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Ilya · 11-04-2006, 09:09 PM

I've created a computer set-up that works for me in Outlook.
I have a separate outlook file that i keep on a flash drive. I've used ideas from
Setting Up Outlook for GTD site.
The idea is to set up Outlook contacts to masquerade as Projects. This way you can assign tasks for the projects and have hierarchical organisation - something that native Outlook tasks lack.
So the pipeline is as follows - i capture everything in notebooks that I carry in my wallet or straight into outlook. I treat all things to do as projects - write the end goal and the necessary steps in description. Then assign the next action task for the projects. The tasks are dispayed sorted by the context and then by project. When a task is done, I go back to the project the task belonged to and assign the new next action untill the project is eventually complete.
When I first did the capture process it took me a long weekend and I ended up with more then 700 tasks, many of which were multy-task projects. Then I've realised why I was so stressed and why I had the feeling that I'm not doing enough. When I've got all this stuff out of my had my stress fell to zero and I saw for the first time that I'm actually doing a lot of things and achieving a lot. It was a breakthrough.

11-04-2006, 09:09 PM	#18 (permalink)
Ilya Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Moscow, Russia Posts: 452	I've created a computer set-up that works for me in Outlook. I have a separate outlook file that i keep on a flash drive. I've used ideas from Setting Up Outlook for GTD site. The idea is to set up Outlook contacts to masquerade as Projects. This way you can assign tasks for the projects and have hierarchical organisation - something that native Outlook tasks lack. So the pipeline is as follows - i capture everything in notebooks that I carry in my wallet or straight into outlook. I treat all things to do as projects - write the end goal and the necessary steps in description. Then assign the next action task for the projects. The tasks are dispayed sorted by the context and then by project. When a task is done, I go back to the project the task belonged to and assign the new next action untill the project is eventually complete. When I first did the capture process it took me a long weekend and I ended up with more then 700 tasks, many of which were multy-task projects. Then I've realised why I was so stressed and why I had the feeling that I'm not doing enough. When I've got all this stuff out of my had my stress fell to zero and I saw for the first time that I'm actually doing a lot of things and achieving a lot. It was a breakthrough. __________________ Ilya.