In the spirit of the conversation here for the last few weeks (and given the fact that the summer is almost over) I thought it would be timely to post a few more ideas about how to spend your time in between semesters. Granted, my perspective is probably a little bit different – but this is a good thing. Like all of you, school isn’t the only thing I do; I also work full time, and I’m a husband and father. That being said, my academic life is very important to me – that’s why I’ve started writing here. I’m spending my summer preparing for my first semester of graduate studies. I’ve essentially broken this prep-work down into four categories that are useful no matter what your circumstances: administrative, financial, physical, and mental.

• Administrative Preparation:
  By administrative preparation, I’m referring mostly to paperwork: immunization records, registration records, transcripts, resume updates, etc. These are all things that my new school will require and since schoolwork isn’t occupying most of my spare time the summer is a great time to pull all these things together. For me this is mostly a matter of locating everything and making sure it is up to date and checking with my school to make sure all the required paperwork is submitted. Taking care of things like this now can prevent a lot of headaches when the semester starts and will allow you to keep your focus where it belongs – on your work.
• Financial Preparation:
  Taking a little time away from the beach, road trips, or whatever other plans you may have to make sure all of your financial aid paperwork is in order is sure to save you lots of hassle once things pick up and tuition bills are due. This is also a good time to review your finances overall and make the big decisions that will dictate your school year (will I have to work? How much do I have saved? Etc.). I’ve pulled a free copy of my credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies (start at annualcreditreport.com) and am in the process of reviewing these for inaccuracies and reporting any discrepancies. The summer is also a great time to earn money and/or valuable work experience. Work to save spending money, or even look for volunteer opportunities in an industry that you’re interested in. Either way, future employers will see this in a positive light as it shows that you have initiative and are responsible.
• Physical Preparation:
  Moonlighting as a student isn’t always the easiest thing. Sometimes after a full day of work the very last thing I want to do is sit in class for several hours and cap off the evening with a drive home and some reading… but I don’t really have much choice. My circumstances require this so I deal with it. One way to make the burden a bit easier to shoulder is to maintain my health. The stress from school and other commitments, the long hours, the mental work involved – these are all easier to handle when your body is equipped. I’m using the summer to refine a fitness routine so by the time the semester starts I’ll be in tip-top shape.
• Mental Preparation:
  Finally, I am preparing myself mentally for an enhanced workload and dramatic change in lifestyle. There are lots of ways to do this; I’m focusing mostly on organization. Most of you are probably familiar with GTD, I’m spending the summer re-reading the book and fine-tuning my organization system (things to explore in future posts). I’m also getting in some leisure reading (something I rarely have the time for when class is in session) and generally relaxing in order to rest up for what’s ahead. It’s just as important to keep your brain fit as it is to keep your body fit. This will keep you from getting burned out but allow you to stay sharp and focused once classes start up again. By honing my organization and workflow system I’m gaining not only time and efficiency, but the confidence that comes along with being prepared. Doing this now ensures that I’ll have a good system in place when the semester starts and it will only be a matter of enveloping some new responsibilities to make sure that it serves me well.

So, a quick recap: spend some time this summer relaxing, but don’t let the time slip idly by. Make sure you’re ready for the school year, focus on your goals, and do what you can to move them forward. Advance preparation will save lots of time and trouble down the road.

I have 2 weekend, 3 weeks and 3 blue Post-Its until my first exam. Yes- 3 blue Post-Its. See:

My first exam is the first blue blue Post-It in the third row, and there are three blue Post-Its before it. The green Post-Its are the weekends I have to study (far right), and the yellow ones are days where I don’t currently have any event scheduled that will require my mental or physical energy. (I apologize for the blurriness. Walls are surprisingly difficult to photograph!)

Why all the Post-Its? Because I woke up on Saturday morning in a cold sweat, panicked about everything I knew I had to do, but was completely unable to conceptualize how much time I had to do it all. Everything was written down, but I couldn’t turn the words on the paper in my day-timer into anything that made events clear in my mind. It’s my very last exam set of high school (I’m graduating afterwards!) and I’ve been feeling/putting a lot of pressure on myself to go out with a bang. But I wasn’t anticipating the high blood pressure that my personal expectations would bring. So I took 10 deep breaths and tried to figure out how to get organized so I can maximize my productivity in preparation for my exams.

When it comes to my world, I like three things:

• lists
• colour
• Post-It notes
• and Tina Fey

Okay, so that 4 things, but lets pretend it’s 3. So, I combined all of these things and made a Post-It calendar. Actually, it’s not a full calendar of the month, but I leave on June 26 for a 6 week vacation travelling the other side of the planet, so I didn’t bother with the rest of the days. The day my plane takes off is the last thing I’ve written:

I like this idea because I can see at a glance when everything is, as opposed to flipping through pages. I do have a month-at-a-glace page in my planner, but it had gotten messy with “maybe-happenings” and “not-sures.”  I applied the GTD principle of only putting in concrete events. For each of the days I have an exam, I also wrote the time and place so I won’t forget. It helps to keep this from becoming another ambiguous list of things that may-or-may not occur so you then have to spend more energy sorting it in your mind. Whew, that last sentence was a mouthful!

This calendar is on the wall beside my computer, where I notice it every time I look up. So when I’ve been spending too much time on Facebook, out of the corner of my eye, I notice everything I have to do, and I log off :

This calendar is easy to replicate for yourself, using any colour combination you wish.

And also, since I’m using this to track school work, I put in fun events too, so I don’t forget that life isn’t a 24/7 study session. Like the day of my tattoo appointment:

It’s something to look forward to.

So tell me, what’s your strategy for conquering the mental clutter that exams bring?

“You can’t expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday’s tools and expect to be in business tomorrow.”

One of the biggest challenges of GTD lies is finding the right tools and system for you. There are many tools available across all platforms, including online. The hardest part is choosing a single tool that fits your personal needs, and ultimately something that you will stick to and not abandon. I’ve seen some versatile GTD tools, but with an ugly interface, I found myself dreading them within a week.  My longest stay has been with Remember The Milk. I used RTM contently for over a year, but eventually I found that I had outgrew my system. Some of the things I wanted to do, like sub-tasks, sub-projects and different views and task sorting were not possible in RTM.  Coincidentally, I had recently gotten a Mac, which opened up a whole new platform of possibilities. The biggest player in the task management field being OmniFocus. Long story short, I have found OmniFocus to be the best GTD tool I have ever tried.

Here are the Top 7 reasons you should try out OmniFocus (buy a Mac if you have to):

1. It is really really ridiculously good looking.

When choosing a tool that you are going to be using for countless hours each week as the core of your organizational system, it needs to be an enjoyable experience. OmniFocus has an attractive interface that combines the glossy and familiar interface of Leopard with a simple and easy to use program interface. The end result is something that is eye catching, but still lets you focus on your work.

2. It has a brother - OmniFocus for iPhone.

One of the main reasons I left Remember The Milk was that I couldn’t carry it around with me unless I had a Windows Mobile phone or a Palm. OmniFocus has a great iPhone and iPod Touch app which lets you sync your tasks and go. The interface is designed similarly to OmniFocus and offers most of the functionality of the desktop client. It even makes use of the iPhone’s GPS by notifying you when you approach geographically defined contexts, and telling you what actions are available.

3. It works well with GTD.

If you’re an orthodox GTD’er, you are going to like OmniFocus. The contexts and projects set up will satisfy even the strictest of GTDer’s. In fact it will satisfy everyone, because even if you don’t like strict GTD, you can customize how you use OmniFocus to fit your needs.

4. Sub-projects, sub-contexts, sub-tasks, sub-everything.

There is something distinctly satisfying about being able to organize small tasks into bigger tasks into projects into bigger projects into folders, etc. You can even organize your contexts in a hierarchy.  This is a great feature for drilling down to any level of your contexts. For example you could look at all possible actions around home, or look specifically at actions that are available in the basement, garage, etc.

5. OmniFocus offers precise availability through start dates, task order, and holds.

In any given action list, there will be countless actions that you cannot complete due to not being in the right place, someone or something being unavailable,  or perhaps the time to complete the task hasn’t even come around yet. OmniFocus allows you to  filter your lists to view only actions which have a passed start date, are in an available context, and do not rely on the completion of another uncompleted task. You can even put entire contexts or projects on hold, so they will not show up in your next actions.

6. Easy capture with Quick Entry and Clippings.

OmniFocus allows you to quickly capture your actions using it’s Quick Entry box. By tapping a key shortcut, a box pops up on screen and allows you to add tasks and then close it. You can also use a shortcut to clip portions of text from other applications and put them as a note for items.

7. Drill down with Perspectives.

OmniFocus has a feature called perspectives, which lets you save the view properties of a window as a state, and restore them at a future time. This allows you to manipulate OF’s interface to view only what you want. For example I use a “Do Today” perspective, which only shows overdue items and flagged items, and has the toolbar and sidebar minimized. This allows me to easily view what I plan on doing today. When I’m done, I can easily return to my regular window.

Obviously I have not covered near all of the features of OmniFocus, but these are the most important ones to me. OmniFocus has a free 14-day trial which allows you to try out the product before you buy. I’d highly recommend checking it out, you will be impressed.

OmniFocus [OmniGroup]

I wrote a post last week called “The 3 Step Plan to Owning Your Task List”, in which I talked a bit about the few productivity principles that have become critical in my life as a student. I’ve read a number of productivity books, and enjoyed many of them, but it’s always boiled down to the three points I mention in the post.

This time, I’m going to show you a bit of my brain, and detail my essential productivity system. The three step process is what I work by,  and I’ve ironed each down a bit more.

Here’s how I, a college student, keep my brain and life in order.

1. Write EVERYTHING down, in the same place. My “ubiquitous capture tool”, as it’s referred to in GTD circles, is Evernote.  Evernote is a web, desktop, iPhone, and cell phone-based system for taking notes of any kind. You can clip screenshots, take pictures, record voice notes. Add them to notebooks, add tags, search through everything (including the text of pictures- HUGE for things like business cards), and access it all from one place. 

The reason I use it, though, is that I can access it from anywhere. I like the web-based client the best, so I use it when I can. There’s a desktop client for offline use. There’s an iPhone client (or iPod Touch, in my case) that finally offers offline storage, as well as a Windows Mobile client (for my phone), which lets me upload text notes, voice notes, and snapshots. I can send emails to Evernote if I need to, and I have yet to run into a situation where I can’t send something to Evernote. Even if I’m out of cell service, I can add a note and it uploads when I get back to civilization.

Anything that comes into my head goes straight into Evernote. Quotes to remember, grocery lists, “do laundry” reminders- everything.

2. Schedule like mad, and stick to it. I would fall apart without my calendar accessible to me at all times. Once again, the biggest requirement I have for a calendar is that it be accessible anywhere I am. This time, Google Calendar’s the big winner for me, for two reasons.

1. It’s the easiest to use: Creating an event is easier here than with any other app I’ve found. Especially now that there’s a Gmail gadget (I use Gmail exclusively for email), I can add events right from my email. It recognizes things like “lunch with Tom tomorrow at 1″ as it should, and makes adding, editing, and reviewing my calendar incredibly easy.

2. It plays nicely with the other things I use: I mentioned the Gmail gadget, which is huge. There’s also an iGoogle gadget (my homepage), a way to sync to my iTouch and my phone (called NuevaSync- it’s awesome), and great web interfaces on all platforms. Whether I’m on my phone, my iPod, or my computer, I can use Google Calendar easily and smoothly. If I don’t like using a program, I don’t- Google seems to know that, and creates fantastic user experiences.

3. Review, review, review. Over the last 6 months, I’ve become a Remember the Milk evangelist- mostly because it’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to task lists since… ever.

There are a million reasons RTM is great, but here are 10: Gmail gadget. Google Gears (offline) integration. iPhone app. Email tasks. Location-awareness. Flexibility (create all the lists you want, play with them however). Tagging. Syncs with my phone. Great web interfaces. Tons of ways to input tasks (bookmarklets, gadgets, etc.). Twitter integration. See tasks as RSS. Text message reminders. Email reminders. (For more, check their services page)

Okay, that was 14. I get excited. To sum it up, RTM makes inputting tasks incredibly easy, organizing them obvious, intuitive and simple, and lets you actually get stuff done instead of always tweaking the system (but you can tweak the system all you want). For more information, there’s a post on my own blog that talks about more reasons I’m sold on RTM.

Everyone’s got their own productivity system, but this is the one that’s worked for me. Everything goes into Evernote, and then a couple times a day I dump things into either RTM or GCal, and then I’m able to start doing work, checking stuff off, and getting stuff done.

What’s your system for getting stuff done? What applications do you use? Are they better than mine? Let us know in the comments.

(Image source: Flickr)

In my experience, keeping track of all the things I have to do as a student is very difficult. I have my daily reading, my bigger assignments, my part-time job, my clubs and organizations, my writing- there’s a lot of variance in my life, and thus in my task list.

Because of this, things tend to pile up. I end up with lots of mundane, small tasks that need to get done, but easily fall by the wayside. Many people have a lot of balls in play, as they say, and don’t like letting them drop; finding a way to balance it all is hard.

I’ve recently developed a system that works well for me, which I’ll detail in my next post. First, though, I want to outline three crucial steps to staying sane with all your responsibilities. The system I came up with is loosely based on GTD, a revolutionary system by David Allen (that created a huge blogger buzz), but is a much simpler version- the whole GTD thing got too complicated for me.

1. Write EVERYTHING Down, in the same place.
This is really two points, but I’ll combine them. The first part is simple: get things out of your head. Write them, leave yourself messages, text yourself, do whatever works; the simple point is get your thoughts, ideas, reminders, and tasks out of your unreliable brain, and onto something that doesn’t know how to forget.

The second part of this is creating what’s called a “ubiquitous capture tool.” This means that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you have a place to record your thoughts and tasks. For many people, this is simply a small notebook (Moleskines are all the rage right now), but it can be anything. I use my cell phone, because it’s the only thing near me 24 hours a day. Make sure you have something always accessible and easy to use. You should ideally have as few inboxes as possible; personally, I try to have 3- one for email, one for physical things (papers, mail, and such), and one for my task-writing.

2. Schedule like mad, and stick to it.
Keeping a calendar of what I have to do, and when and where I have to do it, has made my life much simpler. Any place you have to be, put it immediately into your calendar. If you want to study at a certain time, or do a particular task, put it in your calendar. There’s something subconscious about seeing your time allotted to doing a particular thing that makes you much more inclined to do it, and it makes figuring out how much time you actually have much easier. Again, your calendar should travel everywhere with you, and be easy to access and use.

3. Review, review, review.
Writing things down isn’t going to do you any good if you never look at what you write. Have a task-management system- there are a ton out there- that works for you. That’s a different system for anyone, and I won’t push any one on you, but having one is crucial. Again, maybe it’s a piece of paper with crossed out tasks or check-boxes, or maybe it’s something super high-tech that uses words like AJAX and has multiple mobile versions. Make sure you review your lists every day, and that you keep up to date.

Obvious though this may sound, following these three steps has gotten me much closer to the point where I’m getting tasks done efficiently, easily, and more quickly. I still drop the ball on occasion, but I’ve found it’s usually because I forgot to write it down or put it in my calendar.

Make sure you build a system, use it completely, and trust it as well. No exact system works for two people, so there’s some experimenting involved, but that’s half the fun.

To get you started, here are a few great (and free) tools for implementing the various steps.

1. Write EVERYTHING Down, in the same place
Evernote
Ubernote
A Moleskine Notebook
Google Notebook

2. Schedule like mad, and stick to it.
Google Calendar
Yahoo Calendar
Mozilla Sunbird
30Boxes

3. Review, review, review.
Remember The Milk
Toodledo
Nozbe
Vitalist (plus a great article on GTD for Students, using Vitalist)

I’ll share more next time on my own system, but go try these tools, and see what works for you!

What tips or tools do you have for simplifying and improving your task lists? Let us know in the comments.

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 23 to GTD Mastery is: I attend a weekly productivity group centered around the GTD methods.

Image: Ted Patrick

Or not…. The number of people I’ve talked to about GTD can be counted on two hands (not including the readers here at GearFire who I’m grateful for sticking around despite another vanishing act on my part).

Edit: Feel free to join the Google group here: http://groups.google.com/group/gtdweekly

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 15 to GTD Mastery is: I have a paper file system which is fun and fast to use, perhaps using an automatic labeler.

A couple of months ago, I put out a call for help to our readers for the creation of my paper file system. Many of the responses advocated a paperless system. After weighing my options, I chose the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner (Mac version here). The S300, a lower-end model is also available (comparison chart here). The factors that swayed my decision were the inclusion of Acrobat Standard and the carrier sheet support which helps with the scanning of my odd-shaped newspaper/magazine clippings. The S510 also scans over twice as fast and you can feed it 50 pages compared to 10 pages with the S300. This lets me use the S510 as my inbox.

First Impressions
Upon opening, I couldn’t believe how small the S510 was. Its footprint is less than a standard piece of letter-size paper.

Setup
Step-by-step instructions are provided in the manual and are easy to understand. The first step was to install the ScanSnap’s drivers and software and Acrobat (Windows 2000, XP, and Vista compatible). Everything went smoothly and, despite the software spanning 3 CDs, I only had to restart the computer once. The ScanSnap itself connects via USB and is run off of DC power.

Testing
I tested out the ScanSnap with a pamphlet I received from school. You can take a look at the resulting PDF here.

At this point in the review, I should be writing about how great a product the ScanSnap is and how it has simplified and revolutionzed my paper workflow. However, I’m going to outsource this part of my life, Tim Ferriss style. Ryan Norbauer over at 43 Folders shares my love for the ScanSnap.

Here’s the premise: the SnanSnap is the first consumer scanner (that I’ve used anyway) to truly be about information storage. It’s not for ultra high-resolution photo scanning; it’s all about documents and speed. Firstly, you initiate scans by piling your documents into the stacker and simply pressing the one big button on the face of the device. It then rapidly (and I mean damn fast) gobbles up your papers and spits them out at the bottom. Fujitsu says up to 36 pages/minute in duplex mode, and that sounds about right. The resulting digital document gets dumped right onto your hard drive in searchable PDF format, which every OS seems to understand natively these days. It automatically corrects for mis-aligned papers, auto-detects whether the document is color or monochrome, scans in duplex if it detects a back side to the page being scanned, and detects the size of the paper being scanned and intelligently crops the digital version to the right size. You can mix and match document types liberally and it stitches them all together into one PDF with each page automatically adjusted to its own parameters. I love that there is just one operative button: you just tell it to go to town, and it gets out of your way and makes smart guesses based on what you give it.

Carrier Sheet
I pulled out an old magazine clipping to test out the carrier sheet. Needless to say the ScanSnap came through again. You can find the resulting PDF here.

CardMinder
You can also scan any business cards you may receive.

The ScanSnap includes the CardMinder software for managing your business cards. Unfortunately, it only supports the reading of the contact’s name, company name, one phone number, email address. In the future, I hope that it will support address info, multiple phone numbers, and website. You can export the card info to Outlook or Outlook Express. If you use a different email client, CardMinder also allows you to export the info to a CSV file. I use Gmail and it supports the importing of CSV files.

Gmail correctly identifies the “name” and “email” fields from CardMinder’s CSV. However, the “phone” and “company” are placed in the contact’s notes under “more information.”

Final Thoughts
Being a student with a budget, I had my reservations about the ScanSnap’s price tag. However, in the long run, the ScanSnap will be cheaper than filing cabinets, file folders, a labeler, and labeller refills. I purchased mine from ATS Systems here in Canada with free shipping on orders over $99. There’s also a $50 rebate on all S510s purchased from January 1 to March 31. You can download the rebate here. The total cost of my ScanSnap came to $450 CAD. Amazon and eBay are currently selling them for ~$400 US (plus shipping). If you’re on a tighter budget, the S300 is listed for $260 CAD at ATS Systems. If you don’t need the carrier sheet and don’t mind slightly slower scan times, I would save your money and buy the S300. If space is a concern, the S300 is half the depth of the S510.

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 22 to GTD Mastery is: My computer files are set up for maximum productivity.

Above is a screenshot of all my files. Even with nearly 50,000 files spanning multiple computers, managing my digital data is painless.

Organizing
The first step is to establish a folder hierarchy. If you have multiple computers, I recommend using the same structure on each to allow for easy synchronization. The exact structure will vary for each user and there is no one solution. The only criteria I have is that I’m able to quickly locate required files. Below is a mindmap of my “My Documents” directory.

Searching

Vista has Instant Search, Mac has Spotlight, Linux has Beagle. I’m using XP and use Google Desktop for my desktop search. While it isn’t perfect, it is much more efficient than manually point-and-clicking.

Backup
Nothing is a bigger productivity killer than losing your data (not to mention grade killer when that term paper is due the next day). There are different levels of backup that you can take to protect your data.

Level 1: Create a separate partition for your documents
For Linux and Mac, this means you should have a separate partition for your “home” directory. For Windows, this means your “My Documents” should not be on your C: drive. Instead, you should have a separate partition (e.g. X: drive) where you place your documents.

If you already have a spare partition, you can move your documents by right clicking on “My Documents” and selecting properties.

If the C: drive got corrupted, you can simply reinstall Windows and point your “My Documents” back to that other partition. If you don’t have a separate partition, you can resize your C: drive to create a new partition. If you’re doing a re-install you can create your partitions during the installation. An introduction to “partitions” can be found here. A search for “your OS and hard drive partition” should provide guides for your specific OS.

Level 2: Backup to a separate hard drive
The next level is to backup your files to either an external hard drive or a dedicated server. I use SyncToy to synchronize and backup all my files. My laptop is backed up to my server at home. My server is then backed up to external hard drives.

Level 3: Off-site backup
The final level is to backup your files either to a computer outside your neighbourhood or through an online solution. This is the only way of protecting your data from a natural disaster (e.g. fire/flood). If you have friends/family who are willing to run a backup server and who you trust to respect the privacy of your files, re-imbursing them for the electricity costs will generally be cheaper than an online solution. This depends on the size of your data. There are many free online backup solutions that offer a few gigabytes of storage. However, if you’re data needs are larger, check out our partner, Carbonite, who provides unlimited, automated online backups for only $50/year. Computers are disposable, your data isn’t.

How do you organize, search, and backup your files?