On the Subject of GTD

Me: That's exactly what I hate about GTD.
Me: 10,000,000 TextExpander shortcuts and AppleScripts and rules.
Me: So GTD means managing all that shit.
Me: Wow, way to get nothing done.
Bill Griesau: It's too much. Way too much.
Me: For me, I've found the best system is:
Me: 1. Add item to list.
Me: 2. Do the thing or delete it.
Me: And that's it. No really-long-term planning, no complex organizing or categorizing or automating.
Me: Just HERE ARE THINGS.
Me: And DO or DELETE.
Bill Griesau: Let your mind naturally decide what to do and write it down now so you don't forget it then.
Bill Griesau: DO or DELETE, and if DELETE and you think it's important, oh well—it will come back up if it really is important.
Bill Griesau: Unless it is "pay Bill Griesau for working". Then, don't delete that.
Me: And I do have one more stage, which is DO LATER, which happens naturally in that sometimes I look at my list and think, nah, not now.
Me: So I just drag something else higher on the list.
Me: And when I need something to do, i just look at the list, and do the first thing if I can. If not, the second, etc.
Me: I'm certain GTD works for thousands of people.
Me: But for me, it's just masturbation.
Me: And frankly, I'd rather spend that time actually masturbating if I have to choose between it and GTD masturbation.
Me: At least one feels good.
Bill Griesau: We already have masturbation, it's called *masturbation*.
Me: Man, that quote's got LEGS.

A while back we released Scratch v1.4 with a whole new customizable email exports system. You can create unlimited email export options with To and Cc addresses, custom placeholder-based subject lines, and have them sent instantly in the background (without showing the compose sheet) if you want.

A couple of really cool ways you can use this:

Setup an “Email Me” export (as shown in the screenshots here) and you can instantly email yourself notes after a meeting or at the end of the day.

Create a version that emails to your personal Evernote email address. Check the “Strip first line from body” box and make the subject the first line placeholder and have it send instantly. Bam, your Scratch notes look great in Evernote.

You can create as many as you want and configure them all differently. It’s pretty boss. Go get it.

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AnonymousAnonymous asked:
You seem like a pretty organized dude in just about every aspect of life. I'm pretty good at staying on task and organized when I already have workflows set up. It's the setting the workflows up part I have trouble with. Think you could talk about how you workflow your workflows? I'm two for two on getting answers, jerk.

Thinking too much about thinking will kill you. Same goes with setting up workflows for your workflows. If you spend all of your time figuring out systems, you’ll never actually use the systems and get anything done. People love to talk all day about GTD and whatnot, but they end up spending so much time writing about GTD and thinking about GTD and setting up various GTD processes, they never actually G anything D.

Simplify, man. You don’t have to have a system for everything. You just need to do stuff and whatever form makes that easiest, go with that. I keep a private todo list split up by work projects and home projects, and we have shared todo lists for Karbon that we all work from. It works pretty well. We only change things and set up new workflows if something isn’t working or someone comes up with a better solution.

Maybe I’m not understanding the question completely because I instantly become edgy when someone talks about process and process management. I’ve spent too many years at agencies where half of every day was spent on process and I wanted to die.

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AnonymousAnonymous asked:
How late do you sleep every day?

My average wake time is 10AM. I’m not a morning person. Never have been, seemingly never will be (though we’ll see what happens when Oliver is 3 or 4 years old and I am forced into it). I don’t work well in the morning and I’ve learned the most logical thing is not to fight it. I wake at 10AM and I go to bed around 3AM.

I can always tell when I’m busy by looking at the mess of icons on my desktop. Normally, there are zero. I look forward to getting through this long week and trashing all of this junk Friday night.

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AnonymousAnonymous asked:
Is your wife designer / developer too ?

God no. If she was all we’d do all day is sit in front of computers and bitch about code or UI. That possible alternate life gives me nightmares. Don’t get me wrong, I like designers and developers, but I don’t think I could be married to one. In fact, I’m not sure how my wife can stand being married to me.