Do project management apps help productivity?

Thanks for the links Jay http://www.stevepavlina.com and http://zenhabits.net definitly look interesting I shall be giving them a good read, even after a quick scan of the pages i can see some easy wins to getting me more focused at the job in hand.

With over 2000 emails in my inbox, Basecamp helps de-clutter my mind. But really it’s a bunch of things that help me get things done. And by GTD I mean eliminating distractions.

Yoga helps clarify me and destress. Makes molehills when my mind wants mountains to climb.
Basecamp declutters.
The #1 factor is clarity/vision and a client that has it. Our worst client is a total drain because they are de-centralized. There is no one person in charge day to day. It’s more like decision are made every 3 months, if that. I have a decision pending from last August. We quit them but they still haven’t acted on it yet.

It’s not so much as replacing their income as it is freeing up our time from getting bogged down in wasted time. As you might have figured out by now: an hour lost is actually 2 hours because you’re "making up" for that 1 hour with this hour. So in reality, that hour never gets made up. It’s gone forever.

Quote from: Meristem at Apr 02, 2008, 12:25 PM

With over 2000 emails in my inbox...

Do you know what. I had a hard drive failure over a year ago now and lost my Thunderbird mail. There were thousands and thousands and you know what. You don’t need most of them. I just today listened to a podcast from http://getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com/getitdone-email-backlog.aspx about clearing your email back log. My Inbox never has more than 10 emails in it from day to day. I have archives but I use David Allen’s idea of assigning the action or do it then. So I either do it if it takes less than two minutes or I put it in a todo folder and process them every day at work. Sometimes you have to just get rid of them altogether. Sometimes people send you email that you won’t respond to and won’t ever read. Delete em.

Keeping my inbox clear became easy when I realized that it was slowing or delaying a decision that would be faster to deal with when it arrived than to put off for some big clean up.

Cheers,
Jay

@smashingred : thanks a lot for your answer(s). It seems like I’m definitively going down the same path as yours, a few miles behind.

In order to plug-in GTD in my life, I tried various tools, didn’t find the right one, and ended up programming it myself (a very simple website, a kind of personnalised Ta-da list). Obviously, the biggest trap is spending too much time tweaking such a tool >:( , and it’s tempting, since you don’t necessarly find straight away the workflow that suits you.

Basically, my organisation is tends to be the following :
- each idea/task-to-be-done that pops in is immediatly written down on paper (OK)
- every evening, I transfer all theses items in my GTD tool, in the right project, with the right status (OK)
- every morning, I choose a few items/projects I’m going to work on, in order to gain focus (not so OK, I’m working on that)
- once in a while, I scan all these items, and try to remove some of them (almost OK)

Woot indeed this thread is getting quite interresting !

The 20/80 rule is something I learned early as a former quality consultant, I guess it’s a bit overused but mostly true. It’s quite consistent with the selective ignorance principle you guys discussed earlier in the thread. GTD / project management / tools is only part of the equation, but having fun and keeping your ideas flowing is another key ingredient !

Which bring me to the next item. The firing clients or turning down work is something which is hard to do when you start, but becomes essential if you want to survive as I have recently come to realize. Otherwise you’ll burn out, cut down margins and most importantly loose the fun of doing a creative job. Hell, you probably won’t be creative anymore if you burden yourself too many clients, especially when they want to cut down prices

This being said, this is not all about prices/profitability even though it’s a given you have to put food on the table, there are "average returns projects" who are fun and/or great learning experiences (and learning is - for me - part of the ROI). I sure won’t throw them out as bigger projects are (often but not always) less fun (bigger structure who can afford higher prices are often bound by lots of rules and processes).

All in all, freelancing is a balancing act between doing that creative stuff you love + having fun & keeping it real + be efficient.
If you can do both well then, you’re blessed !

I guess finding the good balance is also a matter of choosing your clients or - maybe more accurate - selling it to them in a way that makes it profitable and fun to work with them

I am trying but it’s not small feat !

Anyway, back on project management : I like to keep it all in one place and that’s why I chose a single tool to centralize things. Transferring between tools (even from paper to app) is lost time to me (maybe you’ll say it helps you choose which items you really need in the process : for me, it doesn’t work like this). If I want to have the big picture and an accurate project history (great to analyze what you could have done differently/better).

I’m definitly feeling more focused today, hopefully I can keep it up with the tips from the GTD sites yesterday.

Last night I reduced my inbox from 1,469 emails to just 8, it’s a great feeling at the moment to have a empty inbox, important items I have added to my webmail tasks list approx 5 out of the 1,000’s, and this evening I’m going to filter them out and put them into project pier.

Next up is to tidy my deskspace and filing system

Personnaly I don’t especially agree with throwing out client emails as you never know what could come in handy (if anything, remind the client of what he decided or said on a particular matter ). Storage is cheap, search features (at least GMail’s) is great, so are labels. I don’t see the reason why you should delete those. I have no problem with keeping the 600+ emails in my professionnal Email box.

But like you, I keep a copy of important emails in my project management app, which ActiveCollab allow me to bookmark when I know I might need it and then keep them as an archive.

Quote from: davidm at Apr 03, 2008, 06:20 AM

Personally I don’t especially agree with throwing out client emails as you never know what could come in handy

Definitely I listened to a podcast this morning about coming back from a holiday and just deleting all the emails and asking people to resend, for me this seems like a bad idea, especially for me when some of the emails could have been relating to new sales.

Last night when I was getting rid of my 1,469 emails a lot were just junk and some were past work queries I had done for customers and just forgot to delete or file.

Tasks TODO I have kept a list but I think as a safety net I will archive my whole deleted items to a file and keep it on a CD just in case, I may never use that archive again but it’s always good to know its there in case I need to look up something for reference.

I like the idea of adding items to project software so you always have reference of work you have done and I think going forward for important items I will start to do this.

Quote from: davidm at Apr 03, 2008, 06:05 AM

I guess finding the good balance is also a matter of choosing your clients or - maybe more accurate - selling it to them in a way that makes it profitable and fun to work with them

Are we talking about ending up drinking alcohol with them, here ?

I realize that I don’t have to face exactly the same issues as most of you, being an employee, but some key-conclusions do seem to be go in the same direction in the end.

Quote from: davidm at Apr 03, 2008, 06:05 AM

Anyway, back on project management : I like to keep it all in one place and that’s why I chose a single tool to centralize things. Transferring between tools (even from paper to app) is lost time to me (maybe you’ll say it helps you choose which items you really need in the process : for me, it doesn’t work like this).

In an ideal world, I would have only one tool indeed. But there are a few obstacles :
- I’m not always online, nor in front of a computer (and certainly don’t want to be), while ideas do pop in at anytime
- Updating any GTD tool takes time. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, I’m just saying that it does take longer to correctly insert anything in it than just writing it down on the spot. Plus, as you said, this transition-step can turn into a filter : when I stumble upon a bug, I just take a note and move back to my current task. Later, when I’ll process my notes, I’ll decide what to do about it (fix it, ignore it, dig further, talk to someone about it, etc.)

Quote from: awardle at Apr 03, 2008, 06:15 AM

Last night I reduced my inbox from 1,469 emails to just 8, it’s a great feeling at the moment to have a empty inbox, important items I have added to my webmail tasks list approx 5 out of the 1,000’s, and this evening I’m going to filter them out and put them into project pier.

Wow, giant step forward !

I try not to turn my email inbox in a tasks-to-do-list-reminder. If there’s something of value (ie. reference, information, file), I save it outside my inbox, and if triggers a task, I put it in my GTD tool. Then I delete the email. It’s not gone forever, I can always search for it if I need to, but it’s out of the way.

I can’t say that I’m following this rule everything single time I get an email, but I’m close to it, and unlike some other methods I try to implement, I’m sure this one fits me.

Quote from: aspeum at Apr 03, 2008, 06:37 AM

Are we talking about ending up drinking alcohol with them, here ?

Explanatory note : I worked with aspeum on soleil.info, and we had a drink to celebrate yesterday
I don’t get paid in in drinking currency otherwise I would get anything done

This being said, a friendly atmosphere can’t hurt

Quote from: aspeum

In an ideal world, I would have only one tool indeed. But there are a few obstacles :
- I’m not always online, nor in front of a computer (and certainly don’t want to be), while ideas do pop in at anytime

Maybe it’s the geekish side but I don’t mind being plugged at all times (I feel frustrated when I am not ! That is, except on holidays...).

Quote from: aspeum

- Updating any GTD tool takes time. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, I’m just saying that it does take longer to correctly insert anything in it than just writing it down on the spot.

It definitely takes more time, but for me it’s time gained afterwards.
Then again, everyone has a different personnal process !

Quote from: aspeum

Plus, as you said, this transition-step can turn into a filter : when I stumble upon a bug, I just take a note and move back to my current task. Later, when I’ll process my notes, I’ll decide what to do about it (fix it, ignore it, dig further, talk to someone about it, etc.)

As far as filtering is concerned, I kind of think the very fact of updating your GTD tool acts as a filter : by entering the data you have to decide how to prioritize it, for me it’s structuring...

While I am here, I have read the ZTD article and it’s really interresting !