The picture tells most of the story.



Getting to see the eProductivity up on the big screens at the GTD Summit was quite a thrill. I wasn’t close enough to see Eric’s face but I’m sure he was grinning when the eProductivity logo displayed the first time. After all, eProductivity has been in the works a long time.

It’s been a journey. Too bad Ian, our principal software architect, couldn’t have seen it in person, but I’m sure he’s reading this blog carefully!
Having David Allen, a long-time eProductivity user, and other GTD faithful riff on the merits of eProductivity and Lotus Notes during the conference was quite encouraging to boot.

I wonder how many people caught this: when David flashed screen shots of his personal task lists - those were from eProductivity!

Guest Post by Ryan Heathers

When I think of GTD -- perhaps because I’m fairly new to the methodology—inspiring creative innovation is not the first benefit I think of. After all, productivity helps to get the nitty-gritty details done, accomplished, put away. It clears space in your mind for higher-level thoughts to occur. But actually inspire innovation? That seems like a logical leap.

Not so.

GTD teaches you to capture thoughts whenever, wherever they occur.  Black belt GTDers have a capture tool with them at all times.

 
Once you’ve become a pro at capturing your thoughts and putting them into a trusted system, the benefit to innovation becomes obvious.

Stepping back for moment, creativity is defined as coming up with a great idea. Innovation is defined as putting that creative idea into action. Of course, the two concepts are very tightly linked. Bottom line, though, is that in order to be innovative, you need to be creative first.

That’s where GTD helps by teaching you to always capture your thoughts.

It’s far easier to innovate when you’ve come up with half a dozen creative ideas for that looming project over the course of the last week. Or year. When you sit down at your computer, and the deadline is ticking to think up something excellent, you have a huge head start. So much of your thinking can be done already and you can comfortably slip into execution mode. You don’t have to wait for the innovation lighting to strike you.  

A panelist at the session called this, “seeding your mind”.

So can creative innovation be scheduled?

Yes, if you’re using GTD capture principles to seed your mind for success.  

Guest Post by Ryan Heathers

I'm still processing my thoughts from the GTD Summit. What an amazing event! In fact, it was probably the most inspiring (not to mention productive) conference I have attended. To be in one place with 400 people, including movers, shakers, thought leaders and GTDr's was definitely a high.

I'm not sure the audience caught it but when David Allen showed screen shots of his personal system. he was showing Lotus Notes and eProductivity. I know that Several people downloaded and installed Lotus Notes and eProductivity for the first time as a result. How cool.

The above video was created by David Spark This evening, Chris Blatnick  (Interface Matters) and I were invited by Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux to talk about eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes.

I talked about GTD, eProductivity, and Lotus Notes from a designer perspective and Chris talked about how he uses these to get things done.

Session notes, courtesy of the Taking Notes Podcast:

• What's the big deal about GTD and why should Julian (or anyone else) care?
• eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes and how it makes getting things done in Lotus Notes easy
• How Chris Blatnick uses Lotus Notes and eProductivity to Get Things Done
• What does "GTD Enabled" mean?
• The secret sauce of eProductivity: Eliminating unconscious resistance and barriers to knowledge work in Notes
• Eric and David's very successful Lotusphere presentation: BP304: Lotus Notes and Me: Maximizing personal productivity with Lotus Notes.  (Photos)
• The upcoming GTD Summit - Eric will moderate GTD at Home: From Boardroom to Living Room. Chris will blog and tweet the event.
• Julian plans to learn about GTD and take the eProductivity test drive
• Bruce asks for an gets a special offer for all Taking Notes Podcast listeners (Listen for details near the end.)

The show runs 49 Minutes and is 45.7 MB (128kbps)

Taking Notes Podcast #96

Special thanks to Bruce and Julian for inviting us on the show and thanks to show sponsor, Elguji Software for making it happen. We will be exhibiting at David Allen's GTD Summit conference, March 11-13, 2009, in San Francisco, California.

If you are planning to attend, please plan to stop by and say hello, We look forward to meeting you!

If you need passes, we have a few passes left. Details here.

Several times a week, I receive testimonials from people that write to share their experience using eProductivity. Today, I received two fun ones.

The first needs no explanation:

Just to let you know.  I worked on setting this [eProductivity] up till about 2 am last night.  I had an empty in box when I went to bed last night for the first time in I don't know how long.  This morning I started dealing with email at 9 and now again have an empty mail box.  What a feeling.  I still have to finish setting up all my projects/commitments and I don't feel confident yet that I am using the software as effectively as I could, but I am very excited.  I really think this may be the tool that keeps everything together for me and allows me to "clear my brain" as David Allen would say.

I can see even at this early stage that this is a program I think I should invest in. I think I will look at GyroQ as well.

This is a pretty common theme from first-time users but I enjoyed reading every one.

The second is from a customer that had uninstalled eProductivity in order to experience and evaluate vanilla Notes 8.02. That experience wasn't as productive for him as he had hoped, so he switched back.* This morning, he wrote:

I'm very happy to be back on eProductivity -- EOM

I love it. eProductivity is about Getting Things Done with IBM Lotus Notes. Time and again, we are learning from our customers that David Allen's GTD methodology and the eProductivity software are having a huge impact on the way people get things done. It's also changing the way people think about Lotus Notes.

I think that's cool.


* eProductivity works well on Notes 6.5x, 7.x, and 8.x, 8.5x on Win/mac/Linux. We have many customers happily using eProductivity with Notes 8.02 and 8.5. This particular customer was extremely productive and proficient with Notes 7 and eProductivity. His move to Notes 8, from a productivity perspective, simply wasn't. Your experience may be different.  If you have an eProductivity experience to share  would love to hear from you. (If you are not using eProductivity yet, get started.)
Guest post by Wendy Mack:

Next week, my sister Amy and I will be accompanying our father to the GTD Summit; we will be assisting him at the eProductivity pedestal in the product showcase. We will help people learn how we use Notes, eProducivity and Mr. Allen's GTD methodology to get things done.

As part of my preparation, I created two documents to help my sister and me prepare for the Summit. I have learned that it is helpful to map out the people we might meet and connect this to a picture so that if we meet them we have a reference point. So that is what I did.



My father encouraged me to share these maps on his blog so that whoever is interested can use them to plan for the conference.

The first mind map contains all of the information relevant to the GTD Summit (speakers, agenda, exhibitors, etc.)
20090301_GTD_Summit_Planning_Map_(Wendy_Mack).mmap

The the second map contains information about key people at the David Allen Company - many of whom will be attending the Summit.  
20090301_GTD_Summit_DavidCo_Key_People_Map_(Wendy_Mack).mmap

I hope that this information helps. My sister and I look forward to helping and learning.

Update: I created these in MindManager 7. Use the free MindManager viewer to read these maps.

• 
• 
• 
•