TonsofTime - Enjoy the now

In her article on the Huffington Post, Linda Stone argues that time management, with all it’s never ending lists, causes feelings of helplessness and overwhelm. At the end of the day, the lists seem to get longer, in spite of the fact that you have crossed-off several items. This is how she puts it:

In the cases where people reported managing their time, they more often reported experiencing burn-out, they didn’t know how much longer they could go on at their particular job or lifestyle. There was often a sense of helplessness and overwhelm. The endless list, the one that gets added to and never completed, at the center of it all, left them with a heavy heart and a burdened sense of tomorrow.

Linda argues that the answer lies in managing your attention, not your time. You can do this by making a closed list at the beginning of the day and only put things on this list that you intend to really do. Also, an important part of Linda’s solution is switching off all the distracting technology, like IM, Twitter and cellphone.

Mark Forster also recommends (among other things) to trade in you to-do list for a will-do list. In his book Do It Tomorrow he writes that:
Open lists are demotivating, because:

• They tend to grow
• New items can be added
• Difficult to clear

Closed lists are motivating, because:

• They tend to get smaller
• Nothing new can be added
• Relatively easy to clear

Mark recommends to make a do-able list for 1 day and stick to it as much as possible. If you get new tasks on you desk or in you e-mail, put them on your list for tomorrow. Besides this idea, Mark offers a lot of other insights and techniques in his excellent book.

So what do I use?
So, is the rejection of the open list the end of time management, as Linda puts it? Not according to Mark Forster and I agree with him. If I make a task list for a particular day, I feel much more motivated to finish this list. One of the big disadvantages of Getting Things Done (GDT) is that it stimulates procrastination. I still use all the context lists of GTD, but I also use the task diary of Mark Forsters system, so I combine both. I digitally copy the tasks that I intend to really complete on that day from my context list to my task diary, and stop adding to that dated list during the day. This works great!

The 20th century
Ever since my school days, I have been taking and keeping notes. For many years, these notes were solely analogue (on paper). Later on, they were supplemented with digital texts on desktop PC’s. After I bought a Psion PDA in the nineties, I started to use the application Notepad Deluxe (now abandonware) to enter, store and search notes. It was a great app, with linking capabilities, almost like a mindmap, but not graphical.

Requirements for a note keeping system
For me, and I believe these things are personal, the ideal platform has to be portable, computer independent but secure, and preferably digital.

Portable, because it is great to be able to make a note when I am away from a computer. At the moment, I use my Treo 680 for this and applications like Notestudio (which the makers to my disappointment have stopped developing). The mobile searching of notes, like with a smartphone, is less important, however this can come in handy sometimes as well.

Computer independent: ever since the coming of Web2.0 applications like Gmail, Google docs and Mindmeister, I have gotten used to the fact that my data is online and can be reached from every connected computer, be it from the PC downstairs or upstairs at home, from my laptop in the train or from a computer of a customer. Once you are used to this, you don’t want to go back. Therefore, for keeping notes, an online wiki or other Web2.0 site would be great.

The matter of confidentiality
I feel there are a couple of disadvantages to keeping all your notes or other data on a Web 2.0 site. One of them (besides backups) is that my notes often contain restricted information about customers computer networks and IT architecture and I do not want to put them in the hands of a possibly insecure provider, even if this site features encryption of the data and the connection. So, the best way to solve this is to keep the customer-related notes in a separate, encrypted store on the hard drive of my laptop. The application that I have used for this for several years now is Treepad, which is also available for Linux and can be run from a USB stick.

What about online file storage, like Mediamax and iBackup, Skydrive of Microsoft or the storage that Google is preparing for its customers? If I put my encrypted Treepad files there, would they be safe? Maybe, but I still do not want to take the risk of trusting a companies IT designs to an outside hosting provider.

The advantages of digital notes
Digital notes can be searched, which is why it is good to keep them all in the same bucket, so that you do not have to search in several locations. Digital notes can also be backed up more easily, since making a digital backup is easier than scanning in handwritten notes. What I also like, is to copy and paste computer commands, difficult strings and other hard to remember stuff right from a website into my notes. If you want to keep those on paper by copying them from the screen by hand, I think this is asking for trouble in the form of writing errors. Can digital notes be portable? Yes, if you can access them with a smartphone.

What digital information not to keep as a note
Contact information, I use Google contacts for this and sync them to my smartphone with Goosync. For calendar info, I use Goosync too. Passwords: for this I use eWallet of Iliumsoft and keep them synced. Mindmaps: I keep these on Mindmeister, when they are not work related and I use Freemind with local files (on harddrive or USB stick) when they contain restricted information. To do’s and project lists: for these I use Life balance on my PDA, but I am looking into applications like Nozbe, because with Life Balance, you are restricted to keeping them synced to a single computer if you want to avoid synchronization errors.

MediaWiki
Using my Treo, I have tested the readability of Wikipedia (MediaWiki) on a smartphone browser. To my surprise, the texts can be read very well. That’s why I intend to install MediaWiki on a webserver someday and put all my not-restricted notes there. I will definitely use password protection, because wiki’s are very vulnerable to pollution by spammers.

Accessing your notes during a meeting.
What notes should be readable during meetings? In the teams where I work, it is custom to take your laptop to a meeting. But if there is no place for laptops or it is just not that kind of meeting, what can you do? Mediawiki and Notestudio notes can be read on my Palm during a meeting, but not the confidential notes about customers projects, servers, databases and so on, because I do not want to keep them online and they are on my laptop or encrypted on my USB stick. In that case, I can compile an abstract of relevant notes for the meeting, print it out and shred the paper afterwards.

Click on the photo to see it in Flickr

Leitz 43 Folders (LEI5844)
I use this Leitz folder as a tickler file. When I have an appointment on a certain day that has a paper invitation, badge, slip or note that I have to bring to that appointment, I place it in the appropriate day in the file. (The 1,2,3 tabs are for the days of the current month only, the I, II, III tabs are for future months.) It is a very good solution to the “where do I place the cinema tickets for next week?” problem.

Palm Treo 680
The applications I frequently use on this smart phone, besides the built-in apps, are:

• Life Balance, in my opinion the best todo application there is.
• Note Studio, that I use as my personal wiki.
• eWallet to store passwords.

Cross Ion gel pen
This is a small pen that extends to something you can use to write with. Although the pen has a rather sharp edge close to where your middle finger goes, it writes very well. Because you can carry the pen in your pocket (or on a key cord around your neck) everywhere you go, you’re never without writing tool, which is nice. Pigpog has written a review about the pen, that was a bit of a hype in 2005. Nowadays, Cross sells the Toffee pen which is also pocket size. It is not a gel pen, more expensive but made of metal with a leather coating.

Hardcover paper notebook
This is just a brandless hardcover lined notebook, I use when writing on my Treo is not fast enough. The scribbles in the notebook are transfered to the Palm later on, either with the little keyboard or on a PC.

How to avoid being flooded with obligations and deadlines? According to Bob Walsh in Lifehack.org, the trick is to focus on doing less.

“So there you are with your Today list, your to-do list, your project lists, your house list, your calls list and even your list of lists. You know each and ever one of the 49 things you want to accomplish today. There’s only one small problem: come the end of the day you’ve accomplished zip. What went wrong?

Your focus”

Link to the article.

It is generally acknowledged that Open Source software (OSS) benefits greatly from the feedback it gets from it’s users. It takes a community mindset to file a bug report once you as a user stumble upon a fault in the software. How do you react when you discover a bug in an Open Source package? On a number of occasions, I have witnessed a response from users, that varies from “I told you so” to “I am a bit disappointed in that so called Open Source stuff”. I think you might call this the consumer mindset. During the years, we have become accustomed to have a critical eye for tools like Microsoft Office, especially after reading a report about the wealth of people like Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer. Often, we thought: “why is this software so buggy, while these guys make so much money?” For a number of users, this irritated, critical consumer mindset has stayed and while they have switched over to a Open Source package, they are comparing the people that created this package to large companies like Microsoft. But in the philosophy of the Open Source movement, everybody can contribute; rich or poor, developer or user, irrespect of the country you live in or your occupation.

3 Signs of the consumer mindset

1. I have bought this package, so I have to use it
2. The people who have made the package I use, only want to make more money
3. What is the address of their helpdesk? I demand help

3 Signs of the community mindset

1. The package is free and so are the alternatives. I only use this package because I like it
2. The developers and their community are normal guys like you and me
3. I join the community, and exchange ideas and suggestions to improve the package