Here’s a little gem I stumbled onto today. I really like OmniGraffle for doing flow charts and other diagrams. It’s sort of like Microsoft’s Visio, but it only runs on OS X and has a definite Mac feel. One of its weaknesses though is a general lack of high-quality “stencils.” Thanks to the Summer of Rails project, you can now visit Graffletopia and browse through 100 stencil sets. I especially like the Lego People set. 
Category Archives: Personal productivity
Handy email etiquette tips
Our students may believe that email is for “old people,” but 90% of Internet users send and receive it. Email use has become so routine that I think many of us have gotten a little lazy about basic email etiquette. It nevers hurts to get a reminder.
My recent reminder came in the form of an old post from Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders blog. The post, sensibly titled “Writing sensible email messages,” is full to the brim with great hints to make your email communication more efficient and effective. Take a look and see which of the tips you can incorporate into your own email practices. Your colleagues will thank you.
Some productivity tips from the Mann
I’ve been enjoying Inside the Net with Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte. Their most recent episode featured Merlin Mann from 43Folders and 5ives. Merlin is best known for his personal productivity hints, often related to the Getting Things Done methodology.
Atypically poor audio quality aside, the episode has some good tips about managing large quantities of email (something about which most of us are all too familiar).
Old lesson relearned
We had a whole-district staff development day today and I had the chance to introduce about 35 teachers to Web 2.0 and some applications like Del.icio.us, Flickr (with an accompanying lesson on Creative Commons), Technorati, Bloglines, and Wikipedia. I was pleased with the results, and the experience reminded me of a lesson that I learned when I started working in technology. Simply put, here are the stages of tech integration for teachers:
- Teachers learn to use technology for non-work purposes. (Grandchildren are a great motivation to learn about digital photography and video.)
- Teachers adapt technology for their professional practice.
- Teachers identify ways to use technology with their students and integrate it into their curriculum.
It’s pretty easy to skip stage #1 for many teachers, but it’s a rare person indeed who can cut to the chase and go right for #3. It’s useful to remember when making professional development plans.
Getting Things Done with KGTD
In the ten days or so since my first post on the subject I’ve read and now re-read most of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I’ve spent hours at this point clearing my desk of clutter and my brain of all of the things tasks and projects I’ve been trying to keep straight in my head. My action lists are getting populated, my inboxes are empty, and I’m pleased enough with my progress to keep with the program. I stopped to consider how many different pieces of hardware and software I have to try to track all of these things for my work and home life. The hardware: 15″ PowerBook, 12″ PowerBook, Palm Tungsten C, and a Sony Ericsson T610. The software: Apple Mail and iCal, Life Balance, FastTrack Schedule 8, NoteTaker, OmniOutliner Professional, and Kinkless GTD (KGTD). I suspect that I’m not alone in this proliferation of personal productivity gadgets and applications. It’s time to prune that list!
I never use the Palm anymore now that my phone (and even my iPod) can show me my upcoming schedule. I travel with my laptop wherever I go so I don’t have any reason to enter information on that tiny keyboard. Time to find someone at work who could use it. As for the software I don’t think I need anything besides Mail, iCal, Omni Outliner, and KGTD. The rest has to go.
That brings me to the real subject of this post, the Kinkless GTD system. KGTD is just a set of Applescripts that can be applied to OmniOutliner Professional to create an elegant GTD system that syncs with iCal. Read the Intro to KGTD article for more details. The scripts are open source, but the they require OmniOutliner Pro which has an educational price of about $40. You can get a free trial license for OmniOutliner so there’s no reason not to give this system a try if you’re in the market for a tool to help you get things done.
Time to start “Getting Things Done”
It seems to be an epidemic. There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it. That’s the primary reason that I haven’t been writing much lately. Trying to keep my head above water has left precious little time to reflect on my own practice as a leader or to be out looking for the kind of cool Internet applications that I love so much. Something has to change.
I bought a copy of Life Balance a few months ago and I like it. But I’ve always felt like there was a bigger system missing that I needed to make significant progress on getting and staying organized and working at peak efficiency. Lots of people on the Life Balance forums seem to be devotees of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. I bought the book and plan to spend the next few days going through it and posting my thoughts.
Anyone else using the GTD method? (That’s what the faithful seem to prefer calling it.) To be fair, I’m probably overemphasizing the “system” part of this from what I’ve read. One of the things that attracts me to the GTD method is that it doesn’t require buying a particular planner or using a specific piece of software. It can be molded to fit whatever tools you prefer using. Check out the low-tech Hipster PDA to see what I mean.
This should be an interesting adventure.
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