I wanted to blog about the mountain of data that I am constantly trying to manage - there are so many different formats of data:

-Ebooks - PDF’s and Word files,
-TreePad, an organizational tool I use
-Zip Files
-All the web sites that you have bookmarked, or.. html files that you have saved by doing a CTRL-S on the keyboard while in Firefox
- Email of course.
it goes on and on..


Being someone who has embraced David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, I have this kind of
turret’s syndrome where every time I’m in one of these programs above, I’m automatically asking myself, how can I apply GTD to this and put something over HERE so that I know exactly what I’ve already done with it..

Did I read this email already??? Do I need it again later? Does it need a response ?? (I’m waiting to try “Chandler”, an open source information management program, so that a can get a better more holistic grip on my data).

One of the activities that makes me hold in my breath in with nervous energy is realizing that I’m staring at an email that I started to read yesterday, but I don’t know where I left off, and I’m reading the same paragraph again, and I’m not sure how much I need this information, and I’m looking at the bold lines in Outlook Express representing new email coming in. GTD is all about preventing yourself from ‘processing’ anything twice, among other things.

I love (no I really dont) getting in a single email:
- reference information that you keep ( how to use a css tag or something )
- a number and password to a teleseminar that’s coming up
- the sender asking for your feedback to a particular ebook or article..
You want to put this information in so many dang different places, so that you keep the data you want, but it’s also in a place where you know to look, so that you answer something that needs answering..
That’s all I have to say this morning, just wanted to get this off my mind.

Permalink