David Allen’s announcement that he plans on halting his personal blog gets coverage in Business Blog Consulting along with other A-list bloggers such as Dave Winer.

I’ve been using the GTD methodology for over 6 weeks, and it has paid off handsomely. 

Previously, contemplating a week’s vacation or travel would conjure up discomforting pictures of wading through mountains of email. This time, I was prepared. Before leaving I completed a Weekly Review, ensured that my inbox was empty and developed a set of next actions that I could work on upon my arrival.

I spent a fantastic week away from work, having full confidence in my trusted system.

I’m looking into starting a journal and doing some research on the Moleskine notebooks as well as the Levenger Circa notebooks. What I like about the Levenger Circa system is the ability to add and remove pages. Furthermore, it appears that the Circa system is the same as the Rollabind system. The cost of Rollabind punches are slightly cheaper than those sold at the Levenger site, though the combo deal of the travel and desk punch at Levenger is competitive. I might just order the travel punch and a letter sized notebook and see if it works for me. Has anyone done a comparison between the two systems? I’d be using a fountain ink pen for writing, so paper quality is a consideration.

Last week, I wrote a three part article[1] on my first attempt at integrating a mindmap into my Weekly Review process. At that time I said, “My current thought, after one Weekly review using a mindmap, is to completely manage Projects and Someday/Maybes in a mindmap and to only transfer next actions into Outlook and thus into the PDA.” In concluding that article I opined, “What I can say after one iteration, is that for me, the mindmap is a better tool for the development and maintainance of  Project and Someday/Maybe structures than using Tasks in Outlook.”

Here is a good overview of the Getting Things Done methodology.

43 Folder’s Merlin, as part of an ongoing series called Inbox Zero, provides useful tips on where filters and scripts should be used to keep your email inbox at, or close to, empty. While most people might create filter rules to file important email and invariably have to deal with “near-spam” email left in their inbox, Merlin suggests that users “focus on creating filters and scripts for any noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items…” and recommends that a filter is “ultimately best at shunting away the really un-important stuff…”

David said today that he was putting his person blog on hold to make time he needs “to practice my own GTDing and renegotiate my own commitments with myself to stay up with my changing world.” So it looks like this project will go back into Someday/Maybe, hopefully to emerge again in the near future.

He said that the blog would still be functional “for a while” to enable people to unhook.

Technorati Tags: GTD

Katy let me in on another example of using a Mindmap in a Weekly review. This one from Gary Slinger. I like the clean lines of the mind map produced by MindManager, plus he has also used the mindmap to capture ideas for the higher altitudes - I’ve been focusing on the runway so far, and I’m going to add this to my FreeMind based map.

Thanks Katy and Gary!

Thanks to David Seah for his WordPress plugin “Lazy Image Layout”. I had been looking for a way to add images to my posts, and I came upon this plugin. I am using WordPress 2.01. It was easy to install, the only issue I had to resolve was getting my directory permissions set up correctly, but it had nothing to do with the plugin. You can see an example of LZIL (as he abbreviates it) in use at speakhead.com.

Here is a snapshot of the FreeMind mindmap that I’m using during the Weekly Review. I created broad buckets for categorizing items, and as you can see, I have replicated these buckets under the Projects and Someday/Maybe categories. Example: If I have a Someday/Maybe under Home, and during the Weekly Review I have decided to make this  an active project, all I have to do is drag and drop the parent node from Someday/Maybe>Home into Projects>Home. Example: One of my passions is reading, and I utilize the Public Library System to test drive books before I decide to purchase them. This is how I got started with GTD, by borrowing the book and perusing it. Now I have my own copy! Anyway, I need to keep track of Books Read, Books in Queue, Books to Read, Books I’m Reading and so on. In my Projects>Books section I have a lists of Books I’m Reading and Books in Queue. In my Someday/Maybe>Books section I have a list of Books to Read, and in my Hobbies>Books section I have a list of recent books read and associated notes. I am also building a reference section so that important URLs can be accessed from a single location.