Kristina’s Neighborhood

Andrew Sullivan had a little blurb about Sarah Palin's photo with the American Flag draped over a chair. This was a followup to another entry that linked to a Runner's World profile of Palin as a runner (the political bickering in the comments is predictable and predictably irritating, but some people evidently go in for that sort of thing). Within that RW profile is a photo gallery of Palin in her gear pretending to prepare for a run.

God Almighty, where do I start?

I'll start where I started reading, I guess.

Andrew Sullivan accused her of "brandish[ing] Trig as a political pawn at every opportunity." I really don't think anything written in the profile was political, so having Trig in a few pictures was hardly using him as a political pawn. If it were some other celebrity with a small child, I wouldn't be offended to see that parent pictured with a kid in a jogging stroller. Good for her for exercising, and setting an example for her children.

The photos remind me of the sort of embarrassing cheesecake you'd find in grandpa's workshop. A little too new to be kitchy, kept too precious so you know grandpa's thinking prurient thoughts and the whole experience just makes you shudder.

The flag draped over the chair was offensive to me. I consider myself a patriotic American. I happen also to be pretty liberal, but I don't see patriotism as anathema to liberalism, or vice versa--I also want to stress that patriotism goes beyond how we treat our symbols. Anyway, if there's any truth from the recent Todd S. Purdum's article in Vanity Fair  about Sarah Palin's past as a predictor of her future, then I can't say I'm surprised by her carelessness with the flag. To quote Purdum, "Alaskans of every age and station, of every race and political stripe, unself-consciously refer to every other place on earth with a single word: Outside." In other words, if he's right, she considers herself an Alaskan first, and an "American" second.

What offended me more in her portrait with the flag on the chair was her "Blue Star" flag in the window, on the left. Literally, on one hand she's proud of her soldier, on the other, fuck the flag. I question her patriotism, but again, if Purdum's article is accurate, her allegiances lie soley with herself.

And that's what really bugs me more about the current crop of Republicans: their cynical branding of themselves as more patriotic, more American than thou, and to prove it, they have the lapel pins, they have a flag in their Runner's World photoshoots, and as Bill Mahar has so cleverly pointed out, they talk about family values with their second wives (Reagan, McCain et al). If we just take them at face value, this image says, everything will be OK. And if we question anything of their message, we're threatening their First Amendment rights (O'Reilly, Limbaugh).

As long as at least 50% of the voters exercise a little critical thinking, I couldn't be more pleased than to see these cynical jerks scrambling to step on one another to declare themselves the leader of the Republican party. If we're not careful, though...

I have found that in my arsenal of tools to manage my thoughts and my time (Toodledo, gCal, pad and pencil, Shopalot, principally) that I refer to my calendar for past events as much as to see what's on the horizon. If I have to follow up with a client on something, I can search gCal for the appointment date (and from there maybe comb through email exchanges before or after that date). This is really handy if we're going through revisions and drafts of a project.
Naturally, I use my calendar to mark important dates in my personal life, too--dinner plans with friends, theater events with my wife, birthdays, parties, etc. Having this touchstone can be very useful for myriad obvious reasons, the greatest being to me the authoritative reference of seeing something written down, so that I needn't trust (or doubt) my memory.
Yesterday, my friend's mother died. I want to be able to remember this with her next year, so I made a recurring event (no reminder alarm) for yesterday ("X's mother died, 2009"). I hope it doesn't seem cynical that I would record this on my calendar. In fact, I am motivated out of respect for my friend and her deceased mother to be sure to remember it in coming years.
It seems obvious as I write it down here, but it is liberating to know that a calendar works both ways (past and future) for helping my memory. And a single line on my calendar can record for me what happened on a given day-today or a past day.

FOLDERS
Folders are used as "buckets" for projects. Projects are things that take more than a single step to complete, but still have a distinct, measurable, and often planned deadline. These are different than Goals, which are much broader matters, like determining my purpose on earth, self-improvement, business development and business goals, hopes, dreams, marriage, child-rearing, etc.

An interesting note about Folders in Toodledo: your folder list is visible from the Notebook. When you write a note, you have a field for the title of the note, and immediately below it, there is a drop-down menu, containing your folders list just as you have when you're entering tasks in the To-Do List section of Toodledo.

Many of my projects are pretty routine, since I work in a production environment:

1. Get a request for a quote from a customer
   
2. Develop a design for imprinting
   
3. Quote the job
   
4. Get the order
   
5. Order the merchandise
   
6. Print it
   
7. Ship it
   
8. Bill it
   
9. Get paid for it
   

Since so much of my time is spent doing these routine projects, I should probably just trust my gut in determining when a project needs a special folder for it and when it doesn't.

Generally, I use Folders just for the really big ones: kitchen remodeling, developing a website, etc. I can create a "dummy" folder for these routine production projects I've discussed above.

GOALS
Goals are what David Allen would call things you see from a 50,000-foot perspective. These are the real reasons we get up every morning.

These things don't have deadlines.

They don't break down into clear processes, either, so they're not Projects (listed in Folders in Toodledo).

However, they are the highest-level areas that we think of when we think of our lives.

Think of them as the Roman numerals that you'd have if you were to outline your life for a biography: Self-improvement (including physical fitness, education, and spirituality); legacies and relationships like marriage, children, and mentorees; business long-term goals (e.g., increase profitability and grow business to $5M in sales, sell business, etc.), Dreams and Aspirations (learn Italian, get pilot's license, etc.)

Be specific when you create Goals in Toodledo, so you can think of what the work (task) hopes to accomplish and fulfill, but not so specific that it becomes a Project (aka Folder in Toodledo). Remember, these things don't have a deadline. Some goals, like business goals, might come to fruition, and then when you do get $5M in sales, you will begin a process of preparing the business for sale--a project now, no longer a goal.

Toodledo wisely adds three levels to the Goals page: Lifelong, Long-term, and Short-term. The next level below this gets specific: completing Projects attain these goals, and so you categorize your projects by using Toodledo's Folders.

STATUS
This is what David Allen would call "Runway-level" stuff. This is near- and long-range actionable items. This is not where broader-level project management or life-goal topics. Use Folders and Goals respectively.

Next Action: This is the next thing on my mind in a process or project--the most elemental step.

Active: A little more broadly scoped than a next action. Project currently on the desk or in process. Perhaps a parent task.
Examples:

• Developing a quotation for a potential order--I should give myself a time limit to it, or at least track the time I spend, for future reference
  
• Developing new designs for sports thumbnails--takes some time, sometimes a "back burner" project that has a deadline that I can't/shouldn't commit 100% of my attention to
  
• Workshop project at home: say I'm painting a chair--This project has to be done in slow deliberate steps and returned to in a timely manner
  

Planning: Used for a project or action that's not clear in my head yet--something I should start thinking about.

Delegated: Used for an action handed off to someone else to do--need to follow up or get a status report at a later date. Essential to put a due-date on this because the following action in the process is back in my court--I need to be ready for it.

Waiting: Used for an action that has been completed and is waiting for a response. Examples: email/phone contact made, artwork/quotation sent.

Hold: Action that's been stopped. Example: started painting a chair in the basement, ran out paint, and thus an action has become dependent by a newer and more urgent next action. Another example: develop a quotation, send a revision, later find out a school's budget hasn't yet been approved for uniforms (although this situation could arguably fit the criteria for Hold status.

Postponed: Used for an action postponed because of time constraints or better time budgeting purposes.

Someday: Used for an action that should be done someday, but not yet. Some might use the @someday-maybe context instead.

Canceled: Used for an (sub-)action that somehow resolved itself. Example: Action was to "call X" and X called first.

Reference: Used when an action has been completed and just needs to be somewhere so I can search for it at a later (indefinite) date. Example: A quick off-the cuff quotation via email to a customer, BCC'd to Toodledo so I can find it later.

I've been trying to adopt a comprehensive use of David Allen's GTD for a few years now, and for at least a year I've been using Toodledo to track my projects and tasks. Back in January, I upgraded to a Pro account so I could attach files to tasks, and better keep everything in one place.

Toodledo is popular for GTDers, and there's even a Toodledo iPhone app that syncs with the website so you can constantly add and check off items as they come to mind.

We GTDers are striving for a "mind like water," and the mind is good for creating ideas, not so good for storing them. That's where paper and pencil, lists, and now at a higher level, GTD comes in.

But Toodledo is not strict about GTD, because, as David Allen himself says, GTD is systematic, not a system. In other words, a system that's perfect for one user would be completely unwieldy for another, and incomplete for a third person.

Toodledo is not strict about putting tasks into a context, for example, and doesn't demand you create a project before you get to the task portion of a process, for example. You can either go up the pyramid or down, or start anywhere in the middle. However, its flexibility has left me wondering how I could use it better without too much twiddling each time I enter something.

Also, David Allen uses certain words with discrete meanings: Goal, Project, Task, Context, Next Action. Toodledo does not use the same words for all these things, just some of them, and one of them in particular has tripped me up: Folder. "Should I use this as a place to sort my Goals? Well, there is a Goals list..."

Goals are hard enough to define without getting either too general or too specific as it is, so I have almost completely ignored this higher-level sorting in Toodledo. After GTDCoachKelly's first #tweekly review a few weeks ago on Twitter, I got some great tips, and even more ideas about how I could be using Toodledo to get (and keep) things in perspective.

I have instructions at the top of each of my contexts in Toodledo to define what the context is and isn't, and action verbs that keep the context from turning into something meaningless, or trapping project-level stuff into task-level listing. That got me thinking--why not make some notes defining a Goal vs. Project (called a Folder in Toodledo), Status, etc.

So today, I took advantage of this open-ended Sunday morning time and started writing. Here's what I have so far. I hope it helps anyone who reads it. If you're not familiar with GTD, some of the language might seem a little like cult-speak. Don't worry, it is cult-speak in large part.

If you're a struggling GTDer like me, I hope you get some good ideas. I'd love to hear feedback. If you're not a Vox user, you can DM me on twitter (link in right margin).

Goals
Folders
Status

A note from a friend:

I have been researching and thinking extensively about how to be ahead of the curve on selling via social networking.

Let me show you an excerpt from an article I read from the CEO of a CRM company:

"Changing Face of Internet Lead Generation

This is one that I really want to get your thoughts on. My curiosity was triggered by a comment made by Pat Kitano (follow him on Twitter: @pkitano).

He said (highly paraphrased):

People used to use Google to find people to work with, like you would use the yellow pages. Now people are using Google for information and using social networks to find people to work with.

If this is accurate there is a major paradigm shift on its way in the Internet lead generation industry. What do you think? Do you agree with his comment? If it is correct what will lead generation companies look like in the future?"

I know the author, and sent him this quick note of affirmation:

Bill,

When I read your part about people now using social networking sites to help in buying decisions, I tried to figure out how that could be happening....Then I remembered that, on a personal note, I’m getting ready to buy a new pasta maker. After researching them on Google and Amazon, I asked on facebook if anyone had a recommendation! Now, I am never an “early-adapter” type, so if I’m now looking to facebook for buying advice, I can only imagine how many millions of others have preceded me there...

[redacted name]

This is going to be HUGE. Google Adwords is going to still be important, but this is going to be picking up FAST.

I hope that you're having a good one!

Couldn't pass it up when I found it.

Mr t vox

Who is going to win Super Bowl XLIII? The unlikely Arizona Cardinals or five-time Super Bowl champs, the Pittsburgh Steelers?

Arizona has a football team??  They're going to lose.