How to Use Your Smartphone, Pocket PC, or Palm to Manage Your Tasks
Here's what we discuss on this page:
Introductory Material
Key Principles
Doing a Mindsweep
Keeping it bite-sized
Managing Categories
Prioritizing
Using the Two-Minute Rule
Little Tips and Tricks
Closing Thoughts
Note that I previously discussed Managing Projects on this page, but my sense is that this put an overwhelming amount of material on this page ... hence, I have moved the Managing Projects material to a new page so that we can focus on TASKS on this page. (The topics are related, but I think separate pages are more clarifying.)
Also, while I have aimed this material at Smartphone, Pocket PC, and Palm users, the principles can be applied to desktop/laptop architectures and to paper-based planning systems.
Introductory Material
Prior to 2001, I used the Franklin Covey (FC) time management methods for years. I started with a paper-based implementation, blending in the use of a Palm device around 1999. I studied Covey's books and went to a couple of his seminars, and was pleased with the life-management improvements I was able to make using his system. Then, in early 2001, I read David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) book and immediately began implementing GTD on my Palm. I liked its fresh approach as the FC approach had begun to feel stale to me.
Then, in September 2001 my wife passed away, and GTD became a major tool for helping me deal with all the stuff in my life. It let me do this without requiring great concentration, which is good, because my mind was in an absolute fog for months. I could no longer implement the FC approach if I wanted to, because my Roles were now confused and my mission statement was shattered. So I ...