Jan Schulz

Since a few days I get the "valid usage period expired" message when trying to add new actions to my action lists. Seems that it is time for a resume of my time with eProductivity (and to some degree with GTD).

To start with: eProductivity changed my way of time- and email-management and for a lot better! One of the objectives of my evaluation period was if it reduces the constant nagging feeling of "did I miss something" and I can say that it does! A lot!

eProductivity is up to now my most productive way to organize myself: it makes it really easy to us it, especially the integration with email. The "today" view is up to now the fastest way to get an idea what needs to be done today. Having three different ways to look at your actions (by context, entities or projects) gives you a lot more overview than what I previously had.

(Not) Getting in my way
Eric Mack argued in a "taking notes podcast", that one of the key features of a time management system is the ability to not get in the way: even one click to many is unconsciously preventing your adaption of such a system. eProductivity does that most of the time and especially more often than my other tools I used before. Draging an email to a context makes it an action. Different ways to look at your actions (not doable at all on paper). Linking information to actions and the info is one click away.

But sometimes it does force me to do this "on click to many". The most important one is the "drag email to context" (or "copy email into"): afterwards it asks me to what I want to do with the original email and my answer is in 99%: put it into folder "done". To do this it is click on 'put into folder' -> wait a few seconds to get the picklist up -> choose the folder -> ok. This was my number one resistance to using eProductivity and putting every email into an action. Hopefully there will be a way to do away with that in future versions (feature request filed :-) )

Another one is the dialog which comes after "mark complete" of an action in a project: usually I have my actions sorted (possible in the projects) or multiple action in my todo, so just pick the next or one of the "today"-marked and don't bother me...

Linking information to reminders
Also great is the ability to link emails, actions, calendar items and projects. It's such a timesaver to have the ability to have all the information linked into a action or callendar item (at least if the information is/was contained in an email) or actions linked together into projects. I just wish if there was an toolbar button to link arbitrary notes documents (or even things outside of notes).

Working on your action lists: Stream vs. structure
I'm a very structured person: I need it and I feel uncomfortable without structure. In a lot of ways, eProductivity and GTD helps me with that by giving me structure in my todos/actions, at least on the filling level. On the other hand, on the last step when working on my action lists, it misses structure: the context lists are not ordered at all, you always have to pick one action after completing the last one. At least you have different ways to look at your actions (context, by relevant persons, by projects), but urgency and priority are missing.

Other time management techniques argue for planning the day in advanced (-> the evening before, adding puffers and including timeslots for "unplanned events") and ordering your actions by priority/urgency (Eisenhower method). The only way to emulate this is by using the today flag, but that way I can only chose the items, not the time when I want to do them. This "problem" seems to be build in, at least I found that the GTD book also argued for this kind of "stream" time management without predefined order or priorities.

What I also miss is some kind of "daily review coach", which lets me pick actions for the next day, review my callendar and fit them in and then present me a schedule for my next day.

GTD - the book
I didn't know GTD when I started using eProductivity and read the book during the last weeks. The biggest "aha" moments came in the last three chapters when it came to the "big picture" view ("The Power of the key principles" -> seems that David Allen really likes bottom up :-)) and I think I will re-read the book with that knowledge.

Some of the ideas in the book are really great (I reordered my paper stuff into folders.... What a great feeling afterwards! That alone was worth the book!). Most of the action stuff was intuitive with eProductivity (at least I did them that way when using eProductivity without reading the book :-) ) What I didn't like was the "stream vs structure" view of GTD (see above). Anyway: I'm looking forward to what the re-read will bring!

So, to sum it up:
+ Up to now the easiest way to organize my time
+ Really intuitive way to work with your emails and getting on top of them ("inbox zero")
+ Linking information is a great time saver (and could be used much more) .
+ Different ways to look at my action lists make me much more comfortable not to miss something
+ Today view gives me a easy way to know what needs doing today
- "Dragging emails to actions" and "mark complete" have too many clicks
- Stream (vs structured) based action picking doesn't fit my personal working style
- I miss a daily review coach

But even with last negative points: eProductivity wins hands down against all my other tried time and task management tools! And not to forget: the support team is great! :-)

Thanks to Eric Mack and his team for this opportunity! So lets hope they will let me go on with eProductivity :-)