This is the final post in the Getting Things Done for SEs series. As a reference point, here is a list of all the previous posts in the series:

1. Introduction to GTD
2. Collect
3. Process
4. Organize
5. Review
6. Do
7. Case Study

I also created a product list of all the products I’m using, hopefully it ends up saving you some time.

Case Study

To conclude the article, I thought it would be really helpful to see this system in action. It’s less important that you follow and understand each discrete task from start to finish. The main goal is to get a sense for how various inputs flow into the system and are tracked. If you decide to implement a similar system, this is where you can come back and spend some real time understanding the nuance of dealing with SE-specific types of input.

To frame the story I’m going to use a case study of an SE persona. I’ll call him Dave in honor of Mr. Allen. Dave works for large enterprise software company, supports 2 sales reps, and has about 60 customers total. Here’s a typical day for Dave:

Day 1

Dave wakes up and begins his morning routine including some time on the treadmill. During his exercise he thinks about an upcoming product release about Enterprise Reporter 2.0 and has an idea that the ascii conversion widget would really help his customer Acme Corp. He has a pen and paper at is treadmill and jots down the idea and gets back to working out, free from this thought for now. As he finishes, he drops the note into his home In Basket. Before he heads to work, he clears everything out of that home inbox and inputs the idea from the note into his laptop as an uncategorized task for later processing.

Dave gets to work and opens up his inbox. He’s got about 20 emails and 2 voicemails. 16 of those emails are not important and he scans and deletes them. 2 are from his reps and 2 are from customers. For each of those 4 emails he must do something about them. 1 of them takes less than 2 minutes and he responds on the spot. He drags and drops the remaining 3 emails onto the Outlook Tasks folder, which instantly creates Tasks. He also looks at each of the hand written notes, including the one about Acme corp and he enters that into a task as well. He doesn’t bother to think about them at this point other than to just get them into his system.

Once he has entered all of his raw data comes time to Process them. Dave goes to Outlook->Tasks->[Process] and sees the five items (from 3 emails/2 notes) and goes through them one by one. The tasks are as follows:

• New opportunity for DataView at Dynacorp
• Need to schedule product demo for BBGE Group asap
• Ascii widget for Acme
• Update CRM before end of month
• Pick up home office supplies

Note that in the current state, these aren’t actionable for the most part. They need to be further refined. So we Process each one.

DataView at Dynacorp

Because it’s a new opportunity, Dave needs a way capture it so that daily or weekly he can review progress and take action. Because this is a multiple-step activity, we consider it a Project. Dave goes to the [Project] task view and finds Dynacorp and adds Dataview to the list which already has 2 other product opportunities currently going on at the company. He will now see this entry weekly. He also decides that he wants to talk about the opp with his sales rep the next time they connect, but it doesn’t warrant a separate meeting, so he creates a new task called DataView at Dynacorp debrief and categorizes it as an agenda item @@Paul (his rep) for the next time they speak.

Demo for BBGE Group

Dave needs to coordinate with the customer to go out and demo a product. His other rep, Mark, wants this done today because the customer has a short runway to make a buying decision. Dave already has a project for BBGE so that’s covered, but setting up the demo will require scheduling the meeting, reviewing the latest product manual, updating his demo data, and customizing the demo for the customer after a debrief with Mark. Because it’s more than one Next Action it is definitely a Project, but he’s also got to move on it quickly. He decides that the first step is sending his customer a couple open dates on his calendar to get the meeting scheduled. He stops what he’s doing and sends the email right away copying his rep and himself. When he gets the email from himself he drags that email to the Tasks folder and labels it as .Waiting and saves the task. He then decides he needs to schedule a debrief meeting with his rep right away so he sends a meeting request right away for later on in the day. He then makes a .Waiting task for the meeting response from Mark. He decides he doesn’t want to take further action until he hears from Mark, but because it’s urgent he doesn’t want to wait until the end of the day to followup, so he makes a 0 minute reminder in his calendar for 2 hours from now to revisit the project.

ASCII for Acme

Because this would be a new opportunity, he appends ASCII to the master project list for Acme. He also decides that he should also review this with Mark next time they speak, so he creates a new task called ASCII for Acme and labels it as @@Mark.

Update CRM

This isn’t an urgent, but does have a definite due date 2 weeks out. Dave creates a task called Update CRM, labels it @Computer and also adds a Due Date to the task 2 weeks out. The day before it is due, he also adds a day-specific entry in his calendar called Verify CRM Updated. This gives him a safety net if he gets too busy to work out the task. Because it’s a single event he doesn’t create a project, but he thinks that he should maybe be setting aside an hour on his calendar every month to update the CRM, that way he never needs to react and try to squeeze it in next time. He creates another task and calls it Schedule Recurring Monthly Calendar Slot for CRM Updates and labels it @Computer.

Office Supplies

Perhaps the simplest task to complete, but one of the easiest to forget. Dave knows that he will be leaving a customer site at 4p and will want to be reminded to stop at the store around that time, so he adds a calendar event for 4p to pick up office supplies. He needs to go to a specialty store he’s never been to before, so he takes the additional steps of adding the address to his task so that when it pops up on his phone, he can enter it right into the GPS before he starts his car.

He then prints off a copy of his [Action] and [Agenda] list.

—

Let’s pause at this juncture for a moment. Although Dave has completed a few simple tasks, he really hasn’t begun his day in a discretionary sense. He has been reacting with the help of his system. He’s processed several inputs ranging from simple and mundane to very complex and important with a mix of urgent and non-urgent activities. Dave has had a place and mechanism for dealing with each of these criterion which means he hasn’t wasted a lot of brainpower dealing with them. At this point, maybe 20 minutes into his day, he now has a complete record of all his open loops and his mind can let go of the forces tugging at him from many directions.

He now has all his committments in front of him and he can use sound judgment to knock tasks out without mental distraction.

Doing

Dave is now ready to get to business. He scans his [Action] list and sees about 50 tasks spread across @Computer, @Calls, and @Office. He has an @Office category because there is a computer lab he needs to use frequently where specific tasks must take place. He sees 2 @computer, 1 @call, and 1 @office task that are high priority and he completes each of those in turn. After they are completed, he looks back to his list and proceeds on the next office task.

While in the middle he gets a call from Paul, one of his reps. While on the phone he breaks out the Agenda printout and goes to the Paul section. As they’re speaking Dave takes some notes including a couple action items. He then brings up the couple agenda items he wanted to discuss including DataView at Dynacorp. They decide that Paul needs to do some further qualification before they can go out do a technical presentation, Dave notes this as well. As soon as Dave hangs up, he looks through his notes for actionable items and enters them as uncategorized tasks. He then enters a couple pertinent notes in a simple text file in their respective project folders and throws away the paper.

Dave then returns to his office task when he gets an Outlook reminder to check on Demo for BBGE Group. He checks his email and verifies he got a confirmation from Mark on the meeting later in the day. He goes back and knocks a couple more tasks off his list before lunch. Before heading to lunch Dave does a Process again and opens his inbox and gets it down to 0 items including processing the input from Paul earlier in the day. Because Dave needs to wait for Paul to connect with Dynacorp before he can begin to create a presentation, he creates a .Waiting task called “Paul to Qualify Dynacorp and get back to me”. With that completed he can head to lunch.

Upon returning he meets with Mark to discuss the BBGE meeting. Before the meeting he scanned his email looking for a response to the calendar invite, but nothing received. He and Mark discuss the account and a strategy for the demo. Dave captures the main customer points of interest until he is comfortable he can tailor the demo to the customer. Finishing up that conversation, Dave can also bring up the Acme account and several others. Mark thinks that Acme would indeed benefit from hearing about the new product and asks Dave to send him some good qualifying questions pertaining to the new features. Dave agrees and they finish the call. He then has a couple minutes to gather his materials and head out to meet a customer to conduct a presentation. During the presentation he captures some additional notes about the customer as well as some followup questions he’ll need to address within the next couple days. As he leaves the meeting to head home his calendar notification pops up to stop at the supply store on the way home.

When he gets home he takes 15 minutes to debrief from the day. So far he has a couple pages of notes and several action items from the call with Mark and the customer presentation. He enters the data into his system as before including emptying his head, email and voicemail into the system. He additionally reviews his .Waiting list where he sees he is waiting for a reply from BBGE about the meeting later this week and he still hasn’t received a reponse. He stops what he’s doing and he emails them a polite confirmation that they do indeed wish to meet this week and that he’ll follow up with a phone call tomorrow late morning to confirm. He adds a 0 minute calendar reminder at 10a to call BBGE if needed. He returns to his Process session. After processing, he has the additional data in his system:

For BBGE:

• A calendar slot tomorrow for building the BBGE customized demo

From the presentation:

• A Project called Research for Customer ABC
• A task to research the questions online
• A task to email a colleauge about a possible reference that is similar to this customer
• Additional notes added to his reference file for the customer (which get entered into the CRM)

For Acme:

• A task to research qualifying questions and then send them to Mark

Before he finishes he checks his system if there was anything important he needed to do @home or anything he needed to speak to his wife about. After that he closes his computer knowing everything he has to do is accounted for and scheduled.

—

Let’s pause and review again for a moment. The day in the life of an SE can be intense and very interupt driven. I tired to account accurately for all the task switching that comes with the territory. It’s hard to follow all of the elements to this story, and that’s partially the point. Each of us needs a system that can deal with that kind of complexity without being overly burdensome. It takes a lot of text to explain each step, but once you’re in the flow this becomes automatic. The 10% overhead you’re adding to your day easily doubles the effectiveness of the other 90%.

Still, it’s easy to get tripped up here. Some of us have reps that schedule 5 account calls back to back with little time to eat let alone Process effectively. This is where the Review comes into play. It gives you the dedicated time to sync up with yourself and address any open loops you’ve been accumulating. Anything you don’t catch during the day you catch at your Evening Review. Something missed there can be captured at the Weekly Review. This extra redundancy gives you a safety net and permits imperfection (not read as: sloppiness) which I personally feel is crucial to minimizing stress.

Weekly Review

The next day Dave has his weekly review scheduled. Before doing that he processes everything to 0 to begin with a clean slate and goes through the standard review process. When he starts to review his projects. He looks at the project item for each customer. He starts with the one for Acme.

Inside the Task details he has:

Database Suite
- POC
Email Security
- Demo for security group
- Presentation for network group
Encryption Manager
ASCII Tool

Each of the main items (e.g. Database Suite) are specific product opportunities. Underneath each one are specific projects he needs to manage to closure alongside his reps. As he thinks about the POC (proof of concept) he adds a task to call the customer to check in on the status. For the demo, he had completed it earlier in the week and addressed all questions making it a “closed” project, so he remove it from the list.

For the remaining items he doublechecks his current Action list to ensure he has items for each one (.Waiting or Action).

Dave repeats this for each account and ends the session with a fresh set of tasks for the week. The total time spent was about 1.5 hours.

—

This wraps the series on Getting Things Done (GTD) for SEs. My hope is that this provides just enough motivation to start your own inquiry into the possibilities of getting more done and stressing out less in this difficult profession of ours. I, like most other recent GTD graduates, am proud of my accomplishments and still amazed at how well it helps me get through the day. I want everyone to experience that feeling, and to that end I’m happy to help with any other other pointers or advice I can should you choose to get started–just hit me up on the contact form.

In the previous post I provided a detailed look at some Review strategies for SEs. Today I am going to provide my GTD “Doing” process.

When it comes time to doing, Allen lists out his main selection criteria of:

1. Context
2. Time available
3. Energy available
4. Priority

The engineer in me loves the elegance and precision. One rough spot that kept creeping up was that I always got hung up on talking myself out of doing certain tasks because of the “energy” constraint. Not wanting to do them
and not having the energy are two different things but are surprisingly difficult to discern (at least for me). It took a bit of reprogramming of this model to get myself into the zone. In order to get there I needed a way to take some of the subjectivity away.

When whitespace comes up in my calendar, I now start of with my short list of high priority activities for the day that I created during my morning review. I simply go from most important to least, given my time and situational constraints. It’s far easier to do this with a list of 5-8 things versus my complete task lists of 30-50. I now spend a little time on the frontend each morning, but don’t have to spend hardly any mental effort on my schedule during the day.

Now, I’m a morning person by nature. 80% of my high value activities need to be done by 1-2pm or there is significant liklihood I’m running out of steam or other things have gotten in the way. I now plan for this.

When I get to that afternoon discretionary time, I now can just go to my chosen context and work from the oldest to newest. To this end I keep my Task list sorted by date added. Because I’ve already addressed high priority tasks I can mentally give myself permission to work serially down the list without much thought. Once I removed the line by line decision making from the list, I just process and I don’t 2nd guess myself and I don’t procrasitinate. I get a lot more of them done with a fraction of the mental energy.

The insight for me throughout this process is how important it is to get yourself in a mental state where you can be most productive. My stuggle has led to the realization that achieving that state is both elusive and fleeting. I’ve had to adapt my process many times to get to state where I don’t have that voice inside my head wandering to other tasks, “what ifs”, and second guessing. When you finally tame those thoughts is when you will start seeing exponential increases in your general effectiveness.

Next week will be the last in the series and I’ll provide a case study if a typical SE using this system.

In the previous post I provided a detailed look at some Organization strategies for SEs. Today I am going to provide my GTD review process and schedule.

I’m starting this post with the assumption you’ve read up and understand just how important this part of the process is. Without a constant check in with yourself and your system it simply becomes out of date within a couple weeks at which point it completely breaks down.

My review process has gradually shifted to a more and more precise routine. I’ve had to get specific to ensure that I don’t have any leaks in the process. Additionally, while I still love the weekly review, I have moved some of those tasks to a daily review so that I catch urgent items more quickly.

As with most of my routine it takes a lot longer to explain than to do. I hesitate to even call my morning and evening session reviews as really they are really just checkpoints and take me less than 15 minutes each.

Morning Review

I have a morning check in where I do a Process of all the items that came in since yesterday. Next I review each Context on my Action view as well as a simple list of tactical activities that I’d “like” to do on a daily basis, time permitting. On this tactical list are things like calling a friend, writing a journal entry, writing a blog post, etc. Looking at both lists I simply jot down on a scratch piece of paper the most important tasks that I’d like to make sure get done that day. Sometimes there’s 10, sometimes just 1 or two.

Evening Review

This review is a very lightweight weekly review sans a project review.

1. My evening check in also begins with a Process.
2. I then update my Actions and Agendas list.
3. I then review all the tasks I completed that day (via the Outlook view) and use that as a trigger to add any tasks that I feel can’t wait until next week.
4. I check my calendar for the day and tomorrow to see what’s coming up just as a mental spot check to make sure my day is in order and nothing fell
   through the cracks.
5. I then check my sent mail for the day (again using the Outlook view) and note any action items or waiting for items that I didn’t capture.
6. Finally, I review my Waiting For list to see if anything there triggers an immediate action. So many times there will be a project I need to complete by a due date and I haven’t received an input from a colleauge that I
   need to remind them of. This is when I send those out; many times those items are in my inbox by the time I get in the next day. For instance, if I sent a note to a product manager and I needed a response for my customer, assuming I didn’t receive anything by end of day I might decide to do something additional based on priority. My goal in structuring this was to end the day with a clean break and to address concerns about any issues before leaving the office.

I’ll be the first to admit how pedantic this seems, but trust me and give it a try it and simply appreciate the absense of stress on the drive home.

Weekly Review

When I’ve been dilligent during the week with my morning and evening check-ins, my weekly review usually takes no more than an hour, and that time is mainly spent on reviewing higher level goals and prioritizing projects. My weekly review is done on Monday afternoon. It is blocked (red) on my calendar. I also disconnect from email and turn off my phone. With 3 young kids this is far easier than aiming for a Sunday afternoon.

1. I always start off with a review of completed tasks for the previous week just so my prior progress is fresh in my mind. All of these steps are done via a simple Outlook view I explained under the Organize section.
2. I then scan my quarterly goals to make sure I have at least 1 project addressing each one.
3. I then go through my active project list, assign next actions, and prioritize (I use a simple 1-4 reference).
4. I then review my Someday/Maybe list to see if anything should be moved up to active.
5. Finally, I review a couple of trigger lists (I recommend you create one for your specific job). A couple examples are !here! and !here!

I finish by printing off a copy for myself and emailing 1 to my wife.

Now, when you’re on the road it gets tough to be regimented. Airline travel across time zones especially interupts this schedule for me. I may go a couple days without hitting my morning or evening reviews. I plan on this happening which is why I build in some redundancy in my weekly review to always catch me up. I hit about 60% on my evening review but always 100% on my weekly, even if I have to reschedule it. This gives me a pretty good balance between speed and integrity.

Believe it or not, on Monday morning I now look forward to my weekly review. After completing that process, it is the clearest and most stress free state of mind I’m in all week.

In the previous post I provided a detailed look at some Process strategies for SEs. Today I am going to provide my GTD Organization strategy.

I found that this was probably the most beneficial part of the program for me. So many times I would take a note to do something, or I would send an email and have no way of reminding myself to follow back up. I basically relied on the idea that if something became an issue, I would be reminded of it by someone/something else. This is a very reactive approach and resulted in my spending a lot of time each day putting out fires.

The act of mentally stepping through my workflow for accomplishing a task allowed me to see it on paper and analyze it for “leaks”. While I am still honing my ability to better capture ideas on the front end, once an idea or action makes it into my system, I can now confidently say it is certain to be acted upon and reviewed regularly until completion.

The organization piece also happens to be very involved from a tool
perspective. I spent a lot of time pushing my tools to the limit–minimizing the number of tools I needed–so hopefully you can benefit from this experience. Remember that this evolved into the system that works best for me. I recommend keeping it as simple as you can get away with–see Zen To Done as an example of a minimalist version.

Email

Email was perhaps the easiest part of the exercise. I now only have 4 top-level Outlook folders. I have one folder for Customers/Projects and a subfolder for each customer. I have another folder for Reading. Anything that comes in that that doesn’t have an “ask” but will take me longer than 2 minutes to review goes here. If it’s something I need to read by a certain deadline I will still put it there but I also create a task for it. I have a separate Reference folder for anything that is not tied to a project or customer but may need to see again. I rely on search to find it from there. Finally I have a Waiting folder where 1-off emails go that have a Task associated with them and need to be replied to (e.g. your boss wants a list of your top ten opps).

One thing I do in my end of day review (more under Review) is search through Sent mail for tasks or Waiting For items I may have missed. I set up a simple view that shows me all sent mail sent today, and 1 for Last 7 Days. In the Sent folder, go to View->Current View->Define Views and select New. Enter the name (e.g. Sent Last 7) and click OK. Click on Filter and under the Messages tab under Time select Sent and then “in the last 7 days”. You can futher tune the View but this gives you the basics.

I do have 3 rules in Outlook that help with this process. I have one rule that sends a message that I BCC myself on directly to my Waiting folder. I have one that moves reocurring or low priority newsletters to my Reading folder. Finally, I have a rule that looks for known email offenders (I’m looking at you IT), that moves those messages straight to the trash.

While not technically part of GTD, one thing that has helped lower my stress emensely was turning off the visual and audible incoming email notification. When I really want to not be distributed I go ahead and put Outlook in Disconnected mode to remove temptation.

Tasks

We use Outlook at the office and I spend a large part of my day now in front of my computer. Wanting to keep tools to a minimum I experimented with both GMail and Outlook tasks and Outlook is far better at managing them within this construct because of the ability to customize and integrate into the desktop, with no browser or internet connection necessary. I still find offline GMail buggy.

Tweaking Outlook to this degree is a surpringly under-documented undertaking. I still had the goal of not requiring any “coding” updates to try and keep it simple. The following customizations are a result of many long hours of research and testing.

Contexts and Categories

By now you know what a context is. I manage contexts in Outlook via Categories. You can categorize any object in Outlook (mail, task, calendar, etc). I only leverage categories for tasks.

The categories I recommend for SEs are as follows:

• @Anywhere
• @Phone
• @Computer
• @Errands
• @Home
• @Office (if you have an office lab or other tasks that must be done there)
• .Waiting
• .Deferred
• .Projects

I also break the standard @Agenda into several categories. I have one for my boss, each of my team members, and one for specific colleagues I interface with frequently. You should also add one for each customer, or down to the individual if you’re in frequent contact with several members of a client organization.

The goal here is to get by with as few as you can and not get distracted. If you spend a ton of time on the plane maybe you add an @offline category that you can tackle from a laptop anywhere for example. But only do this after you find that you spend too much time sifting through tasks that you can’t do when you want. I actually did create a category for @offline, but I only use it when I specifically have some major plane time coming up. Before I depart I’ll move several tasks to it as my “schedule” for the trip.

Defining Views

You’re going to follow the same step for creating the custom
email views, but for tasks. The views I have created are:

• [Action]
• [Agendas]
• [Deferred]
• [Process]
• [Projects]
• [Waiting]
• Completed Last 7
• Completed Today

[Action] Shows me everything I need to do, seperated by context. From your Outlook Tasks folder, create a new view (just like with email, above). Name it [Action]. The Fields I use are Subject, Modified, Due Date, and Notes. The subject is simply the name of the task. The Modified field allows me to sort by oldest to newest. Due Date shows me upcoming due dates, and Notes shows me if there is more data in the Task entry that I need to open up and review. Creating Filters to limit the view to only the needed tasks is the trickey part. You’ll want to go to the SQL tab and enter the following text:

("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0 AND ("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@%' ) AND NOT
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '.%' ) AND NOT
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@@%' ) AND NOT
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/81040040"
!= 'tomorrow') )

Since you may want to create your own, let me step you through what this
says (it is not well documented elsewhere).

http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0 You want Tasks that have a 0 in the “Completed” field

("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@%' ) You want Tasks that have a @ in the Category (which is why consistent naming of categories is important). This is the same principle for % and @@ but you are excluding them, meaning you don’t want agendas or projects.

("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/81040040"
!= 'tomorrow') This hides tasks for which the start date has not yet begun. I assign future start dates for items that I just don’t want to see for a couple days. I could create a calendar entry to add something to my Task list but this is a much faster approach.

Save the view and repeat the process for the others.

[Agendas] Shows me all my agenda items separated by person. The SQL is:
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0 AND "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '%@@%')

[Deferred] Shows me my someday/maybe items. I just use the subject and Notes fields. SQL is:

(“urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords” =

'.Deferred' AND
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0)

[Process] Shows me everything that doesn’t have a category and tells me I need to do something furthur with it. The SQL is:

("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0) AND (NOT( ("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@%' )
OR ("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '.%' ) OR
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@@%' ) ))

[Projects] Shows me anything that requires more than the current action to complete. I use the subject and notes fields only here. I make use of Due Dates at the Next Action level and not at the project level. The SQL is:

("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '.Projects' AND
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0)

[Waiting] Shows me everything that I am waiting for from someone else. SQL is:

("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '.Waiting' AND
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b"
= 0)

Completed Last 7 Shows me all Tasks completed in the last 7 days which is a checklist item in my weekly review. The SQL is:

%last7days("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/810f0040")%

Completed Today Used in my end of day review. SQL is:
%today("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/810f0040")%

As you tweak your own system you’ll want to potentially add other filters. A shortcut is to play around with the Advanced tab to set your own parameters. You may not always get the option you want, but you can use a combination of advanced setting to view the SQL elements you’ll want to edit. Populating an option on the Advanced tab will show you the needed SQL if you click over. Pretty cool and a life saver for me.

Calendar

My calendar has no special organization, just some best practices
in use. The only items that hit my calendar are items that need to be started or accomplished on that day and/or time. If you hang up with a client and you want to follow up with them in one week, that should go on your calendar. Use of the All Day section in Outlook as an easy way to list tasks to be done that day without it taking up specific time on your calendar. You can also use 0 minute appointments but that gets confusing when glancing at your calendar.

I also use my calendar as my digital tickler file. In the rare event I have a hard copy tickler (e.g. event tickets) I’ll just drop them into my reference system and make a note of where they are in my daily calendar entry.

One other piece of data on my calendar are personal agenda reminders. If I’m meeting with someone I usually don’t meet with and have some discussion points I want to cover but don’t want them in the official agenda, I make a new calendar entry at the same time as the meeting and name it zAgenda. The “z” ensures it appears to the right of the main invite and provides my visual queue.

Notes

I make use of Outlook notes to store lists that aren’t project based
such as people I want to contact regularly and notes about restaraunts I’ve eaten at (great for client meeting reference).

Reference System

I’m big on electronic and rarely store paper. But there are times when this is unavoidable. I have a computer-based reference system that is synchronized on my 3 computers using Dropbox. It is a single directory that has a flat list of my projects/storage containers. When the project is completed it is moved to an archive which is backed up so the list doesn’t get too long. If I get paper that needs to be stored, I’ll mirror that directory in my file cabinet and just keep them sorted A-Z. Sometimes I will reference the existence of a paper item (think computer shortcut) inside the digital folder just for a reminder. The A-Z system descibed here is basically all that you need. Finding the A-Z file headers though was not easy and here is what I finally settled on.

In the previous post I provided a detailed look at some Collection strategies for SEs. Today I am going to provide my GTD Process strategy.

GTD breaks Process into a discrete task for a reason. Part of the trap we fall into as SEs is the interupt-driven culture of our rep, customer calls, and various emails driving our immediate action. To an extent this is just reality (not necessarily good or bad), but compartmentalizing will allow you to orderly process (and later prioritize) all these inputs. As SEs most of your input is going to come via email, phone, and from customers during appointments. Accomplishing tasks based on your objective assement of importance instead of which screams the loudest is the foundational objective of this section.

One of the gems of this section is the productivity boost you get when you compartmentalize your tasks. A tangible example of this would be to stop checking email (i.e. Processing) in the middle of an unrelated task such as preparing a customer presentation. The essence of this step involves crafting a daily schedule and workflow that’s adpated to your situation. As soon as I switched from the mentality of checking emails immediatly to a preset schedule I found stress lowered and productivity on my most important tasks dramatically improved.

A Process routine is very generic. It simply consists of gathering up all of your inputs from your Collection strategy, and making sense of them.

For me it follows this pattern:

Email

I open the inbox and go through each email individually. I read it and do one of three things:

• I drag it to my Task folder where it auto-generates a task where I decide on my next action(s) to take. The original email then goes in a “Waiting” folder where I store emails I need to reply/forward.
• I delete it (the one I use by far the most)
• I file it in a generic “Reference” or project-specific email folder (more on this later under Organize)

There’s nothing else to it. After I look at the email once, I never look at it again. After I am done I have 0 emails in my inbox.

Notes

With my various notetaking sources (see the Collect section), I gather all of my notes and go through each line and decide what to do. If it’s actionable it generates Next Actions, which most of them do. The remainder are simply reference. For the majority of those I will retype them in a simple notepad file that resides in each of my project folders on my computer. My preference is electronic which enables searching and access from anywhere. Not only does this help internalize the notes via the act of rewriting, but it gives you a chance to add them in a more intelligent way rather than just your shorthand attempt at capturing the thought. I keep my physical notepads for several months but disgard the one off notes I’ve captured.

Voicemail

I process voice messages in the same way as email except it doesn’t get filed. It gets listened to once, recorded in the system, them immediately deleted.

Schedule

Make a committment to yourself to schedule time to Process. Too often we Collect, Process, and Do at the same time. My best advice is to resolve yourself to set aside a separate time to Process. I do a full Process routine 3 times a day: morning, noon, and before I “disconnect for the day” typically in the early evening. I do scan a few extra times during the day, usually between big tasks. That simply means scanning incoming email/voicemails to see if there was something high priority to address. I’ve added Google Voice as my main phone number which gives you voicemail transcription services for free. That way you can quickly scan vmail as easily as email.