I have a new blog so this blog is now closed down! 

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http://steves.businessblog.com/

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If you want to know why I switched have a look here

http://steves.businessblog.com/blog/_archives/2004/8/25/129522.html

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:56:34 PM - comment []

I came across this site in the OneNote forum,  it has some nice concise tips for studying and note taking

http://www.westshore.edu/webs/ltc/study_skills_resources.htm

of particular note is the Cornell Note Taking Method, which although not fancy does provide some insight into the fact that learning does not stop when you finish taking notes!

- Posted by Steve Richards - 4:56:03 PM - comment []

I was seduced, (for the third time), into installing the Microsoft Outlook Domino Connecter for the following reasons:

1. I wanted a single place to manage my RSS feeds, personal email, tasks, calendar and work email
2. My trial of mNotes completes in a few days and I needed to decide whether to buy it, or whether I could use Active Sync alone, (as my Local Notes replica would now also be in Outlook)
3. I would get a unified search environment, (because X1 would search my Notes data, which would now be in Outlook)
4. Graham said it works fine for him

I have tried it twice before, and had to give up both times, despite considerable effort.  I kept telling myself the problems were to do with the sequence I did things, by interactions with mNotes, X1 etc, because I did not leave it alone – i.e. I tried to use it!  Having tried again a few times these are some of the problems I have had:

1. Synchronisation is painfully slow
2. It does not synchronise according to a regular schedule, it just does it in the background, but not as frequently as I would like
3. It affects the stability of Outlook quite badly, Outlook has hung on me at least 3 times today
4. It created duplicate email and calendar entries, (never did figure out why, but assumed it was some sort of cascade effect caused by replica’s and mNotes).
5. I ended up with a corrupt document in my Local Replica, I am currently creating a brand new local replica to see if I can fix it
6. It does not handle standard s/mime signed documents, (gives a security subsystem error)
7. Formatting of some message is a bit strange
8. X1 tries to index entries as soon as the headers arrive, then triggers a pull of the body causing a dialog to keep opening up, very annoying
9. if you do a full synchronisation, you can not use Outlook until its complete, (either that or Outlook was hanging).

It’s the stability problem that was the killer for me.  I could have carried on trying to work through the other issues.  I also got worrying that there were some version issues, Windows 2003 Server, Outlook 2003, Notes 6.51 is hardly a combination that has been well tested!

So I have just trashed it yet again and gone back to good old Notes!  Which is surprisingly refreshing because it does work reliably.  I also like the fact that it’s nice and colourful, especially when you use custom colours for emails from certain people, and colour different calendar entry types!  I just hope this new replica works ok!

- Posted by Steve Richards - 12:42:53 AM - comment []

There are two discussion threads active on the GTD forum on Offices.  The first is asking people about their home offices and I have replied to this with some links to my blog.  Inspired by the interest people seem to have I have updated some of the pictures and added a couple of new ones.  Of particular note is my new baby spider phone, (brand new and 2/3 off retail price off eBay!):

Then Eric Mack got into the act with this "not so tidy" desk post, and another post that links to his blog:

I cope with this by having a designated untidy area:

My wife and kids also have a desk each, and share this one in my office, which helps keep them away from mine:

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:50:51 PM - comment []

This is a posting that I made to the GTD discussion forum.

I am about to start a small research project into personal productivity,  I am going to be looking at the following main areas:

• Personal knowledge management
• Time, task and action management
• Communication and collaboration
• Team working
• Subscription and research

As you can see these are quite relevant to exponents of the GTD methodology, and so I need your help.

First I wanted to explain a little about my personal experience with GTD and history in using similar techniques.

“I love to be organised”

I am one of those people who likes a clear desk, who like kids to have tidy bedrooms, who likes to be in control.  I invest a lot in my IT, and a lot of my time in researching how to be organised.   I can also invest a lot of time in establishing a new system.  But once that new system is established, I find it hard to keep going.  Here are some of the reasons why:

1. I only tend to be motivated to create my list of, “everything that needs to be done”, when things are out of control.  The process of creating the list brings me back in control and that tends to last about a month.  During that month I gradually begin to feel that I am working for my system rather than my system working for me, so I give up.
2. I find that although they all seem important when I write them down many of the items on my, “everything that needs to be done list”, never actually get done, as new things keep being added.  So in reality I am only ever working with the things that filter to the top.  In most cases I already know about the things at the top of the list.  It’s the 80/20 rule all over again, I only ever work on the top 20% of my list, and most of the stuff in the 80% never gets touched because new items keep adding themselves to the top 20%.
3. During the times of my life when I am not following a GTD like methodology, I find I value the fact that my  Brain forgets the 80% that’s never going to be done, and lets me keep my sub-conscious focussed on the 20% that is, and my conscious on the 5% I am working on.  When I do follow GTD, I find myself distracted by the 80% feeling it’s important and must be progressed, managed, tracked, researched etc.  For example for a month I captured research notes in Microsoft OneNote on everything related to my GTD list.  Most of that time was wasted because in the end I never got around to the tasks.  After the month was up I ended up deleting most of it because I wanted a tidier and better organised OneNote.
4. I find my Brain balances, “Important/Urgent” , pretty well
5. I generally always do some form of daily and weekly review and I get close to the “mind like water”, feeling.
6. I have seen lots of projects suffer because of too much project planning, and too little project management.  By that I mean the project manager and project team start to serve the system, they spend all of their time and energy on task definition, tracking, reporting etc and not enough time on requirements, millstones, dependencies, estimating. 
7. I think the above problem with projects is the same problem I see with GTD.  Too much attention to managing your tasks and not enough time managing your time and goals.

Ok so you sort of get the idea of where I am coming from with the above, but I said I needed help.  Well I have seen a few posts in this forum that really got me thinking.  I will repeat a few of the key points here:

1. Someone said that it was the act of making the list of things to do that was key, not the resulting list.  They tested it with for example shopping lists.  If you make the list and then forget to take it with you, you still end up buying everything you need.
2. This was built on by someone who said that if you forgot the list you might actually do better because you might respond more openly to inputs/ideas that you have while out shopping, and maybe reassess your needs more openly as well, (i.e. decide not to buy things, whereas if its on this list you feel compelled to buy it).
3. In a critique of presentations someone reported how PowerPoint stifles many meetings.    The bulleted list stops people thinking, because it trivialises issues, and the slide by slide format constrains discussion and debate.  I have actually tested this myself by presenting on an eWhiteboard and its amazing how liberated you feel.
4. Discussions comparing “Putting first things First”, top down methodology, (which works like my Brain, but perhaps not everyone’s brain), and GTD help to bring the debate into focus
5. A few people have pointed to Life Balance and there is certainly a lot of thought gone into that software. I tried it for a while, but again concluded that I was likely to end up being controlled by the software, and spend a lot of my time working for it, rather than it working for me!
6. Finally its obvious that a lot of people love GTD more than I do, I want to understand why!

I was hoping that in discussion of this post more nuggets like those above might help me work this topic through in my mind in a more open way that I have been able to do by just reading the GTD books.

The final problem I have is the systems that support these processes just don’t work for me.  When I look at my starting list again:

1. Personal knowledge management
2. Time, task and action management
3. Communication and collaboration
4. Team working
5. Subscription and research

I really need an integrated system that supports all of these.  I have not found such a system.  Although if I were able to use Outlook for my email maybe I would get close with the combination of NewsGator, Outlook, Outlook GTD plug-in and OneNote.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 11:28:52 AM - comment []

In this post I described my "information processing pipeline".  Here is a diagram that touches on the same area.

It was created by Mario Asselin in a response to this paper "Distributed KM" by  Martin Roell

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:10:29 PM - comment []

This is a very very nice summary of how blogs work by Roland Tanglao at Streamline, it complements my comments because it provides more details of some of the server side infrastructure:

1. Joe Blogger writes something and publishes it to his blog.

2. Joe's Blog system updates his site's HTML, updates his RSS file and sends a 'ping' message to the 'Aggregation Ping Server' indicating that his site has updated.

3. Search engines like Google and RSS specific services like Feedster, Technorati and PubSub periodically ask the Aggregation Ping Server, "Which sites have updated?".

4. Since Joe's site sends pings and has an RSS file and is easy to update frequently, Joe's search engine rank is higher than a 'normal site'.

5. Techie Teresa uses a program called an RSS reader to subscribe to Joe's site. The RSS reader checks Joe's RSS file for updates periodically (usually once/hour or once per day) and notifies her of Joe's updates. Teresa no longer wastes time manually surfing Joe's site. She just checks her RSS reader.

6. As a result, Teresa's information flow is more efficient and she can monitor more sites in less time.

7. Joe Surfer (who is not related to Joe Blogger) still can access blogs the old fashioned, slow and less efficient way using his web browser and search engines.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 2:16:35 PM - comment []

Absolute goldmine, lists every OS you can image and provides details on whether its works on Virtual PC.  I was pretty amazed by the list, especially compared with VM Ware.  Where a product has issues it also has notes of workarounds.  Even better if you want to keep up to date with the latest additions there is an RSS feed.

Also if like me you have VMWare Workstation, GSX Server and VPC then this is a good review to help you decide which to use.  I also suggest checking out the comments on the review.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 10:26:41 PM - comment []

The new Seimens SK65.  Full blackberry functionality with a really innovative format, tri-band.  Hopefully it has a decent task manager!  For more details check out this web site.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 8:44:25 PM - comment []