John Borwick's blog

I just upgraded from my Cingular 8125 to the AT&T Tilt. The Tilt is a neat looking phone.

As you may know, I was very attached to my 8125. I learned pretty much everything there is to know about the “vanilla” 8125. In particular, I use Tasks like nobody’s business.

The Tilt runs Windows Mobile 6. WM6 apparently has a bug where its “Active Tasks” filter shows tasks with a start date in the future. That is, it shows you stuff you’re not supposed to start until 6 months from now as “active.” This is frustrating, … Continue Reading

I’ve been using David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system for over two years now, and I’ve gone from having over 200 open tasks, to 80 tasks, to 40 tasks, and have gone from a task-level view to a (more-or-less) project-level view of what I’m doing. I’ve reviewed The Book several times and have gotten to what I believe is a steady-state in my task management.

From this experience, I conclude that productivity to me is comprised of four factors:
1. Follow through on (or renegotiate) promises

Getting Things Done is all about following through on promises: promises that you make to … Continue Reading

At work, we’ve been re-organizing into a “Support” team and a “Projects” team.

At home, Lauren and I have been painting, moving boxes, and getting appliances for our new house.  Today the Wilson Pest Defense people came.
I just finished Harry Potter.

My Getting Things Done system broke down under the pressure; I didn’t do my weekly review on Monday and I didn’t even get through my e-mail inbox from Friday until today!  When there’s too much work to do I’m just piling it on rather than being more judicious with what work should be done.

Today at work I gave a presentation, “Getting Things Done with your 8125.” The 8125 is a Cingular cell phone that runs Windows Mobile 5.0. I use Outlook for my GTD system because it can synchronize to the 8125, which I then carry around.

I didn’t realize how long it would take to describe what I’ve learned about GTD (and task management, and Outlook) in the year and a half I’ve been using GTD! I only covered next actions, task management, and the weekly review–and it took an hour and a half!

For the last few years–I guess since 2002–I haven’t had a watch. In school I could easily measure time in my head, because my 55-minute or 125-minute classes programmed me to “feel” how much time was left.

Last week I bought a watch. Some of my meetings have been running long, and in my new position I have to run more meetings. I take meetings very seriously, and especially my obligation as convenor not to waste people’s time.

The first thing I noticed was that I was checking my watch against all the other clocks in my life. … Continue Reading

I think since college I’ve worked on building habits: cleaning dishes, creating time-management systems, following through on projects, establishing five-year goals, and so on. My Myers-Briggs interpretation of this habit-forming is I’ve been working on my “J” qualities.

However, I think my personality and work flow is less “sequential.” I think fundamentally I like to spend a week learning about something, learn it/do it really well, and then I’m ready to move on to the next thing that pops into my head. I say this is part of my Myers-Briggs “NP” quality.

The two are at odds. My … Continue Reading

Over time I’ve watched my GTD system’s average number of active (actionable) tasks decrease from around 250, to around 190, to 100, to 50. Right now it’s edging up to 100 again.

I wonder what my goal should be. Whenever you get rid of tasks, more eventually take their places. I wonder what a minimum number of active tasks should be reasonable? Is it virtually impossible to get below 25 without either lying to yourself (forgetting some tasks) or a life “pausing” event (eg a vacation)?

Should I be happy keeping my steady state at 50 or do … Continue Reading

I just scored a 48 on the “GTD mastery checklist.”

As I’ve written before, sometimes I have GTD breakthroughs. Today was one of those days.

I ran like 10 errands after work yesterday and today. I did a fair amount at work too, and it doesn’t hurt that I’m going on vacation tomorrow so I reassigned some of my work to others.
Continue Reading

For the record, Lauren is all about “Getting Things Done” now.