Kolz Blog

Link: Leadership Wired - October 2006.

MAKING GOOD DECISIONS BETTER By Dr. John C. Maxwell

Inability to make decisions is ...

If you haven't yet subscribed to this free newsletter from Michael Bungay Stanier, name Canadian Coach of the Year, have ...

A classic from the Onion !!

Ghost Of Christmas Future Taunts Children With Visions Of PlayStation 5

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After my 6th seminar in 9 days (last Thursday) someone asked, "How do you remember what you said, and not ...

David and Merlin talk about the role of GTD managing email. We learn how David coaches people to deal with a high volume of messages using the GTD system. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 17:53) Related Links:

• FREE Five Phases Of Mastering Workflow Whitepaper
• FREE Personal Inventory Control Whitepaper
• Merlin Mann's 43Folders.com

Switched to WordPress today and self hosting. Goodbye Blogger

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It is no surprise that since I received my free copy of MindJet’s MindManager (MM), I have been using this program like crazy. And I must say, it is a very diverse and broad application which you can use in a variety of ways. What I would like to do is not run you through all the features and possibilities of MM but use it as a guideline through the five steps of GTD and see how you can use it. If you need to know what Mindmapping is or need a feature-rich review of MindManager, please check out MindJet’s tour on their website. After the review, you will have the chance to win one of five copies of MindManager Version 6 Pro, so stick around! Collection When you start up MM, you see a big blue box labelled “Central Topic”. Call this “Inbox” and just start typing away ideas. How? Press Enter, type, press Enter. Vavooom! There it is. Another idea? Do these steps again. Very easy, very intuitive. Never mind the order of ideas, typos, double entries. I used this for a big RAM-dump a couple of days ago and it gave me 58 boxes (they call them topics) with blurbs of text, ideas, short notes, thoughts. Just as you would find in a regular Inbox. You can also import Word-documents with lists or headers, or your Outlook tasks. All with the click of a button. Are you not that familiair with the Mindmap view? Switch over to Outline view and you can do the same, but in a more wordprocessor-kind of way. For collecting, MindManager is a nice start. The downside is you need to start MindManager, open up the right map and enter the information. Very time consuming. So Gyronix made a fabulous add-on called GyroQ. With this you can add ideas to a dump-map from anywhere on your PC, without opening MindManager. I will review this add-on on a later date. Keep an eye on our webfeed when it shows up! Process After you have entered all your ideas in a mindmap, it is time to process the thoughts. Is MM the tool to do this? Well, that depends…The main thought behind the Processing step is “What is it and is there an action attached to it?” That is something a program can’t always answer for you. What you can do and what I do is take the processing and organizing step together. The fun part of MM is you can play around with all the topics and drag and drop them next to each other. What I do is I make a few more mindmaps. I am still thinking if I should make 1 big mindmap with all my projects or different mindmaps per project. Right now I am using one big mindmap with all my projects as topics. I open both my Inbox mindmap and my projectmindmap. With the option “Arrange” I can put them right next to each other. Than the fun begins. For every topic in my Inbox I ask myself “Is there a Next Action?” If that is so, I put it in the projectmindmap with the appropriate project. Plus what I do is I add a Map Marker called Next Action. I use a clock icon for this but you are free to make any other icon. If my topic is a Waiting for, I do the same thing but I give it another Map Marker, called “Waiting for”. You can do this for all your topics. Ofcourse you can rename them, change the blurb of text in a more sensible action and always rearrange them. Also, you can make Map markers for your contexts. As you can see, you can add as many Map Markers to one topic as you need or want. I don’t use MM directly as a resource for projectmaterial, but the great thing is, you can add shortcuts to folders on your PC where you keep the projectmaterial. Or you can add a shortcut to a webpage or some other part of the Mindmap. Also you can add “Topic alerts” as an alternative for your ticklerfile or calendar. I haven’t used this myself since I need Outlook for this. I use MM only for my personal projects and I don’t use Outlook for that. So MM is not a program for all your GTD-material, but it can act as a dashboard, a startingpoint. Very powerful. Organize Now, why did I use these Map Markers to define the topics? Very simple, in every mindmap, you can filter on Map Markers. So, if you want to see all your Next Actions in your house, simply filter on those Map Markers and you have your list. Click the image for a full view of the powerfilter. The good thing is, this not only works in Mapview, but also in Outline view. So you really have a list of your actions, to-calls, errands or waiting-fors on your projects. Print it and you’re ready to go! All we need to find is a seamless solution to connect to the Hipster-PDA movement and the result can be very interesting. MM in itself has the power to be really organized. You can drag topics around, link them to eachoter, give them notes. It is really up to yourself how you wish to organize your material in MM, the possibilities are there. The main categories, Projects, Contexts, Next Actions and Waiting For, are made with Map Markers. Review The Review part is something that doesn’t matter what tool you use. It all comes down to willpower and a way to hold the world back for a couple of hours But seriously, yes, I think you can use MM as a tool to review your Next Actions, Waiting For’s etc., as long as it is a system that is complete and current. This is a problem with all tools you use. If you don’t continue using them, your Weekly Reviews will start lagging and the whole system will fall apart. Same with MM. If you plan to use it as your system, make sure you can and will go all the way. Otherwise, don’t bother. To review your actions and project, simply use the Mind Markers and the Powerfilter. One big advantage of MM is it forces you to focus on individual projects. Because of the way it is designed, with topics and subtopics, intuitively you start to focus in on projects and the actions involved. This is a very big plus in MM for me. I also use MM for my list of responsibilities at the various levels (10,00 feet up to 40,000 feet). I am still working on them but I feel MM gives me the power and the easy tools to really work on this. Do The Do phase is most of time something you work out of your system. You make the phonecall, you go clean the garage, you buy catfood. But MM is also a very handy tool for the Natural Planning Process which is part in mostly all of your projects. You can use it to brainstorm some ideas. MM is not a word processor or a webbrowser, so don’t bother if you’re looking for as a swiss armyknife which does all. But it has a built-in brainstorm-function. This gives you the whiteboard to work on your brainstorm ideas and review them later. The good

• Mindmanager to me is very powerful in it’s main task: Collecting thoughts, processing and organizing. Because of the nature of Mindmapping, it feels very intuitive. The interface looks pretty, it’s nice to work in. I know there are free alternatives like FreeMind. But to me, the looks of that are very primitive. I like working in MM better also because of it looks. Compare it to the Moleskine movement, you can write on anything, yet a Moleskine “feels good” for some. Same with Mindmapping software.
• The way MM is organized is very well thought of. On your right hand side (left-hand people can change this) you find tabs with handy add-ons like a list with most used mindmaps, Map Markers and a search functionality.
• MM exports directly to the Microsoft Office suite. Whether it is Word, Powerpoint or as tasks to Outlook, it can all be done with single click. To give you an example, my trafficmanager asked me for a list of ongoing projects and the status. Normally this would have taken me an afternoon to collect and organize. But now, it took me a click of a button to export the projects and tasks to Word, re-arrange them, format them (MM is not very good at that) and send it to her. I never saw her happier…
• MM comes with RSS input. Now to be honest, I thought about the reason to use this. Why would I want a webfeed from this blog for instance, in my Mindmap. But then I thought to myself, RSS is used for much more than just blogs. What if you import your 43things-webfeed in your Someday/Maybe list? Or the recent changes in the Backpack of some other project you are collaborating on? So RSS can be usefull, but not always.

The bad There are some parts of MM that still needs some attention to make them great.

• You know I love to use keyboard shortcuts. MM comes with a lot of them, hooray! But one of the shortcuts is hard to use. With every topic you can add Notes. Use Ctrl-T and open up the Notes-sidebar to start typing. When you’re done, you need to use Ctrl-T again to close the Notes-sidebar and give focus to the mindmap again. This works, but it would be nice to shift focus between the Notes-sidebar and the mindmap with both of them open. So you can quickly add some notes while shifting from map to notes.
• Another issue is the use of keyboard to focus from your map-shortcuts to the map itself. This misses completely and would really make a nice addition to work somewhat faster, since you don’t have to move the mouse.
• When you install MM and use it for the first time, you will find out that after typing in the third main topic, your mindmap will start to go off-balance. For some reason, the first three topics are added to the right and everything after that is added to the left. No big deal, because with one click you can balance your map again. But go to Tools > Options > Edit and switch on “Balance new main topics” for that extra freshness in your new maps.
• By accident I found out I can move around the lines between topics. But can someone tell me (see this popup) what that plus sign means and why the joints of the lines are all of the sudden black? I don’t get this.

The conclusion I think MindManager is one the best tools in the field of Businessmapping, brainstorming and though-processing. Check out this graph and you will see I am not the only one who thinks that way (courtesy of the Mindmapping urvey at Innovationtools.com. Looking at the possibilities for GTD-practicioners, I think MindManager is not THE best tool, but sure is one of the better ones. As I said some time ago, it is not the tools that make you blackbelt, it’s the principles. MM will not make you blackbelt at the blink of an eye, but it sure helps you on the way. For me MindManager is the tool to use right now. I like the way it looks, how I can tweak and modify it to my needs and how I can handle my projects and actions in them. Now I only use it as a GTD tool for my personal projects. At work I am dependent on other systems and tools, so I use MM in that area as a brainstorming tool and a way to capture, process and organize notes. Very efficient and very easy to use. Yes, easier than any online tool

The contest

Are you curious to use MindManager for yourself? Now is your chance to win a free license for MindManager Pro 6! Together with the nice folks of MindJet it is possible for me to give away 5, yes five, copies of MindJet’s MindManager Pro 6. How do we do this? Well, very easy. Send me your finest, most original, thoughtprovoking or best-coloured mindmap on any topic of choice. Whether it is made in (a 30 days version of) MindManager, FreeMind or drawn on an envelope, it doesn’t matter. As long as it is original. Send a jpeg of your Mindmap to punkey@gmail.com and make sure the subject says “MindManager Contest” so I can filter the entries out of my Inbox. You can enter as many times as you want. Entries are closed on November 1st 7 PM (that’s 1 PM Eastern and 10 AM Pacific) I will draw five winners from the entries and make sure you get the licenses. So don’t forget to include your name and emailadress! The winners will ofcourse be shown here on the site! Good luck with the mindmaps. And stay tuned for more goodie-give-away the coming days!

David and Merlin talk about the role of GTD in teams and how to lead by example, including how ambiguity increases at the higher levels of management and how to use GTD to get back in control. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 08:46) Related Links:

• FREE Personal Inventory Control Whitepaper
• FREE Workflow Diagram
• Merlin Mann's 43Folders.com

I just finishing very quickly going over Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy, which has been in my candidates library for a while. It came to the front of my list as a result of some questions that came during discussion in a recent workshop. I won't go into detail on the book - you can find a nice summary the main points at Amit Chakradeo's blog, and more extensive notes (including Tracy's rules) here. Instead I'll look at it from the perspective of how it compares as a system for self-management. I'll first pull out what I thought the best anti-procrastination ideas were, then address how it fits in with my view of personal productivity. [Read more]

How can you can connect a highly effective productivity principle with Mickey Mouse? Well, read this story on how you can use the GTD principles when visiting Disney World. Or any other amusementpark for that matter.

We go to Disney alot, so I started a project called "Plan next Disney Trip" and stored on the attached notes any ideas, tips or reminders that I want to have for the next time (i.e. approximately how much to expect to spend on food, best times/days to attend the parks, etc).

OK, I always thought of myself as a Firefox poweruser. I use the keyboard shortcuts all the time, have my extension highly configured and know how to get at parts of the browser really fast. But one area of Firefox I never really touched until 10 minutes ago are the Smart Keywords. Oh sure, I type my keyword in the adressbar and it goes straight to Google. But every now and again I would like to search Wikipedia or YouTube. I used the searchbar for those searches but I just found out it can go a lot faster. With Smart Keywords. You can read here how you can add those smart searches to your own bookmarks. And better yet, you can use them on any searchengine. Even your intranet or your CRM system. Really powerful stuff and worth to look into!

Windows Meeting Space is a new application built into Windows Vista that makes it easy for up to 10 collaborators to share their desktops, applications, files, and presentations and to pass private notes to one another over the network. In this overview, Windows expert Deb Shinder highlights key WMS...

David and Merlin talk about the subtly powerful someday/maybe list, and look at best practices for the project list and support materials filing. David also gives a deeper cut on why you should capture 100% of whatever has your attention. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 10:22) Related Links:

• FREE Five Phases Of Mastering Workflow Whitepaper
• Someday Maybe List Article by Wayne Pepper
• MindManager Seminar With David Allen

Since a couple of weeks, I’ve been using Netvibes as my main startup page. I tried several of these dashboard/aggregator kind of pages but Netvibes gives me…well…good vibes. I have several tabs with the most important information for me to see in a glance. On my personal page I see my Gmail, Google Calendar, Mint referrers for this website, important news here in Holland a few other newspages. See for yourself. I erased some info on the calendar for personal purposes. Netvibes also supports other-than-RSS content like Flickr-photos, searchpanes, Writely documents and eBay integration. Very interesting which gives me the chance to write about it some more in the future, perhaps a sort of “tips and tricks on netvibes”? Anyone interested in this? One other thing Netvibes comes with are keyboard-shortcuts, yay! With the arrow buttons, enter, the keys n,p,k,j and some other combinations, I can quickly run through the messages. Anyway, as you can see I have several tabs and one of them is a GTD tab. Ofcourse, this comes with a few resources found on the ‘Net about GTD. I decided to open up this tab for other Netvibes users. So you can use this link to get a GTD-tab in your own Netvibes-page. Let me know if you plan on using Netvibes or if you already use it, what are your thoughts about it?

A while back I wrote What's your maximum response time?, in which I questioned why some people don't respond in a timely manner to emails, even if it's to say "no" or "don't write me again" [1]. Due to my GTD practice I'm more sensitive to this in others and especially myself, and I've been pretty consistently sticking to a personal maximum response time of 24 hours. (24 hours is reasonable for most of my transactions; YMMV.) However, this has yielded an unexpected benefit of giving me some mental "breathing room." Specifically, before I instituted the 24 hour policy I felt an internal pressure to respond to emails as soon as possible, regardless of urgency. This turned out to be significantly more frequently than the recommended 24-48 hour processing and organizing David Allen recommends. This caused tension, and drew me away from working my actions list. [Read more]

David and Merlin talk about ways to patch the leaks in your GTD system - including the role of ubiquitous capture and regular review. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 10:33) Related Links:

• FREE Five Phases Of Mastering Workflow Whitepaper
• Merlin Mann's 43Folders.com

David and Merlin talk about the origins of procrastination and share key tips - including how to use procrastination to your advantage - to get back on track. Click here to listen now or click here to download. (mp3, 13:21) Related Links:

• FREE Five Phases Of Mastering Workflow Whitepaper
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Merlin Mann's 43Folders.com

Yesterday I put on part one of my two-part six hour workshop How Do I Deal with All this Stuff!?: A simple system for taking control of work and life. For me, preparing and presenting these workshops has a ton of value, not just (hopefully) for my participants, but to me as a student of personal productivity. (As I wrote earlier, if you want to learn, teach!) They're also a lot of fun! I wanted to share a few observations from yesterday I thought you'd enjoy. Brain dump topics Here are a few of the fascinating topics that came up during the brain dump exercise:

• enzyme research project (experimental research)
• school volunteer calls (20 of them)
• bottling schedule (olive oil business)
• tag sale
• gift visit reports (development office)
• box of inherited photos (parent passing away)
• Disney trip (school band)
• grad school application

Activities using index cards OK I admit it - I love using cards and activities in my workshops. If I'm talking for more than eight minutes, I figure it's too much. (No PowerPoint for me!) Here are two exercises that went over quite well: 1) I created a set of 22 "diagram cards," which were central to a "build the workflow diagram" exercise. I had people form groups of around 8 people, and build up (with my guidance) the processing and organizing diagram. I like doing this much better than simply showing the thing and talking for 15 minutes. It gives participants a chance to stand up, move around, have fun, and get some tactile experience. (Note: I created these using StarOffice, and printed them on my awesome Canon PIXMA iP3000, found via this discussion.) 2) Relevant quotes and statistics can enhance points during workshops, but instead of reading them aloud (boring for everyone) I have folks break into groups of three, and give them each a randomly-selected card from a batch of stimulating ones. I then have them read each one in the small group, discuss them, and pick the "best" one to share with the larger group. This worked great because it gave them choice, got them thinking, and let them show their smarts. Here are a few that I included:

• A key to excellence is being able to recover quickly.
• It's not always the actual work that is the hardest part of a job and success - It's the decisions, compromises and choices that need to be made.
• Who can focus on life goals while totally preoccupied by the chaos at work? No one. However, once you've gained control of your working life, you can easily find the time, energy, and focus to seriously pursue your dreams. And that is the essential ingredient in restoring a positive balance between your work and your life.
• Keep your desk clear and free of clutter. The primary purpose of your desktop is to work on one and only one project at a time.

A great summary of modern life's challenges Finally, here's how one of the participants described the overall challenge of modern work:

I can think of example of where I get bogged down. For example, I need to write SOP for the office (and that is a federal requirement and a pretty important thing to get done) but the phone is ringing with questions, staff are constantly needing assistance and new initiatives keep coming in that have to be squeezed into the same time frame. Then I act like a chicken with its head cut off running from one thing to another and never really feeling like I accomplish anything at the end of the day (especially making any progress on the SOPs).Currently my desk is full of little piles, each one with a little different twist, but each one requiring some quiet time to think through. Quiet time is difficult to come by in my environment. If I go off to some other space, then I am not here to field the questions. And so it goes. Philosophically I want to be known as a responsive and available "service" for the community, but I think I have to lower my standards about that somehow.

I found this to be a great summary, and it really addresses why I'm doing this work - to help people with these challenges. Of course it helps having such a great bunch of people attending!