Published by Eric on 20th July 2009
Using the GTD Add-In for Microsoft Outlook enables me to manage my projects quickly and easily, keeping everything in a single trusted system. But when it comes to managing Actions and avoiding being overwhelmed by too many tasks, there are some tweaks that need to be added.
Using pure GTD, only a single Next Action is recorded for a given project. With Outlook, it’s often easier to go ahead and enter all of the Actions required to move the project forward, especially when it comes to development projects. So, how do I keep my Next Actions list as short as possible, showing only the single Next Action for each project? The answer lies in utilizing the Status field. By default, any task created in Outlook has a status of “Not Started” but by setting the status to “In Progress” for only the Next Action, we can create a filtered list that is clean and more in line with GTD.
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Published by Eric on 18th July 2009
If you’re a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), then you know the top critical success factor is to have a trusted system for everything. Over the years, I’ve tried just about every combination of system you can imagine, from paper to pda to computer to online. Nothing ever had all the features necessary to make it my single trusted system. I finally settled on Outlook using the GTD Outlook Add-In from NetCentrics.
One troublesome aspect of my life as a solo developer involves record keeping. I have to be able to easily capture the time I’m spending on client work with enough detail to properly justify an invoice or time sheet. In order to keep everything together, I use Outlook’s Journal feature to create time records for later invoicing or reporting. However, getting this information into a usable report format is not something Outlook does easily. In order to get the reports I need, I had to create a macro that accepts certain criteria and creates a new Journal item containing the report I need as the body of the item. I can then copy/paste this information into Invoice detail lines or a status report email.
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Published by Eric on 2nd July 2009
Have you ever thrown together a development project to try something out, and then allowed it to grow into a “real” application instead of starting over and doing it right? I recently made that mistake, which almost became a really big mistake when I did something I shouldn’t have in a hurry. If it wasn’t for using version control, I’d still be fixing my problem instead of writing about it.
I recently needed to develop a web service desktop client application for my employer that would communicate with one of their clients to retreive orders, match them up with data in our database and pass the result back.
Since I had never created a desktop application that communicates with a web service, I cobbled together a VB.NET application just to see how it all works. Due to pressure to get it done, I continued with the “test” application and turned it into a released version for the users. But, since it was put together quickly and was supposed to be short-lived, I didn’t follow my normal naming conventions for the objects in the application. I did, however, take the time to check the project in to it’s own subversion repository. Boy, am I glad I did.
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