Smartening up where my Remember The Milk (RTM) lists are concerned!

I have been a Remember the Milk & GTD user for a few years now. I absolutely love the marriage between them and their efficencies. Having said that, I have a confession to make. I find I am now starting to ignore GTD as a productivity tool, and it is not Remember the Milk’s fault! The fault lies solely on me. I’m getting lazy and complacent…

One thing that GTD doesn’t seem to address for me, is what happens when my lists, tasks, and projects become just like me. Burnt out… Overwhelmed… Scattered…

The solution is sitting right in front of me. I am a horrible weekly review user! Horrible! In fact, I can’t recall the last time I did a weekly review… I have gone from location and context specific lists, to simply sticking my tasks into a calendar type thought process. I mentally figure out when I want to attempt to complete the task, and add a due date to the task. Then the day comes up, and I don’t bother doing it as I have put too many random things to happen all on the same day. Did this really need to be done today? Ya, probably not. Just hit postpone, that’ll get rid of it…

GTD says not to rely on calendars for that reason! It is about tasks that I may want to do, to ones that need to be done on a certain day…

A quick online search brought me to http://hamberg.no/gtd/ with a short GTD review to help get me back in focus…

Here is a snippet from the article discussing the Calendar.

Calendar

The calendar is for things you have to do on a certain date or at a certain time, and nothing else! That’s right; no putting “install Bonzibudddy” on your calendar for next Wednesday if you just think you want to have it done then.

But… why‽

By only having items which really are time and date sensitive on your calendar it will be more useful, since it will actually tell you the things you have to do a certain day without being “diluted” with other items. The thing you want to do, but that doesn’t need to be done at a certain time will be on your next actions list any way, so you will be reminded about it and have the chance to do it anyway.

So, it is time for me to start asking a better question of myself when I have a new task…It is not going to be “When do I want to start this task? And, when do I want to be reminded to start this task?” It needs to be, “What is the next action step for this task, and in what context do I need it to be part of?” If it has a due date, I’ll apply it, but other than that, I need to develop the mentality that my contexts lists need to be trusted!

This week, I am going to do a weekly review, for the first time in probably 6 months! And, I’m going to re-jig all my tasks to be tagged with their appropriate context. And then?

Well, stop looking at my due dates & reminders for my Next Action Lists, and start looking at the Contexts and Getting Things Done.

Hopefully this tweak will move me from being a complacent GTD’r to a more efficient one!

Blog updates

I was looking over my site lately, and have noticed a major shift in it. You may have too…I get quite a bit of traffic via Google searches and the majority are about Getting Things Done and my reviews of various systems.

However, as you may have noticed, I have been heavily posting Instagram updates of the things I see and the happenings in my life.

I have been extremely busy the last couple of months packing to move, moving, preparing for a new baby, and then managing the house after the baby. By the time I get home from work, eat, get the kids to bed, I have no time to blog.

So to keep the site active, I’ve created some simple ifttt triggers to auto-post when I tag certain Instagram pictures. I never intended for my blog to become a photo blog, and have been surprised by the amount of “Likes” I’ve received since this change.

I don’t plan on changing my site to accommodate photo-blogging, and hope to come out with something more in-depth soon, now that we are settling down at home and getting the semblance of a routine.

If you have been waiting for certain content, please leave me a comment as to what you’d like me to write about. It may just help me get my creative juices flowing!

Producteev has updated their productivity suite! Check them out…

I stumbled across this post at Lifehacker about the most recent changes to Producteev.

I’m currently using Remember the Milk(still love it the mostest), but Producteev has really been hard at work refreshing their app. They’ve even made it easy to import your RTM tasks directly into your account. I’m doing that right now, and will see how the import went. If it goes well, I’ll do a small review of the new interface on the site…

For now, here is a link to the Lifehacker article which also hosts a video of the changes…

“Comprehensive to-do suite Producteev has not only updated its web app and iPhone app, its now also showing some love for Windows 7 and Android users. The cross-platform task management app works great for group or individual tasks and has a revamped interface.”

via Producteev Is Now a Universal Task Manager with New Android and Windows Apps.

New ToDo.txt Touch iOS App Screenshots and first impressions

Today I was sorting through some past articles to share on Twitter and came across my review of the recently developed ToDo.txt. back in Feb 2011. I wanted to see if the project was still running and whether my links were working, and lo and behold there is a fresh update! It looks like only a couple of days ago they released the iOS version!

I am such a sucker for new apps like this, so I went and grabbed my iPhone and went over to the App Store. There it was, $1.99!

Some of the Best GTD Apps for Android Phones 2011

I am waiting for the day I can switch over to Android. But until that day comes(Decemeber 2012 to be precise), I will get my kicks from looking at all the great apps in the Marketplace!

What better category of apps to follow than GTD(Getting Things Done) for Android?

Here is an article of some of the best GTD Android Apps currently out there I thought you might like!

There are many different GTD apps that are available for Android phones. All cell phone plans and phones make downloading apps easy to do for your android phone.

Android phones are typically able to access an Android Market in order to download the apps. How do you decide which task master is right for you?

The following five GTD apps are all good, but each one has its own special features.

via Some of the Best GTD Apps for Android Phones.