10 posts tagged “gtd”
"What?" You asked.
David Allen spent the last 2 years crafting and fine-tuning this GTD Workflow Map.
Only two guys so far made it to do their own mind.Depositors. One from Russia, one from ..... he is a Chinese who speaks about 5 languages including French and Japanese, currently living in Tokyo. Well, talented Raiman who is an English tutor working for English OK in Tokyo met me a few weeks ago and he needed a black and white version of the index card template.
After creating the original mind.Depositor with clips and used it for a while, I found a small problem but it bugs me on regular basis. To insert and pull out the cards, it requires force, no matter how small it is, it creates stress. That's why superior Japanese stationery designs often put into considerations how to reduce user efforts. They call the practice "Universal Design".
So I set out to do a simpler version by using two pieces of leather only. I also have a practice to carry a small notepad or Field Notes to capture to-do inputs temporarily before transferring them to GTD index cards. So I'm adding a slit for the notepad and a slit to store extra blank index cards.
On the left hand side of the cover, I can put a notepad by inserting it to a slit, put blank GTD index cards in the pocket and insert a Field Notes.
On the right hand side I can put two categories of index cards (Personal and Work) into different pockets.
There is also a flap used as a bookmark or enclosure.
The whole thing becomes more compact and functional. It requires less effort to use, it is a simpler design with pleasant leather as the only material, I'm so happy with it. I especially like the color contrast of the outer white and inner brown. So check out the sections below and learn how to create your own.
- Original mind.Depositor
- Download mind.Depositor Index Card Templates
- How to create the original mind.Depositor
- How to create mind.Depositor 2
Previous cover of mind.Depositor: Lifehacker.com (followup, and Japanese version of it), GTDTimes, Moleskinerie, Koloist, David Allen Co., Lifehacking.jp, Geeks Guide To Productivity
As an advocate of David Allen's GTD practice, I constantly look for ways to improve my productivity and organize the million things around me. Inspired by Merlin Mann's hipster pda, I set out to create my very own version I called mind.Depositor.
The index cards I use have to be 4x6 in. since anything smaller will increase my writing pressure and makes me feel confined. The cover has to be leather because of the love of my Midori Traveler's Notebook. The index cards have to be secured and removed very easily, thanks to a paper clip I found last year in Japan, now I can make it happen.
To make it shot for this post, I uploaded the instructions to a Flickr set here. It is pretty easy provided you found the right tools and parts.
Instead of just inserting plain index cards for random note taking, I created a GTD template to print 4 tabs on these 4x6 index cards: Next Actions, Projects, Wait for, Someday/maybe. The tabs are highly useful to classify index cards into groups, just check the box and start writing to-dos. I also used plastic index cards from KOLO's Havana box to divide "Office Work" and "Personal" index cards (labeling done with Dymo's embossers). I wish I can find better quality index cards in cream color but it is difficult, so for now I'm settled with these ugly blue lined index cards.
The most magical part of mind.Depositor is the clips I found in Japan. They open up wide to accept index cards. When you push a stack of index cards in them, they close and hold them in place pretty tight.
How to close the cover securely I learned from Takeo Paper in Japan. They have a bookmark with elastic band, when inserted to a notebook you use the elastic band just like how you do with a Moleskine. The brilliance of this bookmark is that the elastic band is not a part of the cover, it is in the content! Thanks to Keita san who brought me these notebooks/bookmarks as a gift when I first met him last year.
Why the name mind.Depositor? I treated my Moleskine as a place to store all my notes and actions but it is just a notebook afterall. I named my Moleskine mind.deposits in numbers and now it is time to move on and make a GTD/hipster pda version to start organizing better.
Material used in this project: KOLO's Havana box plastic index cards, Midori Traveler's Notebook's name card holder, CIAK notebook's elastic band, Cavallini's paper, Jointex's paper clip, Lihit Lab's plastic folder, Dymo's embosser tapes.
Blog responses: GTDTimes, Moleskinerie, Koloist, David Allen Co., Lifehacking.jp, Geeks Guide To Productivity
The word "geek" or "otaku" doesn't seem enough to describe who I am. Yes I'm obsessed with objects, in particular stationery and photography related objects/images, but there are more beyond logos and I strive to escape from Plato's cave knowing how limited I am as a human being, so what you see here is only the shadow of my self, which is beyond description. Anyway, corporeal objects are shadows of another existence, they (things I adhere to) often amuse me because they reflect the higher/true self behind in tiny little ways. I enjoy reflections from objects.
- a book given to me as a gift from a Japanese colleague - Love & Free by Ayumu Takahashi
- from 9 o'clock: Futurama tin toy figure acquired in September NY Gift Show
- a light bulb burned out for over 6 months in Times Square store and nobody aware of it. Its a souvenir I need to remind myself to talk to them about operations issues. I used a marker to write on the glass surface the story
- GTD Action Magnet: My own design, a set of 5 strong magnets designed to be used as reminders of the GTD practise. It will be on production in January and arrive our store exclusively. I shall post more about this once it gets more solid
- White Xmas wreath decorated with white LED light on the surface, blue LED on the background: a proud combination I did for this year's Xmas, it is now hanging on my front door
- Reindeer and slate: I love the white/red combination, so when I saw this display in Festival Walk mall, I took this moody picture right away
- Crabtree & Evelyn Xmas shopping bag: I love the drawing a lot! Someday I will paint something similar but with my own twist
- Coffee at 9pm: after dinner, exhausted but motivated, a boost of energy for the rest of the night's work
- Antique Dymo and stamps: they are sort of same in certain sense - labeling. All acquired as my antique stationery collection
I've been using David Allen's GTD Tickler Filing system for a while using Lion's manila folder labeled with Dymo's tapes. It has been a highly valuable tool for me and things started to organize by themselves pretty well just because I can now file things away up to one year ahead without worrying a bit until the time comes when they need to be taken care of. I've already started to accumulate plans for next year's back to school promotion in August, imagine that!
Just finished Merlin Mann (43folders.com)'s podcast talks with David
Allen. It's a great recap of the books/audios I read/listened,
and its free!
I also found the audio "Relaxed Focus with David Allen" by Humankind a super good listen. You can get a glimpse of David's spiritual journey or inner quest at 46:22. He talked about how he was living a plastic unreal dishonest life and suddenly walked out of the house with no money or anything to search for the inner voices. He was literally homeless, but what he got from this experience was the importance of the sense of total freedom and invulnerability if you truly turly let go of everything (the very essence of GTD). He was put in the state hospital, when he finally comprised to live a normal life he told people that "you are not looking at somebody who's cured but looking at somebody at a high state of cooperation."
So to check out more of David's GTD:
- Relaxed Focus audio by Humankind
- Self-fulfilling Prophecies audio by Humankind
- David Allen Company Podcast audios
- Getting Things Done - the Art of Stress-Free Productivity as a book or audio or book in your own language
- Ready for Anything - 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life as a book or audio or book in your own language
- 43folders.com: Merlin Mann's Podcasts
I wish somebody in our comany is going to start looking into this huge
problem of high volume email blasts. Each day I get system
notifications, operations alerts, sales pitches from existing and/or
unknown vendors with huge file attachments, somebody's
action-required-from-you email, spam, etc, totally 50 - 100 junks per
day. We are "still" using Lotus email and many of us have
exceeded mailbox size quota, we can no longer save sent email
automatically so we bcc copies to ourselves "luckily" because inbox
size policy is to be tolerant, this creates even bigger mailboxes.
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