Keeping Track of Work

Propaganda Party: The Pop Stalin Design Manifesto

10 Comments | Mar 8 | Business

It’s becoming obvious I need some sort of easy-to-use planner of some sort. I’m starting to get overwhelmed with things to do and I’m afraid things will start slipping through the cracks. I’ve tried using GTD with Mail.app but it just doesn’t seem natural. I’m not a big fan of using paper because that just seems wasteful.

My most problematic area seems to be receiving RFQs and then scheduling those to be written. Ultimately I’d love to receive an email with a RFQ, be able to tick a button and get a reminder to write a proposal. I’d like to not have to use Microsoft Entourage for this sort of thing but at the moment, that seems like the only option.

Any suggestions for keeping track of things without having to combine 3 different applications to do it? P.S. I use a Mac.

10 People Have Bloviated

David Airey | Mar 8

What about setting aside an hour or two at the same time each day/week for those tasks?

That way it doesn’t matter what software or tools you use. You’ve scheduled to do it and can then have that time in mind when allocating working hours to other projects.

Just a thought.
Pop Stalin | Mar 8

I don’t think my overall problem is the doing of the task but the remembering of doing the task. I’m gettin’ old and my memory is goin’.
Brian | Mar 8

Then, I second David’s idea. Maybe you could set a filter in your mail program to whisk RFQ e-mails off to a special folder, and have it e-mail you a reminder at some time in the day to sit down and reply to them.
Natalie | Mar 8

When I was at Web Directions North Dave Shea and Veerle Pieters did a presentation on the design process and briefly touched on tools to help keep you on track. An interesting one was Daylite, it might fit your needs.
Pop Stalin | Mar 8

Brian @: That’s what I’ve been doing, except for the sending an email reminder part. May end up going that direction.

Natalie @: I’ve actually checked out Daylight, too complicated for me (or I’m just too lazy to take the time to learn it) but thanks for the tip. BTW, is this by chance the Natalie I know???
Natalie | Mar 9

Ex-coworker Natalie? Yup, yup.
Pop Stalin | Mar 9

Hey, thanks for stopping by! How’s it going?
Steve Hill | Mar 11

I haven’t looked into it properly yet because I’ve only just started using it myself, but there is a GTD extension which you can bolt onto GMail. So if you receive an email RFQ, you can flag/label it ToDo or something similar. I don’t know if there’s a way to get GMail to send you reminders, but it’s something to look into.

BTW love your site and the concept of what you’re offering as a service. I’m just in the process of starting to set up something similar here in the UK, and will be popping (no pun intended) by from time to time for inspiration.
Pop Stalin | Mar 11

Thanks Steve. For the time being, I’m actually using Entourage’s built-in Project. Like I said, I’m not digging the whole GTD system. I may like it more if I could automate it a bit more.

Thanks for the kind words about my site. Good luck with yours!
Matt Williams | Jun 1

I use a variety of diarying and to-do list applications, web and desktop apps, but the thing that makes our company work really well is having a big whiteboard that we continually update, and rewrite completely once a week.

It works well for me because I think better when I’m speaking, and writing as I speak is easy and decisive. I guess I also think well when I’m in the shower, but we’re not Golgafrinchans so I have held back on installing a shower cubicle in the office.