Entries Tagged 'GTD' ↓

The short answer: For most users, Backpack is worth the time and money.

Backpack is an online service offered by 37Signals

that makes organizing your information incredibly easy. Backpack lets you make pages which can contain any combination of notes, to-dos, images, files, etc. You can keep these pages to yourself or share them with colleagues, co-workers, friends, or family.

I first used Backpack last year and, to be honest, I wasn’t impressed. 37Signals acquired Backpack and made a lot of positive changes since then and I decided to give it a try again. I’m glad I did.

I’m done with DotMac….what now?

One of the reasons that I decided to pick Backpack up again is because I decided to stop paying the Annual Apple Tax for its DotMac services. A review of DotMac is it’s own blog post series - and since I don’t want to reenter counseling sessions for broken promises - I’ll let it wait until then. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting enough juice for all the squeezin’ I was doing with the service.

But I was getting some functionality. What I lost when I stopped my DotMac service was the online storage for reference files and a shareable calender. I didn’t use the rest of the service, so not having some of the other features didn’t bother me.

Let me briefly touch on the online storage piece. As some of you know, I’m an officer in the Army National Guard. The Department of Defense has some fairly strict security processes in place such that you can’t plug in personal computers into their network. So, even though I kept all of my files on my personal computer, I would constantly have to shuffle them back and forth between the government issued computers and my laptop. That got annoying.

I used my online storage as a good way to still have access to those files without having to transfer from computer to computer. Furthermore, I never was in the position such that, if I forgot my laptop, I didn’t have those files.

(Note that I could have gotten around this with a mobile harddrive. I never got around to buying one because I didn’t need one as long as I had one of my online services, and they proved more functional for me.)

I would also occasionally be somewhere where I needed access to my files for the teaching and research that I do at the University. With DotMac, I had everything synced in my iDisk, so I was never without a file that I needed. I could have just gotten some online storage through another service like Mozy, but I wanted a more integrated solution.

Enter Backpack for all my file and calendar sharing needs…

Calendar sharing is also a huge feature for me. I’m horrible at telling Angela what I’m doing, even though I often put it in a calendar. My old DotMac service automatically updated her computer when I made changes - so when I no longer had that feature, there was considerable tension as my shifting schedule changed and I didn’t tell her. Having your spouse cook a meal because it’s her turn only to tell her way too late that you’re going to stay late for work causes considerable frustration.

Backpack stepped in quite nicely there, as well. Now when I update my Backpack calendar, she gets an RSS notification that I’ve done so.

But I gained more than those two features. I also really started using the Reminder feature in Backpack, as well. I schedule reminders for important things to remember, and I can set it so that it reminds both of us or one of us. For instance, she had surgery last Thursday, and the doctor informed her that was not to take anti-inflammatory meds for one week prior to her surgery. Rather than try to remember that, I just programmed a reminder that emailed us one week prior indicating that from that she wasn’t supposed to take anti-inflammatory meds during that period. Simple and efficient.

I’ve also been continually using their Pages feature in many different ways. One time I used it to keep a rolling ToDo list for things I needed to do during Annual Training. Another time I used it to keep track of the wines that we like. Another use has been as a shared project tracker. It’s really so easy and modular that you can use it for about whatever you need.

Rarely have I used a product that was so easy, and I dare say fun, that it encouraged me to use it more. Backpack does that to me on a daily basis.

Another thing about pages: each one has its own email. So you can set up a page to email all sorts of information, and Backpack diligently adds that information to the page. Combine that with the ability to easily drag the contents from one page to another, and you can hack out Backpack to be your own Capture and Process Center, GTD style.

I also have been using the Writeboard feature more and more. Writeboards are shareable documents that allow different collaborators to make changes to the document. I’ve used them to log meeting notes and to prepare agendas for teleconferences. I could see using them as a Wiki in a Small Business Structure, although it does have some limitations that wouldn’t make it ideal.

Backpack, again, provides a cohesive, integrated solution by allowing you to share documents for collaboration.

To my pleasant surprise, 37 Signals added another feature that I’ve been wanting but haven’t asked for: The Journal. The Journal is just a place where you can write down what you’re working on so that everyone in your Backpack group knows what’s going on. I think it’ll turn out to be a more productive Twitter.

How I think it’s going to be most useful to me, though, is it’ll give me an easy way to write down what I actually did at the end of the day so that I that I don’t have to remember that I fertilized my rosebushes today - I can just search for “rose”, and as long as I put it in to Backpack, it’ll show what I did to my roses on what day. That’s friggin’ handy.

Yet again, Backpack delivers.

That’s great, but I’ll have to spend time and money to use Backpack…is it worth it?

Switching to any new system like this requires time You have to learn a new way of thinking and teach yourself how to use the system. Learning Backpack has been insanely easy. It’s probably taken me twenty minutes, all together, to figure out how to use it.

However, you can spend a lot of time tinkering with it to figure out new ways to use the service for your context. This feature is a double-edged sword - being able to tailor the service for your actual needs and wants also makes it so that you can spend a lot of time fidgeting with it - but I’d rather have a more modular service that does what I want it to do than one that’s constrainingly fidgetproof.

I suspect what’ll keep most people from really using Backpack is the cost. Though there is a free service available, you’re really not getting the best of Backpack - as it’s a really handy service for integrating family and group activities and information. And to do that, you have to pay a minimum of $12 per month.

However, it’s worth it for my needs, and I have been paying for the service for several months now. Consider it this way: how much of your time do you spend sharing schedules, information, messages, and trying to remember stuff? It saves me at least an hour a month - and my time is worth far more than $12 an hour. Not to mention the sanity saved from not being curtly reminded that I didn’t tell Angela what I was doing.

The way that Backpack can be tailored to an individual or groups needs is a huge feature that makes it hard for me to limit who I would recommend the service to. Backpack is so flexible and modular that it can serve the needs of anyone who needs an integrated place to share calendars, information, reminders, and (recently added) their status with others.

[Update on July 10, 2008: If you have more than 6 people that need to share information, you'll probably want to start integrating some of the features of 37Sig's other services.  At that point, it would be more cost-effective to host your own server somewhere and set-up the information exactly the way you need it. However, that would require at least one person who knew how to set up such a service, but an organization of larger than that will need some organic way to help manage information and scale that structure. More on this in the future...]

Right now, the thing that’s most likely to pull me away from using Backpack is not another online service, but rather the likelihood that I’ll be setting up my own home server. If I do that, though, it’ll be because using Backpack has shown me how having my own flexible, tailored intranet can help me and my family’s productivity.

The Changes I’d Like to See in Backpack

Despite the fact that Backpack is already a really good service, I think it could be even better with the addition of the following features:

• A daily calendar view with beginning and end times

Although the Newsroom (the dashboard where Backpack displays your latest activity and what’s coming up) does a great job of showing you the hard landscape of your day, it doesn’t have end times on the activities. For instance, I know that Angela’s physical therapy appointment is at 1pm and her allergy shot is at 3pm. What time does her physical therapy appointment end? To figure that out, I’d have to return to another source of information - which defeats the purpose of me keeping it in Backpack.

This one should be an easy one, as Backpack is already able to understand the syntax of multiple day events.

• The ability to attach notes and files to reminders

Backpack’s reminder service is really handy and easy to use, but to take it a step further, we need the ability to attach files or notes to them. Having the ability to have a reminder that tells me to call Bill at 3pm while having the agenda for the conversation included with the reminder saves me a few extra steps. Yes, this is simply the ability to time-delay an email to yourself or your group, but it’s a service that can easily be integrated into Backpack.

• Time stamps for listed items

It’s very, very easy to make lists within Backpack - so easy, in fact, you’ll probably want to start making lists of a lot of your important data. One thing a lot of people will likely try is to set up some rolling ToDo list - it works pretty well for that, especially because the list items are draggable on the page (you have to do this yourself to see how addictive it can be).

What keeps it from being the end solution for me is that it doesn’t tell me when that item was completed. For what I do, it’s important to know that I completed this portion of that project on this date rather than some other - to do that, I’d have to go back in and edit the list item to say COMPLETED ON MAY 27th. Clearly, Backpack understands timestamps, for it does it on everything else - I want it to do it on list items, as well.

• The ability to enter status for the past in Journal

Yes, this is a relatively new feature, but since I’ve been using it, I’ve been slightly frustrated that I can’t quite use it the way I want it. When you put in an item, it puts it in under today’s date - but if you did something yesterday and want to put it in that you did it yesterday, you can’t. You have to put it under today’s date. I know the Journal is designed to be used as a current status board, but being able to back enter status would be really helpful - especially if you want to capture working actions done when you’re away from the internet.

A Systematic Review of Backpack

I’d like to end this review with a more systematic summary using the criteria I set out in A Special Theory of Productivity. As a brief recap, in that post I stated that the three functions of Time Management Systems are to help us plan, execute, and evaluate our actions and that the principles of simplicity, usefulness, aesthetic pleasure, connectedness, and cohesiveness make Time Management Systems better or worse.

Backpack wins high marks in its ability to help us plan and evaluate our actions - it would be even better at it with the features requested above. Its interface is simple and aesthetically pleasing, and it’s so useful that many people will have to discipline themselves to not use Backpack to list out their lives.

Until we get a better daily picture, though, Backpack will not be an end all solution for executing one’s tasks. That being the case, it gets lower marks for connectedness and cohesiveness, since to see how those tasks are connected to anything I’ll have to refer to another system. The features requested above will help with this aspect without breaking the simplicity and usability.

Give Backpack a Try (For Free)

I encourage you to give Backpack a try if you haven’t done so already. The banner below will take you directly there so you can see the tour for yourself.  Remember that there is a free trial - if you use it and find that I’m wrong, please come back and call me out.

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I mentioned after I completed the Daily Productivity Planner that I figured out how to write this post. Life intervened and I lost the muse. I’m currently in the process of reconstructing the train of thought, but it’s going to be rather rough.

The hardest part I’m having in articulating the ideas in this post is whether I’m talking merely about software time and task management systems, or time and task management systems at large. I think that the same functions and principles are features of both software time and task management systems and of larger time and task management systems like the Seven Habits and Getting Things Done. I’ll not worry too much about it right now, but let me know whether you think I need to separate the discussion between the two.

I’m also going to conflate time management systems and task management systems and just call them Time Management Systems. Feel free to poke holes in these gaping wounds, but think more about the functions and principles, as those are the meat of this post.

Continue reading →

“If you know you have to swallow a frog, swallow it first thing in the morning. If there are two frogs, swallow the big one first.”-Mark Twain

You know how it goes. You wake up in the morning, and there it is. Ribbit!

You pour your morning coffee, and there it is looking at you. Ribbit!

As you’re working and glance at the clock, there it is looking back at you. Ribbit!

It’s that task or project that you don’t want to do. You know you’ve got to do it, but instead you put it off. Maybe you’ll feel like doing it later.

You won’t.

Getting it done first thing in the morning assures you that, if nothing else, you complete that one thing for the day. Leaving it hanging there may make it such that you don’t get anything else done from worrying about it.

There’s also this: getting those things done first thing in the morning often provides additional motivation to complete a lot of other things that day.

After all, if you’ve already swallowed a couple of frogs, can the day really get any worse?

But wait - what about the whole “plan your day by your productive capacity” bit?

(New readers: if this is unfamiliar to you, check out A General Theory of Productivity, The Daily Heatmap, and The Daily Productivity Planner)

Generally, having those things that you want to do hanging over you ensures that you won’t be at your productive peak due to distraction. Remember, decreasing distractions and increasing motivation makes you more productive.

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(The picture above is of a huge toad we encountered in Costa Rica. That shoe is a size 12 - and we took it like that to give the scale of the toad. So it’s not a frog, but I still wouldn’t want to swallow it!)

Dustin posted an article about Personal Productivity in the 21st Century over at Lifehack. I was going to comment on it on the blog, but my commentary got a bit long, so I decided a trackback would be better suited.

As I blog more and more and try to get more traffic, the “cash value” of the ideas I’m thinking or writing about becomes more and more of a nagging question, and, honestly, that scares me. Some things that we write and think about just shouldn’t be monetized or driven by the market. So I get stuck on this one: I hope this blog provides genuinely valuable content to people, yet at the same time I sometimes just want this blog to be about the playing with ideas.

The greatest issue I have with my own personal productivity is not getting things done, but rather figuring out which muses to chase and which to let go. Dustin’s comment about rigid scheduling vs. park sitting rang rather true on this one, because if I were to plan my day down to the 15 minute interval, I’m rather sure that some of the most creative and important ideas that I would have would die on the petard of the schedule. Yet, if I don’t stick to a somewhat realistic schedule, I generate more open projects that I’ll never close.

Lastly, when you shift from being an hourly or salary worker to a knowledge worker, there comes a point in which it’s hard to figure out what your time is worth. On some days, when the muses or flow is with me, one hour of writing, brainstorming, or idea generating can equate to days or weeks of thinking. A further complication, related to the first issue, is that it becomes hard to determine whether the process of generating ideas just to generate ideas has a certain value or whether it’s the generating of relevant, useful ideas that is valuable.

I’m going to run into this problem much more here in the next few months when I take a full-time Guard job for a while. The reason I will likely be hired for it is because of my creative, out-of-the-box but insanely efficient skillset; I’m a bit unorthodox by military standards, but I’m known to generate excellent products (this is not what I think about the products, but rather what my colleagues and superiors think about what I create). But I’m not sure that they’re ready for me to tell them that I’m going to need time to sit outside on a park bench so that I can come up with the product that they want. They want the product, but they don’t necessarily like the way that I come up with the product. Oh, that I live in so many different worlds!

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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Aristotelian ethics here lately…partly due to me teaching it a few weeks ago but even more so due to me thinking about personal development issues. The concept “flourish” has become the predominant concept that’s began to infuse most of my thinking about GTD, personal development, and life, in general. The word actually is on the tail end of one of my recent posts, and I’ve had to stall some of the other posts that I have on the burner to get out what I mean by flourish and why I think it’s a great framework to understand what we are all after, anyways. To get that off the ground, though, I’ll have to briefly explain Aristotle.

Aristotelian Ethics…in Ten Minutes

To get the basics of Aristotelian Ethics, you have to understand three basic things: What Eudaimonia is, What Virtue is, and That We Become Better Persons Through Practice.

1. Eudaimonia

Eudaimonia is Greek and translates literally to “having good demons.” Many authors translate it as happiness, but I don’t think that’s the best translation and way to understand it. “Well-being” and “flourishing” are closer to what he means, and I think of the two, “flourishing” captures the full range of the way he uses the word. And someone who is flourishing is living The Good Life.

According to Aristotle, all humans seek to flourish. It’s the proper and desired end of all of our actions. Flourishing, however, is a functional definition. And to understand something’s function, you have to understand its nature.

There are four different aspects to human nature, and Aristotle is often quoted as saying “Man is a political creature.” There’s actually more to it than most attributions give him, for “political” is often misunderstood. A better attribution is the following: Human beings are social, rational animals.

Two of the aspects of our natures come from being thetype of thing we are…that is, we are animals. The other two come from the type of animals we are. So, a breakdown is in order:

1. We are animals.


Animals have two components:

1. They are physical.

As physical beings, we require nourishment, exercise, rest, and all the other things that it takes to keep our bodies functioning properly.

2. They are emotional.
   What separates animals from plants, according to Aristotle, is that animals have wants, desires, urges, and reactions. We perceive something in the world that we want and we have the power of volition to get it; likewise, we have the power to avoid the things we don’t want. For humans, these wants can get pretty complex, but at rock bottom we all have (emotional) needs and wants that spring from rather basic sources.
2. We are social.


We must live and function in particular societies. “No man is an island,” and we are the type of being that does well only in social settings. Our social nature stacks on top of our emotional nature, such that we have wants and needs that we would not have were we not social creatures. For example, if we were the type of creature that flourished as hermits, the need for trust and friendly cooperation would not be nearly so pressing.


3. We are rational.


We are creative, expressive, knowledge-seeking, and able to obey reason. We might not always obey reason and we may sometimes not want to exercise our minds, but a large part of our existence relates to us being rational animals.

You can’t truly flourish if you’re not flourishing in one of these aspects. This is played out in our everyday lives when you see people who are so emotionally stunted that they can’t function well in society…or who are so obese that they can’t enjoy life…or who are so socially inept that they can’t fit into the type of society that would develop their intelligence. The list goes on and on.

The different aspects of our natures are tiered in the way that they are presented above, so that the physical is below the social which is below the rational. This may sound familiar to some of you familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy because it’s in effect the same thing. Only it took Maslow 2500 years to verify what Aristotle had said all along.

With an understanding of flourishing in hand, discussing virtue becomes easy.

On Virtue

• What is a virtue?

A virtue is a trait of character that enables a person to flourish.

• The Doctrine of the Mean

This is a key phrase to understand Aristotle. Consider the virtue of bravery, for example. An excess of bravery leads people to do really stupid things; the example I normally use is the frat-brat who’ll jump of the fraternity house just to prove how brave he is. It’s not brave; it’s rash. On the other hand, people who have a deficiency of bravery are cowards; they won’t put their ass on the line for anything. The virtue of bravery lies somewhere in between the deficiency of bravery (cowardliness) and the excess of bravery (rashness).
So it is with all of the different virtues: the virtuous trait is that which is between the deficiency of that trait and the excess of that trait.


• What are the specific virtues?

The Virtues
Vice (Deficiency)	Virtue (Mean)	Vice (Excess)
Cowardliness	Bravery	Rashness
Insensibility	Temperance	Intemperance
Stinginess	Generosity	Extravagance
Self-deprecation	Truthfulness (Modesty)	Boastfulness
Boorishness	Wittiness	Buffoonery
Quarrelsomeness	Friendliness	Flattery
Melancholiness	Spiritedness	Boisterousness
Not Responsive to Shame	Conscientiousness	Overly Responsive to Shame
Envious	Indignant	Spiteful
Unkindliness	Benevolence	Over-kindliness
Slothful	Industriousness	Over-industriousness


I’ll not discuss all of the virtues, but some are worth a quick discussion:

• Temperance


This one has to do with calming one’s bodily passions and desires. Always acting on your physical passions and desires will not lead to flourishing. However, always denying your physical passions and desires is also denying component of your nature and will also not lead to flourishing.


• Wittiness


Many people don’t think this should be on the list, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. People naturally want to be around people who are funny and who lighten the mood. We tend to avoid grumps, and buffoons, though initially fun, grow old after a while. So, having the virtue of wittiness enables us to flourish in the social aspect of our lives. The analysis of friendliness is much the same.


• Spiritedness


The insight here is that you should be passionate about things in the right circumstances. There are situations where anger is the appropriate, virtuous response, and if you’re never able to become angry, you’re deficient in spirit, and if you’re always angry, you’ve got an excess of anger. This trait is the emotional analogue of temperance.


• Indignant


Aristotle discusses indignity as a virtue in the sense that he thinks we should be upset if people do well undeservedly. For example, if someone wins because she cheated, the proper, virtuous response is to be upset or angry. On the other hand, some people are so envious that they are angry when anyone does well, and some people are so spiteful that they delight in other people’s misfortunes. The proper, virtuous trait is to be delighted when other people do well because they deserve it.


• Benevolence


How can one have benevolence in excess? Isn’t it always a good thing? Nope. If we get an excess of benevolence, we can’t see that sometimes to do the right thing you can’t help someone. Do you know a drama queen that always calls to talk to you when they’re going through their crises? The proper response is to, at a certain point, recognize that you can’t help them (in reality they don’t want it) and walk away. However, never helping anyone is a defect and should be avoided as well. (Some confuse this with generosity. That one has to do with how you handle your resources.)

• How are all of the virtues related?


What links all of the virtues is phronesis, a Greek word best translated as “practical wisdom.” It’s not quite intelligence, although it is a rational trait…it’s more like knowing what the mean is in the particular circumstance you’re in. How does one know what to do in a particular circumstance?…

We become more virtuous through education and habit.

If we’re lucky, we’re brought up in an environment where the adults around us teach us how to be virtuous. There are two ways that they can do this.

The first way is just by training us to have habits that enable us to flourish. For example, they may instill in us the tendency to exercise or to play sports. They may also instill in us the habit of sharing, being friendly, brave, and all the other virtues. In other words, they make it part of our innate character; they are training us how to be.

The second way normally follows the first. After we reach a certain age of maturity, they can start to teach us why it’s good to have the habits that they’ve been inculcating. Children don’t understand flourishing, but adolescents and adults can. They’re honing our practical wisdom at this stage, since they are teaching us in what circumstances we ought to do certain actions. They are in effect teaching us why we ought to be the type of person we are.

Of course, the best way for them to teach us to be virtuous is to exhibit virtue in their characters. If we ever wonder what we should do in a certain situation, then finding the answer is as easy as finding a virtuous person and asking her what she would do. And how do we know who a virtuous person is? We just look for someone who’s flourishing.

At a certain point, though, we become responsible for our own characters. It is at that point that we begin to actively, intentionally hone our characters. We continue to improve our physical body, our emotional state, our ability to live with others, and our minds. We continue to reinforce good habits, acquire more knowledge, help those around us, and find peace with ourselves.

We have the knowledge, we have the habits, and we have the understanding that the good life is up to us. The end state: we flourish.

[Sidebar: the metaphor that I often use to explain Aristotle’s ideas is that of planting a tree. A tree planted in bad conditions will not flourish, just as a child brought up in a bad environment will not flourish. Just planting the tree in the right conditions, however, will not necessarily lead to the tree’s flourishing; to help it flourish, you’ll need to prune it and tend to it properly (just as we train children). At a certain point, though, you won’t need to prune the tree. It will have the structure and setting such that it can flourish on its own. Just provide it the nutrients it needs and the tree will continue to grow and flourish. The metaphor translates quite well for human development.

If you understand and remember the points just mentioned above, you can talk meaningfully about Aristotelian ethics. The real reason I’ve discussed Aristotelian ethics, though, is that it will likely infuse a lot of my writing about GTD, personal development, productivity, and creativity. It’s an excellent framework to think about how to flourish in all of the important areas of your life.

Scott over at Lifehack recently wrote about the rituals and how they help maximize time. There are two rituals that I think are especially important: waking up and working.

• The Wake Up Ritual

Few things make as much of an impact on the day as when and how you wake up. Fighting with the alarm clock, not drinking caffeine, and not eating breakfast are a sure way to hamper the productivity for the day.

Whatever your full ritual is, get up when the alarm clock first goes off, drink some caffeine (if you’re one of those souls that have mastered existence without caffeine, I admire you), and eat breakfast. Do this everyday and you will program your body and mind to follow-up the routine with high-yield work periods.

• The Work Ritual

The single most effective way to set yourself up for success during working is to define at the end of the work day what you’ll do the next day. This serves three purposes:

First, it serves to give you some perspective on what you’ve accomplished during the work day. It may have seemed that you didn’t get anything done, but when you review what you’ve done, you’ll often see that that’s not the case. If you truly didn’t get anything done, then take a minute and try to figure out why. What contributing agents were there that kept you from being productive?

Second, it makes you plan your work into actionable steps for the next day. It also gives a psychological “stake in the ground” to return to that may do some motivational work in the morning.

Third, you don’t have to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing first thing in the morning when your energy and motivation is usually the lowest. It’s hard to get to work in the morning when you both don’t want to and don’t really have a clear idea of what you need to be doing. With a plan in place, you can just follow the steps you’ve set up for yourself until (a) you get motivated to work or (b) you’ve done all the work you needed to do for the day.

Combining these two rituals is a powerful way to boost yourself into a productive mode. There’s a takeaway point to remember here: you’re creating habits and rituals even if you don’t intend to. Doing the same thing day in and day out programs your body and mind to continue to do those same things; you can either harness this fact and create rituals and habits that help you flourish, or you can leave it to chance.

One of the things I like most about the GTD-methodology is how easy it is to get back on the GTD horse once you’ve fallen off. One of the things I like least about the GTD-methodology is how easy it is to fall off of the horse. Given the discussions that have occurred on the blogosphere about getting back into getting things done, I take it that the on-again, off-again cycle is relatively common.

The leaky hole for me seems to be in my ability to collect all of the inputs I have and to get them processed into some meaningful system. Sometimes I do really well at collecting everything, but then I end up stuck with the ?what the hell do I do now?? mentality. Other times, I do really well at coming up with the critical tasks that I have to get done for the day (or week), but none of the other gazillion things get done and many more of them jump on board while the captain’s away.

A critique of the GTD system has been that it doesn’t really give one a workable system for syncing long-term goals with the runway. In fact, only 20 pages of the book are spent developing the above the runway goals. This is consistent with ?the David’s? philosophy that we can’t focus on those higher tasks because the runway tasks are draining so much of our mental energy. However, many people find this to be a flaw of the program, and this has been a continual point of contention in the GTD vs. Seven Habits (7H) debate. To use the language from both systems, the GTD system can make one really efficient without being effective; I can crank the hell out of widgets and still not push any of my really important goals forward. It’s something I really have to watch before it gets out of hand.

The Weekly Review is a fail-safe feature that’s supposed to subvert the tendency to crank widgets without getting many important things done. When done properly, it really does keep one in line. This is buck that throws me off the horse. Miss a few weeks of weekly reviews and, well, you end up in the ?I have no idea what the hell I need to be doing? sea. Generally, I find that I spend about three weeks on the horse riding high, a few more weeks hanging on, and then a couple of weeks out to sea. Your mileage may vary.

So, given that inspiration for writing generally comes from something we’re dealing with, you can probably tell that I’ve fallen off the horse. The next, and perhaps final, year of my graduate career is the most critical, and I’ve got more projects going than I can currently handle in abstracto. The next few posts will likely deal with my struggle to get back on the horse and going. You’ll likely sense a shift in mood from general pessimism to generally overwhelmed to general optimism that I can actually get it all done. Hopefully, five-six weeks from now I won’t be back to general pessimism, but if I do, you know I forgot my weekly review.

Chris over at Lifehack has a brief article on his morning routine. I’ve found a similar technique to be especially helpful for the day. I try to get up two hours (yep, two hours) before I absolutely have to be anywhere. Half of the time is spent on either exercise or stretching, and the other half on writing out the major goals I have at the different levels followed by the three-five things that I want to get done for the day. Writing it down (in paper at this point, though I’m considering electronic options) helps the sub-conscious reiterate what’s important, and when things pop up, I can ask those important questions:

• Is this something that is consistent with my goals? (if no, think about how to get out of it; if yes move to the next question)
• Is this something I need to do now? (if no, then schedule for later; if yes, move to the next question)
• What on the list has to be rescheduled, and how comfortable am I with that? (unfortunately, this one is not a yes or no–it’s more of a “go-with-the-gut-affair)

Starting the day this way has helped me feel much more in control of the day and my projects; on those days in which I’m too lazy to get up, I feel really disoriented and rushed, regardless of whether I actually have all that much going on for that day. If you can’t come up with two hours, then at least give 30 minutes a try. It’s worth it.

I’m sure I don’t need to cite statistics to assert that email has become the primary method for work communications. Unfortunately, too many of us have yet to really understand how to work with email yet and the management of email correspondence has become a major source of work in and of itself.

As with most serious components of our work, there is tension from both ends: if we don’t spend enough time filtering email, we miss deadlines and important information that is now being distributed solely through email. However, if we spend too much time messing with email, we end up with too little time to actually get any of the work we need to get done completed. As Aristotle keenly observed, the balance is in the middle.

Enter the R.A.F.T. method. R.A.F.T. is a handy acronym for Read, Act, File, or Trash. Here’s how it works:

• Read

This one’s self-explanatory. Briefly skim through the email and determine whether it’s something that actually requires your attention. You’d be surprised how much doesn’t. If it doesn’t require your attention, Trash it immediately. If it does, move on.

• Act

Does the email require you to do something? If it’s a quick reply, do it, and file the message. If it is something that requires you to do something for the future, but not now, place it on your calendar, or whatever system you use to track suspenses, and file it.

• File

If the message does not require action but needs to be referenced or filed, then File it. I still file messages in one of many different folders, but that’s partially because I manage not only academic stuff but other careers as well. Many productivity gurus are advocating dumping all messages in one big archive and relying on the mature search capabilities now available in most mail apps, but I have yet to make that transition. Do some experimentation to see which is right for you, but, above all, get the stuff out of your inbox.

• Trash

Be merciless on unactionable, unimportant messages and get rid of them immediately.

The goal here is to get your Inbox either empty or so that it contains messages that require some response of you. I’ve experimented with having @Action, @Response, and @Waiting mail folders and noticed that either I spent too much time shifting through them or that I forgot to check them regularly enough. I transitioned to letting actionable items sit in my Inbox, but to get the psychological release, all the stuff in there had to be stuff that required some sort of prolonged action. Despite it being somewhat of a task parking lot, the goal is still to get it to zero.

Of course, the R.A.F.T. method isn’t anything special, and the elements of it are covered in GTD’s processing system. However, “R.A.F.T.” is a nice little mantra to help you through your Inbox. Here are some other quick tips:

• Don’t check email first thing in the morning

Doing so starts your day off responding to external projects and actions rather than advancing internal projects. Do your work first and make other people wait their turn.

• Turn off the auto-checker in your mail application if you use a computer-based email application.


The threat of a notification alone is enough of a psychological distraction and the reaction is much like waiting for a punch that you know is coming. Again, rather than letting other people’s issues distract you, check email only when you’re ready and prepared to karate-chop your way through it. This also allows you to reference your email without having to deal with the inclination to check and read new messages when you should be completing your more important projects.

• Check email twice a day.

Tim’s insight on this is dead-on. I check it about 30 minutes before lunch and about 30 minutes before the end of whatever time I determine I’m done working. Generally, this gives me enough time to respond to short messages, schedule a time to do longer messages and actions, and file messages in their appropriate folder with time left-over.

• (For Mac users) Use Mail Act-On to decrease drag and drop filing time.

When a student writes me, I respond or act, and with this nifty program press “~S” (my tag for “this semester’s student email”) and I’m done. Since I have all of my reference folders short-cutted through Mail Act-On, I don’t have to leave my Inbox to get things filed in their assigned folder. This one program alone probably saves me 10-20 minutes a day.


• If you get one of those nervous-I-need-an-answer-right-now emails that would give you peace of mind to answer, quickly respond with “Hey, I’ve got your message and am working on an answer. I will get back to you on X day with the information/answer you’ve requested.”

This response is generally sufficient to get the offender off of you until the time you’ve indicated. Complete the tasks and projects you’ve decided you’d work on while you’re at your peak. Figure out the answer to those types of emails during some less-productive time prior to the time you said you’d respond and respond then and only then.

The goal is to get email back to the way we accomplish our work rather than email being the work that we do.

Okay, so there’s a plethora of blogs out there about personal productivity (I personally enjoy 43folders and LifeDev). However, their appeal is either based on programmers, as Merlin’s is, or is too general. I’ve often found myself asking, “How the !@#@! do I translate this good stuff into my academic world?” Generally, by the time I figure it out, I’ve already wasted too much time doing so and am now in Crisis Mode, or have gotten distracted into another form of procrastination.

So, this site is as it’s titled: Life Management for Academics. Why not time management or some such? Time management is a small piece of one’s career in academia. Granted, it may touch other components, but there are other components that are specific to academic life that are not covered by the geniuses at the other time management sites. My suggestion is that academics are different from the general PP (personal productivity) population due to our having to manage the holy Triad: teaching, research/writing, and administrivia (committees, reports, and general paperwork).

There’s also this fact: academics are never done. A paper submitted here needs reworking for presentation there. After that presentation, it needs rework for submission to publication there. If it’s accepted there, then the seeds from it may start another presentation there. Even if it doesn’t start another presentation here, maybe, just maybe, the information you’ve presented will be relevant to another project you’re either working on or will start (better file this away there, mentally, physically, or digitally…just in case). We often accept that we’ll spend our life in project polish hell, but often forget that that’s only the fire; the brimstone comes from project residue.

And here’s the final kicker for why it’s Life Management rather than Time Management: calculate the time and psychic energy required to manage the Triad, and then throw more time and psychic energy onto the fire for keeping up with project polishing and residue. How much time and energy is left? Okay, then start thinking about family, hygiene, subsistence, and sleep. Still have time and energy left? Maybe a little. What if you’d like to do anything fun or to just plain relax and do nothing? Good luck with that one.

Clearly, something has got to give. We can (A) get less to do, (B) complete all that we have to do more efficiently, or (C) quit. Granted, any of the options are up to us, but it’s unlikely that people will take the last option. After all, how long did you spend in school to do what you’re doing? This blog will focus instead on the first two options.

Here’s what you can expect to see on this blog:

• Commentary on books having to do with time management, creativity, and personal productivity
• Reviews on software and hardware that may help you manage your life (this will be Mac-Centric), especially software and tips that help with project polishing and residue
• Posts about developing yourself as a teacher and as a learner
• Tricks and best practices to help you heal the administrative pains that ail you

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