whatsthenextaction

OpenSubject is an public project to make email correspondence more efficient through the use of simple 3 letter codes. Instead of using your project name as a subject for every message you sent you enter a code which says something about the contents or tha message and the desired action to be taken by the receiver. Example Subject: NRN: Project X Information Means: NO Reply Needed: this message contains information about Project X With their own list of three letter codes they give some good hints to start with this. Big issue: How to remember the codes?

The last couple of weeks have been a rollercoaster ride. Again. It just doesn’t seem to stop and yeah, the first I seem to do is fall back in old habits. I forget I have a Next action list. I haven’t looked in it for a couple of weeks but I just look at the work at hand when I arrive at work and start right away. Weekly review? Nah, forget it. Didn’t do that one in a month of two I think. Is that bad? I don’t know. I still get some projects done and I do feel I have enough balls up in the air to keep some projects going. Okay, i need to look at my mails a few times more than usual (now, where was that answer from Jeff I need for this task…) but since I know I can only have it in a couple of places, it doesn’t take me long to find it. One other thing is my comfortzone and my changing internal standards. I feel it dropping for the stuff around me and how I feel I need to do something to change. Let me explain this in the way The Dave does this in his GTD Fast series (Disc 5 track 4). This CD serie is not for sale any longer. [[image:32579067_fa0f2bb146_m.jpg::left:0]]How many times a day do you brush your teeth? Once? Twice? Ask around in a room of people and you will find a big difference between the groups of people. Some people think that once a day is enough, others need to brush after every meal. That’s a big difference in motivated behaviour. And it all comes down to your internal standards of the level of “scuzz” you allow in your mouth. But motivated behaviour is what it comes down to. How big is your comfortzone? How long does it take for you to not brush your teeth untill you can’t stand the taste in your mouth? Now, no matter how busy you are, you will always find time to brush your teeth. You don’t need to cheerlead yourself into brushing your teeth. You just build in the motivation through life and how you were raised. The same thing is happening with my comfortzone. I don’t feel fine when I have all sorts of thoughts running around in my brain and have a bursting Inbox with emails. I just need to clean it out, have it all filed, delegated or tickled into my trusted system. I feel I have created a new standard for myself on how I want to do my work and how I want to organize my life. But for some reason every now and again I get myself all out of control again and just work whatever comes into vision. I just listened to a bit further on the GTD Fast series and I would like to quote David Allen on the following

The biggest barrier to all of this is your addiction to stress. Addiction not meaning you have to feel stressed. But addiction meaning if you start to get rid of that feeling of stress you are so accustomed to, some part of you will unconsciously will feel uncomfortable and then will go do unconsciously what you need to do get yourself back out of control again and get back into the level of stress you feel yourself so familiair with

There you have it...How true is that. And very true for me at this moment in my life and work. I have planned some time for me to get out of the rollercoaster and try to get some projects back in line again. I hope I can give you some updates on this site along the way!

I would like to welcome the people of Blackbeltproductivity.net in the GTD-blogspace! Started yesterday and I look forward in what they have to offer on insights, new tips and tricks on implementing GTD.

This is quite a surprise to me. During my day off because of Easter, I cleaned my offline magazine-stack by basically throwing them all away. I was planning on doing the same with my collection of PDF’s on my laptop. But I thought “Well…There are some interesting ones but I need a system to find them on the right moment.” I immediately thought of OnFolio. I used this program for a while, I even wrote some articles about it, for instance the showdown with Evernote (part 1 and part 2) What I need is some sort of system where I can tag documents with proper keywords and find them again when needed. Or be reminded that I have some sort of document on a topic when I am working on a project. That last one is the hardest, but that’s another topic. When I visited the site for a new download (I don’t keep earlier downloaded exe’s) I found they have been aqcuired by Microsoft. Kudo’s for them, but bummer for moi. Because OnFolio as I used to know, does not exist anymore. It is integrated in the Windows Live Beta Toolbar. Whatever that is, since I only use Firefox. But nowhere a sign of an earlier version of OnFolio? The forum already talks about abandoned Firefox-users and people are looking for alternatives. Any other thoughts here are welcome! Update: While browsing through the forum I found a link to the releasehistory. Old versions of OnFolio are still available over there.

Paasochtend. De family ligt nog te slapen en ik zit lekker rustig op de bank met Stevie Ray Vaughan, Live at the El Mocambo op DVD. Zo’n typisch zondagochtendje. Lekker man. Maar het is niet dat we deze paasdagen geheel op de reet gaan doorbrengen. Neuh neuh neuh… Vorige week hebben we een paar potten verf gekocht. Vandaag gaat het dan ook gebeuren, we gaan de nieuwe slaapkamer schilderen. We hebben op de eerste verdieping twee kamers, onze eigen slaapkamer en een wat grotere studeer/was/kleding/rommelkamer. Die gaan we veranderen. Onze slaapkamer wordt de babykamer en wij gaan op de andere kamer slapen. Dat betekent nogal wat. Zo moeten we bijvoorbeeld wat kastjes wegdoen (Malibu, iemand geinteresseerd?), bekijken wat we met de desktop PC doen (dat wordt een minikastje. Iemand een tip hoe dat te doen?) en moet de extra tafel die we hebben de deur uit (hij staat al op Speurders.nl). En niet in de minste plaats, schoonmaken! Mijn god….we zijn niet van die schoonmakers, maar dit is toch beyond ridiculous. Ik dacht altijd dat we een matgrijze muur hadden, blijkt wit te zijn na er met de hand-Swiffer overheen te zijn gegaan. Wat trouwens toch echt wel goed spul is, dat Swiffer. Nadat we de drie kuub stof uit de longen hadden gehoest zijn we verder gegaan met wat stofzuigen en opruimen. Toch maf hoor. Een jaar geleden waren we hetzelfde aan het doen in Breda. Om naar Utrecht te verhuizen. Gelukkig lijken de steden wel redelijk op elkaar en ben ik al aardig gewend aan Utrecht. Maar zoals mijn moeder gisteren zei, die hier ging shoppen: “Jeetje, wat een winkels hebben ze hier. En wat een hoop mensen! Dan is Breda toch maar een dorpke…” Ja, je kunt genoeg vinden hier. Zo hebben we vorige week trouwens topshit gegeten van de afhaalitaliaan A Cucinella. In de Hamburgerstraat, hartje centrum. Niet goedkoop, maar lekker! De kruiden komen uit de eigen tuin en de olijfolie van de familieboom in Italie. Hou rekening met een wachttijd, maar probeer ze zeker eens! Maar vandaag gaat de verfpot open. We hebben gekozen voor de kekke VT Wonen kleur Parel. Waarom die kleuren niet gewoon lichtgrijs, donkerbruin of groen heten is mij een raadsel. Maar goed, Parel dus. Enige voorzichtigheid is wel geboden omdat ik op een ladder 3,5 meter de hoogte in moet om het puntje van het dak te schilderen. Gaat er verder nog wat gebeuren? Nou we zijn dus de boel intern aan het herorganiseren. Zo staat er nu ineens een boekenkast beneden, staat alle administratie in die boekenkast en staat de Quinny te glimmen op onze slaapkamer. De bouwvergunning is binnen dus we kunnen ook echt aan de slag. Het zal een hectische periode worden. Ik probeer het hier te documenteren. Maar ik beloof niks :) Tijd voor een paasontbijtje. Eieren. Croissants. Vers sap. En dan gaat de wegwerpoverall aan en begint de eerste puzzel. Het afdekzeil wegleggen. Wens me succes. Oh en voor de liefhebbers, [[lightbox:pasenisleuk.jpg:onze paaskaart::1:inline]] :)

I got a comment from John Ratcliffe-Lee on my article on GTD and Backpack. He wrote an excellent follow-up where he describes how he uses the new 37Signal product Campfire to complement his GTD-ness in Backpack/Basecamp. I don’t quite understand yet what the advantage is, but perhaps that will come in the following days. What I _have done is using Campfire to set up some chatrooms for you all to use. You can chat about GTD or well, whatever you like. Just keep it nice and clean! I have made two chatrooms called Basic Talk and GTD Tips. Feel free to try out Campfire with these chatrooms and let me know what you think. Maybe I will be around every now and again but I can’t promise it… Since I am on the free version of Campfire, only 4 simultaneous chatters are allowed. Which pretty much sucks ‘cause that is not enough for some real conversation. So if any of the 37Signals peeps are reading along with us, hook me up with a better plan so I can promote it better ;-)