Priacta

Q: “I have an email that I want to send as a task to somebody else. How can I do this?”

A: Before I explain how to do it, let me caution as a productivity coach. Just making a task show up in someone’s task list isn’t always the best idea. It’s usually best to forward the email and ask them to accept the assignment.

If you’re not getting good results that way, then their email handling and/or workflow management may need help, and I’d recommend TRO training for them. TRO is a highly simplified yet more powerful approach to GTD principles, and it’s as little as $59. See Tim Kwiatkowski’s great review of TRO for an overview.

So what exactly are the problems with auto-assigning tasks to people, and how do you tell when it might work for you? [Read more…]

Trog Bar displays your meeting agendas automatically, at the right times, if you process tasks and appointments correctly. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. Here’s how to make it work.

First, remember that Total, Relaxed Organization and GTD teach you to assign contexts and/or categories to your tasks when you process them. We refer to this as tagging. With that in mind, we’re ready for the rules for agendas in Trog Bar. [Read More…]

It must be the best-kept secret of Microsoft Outlook.

Many of my coaching clients are floored when I show them how to create tasks from email in Outlook. They say, “Wow, that was worth the whole $900 [cost of Premium Remote Coaching]” or “Nobody in our organization knew how to do that!” That last one came from a brilliant guy in a huge firm with a lot of IT support staff. It seems easy to some, but others don’t know it’s even possible.

Honestly, tips like this help, but they aren’t the real point of Priacta’s coaching and training. Principles, like those we teach in Total, Relaxed Organization, are invariant and apply anywhere. Tools, on the other hand, are just helps for applying principles effectively, and tips are usually just smart ways to use tools. Tools change, but principles are permanent. (See our 4-faceted training model for an idea of how they interrelate.)

So here’s the free, $900* answer. Hopefully this tip will help you work faster, so you can focus on more important things, like really getting control of your time and tasks. [Read More…]

Change is hard. So how do you stack the deck in your favor when you’re trying to make and sustain productivity changes (like learning Total, Relaxed Organization or GTD, or breaking an unproductive time use habit)? A slick, free, and effective tool called RescueTime is your powerful ally in changing time use. As a productivity coach, I love this tool, both for myself and my clients.

Run, don’t walk, and install RescueTime now. I mean it. [Read More…]

Evernote is a universal note-capturing and organizing system. It is now free and—surprise!—gaining popularity. Their 3.0 Web version was recently released for public beta. (You need an invitation to beta test it, ask me for an invite if you need one.)

So what can you do with it?

Who should use it?

[Read More…]