Turning Your SmartPhone Into A $1,000,000/Year Tool
Over the past few months I’ve become semi-obsessed with productivity because of my BlackBerry.
After reading David Allens “Getting Things Done” and having his system change my life I have stumbled upon/created a system for personal productivity that uses technology to make me more productive.
If you’re not paying the $20/month to be able to do email from your smartphone, I think you’re wasting the biggest productivity tool you have. I’ve always said that outside of being a phone, most pda/smartphones are just toys. They look cool and sound great, but in the end, they’re just eye candy. Toys to play games with in your down time and keep people’s contacts in.
Here’s my podcast of How To Turn Your Smartphone Into A Million Dollar Tool instead of just having a phone and a toy.
Or you can play it here:
The website I use and talk about in the audio is http://tracks.tra.in.
I also use Google calendar.
Here is the php script I use to email myself the todo’s.
Here’s a video of instructions:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=816501744180957431
[tags]gtd, getting things done, gtd online, blackberry, smartphone[/tags]
October 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Good post - I’m always surprised that people won’t drop the $20/month for email access on their phone. The opportunity cost is much higher.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptOver the past few months I’ve become semi-obsessed with productivity because of my BlackBerry. After reading David Allens “Getting Things Done” and having his system change my life I have stumbled upon/created a system for personal productivity that uses technology to make me more productive. If you’re not paying the $20/month to be able to do email from your smartphone, I think you’re wasting the biggest productivity tool you have. I’ve always said that outside of being a phone, most pda/smartphones are just toys. They look cool and sound great, but in the end, they’re just eye candy. Toys to play games with in your down time and keep people’s contacts in. Here’s my podcast of How To Turn Your Smartphone Into A Million Dollar Tool instead of just having a phone and a toy. Or you can play it here: […]
October 21st, 2007 at 11:25 pm
[…] on my PDA and computer…I wanted a solution online. Leave it to John to solve my problem…his latest post gives you everything you need to start making the Getting Things Done system work for your life. […]
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
John,
Do you mark off your tasks somehow with your phone in the system you described? Or do you have to mark them off through the tracks interface?
- Neal
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:53 am
I have to mark them off in the tracks interface.
But, when you use rss through viigo to view your tasks on your phone, whenever you actually look at a task it un-bolds it. That’s how I know I’ve accomplished something. Normally I don’t need to open up a task in viigo to know what it is, so I don’t open it until I have accomplished it.
October 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
John, nice podcast. In my GTD system I’ve kept a list of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks which seem to correspond with your reminders/affirmations/goals. I like the idea of having them emailed to me so I don’t have to remember to check them. I’m going to set that up.
You mentioned that you have your notes from Conference emailed to you every week. How long do you keep them? I thought it might be interesting to keep each individual note until you felt like it was a part of you. The other option would be to keep them for 6 months. I’m going to add that to my system.
October 30th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
P.S. If you do a followup podcast or post, I’d be interested in hearing about your affirmations — how you chose them, how often you review them, what effect they’ve had, etc.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:32 am
John, nice post/cast. I’ve been trying to get into GTD for a couple of years now and getting over the initial sort is real tough. Once I’ve setup I think I’ll implement it similarly to how you’ve done it with tracks. I haven’t used GCal (I’m all in Outlook) so I need to see how the calendar side of things will work out.
Alastair.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:26 am
[…] my last post about my online gtd system and my first post about how to best implement GTD online, I’ve had quite a few questions […]
January 1st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
[…] Of course, I always write these things down in my todo list and email them to myself. […]