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This is  just a very short Blog Post but I thought it was important enough to post.

Since a few days I have a feeling of anxiety and stress. Even though I am following the rules of GTD and am doing weekly reviews. At least, I thought I was doing GTD. But then I took a small break to have a view from a distance and thought at what causes my fear. After a few minutes I think I found the reason. At least, I think that now, but we’ll see in a few days or weeks.

I had Actions that actually should be Projects, or should be split into several Actions. So now I am converting these actions to Projects or I make smaller chunks so i don’t have an action that can take 8 hours. This looks banal, but if you ask me, that’s what GTD is all about. Little banal tricks to make you more productive and Get Things Done.
These little thing make big things happen for me.

On May 11th, 10 days after my ‘The near future of Nozbe (on iPhone) looks promising.’ post, Nozbe 2.0 for iPhone was released in the AppStore. As I was waiting for this version, I downloaded the moment I could. In this post I’ll try to explain the (new) features, what it means to you and me and what I think about it.

Nozbe for iPhone v2.0

The first thing that has changed is the logo. The logo is refreshed and I like it. Nothing more to say about that, it is just a nice logo. The home screen of the Nozbe 2.0 for iPhone has changed slightly. There was a great demand for an Inbox, and since it was implemented in a previous release of Nozbe on-line, it is also implemented in the iPhone App. For the rest, the menu remains the same except the Inbox is added (Inbox, Next Actions, Projects, Contexts, Calendar), but the layout has changed, and there are new icons.  The icons at the bottom of the page have the same functionality as the previous version, but for them who haven’t used Nozbe for iPhone before, there are 5 icons as you can see in the screenshots

image

continue reading…

I was recently searching on the exact syntax to add Actions and/or to email them so they’ll arrive , with or without notes in the Inbox or in a Project in Nozbe.

On the Nozbe blog there were several posts that refer to each other and my purpose is to create this one page overview with everything you need to know when sending email to Nozbe. Since GTD is also about having an ubiquitous capturing tool, this is the ubiquitous Email to Nozbe page.

So, here is my overview of everything you need to know when sending emails to Nozbe.

First of all, it’s important to understand the “Nozbe language”

Syntax

The syntax for a (Next)action is simple

Example:
Write a blog post about Email and Nozbe #blog @computer @home on today %30 min !

You just have to follow this syntax :

  • #projectname : Add a # sign before the name of the project
  • @context : Add a @sign before the context. Multiple contexts can be used.
  • dates : write the date in the action like ‘On today’ , ‘ on tomorrow’, ‘next week’, ‘on June 18”. Nozbe understands these all. If you use a date, you also need to use “on” or “at” before the date. If you use next week or  next month,  you don’t need to use the prefix.

continue reading…

A few weeks ago I started (re)using Nozbe after my "Remember The Milk" pro- account was expired. This forced me to use Nozbe more intensive and I also engaged myself to the community to translate from English to Dutch.
I started actively and translated some chapters and received an E-mail from Delfina asking if I would like to be a moderator for my language. This would basically mean, I’d not only translate, but also "take care" of the translation in my language together with the Nozbe team. Hereunder I have posted an overview of the topics I’ve translated. Please note, that I started a few weeks ago, and I didn’t logged the topics I have translated in April. Now I started a project in Nozbe, shared it with Michael and we now keep track of (my) translation work. I must say, it is not always easy to translate, because sometime you see just a bunch of words, and you can’t always place it in the correct context. On the other hand, I would like to encourage more translators to translate! It I a huge job, and the sooner we get this done, the sooner we’ll see out beloved Nozbe in our own language.

Topic

Translation date

Aff(iliates)

April 2010

Atimer

April 2010

Duef

April 2010

Size

April 2010

Format

April 2010

Login

May 1, 2010

SEO

May 1, 2010

Forum3

May 1, 2010

Extras

May 1, 2010

Message

May 1, 2010

Biz

May 1, 2010

Feed

May 1, 2010

Task

May 1, 2010

Context 

May 2 , 2010

Newindex

May 3, 2010

Gobiz

May 3,2010

Print 

May 3,2010

Newtour 

May 3, 2010

   
 
Update : Since a few days the Dutch translations are finished. They are ready for production and I hope Michael will release them soon.

Update : Since a few days the Dutch translations are finished. They are ready for production and I hope Michael will release them soon.

Today Michael Sliwinski  posted a new blog post on Nozbe.

For me the interesting part (at this moment) is the paragraph about the new iPhone. Nozbe has set up a partnership with Macoscope, a Polish software house that is specialized in development for the Apple platform.

The last modifications were done and the new Nozbe iPhone application is submitted to the Appstore. I can’t wait to start using it. It will be a paying App, and I hope it will not cost too much, but it will definitely add value to the Nozbe application. I’m currently using the version 1.0.2 which is a quite simple application that lacks lots of functionality. continue reading…

I started testing with a free account of NOZBE and Since i am an Iphone user, installed the application on my Iphone. After changing the password in the webinterface of Nozbe my Iphone didn’t sync anymore because of the password mismatch.

On my iphone I couldn’t find the screen where I could change of enter my username and or password, so I started googling for it. After somewhate more then 10 minutes the answer was clear. Currenlty you can’t change your password on the  Iphone.  It is documented in the forum.

The workaround is to de-instal NOZBE on your Iphone and reinstall it from the Appstore. Ofcourse no data is lost since everything is stored on the NOZBE servers.

Since a few weeks I have been following the #GTD hash on twitter and there are a lot of questions of which (web based) software to use.  Therefore I have taken some screenshots of my RememberTheMilk configuration so you can actually see the difference between the default RememberTheMilk and the customized one. The customization is done with some Greasemonkey scripts. Hence, they only work on a Firefox based browser.

In my RTM configuration I use 3 Greasemonkey scripts.

  1. Remember The Milk – Tag Cloud Colorizer
  2. Remember The Milk – Keep Cloud Visible
  3. Remember The Milk – display keyboard shortcuts

Here is a screenshot (Figure1) of how my RememberTheMilk looks without any customization.  continue reading…

Performing a mindsweep

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One of the base principles of Getting Things Done is to obtain a “Mind like water”. Your mind is good for having ideas, not for holding them. That’s why you need to capture everything out of your head, and into a trusted system.

But please pay attention. Its takes about 20 days before you really can trust your trusted system. You need to be able to change and to adapt these changes in your way of work.
Before you continue reading this article, please take a look at this one.

Hereunder you can find a way to perform your Mindsweep. It is based on a Mindsweep Twitter session @GTDCoachKelly  executed via @GTDSpecialEvent
Take pen and paper or some a new document on your computer. Get ready to capture what’s on your mind.

  • This is a capture only. Don’t analyze , process or organize.. Just capture!
  • The primary question you have to ask yourself is: What has my attention?
  • Now start writing down
  • Are there upcoming meetings, projects, ..
  • Anything you have attention to regarding your spouse, partner, kids, family
  • Don’t worry on what you are going to do about it. Just capture. The processing will be done later.
  • Do you have concerns regarding your health, sport?
  • Are there things you noted somewhere else (tasks, projects) write is down. You still have some attention on it
  • Anything with your laptop, equipment, car you have attention on?
  • Look around (real life or virtual) you. Anything you would like to see different in your environment? What’s not exactly how you want it?
  • Write down as much as possible. Don’t be afraid of the possible workload this mindsweep might create. You can always park things
  • What about your E-mail Inbox? Or the Sent Items? Any open issues there?
  • Scan your calendar, some weeks in the past and some weeks in the future.
  • Are there upcoming birthday presents to buy, or Christmas presents?
  • It might be enough to write some keyword just to remind you, like “SharePoint Conference” . You should process it later
  • Some longer term stuff might also have your attention, like your career, family , …
  • Maybe some things you want to do like a parachute or bungee jump, learn a foreign language, …
  • Go for a long, complete list, your mind will be grateful!
  • Oh yeah, this list doesn’t have to be executed tomorrow

So now you have captured what’s on you mind. This is phase 1 of a 5 phased process. The next steps are processing and organizing the Mindsweep.
Good luck with it!

 

 

Step 3: Organize

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The next step in the process work flow is organize.


You organize everything in a set of lists which you can use to track the items awaiting your attention. It doesn’t matter where this list is. You can have it on a computer, a PDA, IPhone, on paper, on your legs. It doesn’t matter (except for yourself, especially if the list is on your legs :-) ) where you keep these lists, as long as you have it. I’ll provide my setup in a later post.

Next actions

All next actions are gathered in this list. You can (and please do so:-) ) provide a context to these next actions. This context are extra information for how/where/which they can be don, such as :

  • In the office
  • at the phone
  • at the computer
  • at the store

An example is at the phone. Imagine you just had a great lunch meeting, but your stomach is demanding more attention and all your blood and power is concentrated to digest your great meal. Maybe this is a good moment to do some phone calls. Some low level, low brainpower phone-calls. Then you take your next action list and filter on the context ‘at the phone’.  The execution of actions is also related to your physical and mental energy. If your energylevel is very low, like you have the thinking peformance of an insect, what do you need to do.. Low level next actions. You can refill your stapler or give your plants in the office some water, or organise your email, or desk. (you can be sure that at a certain moment, when you are full of energy, and need to staple some important documents for and important business criticall meeting you run out of staples … Use your ‘braindead’ moments good :-)

Project

If something you have to complete takes more than 2 next actions, it is  aproject. It might be someway difficult to get used to this idea (it was for me), but it helps a lot. Theses projects should be reviewed regulary to make sure every (current) project has a next action associated with it, and hence can be moved forward.

Waiting for

On this list all actions are stored that have been delegated to someone else. So before you can proceed the project this is tracked in this list and you should check it periodically if an action is due or needs a reminder to be sent.

Someday/Maybe

These are possible later action things. Somethingyou might do, but not now, maybe mater, maybe not.  You might do this someday, but not right now. For example “look for a holiday to Venice” or “learn Microsoft SharePoint development”

The calendar

Your calender is important to keep track of all appointments and commitments. The calendar contains the big stones you can put into a bigg glass. When you fill the glass with big stones, there is still plenty place left to keep filling it with little stones, and eventually with sand. So don’t fill in your calendar for 100% , because you will get interuptions that will mess up your schedule. Don’t plan more then 60% of your day.

What else is on your agenda? Everything that would ‘die’ if you don’t do it at that time. for example deadline driven next actions

The Next Action

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What exactly does the next action mean?

Well, the next action is the next physical action you need to do to in order to move the current situation to completion.

Some examples :

  • Talk to David about the book we need to buy (improve competence)
  • Call Vanessa to schedule a meeting for marketing activities next month   (marketing campaign july 2009)
  • Make a mind map for items to blog about  (update my blog)

These actions are real physical actions that need to happen. If I do them, I will move forward to completion (of a project).  (an example of a project is written between brackets next the the next action in the list above)

The basic idea is that a project exists of more next actions, but everything (or every project) needs a (one)  next action to go forward to become completed.

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