I know the blog has been a bit quiet the past few weeks, but I have just returned from a vacation to beautiful Sanibel Island, FL. During my time off, I took the opportunity to catch up on a lot of the “nerd” books I’ve been wanting to read. One of the books I was most interested in reading was David Allen’s “Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity.” I’ve seen it mentioned on a number of the blogs I read regularly, and have also heard it mentioned by a few folks in passing as a great way to reduce stress. After reading the book, I realized that Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 (and the soon-t0-be-released Office Onenote 2010 version) fit into the process perfectly, and that I had in-fact already implemented aspects of Getting Things Done into my work routine already.
Getting Things Done? Shouldn’t I Already Be Doing That?
If you’re not familiar with the David Allen book or his “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method, it’s mostly a blueprint for how to manage tasks, reduce stress, and take control of your many to do lists. His method is particularly useful for the “knowledge” worker, and takes into account the dynamic, fast-changing requirements to get things done on a daily basis. To get the full idea of how to get things done, you should truly read his book. However, in order to show you how Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 fits into the mix, I’ll give you a crash course in how to get things done as described in the David Allen book:
- All new material (to do lists, documents, action items) come to your “inbox”, where they wait to be sorted through the method.
- This is where the David Allen book helps reduce stress, as you get all those nagging to do lists out of your head, and into a system where they can be tracked. Thus, your brain doesn’t have to worry about remembering all those items.
- When processing the inbox, you break things down into two categories by asking “What’s the Next Action.”
- If there’s multiple next actions, it’s part of a project.
- If it’s not actionable, it becomes either trash or reference material.
- Trash is an item no longer needed
- Reference material is either a Someday/Maybe (a list of potential future projects) item, or general reference (items that are strictly reference material and will never require action).
- For each project, determine whether to file it under the Someday/Maybe list, or create a list of next actions.
- When asking “What’s the Next Action?”, you get things done as follows:
- Actions taking two minutes or less are done immediately.
- Actions taking more than two minutes are either delegated (because you’re not the best person to do the action), or put on the Next Action list and deferred until a later date and/or scheduled time.
I’m sure it is confusing to read it, but it may help to see the Getting Things Done process in a flowchart.
GTD and OneNote…
So how does Office OneNote 2007 fit into this craziness? The David Allen book basically tries to shift your behavior from managing task lists in your head, to managing task lists via physical and/or electronic mediums. While the “Getting Things Done” book leans more towards the use of paper and folders (with some mention of using Outlook), my own experience has shown Office OneNote 2007 to be a highly effective tool. Basically, OneNote is the digital equivalent to one of those “multi-subject” paper notebooks. In Onenote, you can create a file (“notebook”) which contains multiple folders (“sections”) or groups of folders (“section groups”), with multiple pages (“pages”) of information contained in each section. As such, you can easily create Notebooks and Sections that allow you to organize and manage tasks to get things done. To help with your initial setup of Office OneNote 2007, I’ve created an eHow article that shows you How to Get Things Done with Office Outlook 2007.
But Why Use OneNote?
Ok, so OneNote excels at organizing “stuff”, but why would you really want to use it in your Getting Things Done routine? Here’s where OneNote can really take your organization to the next level:
- Tags – OneNote allows you to apply a number of tags to items, including a “to-d0″ tag. I tag all my “Next Actions” as a To-Do within OneNote, which allows me to then pull up the entire list at once by clicking Insert | Tag | Show all tagged Notes. Clicking on the tag then takes you straight to the page in OneNote. The variety of tags can also help you remember things to discuss with others, save for later, or highlight (so they stick out on the page). This feature is incredibly powerful and customizable.
- Multiple Data Formats – You can dump just about anything into a OneNote notebook: images, text, audio, video, Office Documents, etc. You can even drag/drop or copy/paste Outlook email items into a notebook’s page, which is great when you quickly want to reference “the email from a few weeks ago” about a particular item. No more hunting through PST’s or a huge inbox!
- Outlook Integration – If you’re like me, you run your life by your Outlook calendar. Office OneNote 2007 has the to create tasks (including time-based tasks) that link back to the specific page in OneNote. You can also create appointments for items directly within OneNote. This is particularly helpful for “Next Action” items that you delegate, or that are time-based (such as “Call Kelly at 3PM on Friday”).
- Built-In OCR (Optical Character Recognition) – Every image you paste into one of your OneNote pages goes through an OCR process. This means that text within your images becomes data which is searchable.
- Search – OneNote search is incredibly useful, as it hunts across all your Notebooks, sections, and pages. After all, once you’ve been Getting Things Done for awhile (using Office OneNote 2007 as your task organizer), you’ll no doubt have some fairly large OneNote notebooks. Trying to find reference material could be like looking for the “needle in a haystack” without this wonderful search capability.
- Shared Notebooks – OneNote has the ability to create shared notebooks, which can be handy if you want multiple people working out of the same notebook and/or want that notebook synced between multiple computers.
- Built-in Backup – OneNote has a feature which allows you to back-up your notebook to another place on a regular basis. This is incredibly handy, as it would NOT be fun to have your task lists wiped out due to a computer problem!
- Easily Move Sections & Pages – I thought I would throw this in just to quell some fears about getting started with OneNote and Getting Things Done. If you’re like me, you’ll no doubt find a way to tweak the method so that it better fits your work style or the type of work you do. No worries, simply create a new notebook with sections to fit your work style, and then easily move the pages (fully intact) from the old notebook to the new notebook. Away you go!
As you can see, Office OneNote is quite a powerful tool and fits in nicely with the “Getting Things Done” method as described in the David Allen book. I’ve actually been using a slightly modified version of this at work for 3 weeks now, and it’s definitely helped me get things done efficiently and quickly.
** UPDATE ** I’ve continued using OneNote and GTD at home and work with HUGE success! I’ve recently updated to OneNote 2010, and have found the ability to create “subnotes” a valued addition in keeping my notes organized. If you’re ready to tackle your inbox with OneNote, it’s currently available for a reasonable price (close to 30% off) at Amazon. You can either get OneNote by itself, or as part of any version of Microsoft Office. Not sure how long these prices will last, so ACT NOW!
BONUS!
Since eHow discontinued their writers program, I’ve now been granted full access to my articles. One of the articles I wrote was How to Get Things Done with Microsoft OneNote. Check out the attached PDF, as it will be a great quick-reference when you go to set this up!
Final Thoughts…
I definitely encourage you, particularly if you’re stressed, to check out the book and give Office OneNote 2007 a try. Additionally, if you don’t have OneNote and purchase the 2007 version at Amazon now, you’ll qualify for a free upgrade to the 2010 version when it is released. As always, I welcome commentary on your experiences with OneNote and/or your thoughts on the David Allen book. If you have questions, feel free to Contact Me directly!
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