rtm .. one week progress report

Wow. What a week, busy and very inspiring. I’ve had great business and personal interactions; I’ve worked on some great knits (I bought buttons today and want to finish both pairs by tomorrow, I need to find time). Overall, I’ve been quite busy and scattered in what I have to do. Which makes sense. It goes along with how I’ve set my life and my work.

Thus, I want to briefly write ineloquently about how remember the milk is working for me.

I’m surprised.

I didn’t expect to still be using it one week on. I have traditionally had a really hard time tracking the lists I love making and struggle with actually completing things. I have a confirmed case of startitis.

I’m definitely not yet using it for everything. But I am finding I look at it more than most other things that have what I have to do on them. I’ve completed a bunch of nagging to-do items this week. Which is good. The freedom I feel is exhilarating and freeing me to be able to knock off others.

My successful use (for even one week) is a surprise and making me really reevaluate how I track my todo lists. I’m definitely starting to finally grok how to break down items into GTD’s “next action”.. yeah yeah, I’ve read this book many times (even before GTD was “hot”) but I could rarely successfully convert my projects to manageable steps which David Allen calls “next actions”.

As I’m working on growing my planning skills and providing more accurate time estimates, this is quite useful.

That said, I still find the “overdue” section depressing (even just the 13 items with not everything is entered) and most of those are actually projects and not tasks, so the total is probably much higher.

“update client website” isn’t quite an accurate task.. it’s actually a project I have to do.

Hmm..

“figure out how to beat css into submission across browsers and platforms” is better but doesn’t quite explain what I need to do next for this client.

but..

“identify which item to use for demonstration for new feature” is.

can you wait three seconds? Great. Thanks. I just went and did it…

Awesome. Ok, what’s next?

“copy template of this feature from other successful client implementation”.

Oh this rocks.

I have already identified that what will help me tremendously is if I succeed in completing both DAILY and WEEKLY reviews and clean out my inboxes. (hah hah hah!!) I also need to be more comfortable with the short cuts and remember that I can email items to my rtm “inbox”. Currently, during the day I scribble items everywhere. Some might make it directly into RTM if I’m lucky enough to have a computer handy, others will be in my filo, most like the rest on a variety of paper (from the back of meeting minutes to my daily index card).

I have a crackberry so emailing items really won’t be that difficult. I need to review the how-to for this feature and start using it. I’ll definitely start saving trees!

Tomorrow, I hope to get through much of this coveted review. And even find time to write tomorrow’s post. ;)

How about you? Are you using RTM? Does it help you?

• Category: tools
• Tag: gtd