Omar Shahine's WebLog : Productivity

Phone Calls in Meetings

omars — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 03:36:00 GMT

When did it become OK to answer a phone call in a meeting? I personally find it incredibly distracting. I *never* answer my phone during a meeting. I try (and some times forget) to place my phone on vibrate, and if I need to answer the call (because my house is on fire), then I walk outside. While that is a bit distracting, it's not as bad as answering. If something is an emergency, my family knows to call me twice if I don't answer (or send an SMS).

I am guilty of doing email in meetings. Working on that one. The solution there relies on getting less email though so I don't feel like I constantly need to be on mail.

Getting Things Done Add-in going to be updated

omars — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:13:00 GMT

This is most excellent news. The folks at Netcentrics are going to be updating the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-in. I applaud them for the transparency with which they are presenting their plans. I purchased the add-in last year and grew frustrated with it, so I wrote my own implementation in managed code (don't ask me for it, I'm not releasing it). However, I still struggle with various Outlook Interop issues and just don't have the time to deal with them.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks ago I got in touch with Scoble, who got me in touch with David Allen, who got me in touch with Jeffrey Phillips who does Marketing and BizDev over at Netcentrics. I wrote up a lengthy email of all my issues, and sent him the work that I did as well as my source code. A few days later I got an email from another employee at Netcentrics letting me know they were planning on releasing a new update this summer and asked that I continue to send feedback. I'm really happy that they were open about getting any feedback from me. GTD is so very important to me that having excellent software in Outlook is critical.

Needless to day I anxiously await the new version!

[via Marc Orchant]

Take Control of E-mail

omars — Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:47:00 GMT

Today I decided to stop the madness. An email every few minutes and desktop alert + sound to go with it makes it to easy to lose focus on my task at hand and look at my inbox. While I loved this feature when Outlook came out, it's become my achilles heal of productivity. No more.

Tools->Options
Click E-mail Options...
Click Advanced E-mail Options...
Uncheck:

Play a Sound
Briefly change the mouse cursor
Show an envelope in the notification area
Display a New Mail Desktop Alert (default Inbox only)

I highly recommend reading The Tyranny of Email. Do email on your time.

ClearContext Survey

omars — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:31:00 GMT

The folks at ClearContext have posted a survey about e-mail usage. As you probably know, at this point I rely on ClearContext to help me with my email. When I returned to work from my excellent snowboarding trip I was greeted with > 300 unread messages in my inbox. This is for 2.5 business days. ClearContext allowed me to work through my messages from most important to least important. When all were unread I was able to focus on what I needed to. I'm down to 28 items right now.

They have also laid out their product plan. I'm really looking forward to some of the enhancements. It's not often I get excited about productivity software, and when Outlook upgrades come every 2-3 years, it's nice to have some innovation in how I deal with my email every so often :-). Anyway, filling out the survey will get you $5 off a license of the product as well as a chance to win a free copy. Seems win win to me!

How the Moleskine Rocked My World

omars — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 13:24:21 GMT

It's so weird how a small black book and a nice pen can change things. Since graduating from college I have increasingly gone "all digital". No more paper, vacuum tubes, tapes etc etc. However, in this process I have tried to cram the needs of my life into a set of rather restrictive tools, at least when compared to paper. While Getting Things Done has really helped me to manage my life using digital tools, I feel that I've arbitrarily limited my own success because I never even allowed myself to consider paper as a tool for helping me. Kind of short sighted looking back.

The PDA

When I first red Steve's post about the 21st century PDA it really made me think. In school I used to take lots of notes, I mean lots. That is how I learned. Since then I use the computer for everything. I have owned a few PDAs over the years, and looking back on my experiences I can't say that any single one has really done a better job than paper can do for some core things. I think the PDA was initially attractive to me because I could have my contacts and calendar everywhere I go. However, now my phone provides that functionality, as well as e-mail and wireless synchronization to our corporate exchange servers. Whether it's Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition, they both do this well. However, the Smartphone is to much of a read only device, and the Pocket PC is to clunky for taking notes. To this day, I have yet to find a better note taking experience then paper. The Apple Newton came dammed close, and since then no one has bothered. My Tablet PC and OneNote has an amazing writing experience but my laptop is to big, heavy, and runs on batteries making it non ideal for note taking. Until there is a small slate like device that can capture ink like the Tablet PC, I will probably never feel that it's suitable for the kinds of things my Mokeskines are.

So, what does a guy who has a SmartPhone, Tablet PC, OneNote, and 3 computers need a Moleskine for? A lot of things, and I'll explain them based on the notebooks I purchased.

Moleskine Large Ruled Notebook

I use this notebook exclusively at home for taking notes when I read computer books, photography books etc. Basically anything where I am learning something that I want to commit to memory, as well as have available for reference later. This was basically how I worked in school, so why not in life? I also check a lot of books out of our library at work, and once I return them I pretty much lose whatever I didn't commit to my brain. Cuddling up with a book and my 5 pound tablet with 3 hours of battery life ain't going to suffice in these cases.

Moleskine Pocket Ruled Notebook

This notebook goes everywhere with me. I've obviously read all the Hacks out there, and have taken some and applied them to my notebook. This notebook is primarily for my "Life" since I use my PC so heavily at Work, and use the Outlook Task list for my Actions. I've organized the notebook into 4 sections. I divide the book in half and I place the first Avery Write-On Tabs there. The first section of the notebook is for Next Actions. In the Next Actions section I label pages with Contexts like @Calls, @Home etc. From the middle and for the next 10 pages I have Projects, then Someday List, then Reference. In the Someday section I have a page for my Wish List and then my Blog Post list. In the Reference section I place any reference info like the Caltrain schedule, our Microsoft shuttle schedule, a map of the Redmond Campus, Flight info etc.

Then I turn the notebook horizontally and vertically and that is where I write my generic Notes or where I dump stuff. Things I would normally write on a post it and then lose track of later. So think of it like this:

(1 - 96) : Next Actions
1. A page each for @Calls, @Errands, @Home etc. I use one page per context, and then I move to the next free page when it's filled.
(97 - 107) : Projects
1. For a list of all my active projects.
(107 - 117) : Someday
1. A page for my Wish List
2. A page for my Blog Posts list
(192 - 127) : Notes/Dump
1. this section starts from the back of the notebook and works it's way in.

I can't tell you how amazing it is to just have this thing around to immediately write things down. It gives me a lot of control in my life and makes it quite fun. I use a Fisher Space Pen Bullet in Matte with a Clip.

I keep the pen strapped to the top of my notebook. I also keep a Bart card, a New York metro card, some stamps and a $20 bill in my secret hidden Moleskine pocket.

Moleskine Large Squared Notebook

I keep this at work and use it for meetings where I don't want my laptop, for my weekly One on One's with my direct reports, and for an ideas that I have. It's divided into 3 sections:

(1 - 120) : General Notes, Meeting Notes etc
(120 - 130) : Projects
(130 - 240) : People
1. This is for any One on Ones, Interviews or an discussions I have with people.

Technology

At first I was worried that I would have a hard time integrating analog and digital. However, what I have found (like Brian Johnson) was that I became a better OneNote user. I love OneNote, but because it was so easy to create sections, pages and the like my Notebook had this crazy complicated taxonomy that I could never figure out myself.

When you start using paper again, you are limited by some fairly basic things. One you write you can't erase, when a page is full it can't be moved, and you can't search your notes with a computer. However, this isn't so bad, as this is how I did things for most of my life and it tended to work fine. Digital has introduced so many options that I never knew how to use them. Some of the things I have noticed doing the past few days are:

I like taking notes in my Moleskine at work. I am not distracted by Outlook, and I can focus on the meeting rather than bury my head in my laptop.
I transfer important work items like next actions to Outlook at some point, and then cross them off.
When I am using OneNote to take notes, I mark Next Actions using the Todo flag, and when the meeting is done, or I am finished taking notes, I send these tasks to Outlook from OneNote.
I take all notes from my One on Ones in my Large Moleskine.
I keep the number of sections and folders in OneNote to a minimum.
I separate a Work and Personal section in OneNote.
My personal stuff is mostly in my Pocket Moleskine since that's what I have the easiest access to at home, on the weekends etc. It doesn't run out of batteries and doesn't require that I boot it up.

So the bottom line is that I use a mix of my Large Moleskine and OneNote at work. I like to think on paper, and take notes in some meetings (the ones where I am learning new stuff), and use it for ideas. Stuff that is actionable I move to Outlook later. I use OneNote for all my other Meeting Notes, as well as putting small snippets of reference data and such.

Here is what my OneNote looks like:

Side Notes - screen clippings, etc
Inbox - dumping ground for all unprocessed stuff
Personal
- House - House related notes
- Journal - Journal for when I travel
- Notes - General notes, dump, ideas
- Programming - Stuff I learn about programming
- Reference - General reference info
- Restricted - Password protected for personal notes
Work
- Lists - my GTD lists that I manually transfer to Outlook later
  - Next Actions - things I can think of before I move them to Outlook via OneNote.
  - Projects - A list of all my active work projects
- Meetings - a place for all my meeting notes that I don't use the Moleskine for
- Notes - General notes, dump, ideas etc
- Classes - for classes I take at work

As you can see my work Section has Lists for my GTD stuff, but all my personal Lists are in my Moleskine Pocket notebook. I've found that this is just the right balance of digital and analog to make me more productive. My work notebook is more temporal/transitive in nature, where my pocket notebook is not as in many cases it's the primary life task list.

I'm still tweaking the system, but so far I like it.

If you are interested in any relevant links that I find as I learn more you can read or subscribe to my del.icio.us link blog.

Staying on the Getting Things Done Wagon

omars — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:14:00 GMT

Scoble just mentioned that he'd fallen off the Getting Things Done wagon. This is dangerous. Since I started last march I have never fallen off the wagon. I have been bad about my weekly review of the task list, and I generally add more tasks to my task list then I complete, but I have stuck to it because I know that my life before it was a stressful mess and I want no part of that. I religiously file things at home, use my Brother label maker to label my manila folders, and keep all unprocessed things in my real "inbox" to be dealt with when I have time.

An inbox full of stuff directly correlates to stress. Stress gets in the way of work, AND life. I don't want to be stressed, so I am religious about making sure that my Inbox is fully triaged by the end of every workday. My inbox is by no means ever empty, cause that's IMPOSSIBLE. My inbox always has less then one screen full of emails in Outlook (translation, under 20 messages). Usually I have 5-10. These are just things that are in the queue. They get dealt with and I don't ever stress about them. Because of ClearContext I know that anything important is red, and catches my eye so I know in what order to deal with things.

I have added one valuable tool to my Getting Things Done system, and that's my 21st Century PDA. I love this thing, and I can't begin to explain how it filled a big void in my life. The Moleskine is like the Brother label maker + Manila Files. Because of its simplicity and ease of use, it's a motivation to write things down. Stuff that I used to store on my scratch disk (the brain) and stuff that I always forgot because I wasn't in front of a computer with OneNote or Outlook. It's made me so happy. I feel even more in control of the things I need to do, and I really enjoy knowing that they are all in one little black book.

ClearContext to deal with E-mail

omars — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 13:10:00 GMT

I've been meaning to write this for a while, and reading John's post on Microsoft's Email Culture finally motivated me to do so. I'm particularly interested in talking about how I deal with "Ignore Incoming Email" since that can be a major distraction.

It's been almost a year since I started using Getting Things Done. Overall I would say it's been a resounding success. I feel in control of my life, my work, my email, and my endless list of things that I want to do. However, I have had a few glitches along the way. Fundamentally, the "system" does not scale to the mail volume I receive. If I spent a minute per mail per day I would do nothing but email. Furthermore, for a few months I was spending 10 - 4 in meetings. That meant that my only time to take care of e-mail was from 8 - 10, or during meetings (which is useless), or at night. It wasn't a happy thing.

Now, some of this was a bit ridiculous. You can't be in meetings all day and expect to do any work. And if you are burying your head in your laptop during the meeting, there is no point in being there. But, beyond that, GTD does not teach you how to deal with 200-400 pieces of mail a day. I believe that the system is really suited for some one who gets a low to modest amount of mail, which does not really exist at Microsoft.

For a few months I used a system whereby Outlook would color messages where I was the only recipient in blue, if I was in the TO line in green, and if I was in the CC line in Brown. Based on color I could sort of figure out what to read first and what to leave for later. However, this was flawed for a few reasons. Out of the box, the two views that Outlook gives you that are most useful are:

Group by Conversation
Group by Date

However, both of these "sort" orders do not give you the most important information at the top of the inbox. Group by Date assumes that the newest messages are those you should read. Group by Conversation assumes that the conversation with the most recent reply is on top. These messages "above the fold" basically have no intrinsic importance associated with them.

The Inbox is really something I use for "triaging" messages. For any given messages I do the following:

See if I can determine from the subject or From if I should read it immediately
See if I can act on it in < 2 min and delete it
See if I need to turn this into a Task ala GTD.

Now for an example. Say I get an email sent to my entire division at Microsoft, or I unnecessarily get added to a thread that I really don't need to be on just because I'm a member of some team distribution list. Well no matter how much I delete, any one who replies gets that thread bubbled above the fold. Clearly this doesn't work. I could go on with numerous examples, but at the end of the day the problem still stands. Outlook has no way of organizing the inbox in such a manner that the important stuff is above the fold. Or does it?

Over the holidays I got an email from Deva Hazarika, the CEO of ClearContext (blog), asking if I would check out his software. I was traveling at the time, but when I returned I decided to give it a go. I was very intrigued and found out that Deva actually lives around the corner from me, so we met for lunch and had a great 2 hour talk about his company, the software, and my problems with email! Since then I've been using ClearContext to see if it would work for me. As of now (1 month with the software) I cannot live without it.

First and foremost, ClearContext is a well written Outlook Add-in. I have spent my fair share writing Add-ins for Outlook, and I can smell a rotten Add-in a mile away. ClearContext has a great installer, seamless integration, and worked without any hitches. One installed ClearContext will re-arrange your inbox so that the important items are at the top. I will explain a bit how this works, but the bottom line is that it has saved me countless hours in the past month and integrated wonderfully with my existing Getting Things Done system.

ClearContext works by evaluating a number of aspects of an email to determine it's priority:

Who the message is from (you can rate specific contacts importance to you)
Which domain the message is from (for example, @microsoft.com can be higher than others)
Importance of the determined priority of the message
If you are a participant in a thread
The "directness" of the message

Based on these factors it will assign a "score" to a message, and a thread. Based on these scores it will sort your messages. Additionally messages are colored with Red being most important, then Blue, Green, Black and Grey (in order of priority). You can also tweak the importance of the weight of these items. For example, I made Thread Participation most important since I usually want to keep on top of thread that I have replied to.

ClearContext also has a notion of a "Topic". You can assign a Topic to a message, and then you can use a button to File that message automatically to a folder. Since I already had a folder hierarchy of Projects from GTD, I was able to point ClearContext at this folder hierarchy and it created all the Topics for me. Filing messages is a breeze now. Topic = Project in GTD.

To illustrate how this can be useful, I'll use two examples.

1) General News type message

Every day I get a few emails about "Top News Stories". I don't need to read these when I get them and if I don't get them it's no big deal. I told ClearContext that these messages are the lowest priority. As such the messages never appear at the top of my inbox, but the very bottom. I can get to them when I have time, and if I don't I just bulk delete them.

2) Threads I don't need or want

Say I get a thread that I don't need to keep on top of. Well i just set the priority to Very Low. As new items come in, they automatically go to the bottom of the inbox, and I can quickly review or delete them and they never distract me.

The basic value proposition that ClearContext offers me, also mentioned in John's post, is that as new messages enter my inbox, I do not see them at the top. If the message is not at the top, it's not important. At first I was nervous about this, but after a month I fully trust the system to do the right thing for me. It's incredibly valuable to keep my distractions to a minimum during the day, and ClearContext allows me to do that. I only focus on messages at the top of my inbox, and I never move down till I deal with those. It's instilled the rigour I need to follow the GTD Triage process.

Now, I have a few small problems with ClearContext, and I've sent them the feedback.

ClearContext doesn't work to well if you have two versions of Outlook 2003 Running simultaneously in cached mode. For most Microsoft employees this can be a problem. The solution though is to run ClearContext on one machine. You still get the views on the other machine, so you don't lose the benefit
You can't view messages in the Group By view. That is, messages are sorted in a flat list like Outlook XP. This is because of how ClearContext sorts items. This isn't a huge loss, but I would like to be able to also Group By Date and Conversation after applying the ClearContext sort order.

A final note. Software like this really shows the power of the Extensibility model in Outlook. I am amazed by how rich some of the add-ins for Outlook are, like Tablet Enhancements for Outlook, ClearContext, and Plaxo. Outlook truly is a platform, and one receiving a lot of attention from some really innovative developers.

Getting Things Done 2 months later

omars — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 09:03:00 GMT

It was about 2 months ago that I started using the Getting Things Done system. First I bought the book, then I got the software, then I organized my life and now I'm a lot happier for it.

LauraJ just wrote a post on how GTD has impacted her, and Marc's blog has many useful posts on the subject. I feel almost exactly the same was Laura does, so read her post and then come back to mine. Also check out some of Marc's articles:

First of all, if you are like me you used to have a work style where you were constantly scanning your inbox for things to do (and then procrastinating because it was overwhelming). You thought you had everything you needed to do stored away in your head and you've been fairly successful "Getting Things Done" but at the end of the day you were constantly assessing what was in your head, what was in your inbox, things you needed to do... always thinking about things you needed to do. This leads to stress and constantly being on mail. In a culture like Microsoft where people one office over will e-mail you before walking to your office (we have these strange device on our desks where you can speak to some one far away and they speak back, but no one uses them).

I didn't realize how badly my "system" was this was till I read the book. The analogy is that you are keeping all this stuff in RAM, and constantly looking for it. You end up feeling guilty when you don't get to something because you feel like you've broken a "contract" with yourself. A better way to do things is to store them away in a secure system. By secure I mean a system that you trust will capture every single actions you need to take for any given project. It's trustworthy because you no longer have to remember the actions you need to do, and know that they are being managed by software or whatever.

Here are aspects of the GTD philosophy that have really worked well for me. I love the software because it makes it easy for me to use the system, and in some senses kind of fun. Checking off tasks that are really e-mails underneath (actionable e-mails) is kind of fun. And that small amount of fun makes me actually continue to use the system.

Email - using the GTD software for Outlook + Outlook2OneNote

Deal with any piece of e-mail that takes less than 2 minutes. Just take care of it right there and then.
Delegate anything that you should and create a task for follow up.
Creating tasks that are actionable for anything else that needs to get done at some point (not time critical)
Creating calendar events for anything else that needs to get done before or on a certain date.
Creating someday tasks for interesting e-mails to follow up on some day (you don't need to do these things, but you want a place to store them and act on later one). You get rid of the e-mail this way. I had tons of these things in my inbox before.
Create a page in OneNote or file any other reference type material. This is where my Outlook2OneNote PowerToy comes in handy (and why I created it). Make it easy to find later by organizing it in a project or subject based folder or section in Outlook or OneNote.

Paper, Files, Mail anything else

Based on techniques described in the book, I went out and bought a top of the line Brother Label Maker that can make Manila style labels. I bought 200 or so manila envelopes and filed every single piece of loose paper as well as tossed every hanging file folder I had and replaced them with manila files. It's amazing how much more you'll tend to file something if it takes less than 1 minute to do so. That's not possible with the hanging file folders, and that is what makes the system work so well. Plus you can store many more manila files in a drawer than a hanging file folders, they are also easier to transport.

Every manila file is placed alphabetically in my file cabinet. I don't hesitate to file a single piece of paper if I need to. I just grab the label maker and do it. It feels great knowing that the barrier to being organized is so low. I was very ad-hoc about this before and again, it was another system that I didn't trust.

I did this both in my home office and at work. My desks are empty, no lose papers, and it just feels good.

Results

The end result of this is that I feel less stressed. I know what I have to do and I no longer remember it. Each week or so I scan my task list and figure out when and how I am going to do things based on context. This concept is explained in the book so I won't go into it here. The beauty of the system for me is that it really only took a little bit of structure, and a little bit of software, and I have a system that makes me feel less stressed out, allows me to think and plan better, and generally frees up my brain to do better things than constantly assessing the same things over and over. Even better is that it helps me use the tools I know and love (a Personal Information Manager) to use a task list and a calendar in a manner I never did before. Why shouldn't you make appointments with yourself to do certain tasks? At ms where we use free/busy a lot it's a good way to tell people not to make any appointments with you at this time. The task list was something I never used before (tried to many times and failed). Not that e-mail = task and there is a strong correlation between the two they are more actionable and granular. My old tasks were like "finish project". Not actionable and they stick around for ever.

Lastly, I can't express how amazing it is to go home every day with fewer than 10 items in my inbox. I used to be consistently in the 100-300 messages range. The book only costs like $15 bucks and doesn't take long to read. It will pay for itself very quickly.

Inbox empty, thanks David Allen

omars — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 13:56:00 GMT

Well, part of a book, and some software later, my Inbox has zero messages (you can see the evidence at the bottom). I think that is the first time in 5 years.

Here is how it started. I had about 200 or so e-mails in my Inbox Sunday night. I used David Allen’s method for triaging my Inbox (I purchased his Outlook software) and I ended up with:

15 action items (tasks)
2 deferred items (calendar events)
1 waiting for
3 Snoozes
6 Someday items

Now, having used the software I can say that it’s nothing special. It’s a bit crude, but it’s much more pleasant than doing everything manually. To be honest though, it leaves a lot to be desired. There is so much more potential in improving the workflow, making the UI more polished, adding more targeted Outlook 2003 functionality (the app seems very optimized for Outlook XP and earlier). Maybe this will be a project that I’ll take on when Outlook has a managed programmability model (I don’t know or want to know VBA and don’t care for writing code exposed as COM).

My Inbox

omars — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 10:11:00 GMT

Lets talk about my inbox for a second. I never let it get over 200 messages, but it's never under 100 messages. I literally struggle every day to keep this thing from exploding. I have dozens? hundreds? of folders and I think the max number of server side rules that exchange will let me and I still can't deal. When I first started at Microsoft it was under 30 each day. But as my roles changed, my interests grew and my responsibility increased it's simply impossible for me to get back to this. When we shipped Virtual PC 6.1 I managed to get my inbox down to 4 messages, but a week later it was back to 150.

Robert Scoble mentioned a David Allen Seminar today and that got me intrigued. I'm not sure where he took it but I think I really need something like this. I went to his web site and already read this document that talks about e-mail tips, and then there is his book, a downloadable “paper” on using Outlook and finally his software that apparently implements his philosophy of e-mail management. I'm tempted to just throw down the $70 for his Outlook software cause I'm pretty much desperate at this point.

My work discipline around e-mail is so bad that it's spilled into my personal life and my “home” e-mail account is just as pathetic as my work inbox. I avoid looking at my other mailboxes because I can't even deal with my work one. I don't get any joy out of e-mail like I used to when I was new to the net.

BTW - I've always wondered. When you die, where does your e-mail go? Who answers it? Does it just stop when your don't pay your bills and your ISP shuts it down ;-).