TimsterC

Using the iPhone application AppBox Lite I’ve managed to calculate that it is 80 days since my BMW 320d touring went bang. I was called on Friday last week and informed by the company replacing the engine that they have a replacement engine that has done less than 10,000 miles and that my car should be ready later this week. I’m not holding my breathe as I’d be blue by now.

On the GTD front I have managed to get to an empty inbox today. YIPEEEEEE. This momentous event occurred on a flight from LHR (London Heathrow, UK) to CPH (Copenhagen, Denmark) this morning. I am in Denmark to present, what might be my last, XPages workshop.
So now I have finally finished the collection phase, it’s time to start on the action phase. Time to start calling people back and using this eProductivity mail template for really GTD (Getting Things Done). I have a huge list of stuff to do so I’d better get on with it. ;o)

So after a quick flurry of email and a chat with Ian in support I have eProductivity† set up and everything showing as it should be.

Now I can start on the GTD process stage one. This involves getting EVERYTHING into a trusted system, in this case eProductivity, and clearing it from my mind. Then I will be one step closer to David Allen’s goal of ‘mind like water‘.

So I will spend the rest of day and tomorrow collecting everything into eProductivity and then working through what the next actions are for each thing I have collected.

The collection process is made really simple in eProductivity as you can drag and drop any emails into a context (more on these later on) and you can also “MindSweep” and collect your thoughts about projects or stuff that you are thinking about but don’t have email about. My inbox stands at 704 emails right now and I want to have that down to none either by the end of today or tomorrow lunch time.

I’d best stop writing about it now and actually go do some of it.

More updates on the next 4 steps will follow.

So I’ve been challenged in my Open University course to try and understand a bunch more about time management and how it can help me.
Being a Lotus bod I decided to take another look at eProductivity that I saw demonstrated at Lotusphere 2009, but Erick Mack and David Allen of GTD fame.

Having listened to David Allen read his Getting Things Done (GTD) book a bunch of times (I have it as an audio book), I think I get the process. I have no decided to take the plunge and investigate integrating that into my Lotus Notes mail file to get the full effect of what it can do for me. eProductivity is just such an application that will change the look, feel and functionality of my mail file. It’s safe for me as I know how to control the security in Notes (ECL) and I have complete control over my mail file (Manager Access). If after evaluating this on a 4 week trial I discover that it’s not for me then I can revert back to the Lotus designed mail file and nothing will be lost. You have to love Notes for it’s flexibility.

So here goes, downloading the template now and replacing the design of my mail file this morning. Then it’s off to lunch for a stiff drink. ;o) When I come back I’ll start the spring clean with a trawl through my existing inbox and work out what needs to go where.

I’ll post my progress and let you all know how I’m getting on as I get into this. I’ll also share any tips and tricks I find along the way.

Full Disclosure
I feel it only fair to inform everyone that I will not be hiding anything in these blog posts, but if I like eProductivity, they have offered me a free license if I want to continue using it. All I have to do is blog about it. But I want you all to know that if it’s bad, needs changing, crashes my mail file, revolutionizes my life or annoys the life out of me, I’ll be telling everyone.
My thanks go to Erik Mack and Ryan Heathers for offering this opportunity to me.