GMTD
My name is James Shaw and I'm addicted to email.
I'm a big GTD fan, and if you have a growing pile of papers on your desk or more than 10 emails in your Inbox you should try it.
My Inbox is usually empty.
That's great, but it's mainly due to a much-worse (and not uncommon) email-related problem - I can't help checking my email. I had my email set to check every minute. I have three screens attached to my computer and one is dedicated to Outlook. Yes, I have only just realized the absurdity of that statement. Having Outlook on the screen permanently, streaming new email onto my screen every minute, is a VERY BAD IDEA.
So this afternoon I started GMTD - Getting More Things Done.
- Outlook is now banished to the task bar (as is MSN IM, so no more witty Personal Messages from me)
- Telligent email still checks every minute. Dozing Dogs email every 60 minutes. Personal email (and list subscriptions) every 240 minutes.
- I'm re-reading GTD, to finetune my habits further
- I read the Outlook GTD plugin help file and found a few new titbits:
- Instead of just sending email to people to ask them to do a job for me - I now use the Send & Delegate button which will create a reminder for me automatically and hence I no longer have to find the Sent email and flag it manually. Duh.
- I found a great explanation of the default Actions; something I missed before.
- I found a useful-looking page at 43folders dedicated to GTD. Added a task to review it.
BTW, my list of scheduled IE windows continues to grow. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but another tip to improve productivity (or more accurately, prompt you to do things you may otherwise put off until tomorrow) is to schedule IE to pop up with a web page in it.
For example (and don't laugh you bastards) at 5am a window pops up with the HGTV Dream Home contest in it. All I have to do is hit submit to enter each day.
At 6pm each weekday another window opens prompting me to fill in my timesheet with the tasks I worked on that day. This is SO much easier than trying to fill it in each week (or heaven forbid each month as some people try to).
Remember, if it's less than a 2 minute task, do it immediately.