Overview Of Jott

By Matt:

I have referenced Jott before in posts, particularly as an input device in my GTD capture arsenal. It's a handy tool that quickly transcribes voice messages into text, and delivers them to your email or cell phone. Here are the basics:

• Capture Messages: To capture a message simply call the Jott number from your registered cell phone and record a message just like you would a voicemail. Capturing messages this way is most ideal in specific situations, like when you're driving in the car and writing text messages is not a safe option.

• Set Reminders: Once your message is captured you can set a reminder for yourself so that a text message reminder will be sent to your cell phone at a later time. You can remind yourself to pick up milk on the way home tomorrow, to return your library book in two weeks, or even to call your mother for her birthday a year from today!

• Notify Friends: Not only can you send messages to yourself, you can also send the message to any of your contacts you have listed with the Jott service. You can even send messages to groups of contacts, enabling you to remind entire departments, teams, or organizations of important items.  Your contact list can be anyone and everyone (even other apps like Twitter!) so get creative with it.

Getting Started
As with most of our favorite web-apps Jott is a free service requiring only an email address and cell phone number for registration. Literally takes a couple minutes to sign-up and confirm your information. Jon and I are both Jott users and can vouch that Jott does a great job of protecting your information and you will not be the recipient of unwanted spam (email or phone).

Any current Jott users out there? The basics of Jott are pretty cut and dry, but if you're using the service in a creative or unusual way, it would be fun to hear about it in the comments below!

The Corporate Hack Presents Tech May!

Hey there Corporate Hackers,

Starting today, we're going to be bringing you a wide array of topics, tips and apps every day in May!  This month in technology is an exploration of our favorite GTD apps, mobile apps, productivity/corporate apps and many, many more, plus general tricks and tools to help you be a better geek.

We look forward to hearing how you GTD with technology, and hope you enjoy Tech May!

How To Stay Productive During A Frantic Week

By Matt:

Last week was a nightmare. A major industry convention, multiple account meetings, numerous hours out of the office, and the overarching expectation to keep things rolling business-as-usual made life pretty insane for the last seven days. I write this post, not so much as a "How-To" based on experience, but as therapy to help myself manage a week like the last better in the future.

Here are three basic (though I won't say easy) steps on setting yourself up for success during a busy work-week:

• Preparation: If a busy week is on the horizon make a preemptive strike before things start to get hairy. Look at next weeks to-do items. Can you work a little harder the week before and knock out some important activities early? Can you whittle down your overall list by tackling items you were planning to do next week? Take care of some big chunks now, and reap the benefit of a less hectic schedule in the week to come.

• Weekly Review: GTD methodology requires a weekly review of your entire to-do list. Never is this more important than the Friday before your week-of-insanity begins. Get extremely critical. Analyze everything that has a due-date set in the midst of your busy week, and if possible move it to the following week. Clear your schedule so you can instead focus on the important activities of the week. If there is an item on your to-do list that must be done next week, place it in your Priority List (below).

• Create A 'Priority List': This is a temporary capture bucket of the most important items that must be done during your busy week. As items come up that absolutely must get done during the busy week, place them in the priority list. This segregates them from the other normal to-do items that you have and isolates your thinking... in other words, only work out of your Priority List, not your regular to-do list. During your busy week you should only be thinking about A) Your conference, account meetings, business trip, etc and B) Items in your Priority List. This is built in filtering - leave everything else until next week.

If I'm honest, I was mediocre at following my own advice last week. My major foul ups? Lack of preparation and a poor weekly review the Friday before. I overheard someone say recently that "Productivity is 60% planning and only 40% execution". Not a bad mindset to work under, and based on previous experiences where I actually have done a thorough weekly review, the results in the week to come astonish even myself.

How do you manage those crazy weeks? Do you have any productivity tips we can all learn from on how to handle life outside the norm?

Transfer To-Do Items Right Away

By Matt:

One sure fire method to ensure you completely fail at GTD is this: After capturing action items, procrastinate on transferring them to your master to-do list.

How many times have you sat in a meeting and written down a whole mess of tasks, but then you get back to your desk and have misplaced that piece of paper you had captured everything on? Before long, you'll forget everything and that's about when you start dropping balls right and left.

Habitual Transfer
Productivity is about consistency and the diligence to manage yourself the same way, day after day. This means you need to create some good habits for yourself, one of which is the diligent transfer of action items to your master to-do list.

You probably record action items using any number of capture devices - a Moleskine journal, a text document on your computer, or a message sent from your phone using Jott. But ultimately, these items need to end up on your master to-do list. And so the crux of this entire post is to encourage this all important habit:

Transfer your action items to your master to-do list as soon as possible.

What this means is, when you get back to your desk from that meeting, avoid the temptation to check your email first - you'll get distracted. Don't start making phone calls, and don't continue working on the sales analysis document. Spend just three minutes transferring your new action items, and save yourself countless hours of lost productivity in the long run.

It sounds simple in theory, but it's a tough discipline to train yourself on - it is for me anyway. Test yourself this week. Can you spend a couple minutes adding items to your to-do list every time you sit down at your desk? Let us know how it goes starting today!

How To Capture Your Life

By Matt:

Let's break down the idea of GTD capture. In the 'Getting Things Done' philosophy of productivity, Capture is the term applied to the gathering and recording of action items. If you want to become more efficient, not only at work but at life as well, you need to define and perfect a method of capture. This post will help you do just that:

Analysis
GTD helps you get things out of mind and on a physical to-do list so that you don't have to remember every single thing that needs to get done by the end of the week. Specific methods of doing this are going to vary from person to person, so before defining your plan, consider how you live your life. Check out these questions...

• Do you spend a significant amount of your day in front of a computer?
• Are you mobile with a laptop or blackberry?
• Do you spend all day in meetings?
• Are you a road warrior, spending a large amount of your time in the car?
• Are you attached at the hip to your cell phone?

Continue to consider these questions as you review the methods of capture outlined below, evaluating how each might practically fit into your daily lifestyle.

Methods

Digital

• GTD / To-Do List Application: Web and desktop based applications abound for GTDers looking to organize their productive lifestyles in a digital world. Popular programs include Remember The Milk, Thinking Rock, and our personal favorite, Todoist.
• Text Document: The best GTD methods are generally surprising simple, such as using a basic text editor like Notepad to list to-do items. Check out our post on TXT docs to get started.
  
• Google Notebook: Similar to the simple Text Document concept, catalog your lists online with Google's Notebook app. Lifehacker offers an overview of using gNotebook for capture purposes.
• Email: For most office workers email is the most common arrival point for action items, and they are generally sent to you by other people, but don't overlook the capability to send yourself an email if that's an easy way to notify yourself of a to-do item. Email should only be an entry point... DO NOT use it as your master to-do list

Mobile

• Text Message: If you're quick with a cell phone, hammering out a quick text message is a great way to send yourself to-do items on the go. Did you know you can text message directly to email? I send my to-do item text messages directly to my personal Gmail address.
• PDA / Blackberry: Both tools great for when you're on the go, and again you might opt to send items as an email to yourself.
• Jott: This fantastic online application enables you to record a message for yourself which is automatically transcribed to text and then sent to your personal email. I prefer this method of capture when I'm driving in the car and shouldn't be using my hands to write text messages.

Analog

• Moleskine Journal: There is something simple, elegant, classy and entirely functional about a Moleskine journal. I use mine for handwritten meeting notes and also tab off a section to capture to-do items. Personally, I prefer Moleskine's Large Squared Notebook - the grid lines are great for keeping straight columns and sketching quick charts. In reality, any simple bound, ruled notebook will suffice in lieu of a Moleskine.
  
• Hipster PDA: The Hipster PDA was introduced by Merlin Mann a few years ago and quickly spread like wildfire through GTD culture. It's basically a bunch of 3"x5" notecards binder clipped together with notes written on them - that's it - check out the original article on 43 Folders.

Application
You need to develop an arsenal of capture methods that will work for you and your daily lifestyle. If you're a mobile person, always on the go, you'll probably opt for some of the more mobile devices. If you're constantly in front of a computer the digital methods are likely most efficient for you. If your company has rules against electronic devices in meetings, you're going to need an analog method of capture. Personally, I utilize a hybrid of email, text messaging and Jott's transcription service, as well as a Moleskine journal, and all action items from these methods ultimately end up in my master to-do list on Todoist.

Two simple rules when it comes to application:

1. Keep It Simple - Capture needs to be ubiquitous, meaning it happens continuously regardless of where you are. You will be best equipped to do that by keeping your arsenal small and uncomplicated, utilizing only a few simple methods.
2. Focus On Capture, Not Organization - Methods of capture are only for gathering action items, not for organizing and refining them. Organization happens on your master to-do list which needs to be kept separate from your methods of capture.
   

The beautiful thing about GTD is that it is completely customizable for your situation, lifestyle, and needs. Experiment with different capture methods and determine what works best for you. Don't ever let your methods become a point of distraction - they should focus on streamlined efficiency allowing you to quickly and consistently gather action items while allowing your brain to focus on the knowledge demanding situations that your job undoubtedly requires.

Do you use other methods of capture that weren't listed here? Let us know about them in the comments below!

The Simple Beauty Of A .TXT

By Matt:

Ever since I started hacking corporate life I've been trying to figure out what I should do with all of the notes that I take. From meeting notes to conference call notes to personal brainstorming sessions... I've got notes everywhere.

I think I've finally hit upon the solution, and it wasn't near as complicated as I thought it would be:

Reviving Plain Text: The Power Of A .TXT
One of the most basic programs that come standard on any computer is a plain-text editor. On Windows systems this would be Notepad, and on Macs TextEdit. These simple, no-frills programs capture plain unformatted text and allow you to save it as a Text file (or .TXT).

I've recently started logging all of my notes - whether entered directly, or transferred from my Moleskine journal - into Text files. Here's why:

• Text editors have a minimal impact on your computer's RAM so they open quickly and run fast
• The text is plain so time isn't spent "beautifying" your notes - bolding, underlining, making pretty tables with colors, etc.
• The files are extremely small and easy to move, upload, and share cross-platform

Where To Store
It's important to keep all of your Text files in one central location. I've created a folder called 'Text Files', creative I know, and have placed a shortcut to the folder on my desktop so I can get to it in one easy click. Ultimately it doesn't matter where they are stored, as long as they're together and easy to get to.

I also maintain a subfolder called 'Archive' and periodically move outdated and unused files here to keep down on clutter.

How To Name The Files
File naming is critically important to maintaining your family of Text files, and there are several elements that go into each of my file names:

Uber Marker | Project | Filename | Date .txt

• Uber Marker: Is a general differentiator that denotes what the category of the file is. I use three categories - Notes, Lists, or Reference
• Project: The project level component defines what the broad subject of the document is - this could be an account name or the name of the person I met with
• Unique Filename: This is the most specific part of the name which drills down to the specific topic of the document
• Date: My date format is yyyymmdd, so April 9th, '08 would be represented as 20080409

My Uber Markers -

• # - Notes: Notes from meetings and phone calls. I use the "number" symbol because 'number' starts with "N" and so does 'notes'.
  
• @ - Reference: Reference documents are long-term files containing information that is relevant in my day to day job on an ongoing basis.
  
• ! - Lists: These are quick simple documents that contain exactly what the name suggests... lists on everything from to-do items to groceries, and marketing concepts to ideas for pranks to pull on co-workers. An exclamation mark looks like a lowercase "L", and 'list' starts with "L".
  

Example File Name -
So based on these guidelines, an example filename for a document of notes from a conference call w/ an account called "Stinson", regarding the launch of a product called "Widget 35X" would be...

# Stinson Widget 35X 20080410.txt

File Tagging
A final identification practice I do is "tagging", and this happens within the document, usually after I have transcribed my notes. On the first line of the document I enter in several keywords that I would associate with this particular file - things that would come to mind when trying to search for the document, but may or may not have been explicitly use in the notes themselves. This aids in searching for the files later, for example:

TAGS: Stinson, Widget 35X, Widget Launch, Spring Promotion Plan

Recall: Searching For Your Text Files
Being able to call up your notes quickly, on the fly, without hesitation is key to this entire process. PCs and Macs both have built in search functions, but I find these somewhat clunky and slow. Ultimately everyone has their own search preferences, but the key to my searching success is Google Desktop.

Google Desktop brings the power of Google's search engine capabilities to your hard-drive and networked drives. It is a powerful, and in my opinion, unmatched resource.

I do not use the Google Desktop Gadget - these eats up computer RAM. Rather, I use the keyboard shortcut - pressing 'CTRL' twice - to bring up the search dialog. If I am searching for a notes document, I simply type in a combination of keywords, and immediately the file I am looking for appears:

EXAMPLE SEARCH: .txt # stinson spring promotion

Two final notes on Google Desktop, and a matter of personal preference:

1. I set my default search option to 'Search Desktop' as oppossed to 'Search Web' - with Google Desktop I'm primarily concerned with finding things on my hard-drive and not on the internet
2. I also tell Google Desktop to index everything except Web History... again, I don't want to pull up my browsing history in my search results
   

Tying It All Together
Proper note taking, integrated with your ability to manage your to-do list and maximizing personal productivity are core components of GTD. Admittedly, the note-taking aspect of GTD has taken the longest for me to perfect, and due credit needs to go to Merlin Mann at 43 Folders for his insight on the process. My tips written out here are a modified form of his TXT Setup.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on this subject: How do you catalog and store the notes you have taken? What program do you use to search for notes you've stored on your computer? Do you even look at notes after a meeting... or are they just a time killing process for you?

Getting Things Done Is Hard When You've Completely Forgotten Everything

Now, I definitely remember this. We take the left one... I think.

By Jon:

Here's yet another look into the world of GTD in relation to being proactive. I've got a really bad habit of using some parts of GTD and ignoring others. After all, the whole point is to be more productive and effective, but I've only been trying to make my job easier and free up more time.

Lately I've had a nasty problem of checking off a task and letting it leave my mind. Don't get me wrong, that's certainly an aspect of GTD -- getting your tasks out of your brain and into an organized list -- but I'm implementing it wrong.

Normally when I finish a task I just let it go and my mind moves onto something else. Weeks or months later, details about a task might be needed; instead of recalling the situation, I'll make some incorrect assumption and look foolish.

It became obvious that in order to cover my bases, I needed to become more proactive. Here's what I'm doing:

Keeping detailed handwritten meeting notes (in a Moleskine, of course)

Creating a folder of organized text docs of unique situations that come up in my somewhat repetitive work

Send myself or others reminder emails for upcoming to-dos

Set far-off and distant reminder tasks in my GTD app of choice

Adding a "notes" column to an Excel spreadsheet I frequently work out of to help maintain my projects

Obviously there's a lot of failsafes there -- I'm pretty forgetful. I've considered memory aid apps like Mental Case, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to subject myself to flash cards yet. On the bright side, there's something really inviting about the smile on that suitcase, don't you think?

Quick Tip: Subdivide Tasks For Better GTD

By Jon:

If you're like me, GTD doesn't stand for "Getting Things Done", it stands for "Getting Too Much Done". Many of my daily tasks have sat on my list for weeks, and every time my eyes roll over them I just leave them be. I had to take a step back and evaluate why this was happening.

Result? My to-do list wasn't good enough.

Looking at the things I've left on the list, I realize that many of them aren't individual tasks, but rather smaller projects. The reason I've ignored them is because multiple things have to happen in order to cross them off.

For each task, GTD'ers have GOT to try and break them down to the simplest forms, which are simple action-oriented tasks. Take a minute to review your task list and try and break down some of those nagging overdue items. Look for the simplest next action that will move you along towards completing the project. Often I've found that breaking something up and doing a small, easy chunk of it has dramatically improved productivity and help me finish the task.

Check out our other posts on GTD for more details on how we get things done.

Fighting Procrastination: Just Do It

By Jon:

I am an incredible procrastinator. The Internet is my best friend: Wikipedia, Flash games, message-boards, Google Reader, and on from there.... The Internet is filled with things that take my attention and time. I have to try incredibly hard to get over procrastination, and when I do, I'm stuck looking at a pile of e-mails, tasks, and things I should do "if I had the time."

The "Just Do It" concept [thank you Nike] hit me pretty hard one day when it finally clicked: nearly all my tasks, e-mails and thoughts don't take long at all to do. Cleaning up my inbox or cleaning up my office each take about 15 minutes if I focus and just do it. I used to spend fifteen minutes worrying about my task list and that I'd never get it done, and now in that time I can mark several items off.

Just doing something is considerably harder if you don't have a plan, though. Most of my e-mails are requests to do something, be it pulling a report or checking on something. I capture all those items into Todoist, my GTD app of choice. It allows me a simple and efficient layout that lets me focus more on the tasks than on the organization of the tasks themselves.

On these thoughts, here are some points that I've taken to heart:

• Doing something is often just as easy as worrying about doing something
• Looking at something twice is half as efficient as looking at it once and taking care of it
• Don't check your e-mail/tasks, process them
  

I'll leave you with this: Merlin Mann, creator of the 43 Folders site and organizational guru, has a brilliant effort he's pushing called Inbox Zero. A while back, he spoke at Google and laid out some great details and concepts. Here's the video:

Action Oriented: Create Meaningful To-Do Items

By Matt:

A great stumbling block for many GTD-ers lies in a disconnect between how they construct their to-do list items and the true "next actions" that need to be accomplished. I have to remind myself everyday as I add items to my to-do list that I need to think "action oriented". When your to-do items are not action oriented they don't lead you to accomplish anything, and more often than not they sit there for weeks on end as you wonder why nothing is getting done.

Being action oriented requires us to use certain verbs, and construct our to-do lists in a way that clearly defines WHAT needs to happen next:

BAD: This Item Is NOT Action Oriented:
Think about ways to increase sales

GOOD: This Item IS Action Oriented:
Create a list of 5 new sales strategies

The difference in the example above is that there is a clear outcome to "creating a list of five strategies", whereas "thinking about new strategies" will have you staring blankly into your cube wall for the better half of a day. A good to-do item will lead you to accomplishing the end goal by giving you a framework to work within.

Structure Of A To-Do Item-
Any given to-do item will read about the same way:

• First it needs to include a verb - the "action" that needs to be accomplished.
• Second, it needs a measurement - generally in the form of a number or a dollar amount.
• And finally it needs a noun - the object of your goal.

A good to-do item is all about the verb, and it can't be chosen haphazardly. Write it poorly, and you may as well forget about ever getting that item done. I make a habit of using a small handful of action verbs in all of my to-do items... verbs that I can easily attach a measurement and a noun to. By keeping the list small I'm able to increase efficiency because I don't spend a ton of time trying to word my to-do items.

These words may not capture all the actions that are specific to your job, but should give you a starting point in "verbing" your to-do items.

Action Oriented Words:
Call
Create
Design
Draft
Email
Find
Label
List
Pitch
Proof
Publish
Purchase
Respond
Schedule
Write

More than anything I try to avoid what I call "empty verbs"... words that are technically verbs but leave you a little mystified as to what defines accomplishment. This isn't an exhaustive list, but I find it hard to create actionable to-do items out of words like this...

Empty Verbs:
Brainstorm
Look
Plan
Prepare
Review
Simplify
Think

You can "think" about your account presentation all day... you can "review" your monthly sales report until you're blue in the face, but what are you really getting done? Answer THAT and you're on your way to writing a to-do item that makes sense.

Merlin Mann, founder of 43 Folders, has some even more in depth analysis on building smarter to-do lists that serves as an excellent resource for writing "next actions". And finally, take some additional time this week during your weekly review session to look closely at your existing to-do items. Ask yourself, are these Action Oriented? If not, re-write them using some of the verbs listed above as a starting point.

GTD 101: A Brief Overview Of Getting Things Done

By Matt & Jon:

Through the life of this blog productivity and efficiency are bound to be of major focus, and any study of these concepts would not be complete without a working knowledge of the method of GTD, or "Getting Things Done". In fact, some would say it would be futile.

We're not about to do a detailed analysis of GTD in this post... we'll get into some of the finer points in future posts, and there are already plenty of great resources out on the great interwebs that can go through all the various ins and outs. But, if you are completely new to GTD, here's what you need to know to get started:

Definition:
GTD is an "action management method," created by productivity consultant David Allen. At the heart of the GTD philosophy is the mindset that a person will be most productive by moving tasks out of the mind and recording them somewhere. By doing this our brains are freed from the burden of remembering all sorts of detailed minutia, and can instead focus on doing actual tasks and, you guessed it, getting things done.

Resources:
To read up on the method, check out these links below and absorb yourself in endless hours of reading material... not while you're at work though (ok, maybe while you're at work):

• Getting Things Done - Wikipedia Article (good for a broad overview)
• David Allen Company Website - Creator of GTD
  
• Lifehacker - A GTD-minded, tech-oriented blog
  
• 43 Folders - GTD Overview - Another driving force in the world of GTD
  

Culture:
In the years since GTD first made its public appearance, an entire culture of all-things-productivity seemingly came out of the woodwork: Merlin Mann introduced his hipster PDA, Moleskine journals became the new Trapper Keeper, Lifehacker and other GTD-minded blogs emerged, and productivity web-apps like Remember the Milk began to proliferate.

It won't be our goal to become the be-all end-all resource on GTD, but we'll do our best to keep you up to speed on the latest trends, and hopefully as a result, help you be more productive.

How We Use GTD:
GTD is core to how we ride here at Corporate Hack. Sure we're sarcastic and don't take work all too seriously, but it's because we take GTD very seriously... it helps us prioritize and categorize so we don't have to spend endless days running around worrying about things that don't matter.

At the same time everyone implements GTD in unique and different ways, often using a kitset approach. In coming weeks we'll post on some of the personal ways we get things done, and will be sure to provide links here below for future reference.

:: How Jon Get's Things Done ::
Meta-Productivity


:: How Matt Get's Things Done ::
Action Oriented: Create Meaningful To-Do Items
How To Capture Your Life
The Simple Beauty Of A .TXT

Meta-Productivity

By Jon:

The productivity gurus over at lifehack.org have assembled a list of 50 items to help you be more productive. That sounds pretty daunting, and well, it is. However, it's a pretty exhaustive list that details the high points from most productivity experts, including GTD, 4-Hour Workweek, Merlin Mann/43 Folders, 7 Habits, and on and on from there.

Lifehack's 50 Tricks to GTD More Productively