Getting started with "Getting Things Done" This article was originally posted during the first week of 43 Folders' existence, and, pound for pound, it remains our most popular page on the site. Please be sure to also visit related pages, browse our GTD topic area, plus, of course you can search on GTD across our family of sites. I’ll be talking a lot here in coming weeks about Getting Things Done, a book by David Allen whose apt subtitle is “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” Like I did the other day with Quicksilver, I wanted to provide a gentle, geek-centric introduction to Getting Things Done, so that you can think about whether it might be right for you. The Problem with “stuff” Getting Things Done succeeds because it first addresses a critical barrier to completing the atomic tasks that we want to accomplish in a given day. Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. So how does GTD work? This is a really summarized version, but here it is, PowerPoint-style: GTD is geek-friendly So what next?
Triple Your Productivity Tomorrow | PickTheBrain Is work slowly suffocating you? To-do lists, projects and random chores all piling up until they surround you? When this happens, your best strategy is to get ahead. Get on top of all your work and go beyond completing today’s tasks, complete more than you need to so you can have room to breathe. How do you do this? I’ve done hundreds of these Project-Kill days, so if you’re looking to start your own here’s how: Wake Up Early – If you aren’t normally an early riser, set your alarm clock early. Morning Exercise – This isn’t strictly necessary, but I find starting my early day with a run or even some push-ups in my room is another great way to build momentum. Create a Fixed To-Do List – Before you start the day, write down all the things you need to accomplish. Isolate Yourself – Most of my work is solitary. Cut the Cables – Television, web, Facebook, phones and instant messengers all go offline during your day. No Mid-Task Breaks – Breaks of any kind should be minimized during your day.
43 Folders | Time, Attention, and Creative Work 100+ Ways to Organize Your Life There comes a time in life when you have to put a stop to the mess you've been working and living in and say: no more! I'm going to get organized, do more and earn more in the same or even shorter amount of time. We've collected over one hundred links to help you get it together. Organize Your Stuff PackAndFind.com - Create a personal inventory online. You'll never have to wonder what's in all those boxes in the attic again! YourGarage online - Keep track of all your car service records online, and manage routine maintenance as well as major and minor repairs. Car Performance - Keep track of the fuel efficiency of your car. Organize Your Shopping iPhonedItIn - Create your shopping list online, share it with others, and access it with your iPhone. OneTrip - Organize your shopping lists and access them from your iPhone. Organize Your Routine notebook G - A free online organizer with nothing to install and nothing to manage. Stikkit - Organize your daily details with this handy application.
ONLINE BUSINESS TOOLBOX: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Onlin Forget useless desktop apps and piles of paperwork: there are now thousands of small and medium-sized businesses managing all their affairs with online applications. After an exhaustive hunt this week, we've rounded up more than 230 of the leading online applications for super-productive companies. Accounting, Billing, Invoicing, Estimating & Contracts BillingOrchard - Online billing software that maintains hourly billing time as well as flat fee or recurring billing. Bill My Clients - A hassle-free way to create and print invoices (you can email them too) and send them via the USPS. Blinksale - Create elegant invoices using professionally designed templates (or create your own) and send them to anyone with an email address. Cashboard - Estimating, invoicing and time tracking for you, your employees and subcontractors. DocuSign - Electronic signature services that allow you to get legally binding electronic signatures on your contracts. Sertifi - Electronic contract delivery and signing. Email
Gtdagenda.com The Ultimate Productivity Toolbox for Creative People | Lateral Pin It Let’s face it: in the online arena, distractions are imminent and inevitable. There are just too many online properties that beg for your attention — and before you know it, hours have passed and you didn’t finish that project you meant to complete. This is especially more challenging for the Marlas in the house, as creativity requires being ahead of the curve. Those who are like Lou, though, don’t know that it’s possible to do everything one can do in the corporate world at home for a fraction of the cost (and even better returns). In the creative world, you don’t have to confine yourself to costly enterprise-level applications. Email The first step to communicating with local clients and overseas prospects is to make sure you have a good email system in place. Many people use Gmail as a business tool and don’t mind having a “professional” email address with the gmail.com domain (I actually use my gmail.com email account straight-away for some tasks). Documents Photo Editing Media
GTD NINJA: 50+ Websites For the Kickass Control Freak We admit it: we're control freaks. We wanna control every single aspect of our lives...and with the latest Web 2.0 tools, we already can. Here are my picks for the 50 or so best new tools to Get Things Done: also check out James Mowery's recent guide to personal productivity. Backpack - Make to-do lists, notes, files, calendars and reminders that can be sent to your email or phone at scheduled times. Blue Smiley - Organizes bookmarks, reminder, notes, to-do lists, calendars and much more. Calgoo - Synchronize your Google, Outlook and iCal calendars online and off-line. coComment - Keep track of all your online conversations in one place. Destiny Goals - Set goals for yourself, figure out ways to achieve them and keep track. HipCal - Online calendar, to-do list, alerts, address book. Hiveminder - Enter tasks, tag them, set due dates, attach notes, set reminders. Jotlet - Shareable to-do lists and calendar. Kiko - Online calendar with drag & drop features, email/IM/SMS reminders.
ONLINE PRODUCTIVITY GOD: 400+ Resources To Make You Smarter, Fas David Allen: The Curse Of The Eternally Urgent - Living on The H Ignoring secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects; it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause the next fires and crises. For example, ignoring worn tires because they're not yet urgent sets up the likelihood of a blowout. Someone heard second hand about my "two-minute rule" (if the action on something takes less than two minutes, do it as soon as you look at or think of it) and thought it was ineffective. I think you'll find that many big and important projects have a two-minute-or-less next action on them. I'm not talking about ignoring priorities. My "total life to-do list," with me all the time and sorted by context, provides me with lots of options to maximize my productivity wherever and whenever.
Hack Attack: Take Launchy beyond application launching Click to view Most people know Launchy as a simple and lightning-fast application launcher for Windows, but it's actually capable of much more than that. Using Launchy, you can append text to files, schedule appointments, add to your to-do list, set reminders, and more—it just takes a little setting up. Today I'll detail how I use Launchy for more than just app launching. The real brains behind most of what I describe below involves using Windows batch files in conjunction with cURL (an open source command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax) and Twitter.* So if you don't already have it, go download cURL (find the Windows section), then extract the curl.exe file to C:\WINDOWS . Now download this zipped folder . C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities . Now we'll walk through how to set up the Launchy batch tools one-by-one below. Remember the Milk with Launchy Open the rtm.bat file in your favorite text editor. Post to Google Calendar with Launchy Set SMS reminders with Launchy
How-to: Use batch files to create a working environment « Inspec Have you ever noticed that when you get started on a particular task on your computer, you always open up the same bundle of programs to do it? Why not make it easier for yourself and get all of these programs loading up when you want them, with a single click. The answer is batch files. Batch files have been around longer than Windows has, but sadly they have been forgotten over the years. You may have already set up your computer to automatically launch particular programs as part of your computers start up sequence. In this article we will look at how to create some basic batch files which you can alter to suit your own needs. When I first thought about this article, I was thinking of a particular scenario I suffer with. Batch files will help to free up the machines power to launch programs. If you like where this article is heading, create a folder somewhere on your computer to put your batch files into, as you will probably make a few of them. Open up Notepad and click “Save As”.