Productivity Workflows Technology
Continuing from my Mondays's post I'm in the GTD refresh mode. Coincidentally GTD time has put up an interview with David Allen from SANG Conference in 2012.
It's very informal and easy going conversation about the GTD, it's impact and some practical tips for implementation and keeping things current.
The interview is an hour long but well worth the time.
Evernote is the primary tool which I use to keep my research materials, scraps of ideas and other notes. This post will discuss a three step process of researching any topic and how Evernote can help it make it more effective.
Evernote Corporation created a number of products/applications which are key elements of my research process and come handy at different stages. It's a very neat power pack allowing you to gather and process different types of media and information.
WebClipper - browser extension
The process I follow is very simple but having it clarified made it much easier for focus on the specific stages rather than jump back and forth.
1) Find a topic
2) Collect
3) Process
4) Organise
Ideas come and go. They are spurred by events, things we see, read etc. Yet what often happens, when we seek something todo all of a sudden there are no ideas available. Whenever an idea strikes, I make the point of capturing it and sending it to Evernote. If for example, I have an idea for a new blog post I put "PostIdea" in the title, if it's a different type I type "IdeaPad". Then I rely on saved search to bring up either in a single list of notes which I can review. Once a topic is selected I move to next phase.
Depending on a topic there maybe a multitude of sources of information relevant to what I'm researching. If it's on the web I use a combination of Google and Duckduckgo to search through it. Anything that looks interesting whether it's a quote, a whole article, image or PDF document gets saved into Evernote through use of WebClipper. Sometimes I'm not sure if I whole article is worth capturing and in such case I would bookmark it into Pinboard and then during processing decide if it's worth keeping.
If I have other sources of information like email exchanges I can forward them straight into Evernote using my special email address. To see your individual address check your accounts settings.
For documents and files I rely on very neat feature called Folder Pickup. All I need to do is save files into the predefined location, wait couple seconds and check Evernote client. You can check the details of the folder location and the import settings under Tools>Import within desktop client.
Images are either taken straight from the web or through screenshots of pages that I specifically need. All it takes is to press "Win+PrtScr" and select the area to capture. Skitch comes handy for this too but I use it more for processing information.
Once I'm happy with the volume of the information that I have it's time to look through it in more detail and what's worth. This allows me to understand what I have, figure out key concepts, note most important points and potentially discover new areas to look at.
When it comes to reading and extracting useful points the most effective tool for that is Clearly. Not only it removes all the unnecessary webpage elements leaving only the main content. It also overlays the page with plain background making the article easier to read. Clearly allows for highlight text you find interesting and send the whole article and highlight into your Evernote account.
Copy and paste is a handy way to gather the material but to better understand the concepts and retain information for longer it's good to type your own reading notes. If I'm doing that I have one a note in a separate window and the switch between the material I'm reading and the note's window. Once I'm done I makes sure I have the link to original content saved in the link field of the note. This way I can always refer to it when necessary or at least know where it was published.
What I would sometimes do is simply to grab a bunch of quotes from a single article and let Evernote create a series of notes which I then merge into one. It's neat approach if you want to grab a large number of items without worrying about manual processing of them.
If I've captured any images or graphics that I want to analyse and review I use Skitch. This app has only a handful of features but they are very well designed and thought out. I can Annotate an image with highlights, text and arrows it's very easy and effective. Since Skitch and Evernote desktop client are well integrated all it take is a single click of a mouse to move between the two. See a sample below.
Last but not least is organising stage of notes. Although Evernote has excellent search capabilities I personally still prefer to organise information in some form. Evernote allows for assigning tags to notes or creating specific notebooks which are note containers. From what I've seen the decision on the approach is very personal matter as some prefer the flexibility of tags, were others like the silo structure of a notebook. I happen to rely on both and use notebooks to store all the notes related to a particular project and then assign tags as way of indicating their status or specific theme they belong to. Once the project is closed, depending on the number of notes that I've created I would simply merge them on to one. Alternatively as I prefer to keep the folder structure light I would assign a specific tag to all notes related to particular project and then move them into a project archive folder.
This is how I manage research using various tools provided by Evernote. Do you have a process for managing your research? Do you have any tips for making it better? Please share in the comments section.
Over the last weekend I've spend some time refreshing my GTD(r) system as it got stale.
My lists were out of date, next actions weren't next action but rather undefined todo items. Project list was in bad condition too.
Oddly enough the only list that was in relatively good shape was my Waiting For list. This is probably because I have more interest in making sure I get the things I'm waiting for.
Before I began the whole thing I was looking for some nice way to get the GTD principles refreshed in my mind and also some quick tactical tips to get me going.
GTD times site was a perfect resource for that. Back in 2011 they have published a whole series about the best practices of GTD workflow.
GTD Best Practices: Collect (Part 1 of 5) | GTD Times
GTD Best Practices: Process (Part 2 of 5) | GTD Times
GTD Best Practices: Organize (Part 3 of 5) | GTD Times
GTD Best Practices: Review (part 4 of 5) | GTD Times
GTD Best Practices: Do (Part 5 of 5) | GTD Times
If you're stuck in a rut or need quick rundown of main principles and the flow this is fantastic way to get you going.
Excellent essay about workflow, quality and process by Rundy Murray:
"Workflow and process are a very important part of what I do. It’s how I create high quality work for my clients and I make it a part my sales pitch."
Unfortunately there will be no post for today. As it happens the article I was working on about Evernote did not turn out as I expected.
Basically after re-reading it I decided the quality wasn't there and I need to re-write it from scratch.
I'm posting this little bit on the spur of a moment after listening to Enough podcast episode 199 and reading Mike Hurley's article.
As result I'm scrapping today's post and working on making it better.
