Gabi Witthaus's List: GTD/ Productivity

The other big advantage of using an RSS feed from citeulike has been the ease of transferring citations to refworks. Every bibliographic database seems to use a different system for providing citations and I can never remember which ones work and which ones just fall over. From google reader, one click to citeulike, click to copy reference into my library, then download the RIS file and upload to refworks, off to pick up the paper, print off and bob’s your uncle (as long as I actually get round to reading it!).

Quick Start
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The system consists of one long list of everything that you have to do, written in a ruled notebook (25-35 lines to a page ideal). As you think of new items, add them to the end of the list. You work through the list one page at a time in the following manner:

1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them.
2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you.
3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so
4. Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it
5. Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out
6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process
7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items.
8. Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.

On top of all this, there’s another feature that may well become revolutionary: adding sticky notes to pages, in a way that other people can see it. When using the Diigo toolbar, you can see what other people have highlighted, and also comments (sticky notes) they added. That means that you are no longer limited to leaving comments on blogs, you can do so in any type of page (even static pages). Diigo enables you to drop your comment exactly where it is relevant, not at the end of a long list.

I want to clip web content

Want to clip web content without leaving your browser? If you’re already using Evernote to centralize your notes, you may as well stick with that (even though it requires you to switch windows). If not, you can download Flock, the social web browser, that has a web clippings feature built-in. Drag any image or text to your web clippings sidebar while surfing and you can come back to it later.

Firefox user? You don’t need to jump browsers just to get a clipping service - ScrapBook is a plugin that integrates web clipping capabilities with the world’s favorite browser. Hey, regardless of whether it’s the most frequently used, we can all agree that Firefox is the world’s favorite!

Perhaps you want a native web service, not another app or plugin. As always, Google has a solution for your online needs - try Google Notebook. Or do you want a web service, but have joined the anti-Google crowd? There’s always Clipmarks

TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki - including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. Because it's a single file, it's very portable - you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick.

But it's not just a wiki! It has very powerful plugin capabilities, so it can also be used to build new tools. You have full control over how it looks and behaves. For example, TiddlyWiki is already being used as:

* A personal notebook
* A GTD ("Getting Things Done") productivity tool
* A collaboration tool
* For building websites (this site is a TiddlyWiki file!)
* For rapid prototyping
* ...and much more!

In Diigo, an item in a list is also saved separately as a bookmark (which can be tagged). So in this sense, Diigo integrates both Google Notebook and Google Bookmark.

So far I have been testing Diigo, Evernote, and Tiddlywiki.

I’m looking for something that has the following characteristics:

* free (all 3 pass)
* taggable (all 3 pass)
* searchable (all 3 pass)
* ability to share links and notes openly and instantly (Diigo wins here)
* ability to protect private notes securely (still exploring this)
* data exportable (all pass but I need to explore more … the good news is that notes can be exported from Diigo as a CSV file)
* ability to share an entire “notebook” so a student can send me their entire body of research (Tiddlywiki is great for this)
* ability to create private notes that are not linked to any particular website (Diigo fails this)
* ideally it will also work offline (Diigo fails)

Note: Google Notebook isn't closing down right now, but its users should see the writing on the wall. In the service's official blog, Notebook's project manager states that its team plans to "stop active development," meaning no new features or sign-ups for new users, and the clipping extension will likely die off with the next big Firefox upgrade.

Why Google Reader and GTD Don’t Mix

To start off with, Evernote has wonderful optical character recognition (OCR) technology which lets you search your images for text strings. Now you can take a picture of someone’s business card and find their info by searching for their name, number, email, address, whatever is on their card. You’d be surprised how often the ability to search images can come in very handy. Looking for a new house? Start snapping pictures of “For Sale” signs as your pass by and search for them later.

But does the level of security Evernote currently provides enough to ensure the safety of private information? Unfortunately, not in my opinion2. There are two issues that I can see.

David Allen, author of "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" and "Making It All Work," took your questions about his philosophy and system, and how to apply it to help set goals and get organized.

The transcript follows.

Evernote as list manager

My primary use of Evernote is as a list manager. A notebook is just a collection of notes with in most cases just a title. See the example below.

I really wish it wouldn’t rename my files. If I put in a PDF file helpfully named “VAT Return Jan-Mar 08” I’d like it to still be called that when I export it, rather than the unhelpful “bb2cd873d62b7e9616a056a1aac12698.pdf”. It’s my stuff, give it to me in it’s original state.

May 26th, 2008 in Featured, Technology
7 Ways to Use Evernote

Evernote

Last week, Lifehack founder Leon Ho introduced me to the beta note taking application Evernote. Evernote boasts a variety of features that make it an excellent application, including automatic synchronization between the web and your other devices, tagging and sorting features, an online client that makes it accessible from anywhere, and a search feature that can even search text stored within images.

From the developers themselves:

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at anytime, from anywhere.

I’m a big fan of anything that keeps my data synchronized between devices, let alone totally automatically, so I was keen to give Evernote a try. It has grown on me in a short amount of time. It’s great for keeping snippets of information, replacing stickies and taking down notes, and pasting research from the web into.