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David Allen, GTD Coach Kelly Forrister, and eProductivity's Eric Mack collaborated on a recent TechGTD podcast.

Topics in the far-ranging podcast included cloud computing, mobile devices, favorite apps, Lotus Notes, and much more. It's well-worth listening to the approximately 48 minutes of run-time.

Note: Listening to this podcast requires a GTD Connect membership. You can sign up for a free trial here.

Click the image below to go to the podcast on GTD Connect (login required).

At this year's Lotusphere, IBM Lotus VP of messaging and collaboration, Kevin Cavanaugh presented the Technology Keynote. Kevin talked about the Lotus product strategy, roadmap, and of course, Project Vulcan.

Kevin discussed how Lotus applications bring a flood of information to the user, and he pointed out a key problem that this can cause: information overload.

"... we don't need more calendars... we need a way to consolidate and adjudicate between competing events. ... we don't need more ways to capture text; we need ways to reduce the stress of unfulfilled commitments and organize tasks for action... As an industry, we're kind of guilty of multiplying lists, with no real method for how those lists of tasks might be managed. However, there are some great counter-examples..."

Kevin proceeded to talk about David Allen's Getting Things Done® (GTD®) Methodology and how eProductivity is a solution developed by Lotus Business Partner Eric Mack and David Allen to 'GTD Enable' Lotus Notes. (See the video for more).

On a related note, one theme that came out of Lotusphere was how CIOs feel that they've extracted all the cost cutting value they can from IT budgets. There's not much left to pare down. CIOs are instead focusing on making workers more productive. (Read the conversation transcript at Escape Velocity, a blog by Nathan T. Freeman)

Lotus has introduced many new improvements and enhancements to their products that can help, but at the end of the day, value creation ultimately happens at the individual level. It's at this level - increasing personal productivity - that the next great opportunity exists.

With that in mind, it's exciting to see Lotus exploring ways to increase worker productivity. One way they're doing that is by looking beyond Lotus software to the best practices of GTD and software tools like eProductivity that complement Lotus offerings and help users get things done.

Are you using eProductivity Sidebar Widgets in Lotus Notes 8? Then you'll probably enjoy the new "Mark Complete" feature that was included in the latest eProductivity 1.84 version. Version 1.84 was just released this week.

In version 1.84, you can mark projects and actions as "Complete" from the sidebar widget. It's a nifty timesaver. Now you can work from anywhere inside of Lotus Notes and still march through your task list, checking off things as you go.

In fact, you can even make your widgets appear in a New Window outside of Lotus Notes, and then you can use your task list when you're browsing the web or whatnot.

Here's how the new button looks:

People frequently ask me how eProductivity handles email attachments. When people try to drag-and-drop emails into an eProductivity project/action/calendar entry, the attachment seems to disappear.

While the attachment is still there - it's located inside the linked email if you open the email up - the attachment is more hidden than some might like. You might want the attachment to be immediately available once you open up the project/action/calendar entry.

Well, as with many things in eProductivity, "there's a preference option for that". We like customizable software, and from the feedback we get, so do you.

So to control this email attachment option, go inside the eProductivity preferences and look for the following section:

(Click on picture for larger view)

Oh, and if you're wondering how to get into the eProductivity preferences, click on the big eProductivity button inside the software and locate the "Preferences..." menu item.

[ YouTube Link ]

Living in or near Singapore? Stephan Wissel posted today about a GTD training opportunity for people near Singapore. A GTD coach from DavidCo is visiting that area and will be potentially available for corporate seminars, consulting, or personal workflow coaching.

Interested to learn why David Allen personally uses eProductivity? Here's some of his reasons why...