I didn’t document my shipping list for 2010 so I can’t do a retrospective, but I’ll not make that mistake twice. So for all my loved ones, all people that know me, and also all readers of my blog I will have a shipping list for 2011. But it will be a SMART Shipping List. SMART stands for

While I know not my whole shipping list will be SMART, I’ll try to create an as SMART as possible list.

Participate more in the SharePoint Community

By creating blog posts, tweeting, present at the BIWUG. This is a continuous process and is easily measurable by the number of blog posts and presentations I delivered. I would like to present the first time at the BIWUG before the summer holiday.

Find and have more peace of mind.

While I understand and realize this is a really difficult objective, I have put it on the SSL. I would really like to have more peace of mind, and need to rebalance my work life with my family life. This will not be easy since I will participate more in the community and insist on participate more in my family life. I’ll know when I have more peace of mind when I’m more relaxed, happy in life and not too stressed. And I would like to reach this by what I will (try to) ship in 2011 Valentine’s Day.

Lose some weight and do more sport.

I would like to weight around 73 to 74 kg again (that’s about 161 lb). My current weight is around 76 kg (167.5 lb) now. To get that result I’ll eat healthier and will start running again. This year will not be a marathon-running year, but I would like to set a good time for 10 km (6.2 Miles) by September. And that good time would be around 50 minutes.

Get certified CMAS 2* diver

There is a relation with the previous objective and this one. Although you don’t need a real good condition, I see that if I look at a lot of other scuba divers, I’m pretty sure that it will help. My target date to have the certification is September, but I must assure myself that I’m a 2* worthy before summer holidays.

Read more books.

This year I would like to read 1 book every 3 weeks. I might read more, at least that’s what I hope, but I set the limit of 1 book per 3 weeks to have a achievable objective. I consider audiobooks also as a book and since commute quite a lot (about 3 times a week for 2,5 hours), this seems like an achievable target.

Do a SharePoint 2010 project.

While I’m working on a very interesting project at this time (preparing the global deployment and starting up SharePoint governance) in the chemical sector, I would like to do a SharePoint 2010 project. The timeline is very clear, it has to be this year, and I mean to start it, not to deliver it.

Get back on the GTD train, be more productive.

While I am convinced that GTD (Getting Things Done®) is a very good system to manage my actions, I fall of the train regularly. This year should be the year that I stay on board and actually become a good GTD practitioner. I’ll do my best to stay on board by rigorously do my weekly review since I discovered this is my weak point. I’ll perform the weekly review every Friday after lunch. A part of this weekly review is cleaning up inboxes, so an extra sub-objective is to achieve on a regular base #inboxzero.

 Use Bing as a default search engine.

While Google rocked for ages, Bing seems to be a good alternative. So starting this week, I am using Bing as my default search engine. I will force myself to use Bing for at least 1 month.

 

Here is a screenshot of what I would like to have (or something similar) :

Update1

After Marc D Anderson commented with how to figure out where to place and calculate the week. This is the screenshot what happens to your date picker after you enabled the “Show week numbers in the Data Navigator” in your sites Regional Settings. So the answer to these questions is somewhere in this screenshot J

 

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

I added 1 2 3 4 5 above the icons in the picture above. These figures match the list hereunder.

1. Go to the Home screen (this screen)
2. Show the Next Actions
3. Sync with Nozbe online
4. Add New action/Note/Project or Context (see extra screenshot) (Power Add Button)
5. Add an Action

screenshot of menu item 4 Power add Button:

Adding a new action (5) will add a new action in the current Project. You can enter a description and Edit the Details.
In the details you can easy check it as done, make a Next Action of that Action, assign it to somebody else (remark:your Project where you create this action in must be shared) or add a comment. It is also possible to change the Project, add one or more contexts, set a time for that action, enter a Due Date with or without an hour(extra screenshot) and there are very nice and easy to use buttons to set the due day to Next Monday, Tuesday, … of Next day, week, month or year) and you can also define a recurrence.

When adding a new Project, you can edit the details.
In these details you can specify a label, you can Share it and make it your Inbox.When you want to share the Project with somebody you didn’t share anything with before, you can invite that person via an email. This is all pretty straightforward.

Adding a note will bring you to the Edit note page, but it is strange that this doesn’t use the Inbox, but uses a random Project (at least, I didn’t found a pattern in it except it uses the same Project)

Adding New Context will allow you to create a new Context and assign an icon to it.

What does this mean?

It will definitely be easier to use Nozbe on an iPhone. The fact that you can use Nozbe on iPhone without having to create a Nozbe account might be a step forward to have somebody use it without registration, but then the price of the App would obstruct this advantage.

The navigation and collaboration features are really nice and being able to comment on your tasks might be useful in some cases.

Being able to sync files within the App is certainly a great feature. Now you carry your presentations, documents, .. with you, attached to the Project. I was only able to open a Word document (.doc) and a PDF. These files failed:  and docx, ppt(x)(s) failed when I created these document in my Office 2010. I could not open them in the iPhone App.

What I think :

This is definitely a fantastic step forward for Nozbe iPhone users. The new layout is easy to use and gives peace of mind. The collaboration functions (delegate) and comments is also a nice features.

The fact that you can carry files with you in your trusted GTD system would be just great if it worked like it should. I’m not quite sure if this is a Apple, Nozbe or Microsoft Office 2010 issue.

Since this is the first release of V2.0, there is some serious margin for improvements. Here is a list of improvements I would like to see.

Wish list: (in order of importance for me)

1. In the Next Actions overview the project should be listed somewhere (next to the Context icon?)
2. Integration with Evernote®
3. It should be possible to filter on context in the Next Actions overview.
4. Adding an action should also be possible in horizontal mode. Now it is just modifying an action that is horizontal-enable.
   In fact, I think the whole application should be available in horizontal mode
5. Notifications on iPhone (overview of what has a deadline that day)
6. Notification via: Direct message on Twitter, email, text, ..
7. Nozbe users should have the ability to upload their own icons,
8. The Help functions is acting not logical. It starts with the Add New Action, then moves left to the Sync, then left to Home, then right to Next Actions and then right to Add more. Even I move my finger each time from right to left on the screen.

 

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.

• % stands for time needed. Just note % and the time needed (there are limitations. These values can be used :  5min, 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 1h, 1.5h, 2h, 2.5h, 3h, 4h, 5h, 6h, 7h, 8h)
• Repeat Actions : write down “every …” before the repeating interval. Eg. Every day, every week, every 2 weeks, every month,…
• !: If you want this Action to be the Next Action, just add a ! (exclamation mark)  in the action. The order is not important.

So : Read Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen #become productive ! @home would result in adding the Next Action  Read Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen in project “Become Productive” in the context Home

The special formatting can also be applied when entering a Action with this syntax in the Web Client of when using the email to Nozbe  functionality.

Creating Actions and Notes from your email client to Nozbe

Now that you know the syntax, it’s easy to send emails to Nozbe with your actions.  There is one thing you need to know about your account. On your Settings page, you need to configure a Nickname and a PIN code.

Adding an Action to your inbox or a Project.

Just send an email to Nickname.PIN@nozbe.us. If you want the Action to be created in a certain Project, use this email address : Nickname.PIN.Project@nozbe.us. If your project contains spaces, replace them with an “_” Nickname.PIN.Project_with_spaces@nozbe.us

Adding Actions to multiple projects

Send an email, using the syntax of §1 but as a prefix you must use an asterisk with a space “* “ before each Action.

Adding Notes to a Project

Send an email to Nickname.PIN.Projectname@nozbe.us and the body of the email will be added as a Note. The Subject of the email will be the title.

You can also BCC your Nozbe account to add some reference material to your project. (if you reply to an email for example)

Adding Actions and Notes to a Project

This is really cool. Almost as cool as the Evernote integration :-)

Send an email to Nickname.PIN.Projectname@nozbe.us . The subject of the email will be the title of the note, the body of the email will include everything before the “* “ as a note and will threat the “* “ Actions independent. So, you can send this email to projectname and add Actions to Project2 if you want.

So everything before the first “* “ will be a note to the project as mentioned in the email address, everything after the last “* “ sentence (in this case blahblahblah) will be ignored.

With this post you’ll see how powerful the Nozbe syntax is, and how easy it is to email (Next) Actions and Notes right into your GTD tool.

–Update may 23rd 2010 :

Adding a note to an action

–> will be saved as a comment in your Action in this case:

I have discovered this feature by accident. Well actually last week when i forwarded some e-mails, I noticed that in some cases my Notes weren’t saved as notes in my Projects. When I did some trial and error I discovered this: When you want to add a note, and have just one Action, you have to be careful. When you email the note with that action, the note will be added as a comment on that action. Only when you have more actions in the email, the note will be attached to the Project

 –End Update may 23rd 2010 :

Macro designers and Visual Basic for Office developers, start creating some nice scripts, macros, …. :-). And off course, everybody who is not using Microsoft Outlook, but another email client, feel free to develop you add-on for your preferred email client!

 

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

 

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.

Horizontal view

A new feature will be the horizontal view. In the current App you can only edit tasks in horizontal view, but Michael announced vertical editing functions in the new version.

Context Icons

I consider the context icons weak point. The black&white icons or so outdated and they just don’t look nice. But I suppose (and hope) that will be modified in the new App, because the context icons got updated to very nice icons in the Nozbe WebApp. If we could just upload our own now…

Other new features will be (as announced in this post):

Easier collaboration.

• Share Projects from the iPhone (and iPad) App
• Delegate tasks
• Comment on tasks

Working with Files

• add and view files in your projects

Easier navigation 

• The Project section is redesigned so you can see actions, notes, files and project info as tabs on the project. This means that you’ll be able to access all project information quicker
  

I hope the new Nozbe for iPhone will be available soon in the AppStore , because it looks very promising.

 

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.

 

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.  As a lot of people on Twitter said, and I must agree, it is doesn’t look very user friendly if you actually follow all levels of responsibilities. (Actions, Projects, Areas of responsibility, Goals, Vision, Life goals).

Figure 1

Then this is a screenshot (Fiigure2) of the same page but with the Greasemonkey scripts activated.

Figure 2

What do you need to do to have this view?

• Create a free account to use RememberTheMilk : http://www.rememberthemilk.com
• Get Firefox if you don’t have it yet http://www.mozilla.com
• Download and install Greasemonkey https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
• Install the Greasemonkey scripts :
  • Remember The Milk – Tag Cloud Colorizer : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25046
  • Remember The Milk – Keep Cloud Visible : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25050
  • Remember The Milk – display keyboard shortcuts : http://userstyles.org/styles/1623

You have to customize the Tag cloud Colorizer, but it is DEFINITELY worth it.

Good Luck with these scripts and more luck and enjoy Getting Things Done!

 

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!

 

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

 

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.

 

When you have collected the stuff, you must do something with it. Actually, this is a continuous process, and you process stuff all the time.
Processing means you determine what to do with it.

First of all you need to decide if the stuff is actionable. If it isn’t , there are three possibilities.

• Trash it (many people forget to use a great key on their computer called DEL), or
• put it on a someday/maybe list (incubate), or
• file it for reference material

If it is actionable, you have to decide what the Next Action is. And please note that the answer to the question “Is it actionable” can only be 2 things. YES or NO.

If the Next Action takes less then 2 minutes to execute, DO IT (NOW)!

If the action takes more then 2 minutes to execute, you have to put it on a list and delegate or defer it. When you delegate it, don’t forget to add it to your Waiting For list so you can track it later. If you defer it, you might put it on your calendar, if it is a day specific action, or put it on your Project list as a Next Action.

Oh yes, some other rules you should really follow :

• Don’t get distracted by other stuff when you process stuff. Take care that you handle it one at the time, item per item.
• Don’t (ever) put anything back in In.

 

Stuff is anything that you have allowed into your life (logical or physical), that doesn’t belong where it actually is, and you haven’t defined the desired outcome yet. It can occur to you in digital format, paper, email, voicemail, a small note you found in your jacket or it might be just stuff in your head.

But what does get it out of your head actually means? We’ll its a simple as can be, get it out of your head, and put in on paper. You can decide what you do with the paper later, but first get it from your head to a paper.

When my wife explained her ‘’lists’ to me, I laughed. She inherited this behaviour of making lists from her father who has worked as a HR manager. The reason I laughed with this was because the methodology was not the correct one for me. She worked with a Todo list, and for me a simple todo list doesn’t work. I needed more.

Now, how can you empty your personal in-basket (your head) and actually do something with it? Put it on paper. The moment you put it on paper, it’s out of your mind.
And maybe you know, but your mind has no idea of time. Is has no clue of today, tomorrow or in a few months. The moment you open a loop (you start by engaging yourself to do something), it reacts like you should be doing that all the time, until it is marked as complete. Imagine what that does when you open 2 loops. Or maybe you are a crazy maker and your mind thinks you should be handling 50 tasks or 1000.

May I suggest you stop reading for 3 minutes and  execute this exercise : write down 5 current things that are on your mind at this moment. Really think good about it.

When you have written this small list down, how did you feel? I bet you felt some degree of positive emotion like relief, release, but possibly you also felt felt frustration, guilt, panic fear,… Isn’t it very strange that you can have such an opposite feeling by doing exactly the same exercise.

Welcome to the collection phase :-). After you have written it all down to paper you have to put it in one place. This can be a plastic tray, or if you have lots of stuff gathered a box. We call this place IN.

You have to collect anything in your environment that lays somewhere. All the papers, notes, receipts, business cards that are widely spread allover, should be put in the IN-basket.

When everything is gatered in IN, you have to process it. This means that you have to perform several actions on this pile of paper. This is the next phase in the 5 phases process of GTD. The process phase.

 

A long time ago, a good friend of mine named Marcel told be some things about Getting things done and 7 habits of highly effective people. At that moment, I wasn’t ready for that life changing information, so I did absolutely nothing with it.

A few months ago I read Getting things done , ‘The Art of Stress-Free Productivity’ from David Allen. This was that a life changing moment. After reading this book, I started looking on how to implement this in my life. This was definitely not a simple assignment..

Anyhow, these moments were life changing and therefore I will share this very useful information with you :-)

I’ll do my best (and added it as a Next Action to my action list) to post on a daily base something about why this thing matters for me.