Steve Holden's Blog

My GTD Weekly Review Dashboard

There was a recent tweet on Twitter #GTD from Emily Wilska (@OrganizedLifeSF) asking for a "status report" template that one might fill out after completing a David Allen GTD Weekly Review. 

While I don't have a status report template, I do have a personal Weekly Review dashboard hosted up on Google Docs.

Here is a link to my GTD Weekly Review Dashboard Google Doc spreadsheet that I created. I also did an Excel export from Google Docs which you can find here GTD Weekly Review Dashboard Excel (.xls). [NOTE: Conditional coloring of fields & fonts may not transfer over depending on what application you are using to read the Excel file.]

The basic idea is to track when you do the individual items of a review by placing the date in "Last Completed" column. The spreadsheet will then make a calculation based on today's date, and give you a GREEN, YELLOW, or RED status.  Most of the items are on a weekly (7 day) schedule, but some of them are on a monthly (30 day) schedule.  Here are some links for more information on how to implement conditional coloring of fields for Excel, Numbers, and Google Docs.  Feel free to customize to your own needs.

I started using this dashboard last summer when things were really getting out of hand at work.  I was finding my timing for reviewing Weekly Review items to be sporadic with some items being reviewed several times a day to some slipping a couple of weeks or even a month between reviews.  To keep sane, I adopted this dashboard for Weekly reviews (which I look at everyday) and also David Allen's My World Mindmap (which will be a post for another day). 

The key for me is knowing what I am doing and not doing, otherwise I turn into a crazy maker.

Summary - Doing A GTD Weekly Review Via Twitter

I wasn't able to attend this event but I thought it was important to capture and share.

Kelly Forrister at the David Allen Company recently did an innovative event on Twitter (#GTD #Tweekly).  It was an interactive Getting Things Done Weekly Review.  Here is the sequence via 29 tweets that she posted:

1. Hello everyone! Ready? We'll do this in 3 parts/11 steps
2. PART ONE: GET CLEAR. Collect loose paper and materials. Gather everything that's loose into an Inbox, Tray or folder.
3. You have 5 minutes for this step. Go...
4. You all have one more minute on step one: Collect loose papers and materials.
5. PART ONE-STEP TWO-GET CLEAR: Get In to Zero. Choose the inbox that can good progress on in 5 min--email? paper? VM? Go!
6. a good way to process in is 4D's: Delete it, Do it (under 2 mins), Delegate it, Defer it (onto a list)
7. PART ONE-STEP THREE-GET CLEAR: Empty your head. Open a Word doc, or grab and pad and clear your head for 5 minutes. Go.
8. STEP THREE - SOME MINDSWEEP TRIGGERS: Family, health, meetings you've had, meetings you're going to have...
9. SOME MORE MINDSWEEP TRIGGERS: Your direct reports, finances, 401k, the dog, your car, health appts you've been putting off...
10. PART TWO, STEP FOUR-GET CURRENT: Review your Action lists (or maybe you call them Tasks or To Do's.)5 minutes start now. Go!
11. 2 more minutes to review action lists--are they current? anything to mark done? anything trigger you to add?
12. PART TWO-STEP 5-Review previous calendar info. Any triggers?
13. Many times reviewing your old calendar (go back about 3 wks) catches things you meant to do. 3 more mins left
14. PART TWO-STEP 6-REVIEW UPCOMING CALENDAR DATA - anything you should start getting ready for? Go!
15. REVIEW UPCOMING CALENDAR TIP: if you find something you need to process, you can add to your mindsweep for now.
16. if you don't get anything on reviewing your calendar, try going further out. Recurring Tasks are great for calendar.
17. PART TWO-STEP 7-REVIEW WAITING FOR - if you've got a list review it. If you don't have one, what are you waiting on?
18. WAITING FOR TIP: Review your email Sent folder. Usually some waiting for's hiding in there.
19. PART TWO-STEP 8-REVIEW PROJECT LISTS. Projects are your outcomes that require more than one action step. Go!
20. PROJECT TIP: Projects are typically completed within 18 mos. If you can NEVER mark it done, it's likely an Area of Focus.
21. PROJECT TIP: Most people we coach have 30-100 current personal & professional projects. Don't be surprised!
22. PROJECT TIP: If you are not willing to take any next action on a current project, are you sure it's not Someday/Maybe?
23. PART 2-STEP 9 - REVIEW CHECKLISTS - birthday checklists? travel checklists? home mntce? Go!
24. CHECKLIST TIP: Maybe you want to CREATE a checklist? Anything recurring that would be good? What to always pack for vacation?
25. PART 3-GET CREATIVE!-STEP 10-REVIEW SOMEDAY/MAYBE: If you have one, update it. If you don't have one, create it!
26. SOMEDAY /MAYBE TIP: S/M is not just a "fantasy wish" list. It can be a fantastic place to stage "not yet" projects.
27. SOMEDAY TIP: You'll trust S/M list(s) more if you know you're actually going to review them again. Otherwise they'll die.
28. PART 3-STEP 11-BE CREATIVE & COURAGEOUS! Any new thought-provoking, creative, risk taking ideas to add to your system?
29. CREATIVE & COURAGEOUS TIP: What's REALLY got your attention in your job, family, environment? This is the last step!

It is my understanding from the GTD Virtual Study Group which did a quick review at the very beginning of their latest podcast is that the timing for this weekly review was limited to 1 hour with all the major items (11 steps) taking approximately 5 minutes each.  The big take away from many of the participants was that they were  amazed at what they accomplished in 1 hour.

Other recommended resources during the Twitter session were:

• Weekly Review CDs
• Weekly Review Summary Article 
• Weekly Review Guides

I've listened to the Weekly Review CDs and I personally recommend them.  The guides are excellent also, and I use them when I need references during GTD processing.

Moleskine DIY Hack - Repositional Glue Stick

One of my co-workers recently came up with this handy DIY Moleskine (or other journaling notebook) hack to let you easily put in and remove productivity templates from DIYPlanner.com.

Find the template you want to put in your moleskine, print it out, cut to size, and then use 'repositionable' glue to secure it in the moleskine.  I added a 'shopping list' to one of the back pages of my moleskine.   Now I can use this for a couple of weeks, and then pull it out & add another fresh one without messing with a list of old items permanently in my moleskine.

Another reason, I like this is because it is sort of like creating your own post-it notes, but having control of the content, color, and size of the note.  The index card size ones at DIYPlanner.com seem to be ideal for the Moleskine.

Setting Up My GTD Moleskine 2009

I'm going on my fourth moleskine as my primary David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) capture device.  The first one covered 2005, for some reason 2006-2007 was captured in one, and last year (2008) went into a single moleskine.

Here are some of the steps I've refined in setting up my 2009 moleskine:

• Use my Dymo labler to print up my labels (see below) and contact information in case I loose my moleskine.
• Contact information is taped right up front and includes cellphone, email addresses, home phone & address; and $20 reward notice if returned.
• Labels: References - Information [start on page 1]; Inbox - Notes - Tasks [starts on page 9]; Calendar [page 192]; Contacts [page 190]; Roles & Responsibilites [page 188]; and Projects [page 174].
• Print out a small 2009 year calendar via Pocketmod (tape on front inside cover)
• Print out a small DIY Planner Hipster PDA GTD Reference Card (tape on back inside cover)

Some things I've learned over the last couple of years:

• Form-factor and ease of pen & paper has been very beneficial to me.
• Thinking of the "notes" section as an Inbox has really made it more appealing to capture everything in the moleskine.  I start each day with a new line and keep things in chronological order.  Once I process something, I mark it done using a yellow highlighter.
• I rarely capture items in the Calendar section except for personal items.  Work items seem to end up in Outlook without making it to pen & paper.
• I do capture more Contacts than Calendar items using the moleskine.  It happens mostly when I'm on travel, and capturing some new information away from my computer or cellphone.
• Previous years I have not had a Projects section, but after attending a David Allen Roadmap Seminar this past summer I started doing this, and it has paid off as a good Weekly Review resource.  It also turns out that at times I only have my moleskine, and I can do some productive brainstorming during downtime with just the Projects list in the moleskine.
• Another item added after the Roadmap Seminar was the Roles & Responsbilities section.  This is great to review from time to time during downtime, and it helps to keep perspective on what is important to me at 30,000-ft and higher levels.

Do you have any good GTD moleskine tips that I might consider?  Leave a comment or drop me an email.

Conference Update - GTD Roadmap, New Media, MT Communications, Office 2.0

I was recently able to attend a David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) Roadmap seminar during one of my regular trips to Washington DC. 

It was a fabulous one-day conference. 

As someone who has been practicing some form of GTD since 2004, it was great to finally get to learn from David Allen in-person.  The Roadmap material was, frankly, excellent for someone in my situation who tries to practice GTD on a daily basis and is maturing in the model.  For instance for me, my Runway is pretty well managed, as is my Horizon's of focus above 20,000 feet. But I do struggle with Projects (10,000 feet) and consistent Weekly Reviews.  This year (2008) could be considered the year of getting a handle on both Projects & Weekly Reviews. After this seminar, I definitely think I have some good best practices to move forward with.

There are three other conferences that have my attention right now:

I will be at the upcoming New Media Expo (NME) 2008 speaking on "Getting Started With Audio Editing - Hands-on With Audacity." More information about my Audacity related resources over at AztecMedia.net/Audacity.  Christy is going to go with me this year, and we hope to get some Jersey Boys Las Vegas interviews completed for the Jersey Boys Podcast. And yes, we will be seeing the show again while we are there. ;-)

I am also planning  to attend the Manager-Tools.com Effective Communications conference in San Antonio, TX on September 9-10, 2008.  This should be a great conference and if you are a manager, you should really consider attending.  Or at the very least, go over to Manager-Tools.com Getting Started page and get started.

The other conference that is on my radar but I don't think I'm going to be able to attend is Ismael Ghalimi's Office 2.0 Conference.  David Allen is going to be giving the keynote which is great, but the line-up of other speakers is impressive, and the content seems right up my alley.  If you are interested in attending, you can save $100 off the conference fee by using this link that Ismael gave me.  For those who are GTD Connect members, David recently interviewed Ismael for the In Conversation podcast.  It is a very good podcast that examines what Ismael is up to with regards to Office 2.0, and gets deep into the personal GTD systems Ismael is deploying.  He is definitely an impressive 'cloud/virtual systems' guy.

 

Open Source Project Management Links To Research

I was about 30 minutes down a rabbit trail that was derailing my David Allen's Getting Weekly Review when I ran into this article that I pulled out of Global Services Media back in March 2006, and since this relates to a #1 crisis currently at work I came over to my computer to type in the URLs into my task list. 

Then I thought, since I'm already chasing rabbits, lets make a blog post.

Some open source tools for project management to check out:

• Dot project (dotproject.net): web-based project mgmt
• Netoffice (netoffice.sourceforge.net): dashboard type project mgmt tool [looks like this one may have died]
• Eventum (dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum): bug and issue tracker
• Bonita (bonita.objectweb.org): workflow system
• Subversion (subversion.tigris.org): version control for code and docs
• Mailman (gnu.org/software/mailman): for sending out mailing list emails and archives

There are probably now a ton of other options. If you have suggestions, then let me know.

But now is the time for the end of this rabbit trail ...

Getting - Busy Four Day Weekend Recommendation

This Memorial Holiday weekend in San Diego looks very busy for us.  When things start to look like they might get potentially out of control with the family schedule, I've found I like to have a 'low-tech paper' calendar for the family to look at in the kitchen. 

I usually print out a couple of pages for each day of the weekend using a 'day keeper'  template from DIY Planner.  But since today is an off day from work, it is really a four day weekend, and a four-up Hipster DIY Planner page can get all the information I need on sheet.

I just printed a single page, and add all the stuff I know is suppose to happen. Now when Christy gets back from volunteering at the kids' school, she can get her items on there, and in theory, we should be pretty well scheduled. 

Have a great weekend! You can follow mine via twitter if you want.

My Getting List Manager Analysis Of Outlook & Pocket Informant

I recently read a post by Kelly Forrister "What makes a good Getting list manager?" But it wasn't until I read Eric Mack's analysis of her post that I made the connection that I should evaluate what I do.

Here is the criteria:

1. Sorting lists by context
2. Ability to assign a due date
3. Portable for on the go access
4. Easily accessible
5. More attractive to you than repelling
6. Doesn't force priority codes
7. Place to capture additional notes
8. Ability to search and sort in various ways.
9. Robust enough to handle all of your stuff.

My system for handling Getting Runway "Next Actions"  is an IBM X61 TabletPC with Windows Vista running Outlook 2007 teamed up with an AT&T Tilt with Pocket Informant 8.

As I read through the list, I find that Outlook + Pocket Informant do the majority of the items pretty straight forward for me: sorting (#1); due dates (#2); easy access (#4); search & sorting (#8); and capture notes (#7)   Neither seems to force priority codes (#6) but offers them if you want them.

I gain portablilty (#3) not so much from the list manager software but more from the platforms.  The IBM X61 is the best PC laptop I've ever had, and I have it with me nearly all the time I need it. Outlook is usually always running and usually only a click or pen gesture away. If I'm going some place without my X61, then I have a good sync with the AT&T Tilt Windows Mobile Phone so I don't miss many @phone, @store, etc items.  Using this setup to capture is pretty straight forward, but I actually use a combo of 3x5 cards and Moleskine for the most of my capture which is probably a topic for another post.

The part that is probably completely personality preference is #5: 'is this attractive enough to you to use it or not? ' It is probably also one of the most important questions that you need to tackle or you'll have a hard time getting things done.

What works for you?