A Personal GTD and Ubiquitous Capture Review

I thought it would be a good idea to do a public reevaluation of my current GTD/Ubiquitous Capture system and maybe get some feedback. I would love to hear any constructive suggestions on how I might improve it further or comments about how you take care of these issues differently using your own system.

Categorization and Evaluation Systems

Types of Information:

• Already in a digital system.
• Waiting to be put into a digital system.

Categories of Information to Manage:

• Events (Business/Personal) and (Importance)
• Tasks (Business/Personal) and (Category)
• Ideas
• Contacts (Business/Personal) and (Links)
• Communications (Phone/IM/Email)
• General Data (Documents/Pictures/Videos)

Ranking System:

• Perfect - Always works
• Great - Mostly works without issue
• Good - Works with occasional issue
• Poor - Works with constant, frustrating issue
• Useless - Does not work

Physical Systems in Play

VX6700 Windows Mobile Phone:

Capture/GTD Software:

• Default Mobile Office

Information Management Ratings By Type:

• Events - Great - If it gets into my phone, I'll be there.
• Tasks - Poor - Interface is much too difficult to use.
• Ideas - Poor - Much too slow. Input style is very limiting. Interface is crappy.
• Contacts - Good - Has difficulty dealing with quantity. Metadata is difficult to access.
• Communications - Good - Makes phone calls fairly well, Texts are doable. Email is painful to use.
• General Data - Useless - Not enough storage space. Document viewing is terrible.

Conveniences:

• Automatic Sync With Work and Home PC
  
• Extreme Portability

Limiting Factors:

• Sluggish Input
• Tiny, Low Res Screen
• Very Limited Storage
• Useless Camera
• Limited to 2 Sync Targets
• Only Friendly with Office
• If the battery fails, I have no phone.

Eee PC 1000 (Windows):

Capture/GTD Software:

• Evernote
• Google Apps

Information Management Ratings By Type:

• Events - Useless - Most often in standby
• Tasks - Good - Interface is usable but slow to access due to small keys and trackpad.
  
• Ideas - Good - Evernote is the best idea capture I've found yet. It Still sucks.
• Contacts - Poor - Does not sync well with my Windows Mobile Phone (not enough sync targets).
  
• Communications - Great - With Wifi, everything on the net. Even phone with Skype.
  
• General Data - Poor - Often in standby. If I forget to sync, I don't have my stuff.
  

Conveniences:

• Long Battery Life (10 Hours+)
• Heavy Web Integration, Evernote and Gmail Syncing

Limiting Factors:

• Cannot connect to Windows Mobile Phone (Not Enough Sync Targets)

Dual-Monitor Desktop (Office):

Capture/GTD:

• Outlook 2007
• Jello Dashboard
  
• OneNote 2007
• Pidgin
• SharePoint (MOSS)
  

Information Management Ratings By Type:

• Events - Poor - Always seem to pop up in batches. Frequently interrupts me while doing work.
  
• Tasks - Great - Smooth task evaluation and management. However, Jello Dashboard is really ugly.
  
• Ideas - Good - While OneNote is really flexible, it also takes a lot of time to figure out how to do anything.
• Contacts - Good - Even with Xobni, it's difficult to keep people and data associated strongly. For example, If you forget a name, good luck finding that person. It's also difficult to distinguish my personal contacts from business.
  
• Communications - Poor - Pidgin looks nice but frequently crashes.
  
• General Data - Poor - Because SharePoint does not like files that aren't documents, I'm often forced to keep different parts of projects inside SharePoint while others are kept in folders. The biggest issues here are code and compiled programs.
  

Conveniences:

• Fast Task Management
• Easy Collaboration (for some kinds of data)
  

Limiting Factors:

• Office is often very slow.
• Office is bad at keeping data associations.
• My contacts are a terrible mess.
• My desktop is often cluttered with way too many programs which are all part of some activity categorically. It frustrates me to no end that I have no way to associate them and optimize my work.

Notecards in Back Pocket:

Information Management Ratings By Type:

• Events - Poor - I did the Hipster PDA thing in college, it only worked because I obsessively checked it.
• Tasks - Poor - Lists are hard to order on paper. Often tasks wont make the leap from here to Office/Google.
  
• Ideas - Great - No limitations other than the size of the card. The only difficulty is digital capture/organizing.
  
• Contacts - Poor - Just as with Tasks, it's difficult to sort on paper.
  
• Communications - Useless - They are even hard to throw at people.
  
• General Data - Useless - I once had this software that would let you print binary data as dots and then read it with a scanner. It was pretty much just for fun though.
  

Conveniences:

• It's easy to convey ideas with the freedom of paper.

Limiting Factors:

• Paper makes for poor integration.

Conclusions

Software Packages Most Frequently Used:

• Microsoft Office 2007, Mobile and MOSS - Office Email/Contacts/Tasks/Events
• Evernote - Ideas/Notes/Clippings
• Google - Email/Calendar

Best Covered Area: Ideas
Worst Covered Area: Misc Data, Physical Documents

Resolving Major Difficulties with My System

1. Digitizing/Categorizing paper and notecards takes a lot of time and so I often avoid it.

Why? I schedule to do notecards and papers both once a week at the same time. At the same time my filing cabinet hasn't been cleaned out or reordered in years and so is slow to use.

Fix: First, make sure all Notecards I care about get digitized and then thrown out. I will put them in a separate, high priority, "Notecard Inbox". Second, I will rework my home filing cabinet, throw out old files, and reevaluate which types of paper to keep for extended periods as well as how to order said paper.


2. Managing several tasks at once on my office computer can be frustrating.

Why? My desktop is always cluttered with active programs.

Fix: Try out a multi-desktop extension tool. I've seen a few of those go by on LifeHacker.


3. Keeping track of which Projects/Events/Tasks/Contacts/Ideas/Data/Paper are related to which is all but impossible.

Why? None of the tools I currently use seem to be designed to be used in that way.

Fix: Explore the possibility of using a relational data management system or a office plugin of some kind.


4. Similarly, searching my Projects/Events/Tasks/Contacts/Ideas/Data/Paper cloud is impossible.

Why? I currently have no software infrastructure in place to do this.

Fix: Give google desktop indexing another try. Now with a second hard disk and extra memory it may have acceptable performance.


5. I frequently don't get around to looking at things I tagged "later".

Why? I have too many systems in place and too much information available.

Fix: Explore the possibility of a system that can track text, videos, audio and paper for queued absorption. It must have a fast interface, be able to sync for offline use, and be usable everywhere.


6. I often have trouble with GTD and Ubiquitous Capture on the go.

Why? My Windows Mobile phone is three years old and just hanging on. It can't run any of the newer software and often suffers from input lag.

Fix: Maybe it's time to get a new phone. Although, I was hoping to hold out for a Windows Mobile phone with both a decent amount of storage and a keyboard to hit the market. I'm starting to feel that it will never come.

Always have a Plan B

It's really important to plan for the unexpected in life. Sometimes, when it is least expected, life can pull out the rug from underneath even the strongest and most prepared of us. However, with a little planning it is possible to be prepared for the unexpected and weather all but the worst of storms.


1) The Nestegg
The wisdom in having a bit of extra money tucked away should seem obvious. When you become ill, you can get treatment even if the insurance company gives you a hard time. When an unexpected opportunity knocks at your door you can afford to follow it even when it requires some start-up capital.

It's important to be able to weather a pretty serious economic crisis with your nestegg. I would think three months of pay would be the minimum reasonable size. Less than that and all you've got is a medium sized vacation fund.


2) Honing Your General-Purpose Knowledge
Everyone knows the importance of staying up to date in your field of work, especially in the world of Software Engineering. You must always be learning and growing your knowledge in order to be prepared for future opportunities and projects. However, it is unwise to focus your learning too narrowly. To quote one of my favorite movies: "It's simple. Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death."

Even if you are an expert on, for instance, Java. It's entirely possible that at some point in the not altogether too distant future the entire platform will be abandoned. If you don't have sharp general purpose skills you will be relegated to the job of maintenance programmer for older systems. You may say that, because Java is now open source, you don't need to worry about that happening. Well, that is both arguable and beside the point. Computing, like so many fields, is an ever-moving target. You have to keep both your specific and general skills sharp in order to be prepared for the future.


3) The Alternate Career Path
We are entering a time of potential serious economic crisis in the United States. Soon many of us could lose our jobs. Even those who are lucky enough to be able to keep employment in times of economic crisis may find themselves at the mercy of a financially stressed employer who in order to stay in business must demand long hours for crummy pay. This is why it's important to have an escape route planned.

For some this escape route may be a quick entrance into a graduate program facilitated by having low debt and already taken the GREs. For others, having some side work outside of your main job can help act as a parachute from a difficult situation or a cushion when things fall apart. In the worst case, a person should develop strong social bonds with people who can help you find alternative work and maybe even put you up for a little while if you run out of money. No man is an island.