As you probably know, David Allen's book "Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" is the inspiration behind eProductivity.

David's GTD methodology has revolutionized the way millions of working men and women tackle their work. His system turns achieving control and perspective over your commitments into a daily reality.

Many people know this about GTD. What you may not know is that for the past 17 years, David has used Lotus Notes as his personal organization system. (For several years, he's used eProductivity as well.)

This month, David and Eric Mack will be co-presenting two webinars on GTD & Lotus Notes. The webinars will be full of great information for non-eProductivity users and eProductivity users alike.

Some of the things they'll show:

• How to go home at the end of the day with an empty inbox
• How to tackle your work week with the confidence of knowing you’re being as productive as you can possibly be
• What's in David's productivity toolkit and how he uses Lotus Notes to get things done

Webinar exclusively for IBM employees
On April 8th from 10am – 11:30am PST, we’ll be doing a webinar exclusively for IBM employees on applying GTD to Lotus Notes. Many IBMers are fans of GTD already, and this will give more insight into David’s master tips, tricks & strategies. We’ll also look at eProductivity – the only software tool for Lotus Notes that’s earned the distinctive “GTD Enabled” certification.

If you’re an IBM employee, sign up now. Space is limited.

Webinar open to the public
On April 28th from 10:00am - 11:30am PST, David and Eric will be doing another "Getting Things Done in Lotus Notes" webinar for the general public.

Go here to get more details and sign up now. Space is limited.

 

To keep current on eProductivity webinar news, you can subscribe to the eProductivity newsletter to receive updates on this and other events and specials.

Mark Hughes is the Lotus Notes developer behind the ITANA app that makes it possible to access Lotus Notes tasks, Journal entries, and more from an iPhone or Android device.

The iPhone is notorious in productivity circles for not having a native task application. This makes syncing the iPhone to desktop task managment software like Lotus Notes to be a challenge at best. Mark's ITANA application could be a solution to this gapping need in being productive with the iPhone. Plus, his solution works on Android.

Mark has contacted us about getting eProductivity to work with his solution and there has been progress on that front. He wrote a blog post today called Manage eProductivity Projects & Actions on your iPhone and Android. He's got a few screenshots there that show what he's been working on, including this one:

Head on over to Mark's blog to see more screenshots and ITANA information.

At ICA, we are creating opportunities for the next generation workforce. Here's just one example:

As Beta users install the latest release of eProductivity and accept the license agreement, we record the date so that we know who’s really using the software. This gives us an idea of how many people are actually using the new versions and it helps us identify star beta program members so that we can thank them and include them in future special programs. It also allows us to remove people who, for various reasons, choose not to participate in the beta.

This important task is the responsibility of our manager of Beta Program record keeping, Kelly Mack (age 10). In this picture you can see Kelly faithfully doing her job.

P.S. Kelly's been a Notes user for 6 years and has began using eProductivity last year.

Jens Bruntt has posted a sneak preview from the upcoming eProductivity 2.x version. This new version builds on the power of Lotus Notes 8.51 and enables a host of new features. eProductivity 2.x is currently in beta and open to current customers. Contact us if you'd like to join and if you meet the qualifications.

Excerpt from Jen's post:

I would like to show a couple of new features from the coming Lotus Notes 8-enabled eProductivity template.

Save and Add Another
There is now a "Save and Add Another" button available when you're creating or editing an Action. See the illustration below:

This action button makes it easier to plan a project where you know that there will be a number of actions involved. What you do is you create an action. When the form is filled in, you click the Save and Add Another button. This saves/closes the Action and then brings you to a new Action form that you can then fill in. And this of course can be repeated for as many actions as needed.

Very handy. I definately can use use it. I often know need to add two-three actions in a row.

Continue reading the rest of the preview on Jen's blog

I was recently asked by a customer:

I normally use email folders for storing emails that I need to reference later. Should I be using the eProductivity Reference Database instead? What's the advantage?

The Reference Database is a separate - and free! - eProductivity application designed to store non-actionable reference materials.

While you can also use email folders for storing non-actionable materials, the Reference Database offers a number of advantages.

First, getting items out of your Lotus Notes mail file will speed it up and also help you to avoid mail file size quotas. For performance reasons, you don't want to store large file attachments (pictures, etc) in your mail file unless you have to. The Reference Database gives a great storage ground for these files.

Secondly, the Reference Database offers far more capabilities than email folders. You can categorize and tag your entries more effectively. You can create checklists and daily log files with datestamps. And, you can utilize the Quick Capture/Quick Paste functionality which helps if you find yourself typing the same things over and over again.

I personally use email folders to just store copies of emails that I might need someday in the future, but don't actively intend to come back to. I use the Reference Database to store all the items that I need to access regularly e.g. ideas for future blog posts, travel packing lists, monthly calls lists, etc.

Download the Reference Database

Depending on which license version you purchased, eProductivity will allow you to define up to three external reference databases and 10 external mail databases. Almost always, at least one of the external mail databases is the user's mail archive.

The ability to file an email into an external database can be used in many ways. In my configuration of eProductivity, I have defined my ten external databases so that I can quickly file something from my inbox into the destination database with a simple drag and drop gesture or by clicking on the File action button as shown here.

So how do I use this?

Continue Reading: "How I set up my external filing databases" »

This week's tip shows shows how to customize your eProductivity project types and action contexts to suit the way you work.

Project Types and Action Contexts are the eProductivity "buckets" into which you classify your work. One such bucket might be "Calls", which lists the phone calls you need to make.This follows the GTD principle of defining your work into the context in which it can actually be done. If you have a phone handy and a "Calls" list to plow through, defining your work this way is very productive.

This is Part 1 in a mini-series, so subscribe to Weekly Tips to ensure you don't miss the other parts.

To see more tips, take a look at the Weekly Tip Archive.

See more in the March eProductivity Newsletter.

Via the Rational Geekery blog

This year, unfortunately, I couldn't make it to Lotusphere in Orlando. After 2009's triumph there with the eProductivity team, I was disappointed not to attend. But, all was not lost. Today I attended the Lotusphere Comes to You roadshow, and this time I didn't have to fly half-way round the world. It was taking place in Barcelona, at the Hotel Juan Carlos I hotel, and a 20 minute walk had me arriving just before the 09:30am start.

So, how was it? I would say a 'roaring success' judging by some comments from my fellow-attendees (a crowd of around 150 attended).

The highlight for me was certainly Ed Brill's talk on the direction of Lotus collaboration. In Spanish! Well done Ed, your effort and enthusiasm were appreciated by one and all. eProductivity got a nice mention, as did yours truly (Eric Mack must have warned him of my presence). Thanks Ed. The 5-minute Project Vulcan video that Ed included left me inspired. You could almost feel the sizzle in the room, as the new tools that Lotus are building looked great. Looks like exciting things ahead for IBM Lotus software.

Ed's slide showing eProductivity:

Luis Suárez also did a very nice job of explaining the social software improvements being made in the Lotus family. Sametime, portal, mashups, social enterprise, Lotusphere prizes and case studies followed-on and, without going into any detail, rest assured that it really does show the strong offering that Lotus has.

All-in-all a great day.

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.

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