Tales of the unexpected.

I saw last week one of the most impressive things I have seen in some time.


At my work we recently found that one of our key funders does not intend to continue funding one of our projects. This would mean the redundancy of 2 members of staff, including a director, plus several sessional staff, and mean that the charitable service we provide for almost nothing for 65 kids would be lost. It would also mean the end of 10 years work on the project - a long time for something in the charitable field.


We were due to have a meeting about it, but I wanted to give our director the heads up anyway. I explained the position, to his understandable shock. We had the meeting one hour later - he had already developed a plan how to make the entire project self-sustaining.


One hour. Think seriously, if someone said to you that you might be losing your job in a month, could you kill the shock, get creative and solidify that idea in one hour?


I was seriously impressed.


I've come to think recently that this kind of refocussing is one of the prime skills for people these days. Its about how we deal with insecurity, with change, with the unexpected. We live in that kind of world - so the kind of person that can deal with it has a huge advantage.


How do we even get there? 


Confidence, clearly, is one thing. I know, as the director did, that he would get another job and most likely soon.


Secondly, its about already being used to change. If your only concern is a logical one about finances, well, that's just another task to be managed like any other. If your fear is actually about change, which is being manifested in terms of worrying about specific things, thats something hard to deal with. This person travels all over the world, spends all his time moving from one location to another, meeting new people in different countries. He's doesnt live the normal 9 to 5. This means that he doesnt worry about things like a new route to work, new colleagues, new sights and sounds, new bosses, new time schedules, a new desk etc. Lots of people wouldn't mind doing new jobs as long as they could do them at the same desk. 


Finally its about getting moving. When I spoke to him after, he said he simply thought "how can i make this work" - and as soon as he started moving, he carried on. When you get hit by shock, you feel helpless. As soon as you start doing something you start to feel in control.


So my aim for the coming weeks is to explore this issue..

GTD and One Note

I thought I would outline my GTD system today. I have seen many ways of doing GTD in OneNote (ON), as I do, but a small number of them seem to get the strength of  ON and others miss the crucial point.

I've tried lots of different ways to run a GTD system. I'm mindful that much of it depends on your work, your personal preferences, how much time you can spend at a computer, and so on. i spend most of my time in the office, and get a good chunk of time at my desk most days. I want everything to run through the computer where possible, and hate having to have paper involved at any stage. This works for me, so here goes.

Firstly, here’s how it looks.

Along the left it says Work and Home. I have two separate notebooks for these; you could just as easily have one. I like to keep them separate, but as we’ll see later on it makes no real difference in the end.

Along the top I have Next Actions, Someday/Maybe, 20,000, some reference stuff, some checklists.

A few points here – you’ll notice I have a tab called WF. This means waiting for, but I don’t keep my waiting fors here. For some reason I have quite a few projects where everything I’ve done is complete, but I just want to make sure someone else finishes the job. For example I recently raised an invoice for another company. I won’t hear anything now for a month and then should just get an online payment. I don’t want to keep it as an active project because 9 times from 10 I won’t need to do anything else. However, since its money involved, I want to keep an eye on it.

You may notice I also have a “Not Yet” tab, separate from my Someday/Maybe. When I started this new job I found piles and piles of incomplete work. Its work I want to do, I’ve definitely decided that – I just don’t have the bandwidth to do it now. To show my point I have about 110 projects right now, with a further 48 in Not Yet, a 49 in Someday/Maybe, and that just my work notebook. Anyway, that’s something else.

Along the right each tab equals a project. I used these pages as projects because I like to be able to see the projects as a list. Sometimes it’s good to be able to see all your projects in a single column, helps you quickly scan through and see what's alive. You’ll note a couple of them are inset – this is just a quick visual cue that they are related. Apart from the inset there’s no difference between them. Something worth noting is that in ON 2010 you can collapse and expand these. I don’t have it yet so I don’t know whether it’s going to be useful or not.

On this page I mocked up a project page. Few of mine have all these things but most have a few.

I love mind mapping so if it’s a project of any decent size Il do a mind map and insert a grab of it. (The software is Tony Buzans iMindmap).

On the left is a table called “Steps”. If I know how a project is likely to go, or Iv brainstormed it, I write it down here to keep a record.

Next to that I have my Next Actions. Note the tags next to each Next Action, il come back to that in a mo.

Next to that is a screen grab I took from Lifehacker (respect). The text is searchable even from a screen grab, which just makes things a ton easier. You can screen grab anywhere in Windows with a hotkey too, it makes clipping notes really quick.

Below that Iv inserted two files. You can insert a copy of the file or a link to it. If you move the file over then the file is backed up wherever your ON is backed up to.

Here’s the really cool bit. Suppose Iv just done my weekly review, and I have 150-odd Next Actions buried within ON. You can search for those context tags and ON will bring them up, ordered according to context. It looks like this

I collapsed a few so you can see the categories, but they’re all in there. 

Even better clicking on one takes you to that page. So if my Next Action is “Call Bob” I click Call Bob and it takes me to the page with his number, the key points I need to raise with him, his extension, and so on. 

Cooler still, the task is highlighted – so once the task is done I hold down Alt then press 0, then – (dash) and it cancels the context and puts a strikethrough the Next Action. I could delete them I guess, but I find it useful to wait until the weekly review to do that. That little run of two keys has become a satisfying little paradigm for me.

All the Next Actions, from both Home and Work, are brought together in this list. So I can separate them in their own categories, but they still get done together.

By the way you can export that list to a document with a button, but I don’t tend to bother.

The ability to keep Next Actions next to the support information and export those Next Actions into a readymade context list is THE killer feature for me. When I first started with GTD I found it annoying either writing Next Actions out twice or having them detached from my projects. This way I get to quickly change from one project to another.

On top of this there are some really nice other touches that are the proverbial cherry on the cake. With one key press I can create an appointment in Outlook – ideal for making day specific Next Actions.

I can print a document straight into ON and then make notes over the top of it; I can prettify things quite a bit – surprisingly important when you use it for several hours a day.

Probably the best addition is that you can sync it into Dropbox. This has 2 great uses. First, all your ON notebooks, including your important Documents, are automatically backed up.  Second, you can open those notebooks from another computer. I have all my notebooks on both my desktop for daily work and my laptop for out and about stuff. The way Dropbox works too means I can sync my laptop at work, and then take it out do my stuff, and then when I get back it will sync. You don’t need a real-time internet connection to use the thing, and when you return it updates then. Great if you don’t have mobile broadband, or if you’re on a train or somewhere with a wobbly connection.

So all in all, I think it’s a pretty fantastic way of doing things. There are caveats though.

Firstly, it’s not very mobile. For me that’s fine, I spend most of my time in the office and only go out about for specific things. If you live on the road, without a laptop, it might not be much use. ON 2010 is supposed to have a web interface, that may change things considerably, who knows. 


Secondly, you're tied in to Microsoft. As an otherwise Linux lover, that grates a little. However, I'm prepared to subjugate that concern for the sake of work. Hey, I run a tiny poor charity, effectiveness is the primary concern :)


Lemme know what you think.