 2:

I forgot to explain how to select the ‘Default’ context, even that I talk about it, I didn’t explain how to make this default Context. 

In the drop-down Menu that said ‘Context’ select the one you want to be the ‘Default’, you wish to use for this specific project.

 

Digital Workspace

Just over a year ago, I bought a netbook. It is small, light and very portable. I searched for a long time before settling on this particular netbook. There were two deciding factors in my decision: screen size and a touchpad switch. 

This may be a holdover from my programming days, but my #1 rule for a computer is real estate. I have to have as much screen as I can get. In fact, at work, I have two 21 inch monitors side by side. Even with 42 inches, I find myself running out of space. When I started looking at netbooks, I knew there was no way I was going to survive on one of those tiny seven inch screens. The ten inch models also felt very small. I was lucky Asus made a twelve inch model Anything greater than that becomes a laptop and the weight dramatically increases. After a year, I have learned to survive with the smaller monitor. Occaisionally I will hook up an external monitor when I am doing something requiring more space. 

The touchpad switch is a deal breaker for me. For some reason, I cannot keep from dragging my wrist or thumbs over a laptop touchpad. The cursor starts moving around and 'clicking' in all the wrong places. It is especially annoying when writing because suddenly I will be typing in the wrong spot. What I find surprising is how few laptop makers include a simple button to disable the touchpad. Asus doesn't even put it on all their models. I was so glad to have it on this one. 

Why all this talk about netbooks? Well, this is pretty much my work space now days. I don't have a desk to myself anymore. I share with the rest of the family. I have my inbox in the desk, but sitting at it is pretty hard to get time. For the most part, I work at the kitchen table. 

A lack of physical space has required a different approach to work. I keep more and more online. I use my Scansnap to capture everything that comes in the door. I do my processing from PDF files instead of paper. I have switched to online everything - Gmail, Google docs, mvelopes for finances, Toodledo for tasks, Google calendar, and the list goes on and on. My whole life is slowly, but surely moving online. LinkedIn is next on my list to see how it can be used more effectively. 

Yes, there are security concerns with having so much online and I am worried about it more every day. I don't have answers there, but I am learning and keeping in touch with our corporate security guys. They keep me clued in on what is dangerous. 

Take a look at your space. Is there anything that can be automated or digitized? Organized? Filed? Perhaps a small electronic organization is the key. Just don't forget to back up your files religiously. 

A new Desk. (My Writer Desk)

It’s not a secret that I have use an Standup Desk and that I use to love my desk. But life change, I am working more on writing that I use to be, I am spending long hours writing rather that interacting with other people. When I was spending most of my time in Sales and interacting with people, it was great to standup, keep the blood moving, keep the energy going, keep things in a high speed movement. Now that my role has evolve to a full time writer, all that energy and movement I need need to be directed towards focus and concentration. I need to produce in a different way, and standing up distract me, and prevent me from focusing, because I don’t change activities as fasts as I use to anymore, standing up, make my mind want to move faster than what we can move, and therefore, instead of focus on the blank page, bring me to all those places that I can get distracted.

Productivity is one of those interesting things, what work today, may not work tomorrow if the conditions change, and change is the only thing we have for sure.

The important thing in productivity is to keep your eyes open, and be able not only to evolve and grow your system, but to be able to re-test things that in the past you had consider obsolete, and consider that they didn’t fit the bill. Things change and even stuff that you discarded in the past, can regain relevance and be useful back in the future.

I remember when I begin playing with an standup desk, the feeling of energy, of movement, the effective and efficient I was feeling, but things changed and now I need a different set of things to make it work, and therefore I begin reevaluating the regular desk. I actually try to work on the lazy boy in my home-office (that by the way works great to write fiction), try the couch in the living room (a mayor fail) and the kitchen table (that makes me so hungry, so another fail).

At the end, I set my Mac on the desk, and had been working great. It may happen that things get re-evaluated in the future and I may get back to an standing desk, but for now, there is no plan.

Since I move all my desk, I also use the opportunity to clean more stuff out of it, with the idea of create the most effective space possible. I have 4 drawers of a file cabinet to my left, my inbox to my right, a Picture and my Headphones. Lenses Clean solution, Purell and Cologne. My Ipad on a Stand my iTunes Hard Drive, the Mac and the mouse and Keyboard. A small stack of Index Cards, an a Pen. 

This is what produce the most for me in Focus, attention and Concentration, I only have in my desk what I am using, anything else, goes to his place, that in general is not on the desk.

 

Part 1: Learning to use the Project View

Last week I advised you to keep it simple, I advised you to begin with only 3 contexts, @Home, @Errand and @Office. I also suggested that you to put everything in the Someday-Maybe list, because if you are not acting, those tasks are already someday/maybe. I said all this because we need to make an effort to reduce the noise in our systems. I remember how nice the FM radio sounded back the old days. The difference was simple: FM then had no static. The same is true for your system, if you reduce the static, you will move faster, with less drag, and will be able to accomplish more of what you want to accomplish.And that last part is the key: Accomplish more of what you want to Accomplish.

 When people begin having productivity systems that allow them to move faster and more efficiently, they discover that they can do more, and they push their system until they break it. They’ve become highly efficient, but are in the same place they were before they had their system:with a set of stuff that is like static noise, useless and annoying. In all the systems I have had the honor to see and peek in, I have found that systems are cluttered with tasks that are no longer relevant, (hey my system is sometimes full of these, too) and that clutter generates an unnecessary noise that make us want to quit the system.

To avoid the clutter and noise, it’s important to know what you want, and that’s part of the reason the project list is so important. Today I’ll cover the Project View. I think you should be able to keep your contexts in a minimal way for another week and make the biggest effort to avoid the static on your system and in your lists. 

I should also clarify that this is not an advanced or intermediate view of Projects. This is a beginner view of Projects, and over time, we will be learning more and more. The idea of this week is to give you some basic tools so you can continue learning.

What it is a project? In “Getting Things Done,” David Allen defines a project as: “any commitment that takes more than one step to complete.” 

So basically anything is a project. On installation, Omnifocus gives you 3 kinds of projects and four ways to classify project status.

Let’s begin with the kinds of projects.

• The Sequential Project: This is the kind of project that you will use, when steps must be taken in sequence or in a particular order one after the other. For example, to send a document to someone, you might be waiting for the original, signed document to arrive.
• The Parallel Project: In this sort of project, actions can happen concurrently or in any sort of sequence. For example, you might be doing the final corrections on the file, but can also looking into printing options.
• The Single Action List: Omnifocus recognizes that there are things that are not technically projects, but more a list of actions. For example, moving the trash out to the curb on Sundays for Monday pickup.

 

Omnifocus projects (especially long ones) can begin as sequential and then move to parallel, and back to sequential.

 

Now let’s take a look the project status.

• Active: These are the projects that you are currently working on.
• On Hold (Waiting): When marked as on hold, the actions in a project are no longer considered available. Omnifocus grays out the project name and all it’s actions when a project is put “on hold.”
• Completed: You get to enjoy marking projects as complete when you decide that the project is done and no more actions are needed. 
• Dropped: Rather than simply delete projects that are no longer relevant, Omnifocus gives you the option to mark these are “dropped.” All the information about that project is still stored in the system in case you want to retrieve it later.

 

Finally, Omnifocus allow you to organize your project in Folders, which can be useful, but because we are looking to begin this system in a simple way, we are going to skip organizing your projects in folders for now.

For the next week or two, we are going to concentrate ourselves in the Project Perspective. Omnifocus, use the word Perspective instead of View, that I understand confuse people, so understand that the Perspective of Project is just a View of the Projects.

The next step is simple: begin populating all those projects that are relevant, that you are working on, that are active. Everything else should be kept in the Someday/Maybe, as we said.

After you list your Projects, make sure you use that you use the note function on the project and add the successful outcome. 

The Successful outcome is basically what will mean for you to be done, or to remove it from your list, how it will be fantastic, it will be incredible.

After you populate your Successful Outcome, begin with the actions, remember if possible to keep the context to a minimum and as simple as possible.

Next Week we will cover more advance stuff in the Project side and then we will begin to cover the Contexts and how to use it as effective as possible. In the mean time, have fun, creating your Project list and the basic actions. Over time, we will teach you what to do with Everything, and how to trow anything to your system and continue going were you want to go.

 

A Sure Fire Way To Achieve Goals

It has been a crazy week for me. Rather than leave you without anything, I am borrowing a post from my personal blog, Dan In Focus. Enjoy!

Want to complete a goal? Want to make progress toward one of those resolutions? Of course we do. That is why we make goals and resolutions in the first place. Here is a little secret from the business world: Measure it.

“What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well,  what gets rewarded gets repeated”
-- John E. Jones
I have used this guidance for years at work. One experience I am quite proud of came early in my management career. I led a large team that was trying to reduce the number of support calls we had to escalate to the engineering team. We were given a set amount of time in which we could attempt to fix the problem before we had to send it up the chain. I had talked with the team, passing on the challenge to increase our percentage, which was languishing around 60%. The goal was 85%. Nothing happened.

I was required to report back to the senior management monthly on this and other metrics (measurements). I created a nice graph, showing the percentage for the last few months with a line at 85%, showing the target. When I was done with my presentation, I posted the graph right out side my door. I didn't say anything to anyone about it. I noticed it took 10 minutes before someone walking by noticed it and stopped to look at the graph. Soon, the word spread I had a graph of our performance posted and everyone came by to look at it. I didn't say a word, just kept working in my office. No one asked me anything about it, either. I left it up all month.

The next measurement jumped to 70%. Again, I posted the chart showing the improvement outside my door and didn't say anything. The next month we hit 85%. The month after that we hit 90%, where we settled out for the next several months. I kept posting the chart, but added another measuring our next problem area. That too improved without my having to say anything about it.

It is a strange phenomena I have witnessed time after time. When something is measured and posted, it improves. So how do we apply this to our personal goals? We have to find a way to hold ourselves mentally accountable. Some folks can do with all by themselves, making a goal and never miss it. I need more help, though.

As I said before, I am trying to lose weight this year. One of the strategies is to record everything I eat. Even though the iPod app I use is quite easy to use, it is still enough of a pain for it to discourage me from eating a snack sometimes. That act of turning on my iPod and recording the food is enough to help me choose a salad instead of a cheeseburger. I love to see how many calories I can save for dinner. Of course there are days when I blow it, but if I faithfully record it, it is okay. Just having it stare at me for the rest of the week pushes me to make up for it later in the week.

Another tool I have started using is Daytum.com. A friend put me on to this one and I love it. It is real easy to track progress on any goal. It then allows me to show a graph of the progress. I have used this website to track my exercise, book reading and wood turning. You can see my results here. Having it out there on the web puts just a little more fire under it for me. I know no one looks at it besides me (and now you), but having it public somehow fires me up. The friend who told me about it looks at it and quizzes me whenever we talk. She is supposed to, though. She is my coach.

That is the next way to supercharge your performance - get a coach. It doesn't have to be very formal, but having someone available to ask you how you are doing on goals really helps keep the momentum going. Knowing you have to account for your performance is very inspiring. Once a week, she and I call each other and tell each other how we are doing on our goals. Sometimes, midweek, when the going gets tough, we shoot each other an email. Words of encouragement help a lot to staying on the wagon.

Want to send your performance off the chart? Tell your kids. My coach shared this one with me. She told her goals to her kids and asked them to quiz her. Every day when she picks them up from school, they quiz her how many minutes she exercised, how many phone calls she made job hunting and so forth. If you want excessive hounding, get the kids involved. They won't accept excuses like adults will. They relish the opportunity to help, too. Don't have a kid? Find one. They are the most ruthless and relentless coach you will ever have.

Pick a goal with which you are struggling. Come up with something that can be measured daily. Share that measurement with a friend, spouse or child. Request they ask you regularly about progress. Before you know it, you will be hurtling along toward accomplishing your target. Buckle your seat belt.

Graph image courtesy of clker.com

 

Creating a Solid Omnifocus System

This is the first post in a series of tips and tricks on how to create a solid Omnifocus system. In case you are not familiar with this piece of Software, Omnifocus, is defined by the Omnigroup (the creators of the software) as:

I should point out, that I don’t believe that Omnifocus is the Holy Grail of Productivity, you can be productive and get things done, with a napkin or much more complex software, the reason I talk about Omnifocus is because it is what I use today.In the past, I’ve used Palm Pilot Software, Outlook, Toodledo and Index cards. Since February 2009 I have been using Omnifocus. I love it, and I have so much to learn, but without a doubt it has been a powerful addition to my Batman Belt.

I have said many times, that the tool will not bring any more productivity in your life, and that is the most common mistake of people that are looking to feel more organized and more in control, they think to get a new tool. The result of that “I will get organized” is a massive failure, not because of the tool, because the lack of a system that can support your new idea, if you are out of control and treat the symptom instead of the problem, the problem will continue to be present. In order to solve the problem, you need to work on it, then the symptoms will fix themselves. That is my ambition with this set of posts, to help find readers find the answer to that problem, and how to use Omnifocus at the same time.

I’ve said often that the biggest problem with Omnifocus, is that it’s too much rope, and if you are not careful you can hang yourself. I hope to help you tame the rope, and use it effectively.

If you are coming here, because you are thinking about getting Omnifocus, or hoping to compare Omnifocus with other tools, you have come to the wrong place, if you come here because you want to use Omnifocus, or learn a trick that allow you to get a little more out of your Omnifocus installation, welcome.

My Goal is to bring people form the most basic implementation of Omnifocus, and little by little add and show all the possibilities that this great software has. My plan is to begin from the Mac, and build a solid system in the Mac, in other words, begin from scratch and add every Friday something new to the system. Some weeks will be a couple of things; some weeks will be only one. At the end of this series, the system that will end up being created in Omnifocus should be a robust one. After that, the plan is to move to the iPhone and finally the iPad versions.

The next step depends if you have a solid system or not. If you have a solid one, you don’t need to do anything, if yours is not that solid, print everything, delete all and begin from scratch.

My advice is to clean your Projects and Contexts. After you do that, it should look like this:

 

 
  

After you get to this point, my advice is to begin populating your system, but be careful. For the next weeks, you may want to wait, or you may want to keep it in a minimal way, just enough for your needs.

       I advise you to begin with three contexts, @Home, @Errands and @Office. Many people use contexts as place holders, as someday-maybe’s and for that reason they never look into those contexts, so reduce to three Contexts, in due time we will add more.

       Give yourself the space, and the freedom to put everything on hold, eventually; your system will be able to handle more.

I am going to get organized. One day at the time.

A good friend of mine told me that again, last week, while I was giving him some advice: “I agree with you, that doing that is important, so I am going to get organized”

People think, that getting organized will solve the problems they have, they think that having those problems solved, will make everything go away, the mess, the missing appointments, the missing dreams, the lack of time; and the feeling of overworking. It will also get rid of the guilt that cause in our hearts, the fact that you are not spending the time you told yourself that you should have doing something else.

He ask me for a recommendation on a tool. I am a tech geek, I live and breath in a computer, I spend more hours connected to my Mac, iPhone or iPad that I am willing to admit, here or anywhere else. I have been known to be attached to a Computer for years, I will say since 1997, when I got my first Palm Pilot. 

I laughed, not at him, but at the idea that the tool will solve the problem. After I try to explain to my friend, that he was looking a solution in the wrong place, so I ask him to identify his success story for the next seven days. - What do you mean he asked?

If I see you again in seven days, I want you to tell me how fantastic your week was. I want you to brag about it, to be exited about it. What have you accomplish that last week? His face when blank. I then explain, to him, if you have no clue, what will be a success story in seven days, most likely you will never see that you have a success one. There is always going to be one more thing to do, one more task to accomplish one more little thing that could be done.

Because I have learn, that sometimes, seven days, is more than what people can digest, I ask my friend to tell me what was the success story for tomorrow. If he can only do those things that will make tomorrow look as an incredible story, what he will do tomorrow. His face when blank again, and told me: “I have so much behind that feel like a success will be impossible” he told me.

I know that the story of my friend is not unique, most of the people that it is looking into more productivity, into getting organized, into be more proactive are trying simply to define a new story, are trying simply to feel success once in a while.

I go every morning over my lists, and pick out of those items on my pending list, what will make a success day. If my definition of success is to accomplish everything in my list, guess what, I will feel like a failure at the end of the day. Some days, I pick five things, some days I pick three, some days I pick one. The interesting thing is that some days I can do seven, somedays four, somedays two, somedays none, but with practice, I had been able to increase the number of success days; the number of days that I feel great!

You want to get organized? Do it one day at the time. Begin defining what success mean for you today, every day. Aim low, if you pick one thing and accomplish seven, you will feel great, the other way around will bring more of that you are feeling now.

About the tool, doesn’t matter, the tool will not organize you, the tool is a way to handle stuff, handle it on paper, computer. Create success, one day at the time, and the way to organize yourself will begin to show from behind the mist that is covering your success, a mist that you put when you ask the impossible from yourself.