10Nov/090
Communication, commitments, and reference
I'm always looking to improve the organization system I use (a hybrid GTD) to manage my business and personal life. I've recently realized the massive amounts of information that I have to digest, store, or act on.
First, I realize there are three types of information that I encounter in my daily routine:
- Communication - This is all of the emails, voicemails, and memos not directly related to my short or long term goals. Items I would classify as communication require no action on my part, or contain information I would later want to refer to later.
- Commitments - Anything that requires an action on my part to complete. Items I would classify as commitments require action by myself or a subordinate. They need to be tracked in my system until completed.
- Reference - Everything I would ever want or need to refer to in the future is reference information. Reference information needs to be easy to access, available when I need it, and complete.
Total Capture
My goal is simple...total capture of commitments and reference information. I've decided to use the following tools to help with my goal.
- Windows Phone - I've a personal MS Exchange account that allows me to sync contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes between my phone, laptop, and desktop. Additionally, I've access to everything through web access if I'm away from any my phone or computers. The phone I use has a great (5 MP) camera, and I can take pictures of any notes or articles I want to refer to later. OCR lets me convert these to text.
- One Note by MS. I like the notebook interface, and it has great search facilities. Anything I put in here can be easily found for future reference. I just wish there was a full featured mobile version that I could use on my phone.
- Moleskeine note book. I love writing in these notebooks - they have a huge cult following on the internet. I try to convert anything I capture in the notebook to digital form as soon as possible.
- Data on the Run - A great application for Windows Mobile that lets me sync MS Access databases from my desktop to my phone. I use it to keep several DBs of reference information I want to be able to access.
- Scan2PDF - PDFs from my camera phone! Great quality, easy to read.