In the fast pace of today's business world, we are pressed to do more with less, to track more things and, well, get things done. Unfortunately, it's easy to get overwhelmed, miss something, and have things fall through the cracks. When that happens, you lose control and perspective and this can have a draining impact on your personal productivity, causing unpleasant ripples in your personal and professional life.

The solution is to hold the world back once a week so that you can do a thorough review of everything that you have (or should have) attention on. David Allen calls this, the Weekly Review. By completing a thorough review, you will feel a greater sense of control and perspective throughout the week and when you do it consistently it will transform the way you get things done.

The Weekly Review Process. It is the critical success factor for people that want to get things done.

This Thursday, May 28th, GTD Coach and fellow eProductivity user Kelly Forrister is leading the first Worldwide GTD Weekly Review. Kelly will be using Twitter to coach a global audience through the Weekly Review process.

Continue Reading: "Worldwide GTD Weekly Review this coming week" » Lotus Notes Product Manager, Dwight Morse, has just posted a detailed tutorial that explains how to use Lotus Notes to retrieve your personal email (e.g. from a hosted account.) Dwight provides detailed screen shots for each step. If you are a first-time user of Lotus Notes and you want to use Notes as your personal information management system, I think you will find this tutorial helpful.

I'm pleased to see this tutorial. Many first-time users are installing Notes for themselves, either to get eProductivity or because they have learned that GTD Author, David Allen, uses Notes. Either way, these people need simple steps to find, download, install, and configure Notes. This is an area in which IBM has historically been light on information for the end-user.

Dwight's tutorial is a step in the right direction to making it easy for people to install and use what David Allen and I believe is an outstanding information management and self-organization tool.

I look forward to Dwight's future tips and I will blog about them as I see them.

Here's what's on my wish list for the future:

• An equivalent tutorial for a first-time installation of Notes 8.x for Mac and PC. (Including how to locate, navigate to and download the software.)
• Videos for each tutorial posted on YouTube to make it easy for people to find and get started

What first-time Notes user topics would YOU like to see IBM blog about?

Link: How to use Lotus Notes to retrieve your personal email
We know that the best way to learn about eProductivity is to experience it yourself. That's why we've decided to conduct free drawings from time to time to encourage people to evaluate eProductivity for themselves. The process is easy and quick and there's nothing to install.

Evaluate eProductivity & enter the drawing for your chance to win:

• ActiveWords
• eProductivity
• GyroQ
• eProductivity Subscriptions (For 3, 6, and 9 months )

Is your name on the list of recent winners?

We will have one more drawing on Monday, June 15, 2009.
(See below for details.)

No purchase is required. To enter the drawing, all you have to do is download and evaluate eProductivity.
Participation in the drawings is free; however, in order to increase the chance of winning for those people that really want to get things done with Lotus Notes, we ask that you take 10 minutes to download and view the eProductivity evaluation database. (There's nothing to install. Simply download, open, and view. When you are done, delete the sample database.) In return, we will automatically add your name to the list of names for the drawing.  

BONUS: If you choose to complete the optional feedback form, we will enter your name in the drawing for a SECOND chance!
After completing your evaluation of eProductivity you will have the option to complete an optional feedback form. In return for sharing your experience with us, we will enter your name in the drawing again for a second chance to win.

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HOW TO ENTER THE DRAWING FOR FREE SOFTWARE:

1. Visit the 'Getting Started' page and follow steps 1-4 (Skip step #5)

2. Download the eProductivity evaluation database (Step #4) and process the sample email messages. This will automatically enter you in the free drawing.

3. Optional step: when you have finished evaluating eProductivity, complete the optional evaluation. Upon receipt of the fully completed form, we will enter your name in the drawing for a second chance to win.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Why are you giving away licenses and subscriptions for free?
We really want you to explore all of the features that eProductivity has to offer. We know that your time is valuable and we want to make it worth your while to explore these features and share your feedback with us. If you choose to explore and follow all of the steps in the evaluation database and send us your feedback (as documented in the sample emails), we will enter your name in the drawing for a second chance to win.

Do I need to purchase anything to enter the drawing?
No. But you do need to download and review the evaluation database which will automatically enter you in the drawing.

How do I find out if I have won?
Following each drawing, we will announce the names of the winners on the eProductivity web site. We will also include them in the subsequent eProductivity Newsletter, so be sure to subscribe! You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for this site.

Do I need to install anything on my computer?
No. There's nothing to install. Simply download, open, and explore. When you are done reviewing the evaluation database, you may delete it. There's nothing to uninstall.

I don't have time to evaluate; can I just contact you by email?
Sorry, no. The only way to enter the drawing is to open the evaluation database and process the sample email messages. This will send us an automated email that will automatically enter your name in the drawing.

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FREE SOFTWARE EVALUATION & DRAWING TERMS & CONDITIONS:
1. No purchase required, however, to enter free drawing entrants must evaluate the eProductivity software by downloading the evaluation database to their computer, opening the database, and processing the sample emails to learn about the software.
2. Only one prize per winner.
3. Names of winners will be published on the eProductivity Web Site and in the eProductivity e-mail Newsletter. We will also send a single email notice to the winner.
4. It is the sole responsibility of the winner to check either the eProductivity newsletter or web site to determine if they have won.
5. In the event that prizes remain unclaimed after 7 business days from posting on the web site, an alternate winner will be selected.
6. Once a winner has been awarded a prize he will be ineligible to win any other prizes.
7. This offer is null and void in countries where free drawings of this kind are prohibited.
8. In the event that winner's country requires taxes to be paid for prizes received these will be the sole responsibility of the winner.
9. In the event of question or dispute, resolution will be at the sole discretion of ICA.COM, Inc. and will be final.
10. ICA.COM, Inc. reserves the right to modify or withdraw this drawing at any time and without notice.
11. Prizes are non-transferrable and have no cash value. Several bloggers have recently shared how they are using Lotus Notes as their system for Getting Things Done using David Allen's GTD Methodology. This weekend, Jens Bruntts wrote up an extensive blog post with screen shots detailing how he's using Lotus Notes and eProductivity as his GTD Solution. Not much I can add to this except that it was really neat to see eProductivity running under Linux (thanks to Lotus Notes cross-platform support). I'm aware that many people are using eProductivity on Mac and Linux but I have only seen a few screen shots.*

Read Jens post: eProductivity review part two: What is it?

* Yes, I'm a Mack and yes, I'm Mac challenged. But I did make sure that eProductivity would run cross-platform so that I can switch at any time. The hard part will be finding equivalents for GyroQ and ActiveWords. Over on the GTD Times blog, Patrick asks how to manage GTD system across multiple machines. Peter Simoons says that eProductivity is the answer.

That's not quite true.

While Peter is a big fan of eProductivity and I appreciate the unsolicited promotion, the real credit goes to Lotus Notes and its ability to replicate information across Windows/Mac/Linux computers seamlessly.

I've just posted a comment that explains how David Allen uses Lotus Notes to create a single trusted system across all of his computers and mobile devices.

Read: Managing GTD systems on two machines and  David's Lotusphere greeting

Update: Apparently my comments on GTD Times have not been approved yet, so here's what I posted:

Patrick,

As David Allen’s technologist for 15 years, I can share that David uses Lotus Notes, from IBM, to solve this challenge and it works very well. with Lotus Notes, he can maintain his projects and actions in a single trusted system that replicates across ALL of his computers, including his Mac, PC, and mobile devices (e.g. Treo).

If David wants to work on his PC, he can pick up his ThinkPad and everything will be there. If he wants to play with his shiny new Mac Air, he can pick that up and all of his information will be there. And, if he’s on the run, he takes his Treo with him and his stuff is there.

In short, he simply picks up whichever tool he prefers and gets things done.

Lotus Notes makes it seamless.

In addition to Lotus Notes, David also uses and recommends eProductivity (http://www.eProductivity.com), an optional tool that makes GTD in Lotus Notes easy. You can start with basic Lotus Notes and follow the GTD Implementation guide to create a very nice system.

Eric Mack
eProductivity Specialist
http://www.eProductivity.com

Sander Zwart is blogging about his experience implementing GTD in Lotus Notes.

It's exciting to read emails and blogs from people around the world that are finding ways to increase their personal productivity and effectiveness using IBM Lotus Notes.

In case you don't read Dutch, here's the English translation.

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