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Implementing Getting Things Done, while using a Blackberry – Part Five January 26, 2006

Posted by Gary Slinger in : Uncategorized , trackback

It’s time to conclude (rather belatedly!) this series of posts of mine on GTD with the Blackberry.

First up, some bits and pieces in relation to comments and/or emails that I received:

Category Synchronization

If you do an upgrade of your Blackberry to a version 4.x, as opposed to purchasing one, then you also need to make sure that you also upgrade your desktop manager to version 4.x as well. Then, you’ll need to manually set the Task synchronization up, as follows:

  1. Do a cable-sync of your Blackberry, and then go into the Desktop Manager application.
  2. Go into “Intellisync”
  3. Hit “Configure PIM”
  4. Select “Tasks”
  5. Using the “Configure” button, select “Advanced Settings”
  6. Hit “Field Mapping”
  7. When prompted with a box titled “Intellisync”, advising you of the mapping details, hit “OK”
  8. Drag “Categories” in the Right-Hand column up/down to align with “Categories” in the Left-Hand Column, and click or hit the spacebar to make sure the mapping is in place.
  9. “OK” everything out until you’re back at the Desktop Manager screen.
  10. That’s it. You can do one more cable-sync at this point just to “make sure”, but you should now have the categories mapping correctly.

The above is predicated on you also running a BES 4.0 with wireless sync – but if you’re not, it’s still the correct sequence of events, except you must run that cable-sync at the end to get the changes in place.

Variations on the Method

“Xoff”, in the comments, reminds us of the two-minute rule, and suggests processing email “on the fly” from the Blackberry, filing email directly from the Blackberry (if you’re running a BES, you have access to your entire mailbox folder tree from the Blackberry for the purposes of filing, even if you don’t synchronize the folder that you’re moving the message to).

Well, I agree with this, for the most part – I just find that I personally process too much email at a time on the Blackberry to do this. I’ll certainly delete mail as I go if it’s clearly not needed; but I find that I can bulk-file email far quicker from the desktop as a part of my Morning Review. Diff’rent strokes, again, folks. Depending on your own situation, this is certainly a valid approach.

Xoff goes on to suggest that if he’s delegating, or creating an action for himself, he does so by sending the message on, and BCCing it to himself, changing the subject line if necessary. I’m in two minds about this – on the one hand, it can work, and I know a fair few folks who use the “BCC to self” approach; it doesn’t fit with my personal style, however – possibly because I’m using the Netcentrics addin. His advice about creating rules to add flags to messages from himself is definitely spot on, however. I recommend you read the whole comment (copied below for convenience, and for those reading this in the Complete Document format), and consider it as a part of your system. For my part – I’m going to take the advice about rules/flags and not-synchronizing emails from yourself to stop synchronizing the “in a hurry” messages that I referred to earlier in the series.

3. xoff – January 7, 2006
Gary, Great post! I got my BB three weeks ago and have been tweaking it to work with GTD and the add-in. It is amazing how similar our methods are. I think the key here is that until there is a GTD add-in for BBs (Netcentrics please!!!) we have to focus on the BB as more of a collection tool and less of a processing tool.

Having said that, I have found a way to process the email in a GTD manner from the BB that I think it is worth sharing. One of the most valuable tools of GTD is processing email the first time you see it, i.e. “what is the next action”. With BBs it is very common to see an email in the BB and then actually process it on the desktop later. In essence, reading the email twice, and thinking of the next action twice.

What I do is to process the email the minute I read it in the BB. If I can apply the two minute rule and it can be processed in that context, process it right there. If not and I have to process the email later I determine the next action:

- If the email requires filing for reference, I do it right there on the BB. I have folders in my server mailbox for all my projects. Because of mailbox size limitations in the server I can’t keep all the emails in the server, but the folders in the mailbox (except inbox) has archive settings of one day, thus Outlook automatically moves these emails to my personal folders, in the corresponding folder using the archive feature.

- If the next action is delegating ie. forwarding the email to someone for action, I forward the email from the BB and BCC myself so that later on my desktop I can assign it the @Waiting For action and integrate the email into my Waiting For list for follow up.

- If it’s an action that requires more than 2 minutes or in another context, I forward the email to myself and change the subject line to the action that needs to be performed and other relevant information like deadline or context. For example, if the email from John requires me to review some documents before responding to John, I would change the email subject to “Review files for project for John @Office”. The other added benefit to using this method, rather than creating a task in the BB is that with this approach you have a copy of the original email thus when reviewing your files you have John’s email. After processing the email in BB I delete the original email from John, or file it (more on that below).

To integrate these emails into my GTD methodology, I have created rules in my Outlook to process emails from me and assign flags to identify them easily in my inbox. If the email is from me with me BCC, it adds a “WF flag”; if it is from me only to me the it adds a “Action Flag”. Thus my inbox in the morning review (similar to yours) I would have the emails that require processing with my GTD Add-in, but the actions are pretty clear. Outlook 2003 simplifies this with a preprogrammed search folder called “For Follow-up”.

Since your emails to yourself, in my mind, create clutter in the BB mailbox, I have created rules in the BB Desktop Manager that prevent the redirection of emails from me to me. Thus these “GTD” emails do not show up in my BB inbox.

Good luck integrating this into your method.

Xoff

MindMaps

I posted previously that I would share the MindMap(s) that I used to write this series with as one of the final pieces; at the end of the process, however, I find that the actual, published version of the work is substantially different enough from the MindMaps that they’re effectively drafts, and not worth uploading.

That said, if more than a couple of people comment on this post asking for the MindMap, I’ll spend the time updating it, and upload it as a “really, really final part of this series”.

Other Sources of Information

I went to Google today, and here’s how many results I got for some search phrases:

GTD 1,860,000
“Getting Things Done” 2,240,000
“Getting Things Done” Blackberry 30,400
GTD Blackberry 35,000

I could go on, but the point I’m making with those figures is that, as we all know, there’s a LOT of information out on the internet.

Presented below, then, are a handful of sites that I personally find useful as a part of my regular reading list in relation to GTD specifically, and Time Management generally. They’re not in any particular order, and if you think I’ve missed something critical out, do please comment and let me know. You may also want to check out the sidebar at www.garyslinger.com which lists each blog and site that I currently subscribe to via RSS; the list is deliberately randomised, for my own use.

http://www.davidco.com/blogs/david/
While it’s true that this list isn’t in any particular order, it does make sense to start with David Allen’s own blog, now, doesn’t it?

http://www.davidco.com/forum/
The discussion forum at the David Allen Company.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Getting_Things_Done/
Discussion forum within the Yahoo! Groups environment. There’s a couple of others, “GTD_Palm”, and “AnalogGTD” that may be of interest as well, depending on how involved in it all you want to get.

http://slackermanager.com/
“Slacker Manager – Paving the path of least resistance, so you don’t have to trip and fall” – don’t let the title fool you, this is a great resource on management, technology and a host of other things.

http://www.ismckenzie.com/
“Ian’s Messy Desk”

http://www.punkey.com/gtd/
“What’s the next action – A weblog about Getting Things Done”

http://safarisoftware.typepad.com/
“ToDoOrElse.com”

Document Download

Finally, as promised, you can download this whole series as a single file (zipped PDF, ~237Kb).

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this particular series. Thanks for reading. All comments and suchlike welcome.

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