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Staying on the Getting Things Done Wagon

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Scoble just mentioned that he'd fallen off the Getting Things Done wagon. This is dangerous. Since I started last march I have never fallen off the wagon. I have been bad about my weekly review of the task list, and I generally add more tasks to my task list then I complete, but I have stuck to it because I know that my life before it was a stressful mess and I want no part of that. I religiously file things at home, use my Brother label maker to label my manila folders, and keep all unprocessed things in my real "inbox" to be dealt with when I have time.

An inbox full of stuff directly correlates to stress. Stress gets in the way of work, AND life. I don't want to be stressed, so I am religious about making sure that my Inbox is fully triaged by the end of every workday. My inbox is by no means ever empty, cause that's IMPOSSIBLE. My inbox always has less then one screen full of emails in Outlook (translation, under 20 messages). Usually I have 5-10. These are just things that are in the queue. They get dealt with and I don't ever stress about them. Because of ClearContext I know that anything important is red, and catches my eye so I know in what order to deal with things.

I have added one valuable tool to my Getting Things Done system, and that's my 21st Century PDA. I love this thing, and I can't begin to explain how it filled a big void in my life. The Moleskine is like the Brother label maker + Manila Files. Because of its simplicity and ease of use, it's a motivation to write things down. Stuff that I used to store on my scratch disk (the brain) and stuff that I always forgot because I wasn't in front of a computer with OneNote or Outlook. It's made me so happy. I feel even more in control of the things I need to do, and I really enjoy knowing that they are all in one little black book.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 28, 2005
    So do these moleskine notebooks come with a pen/pencil? None of the pictures I see look like they do which means you have to carry a pen around with you. I remember little planners that had a pencil in the spine for that reason.
  • Anonymous
    January 28, 2005
    I'm using the Fisher Space pen... it's small and I attach it to the notebook.
  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2005
    Omar - how do you attach the Space Pen to the Moleskine?