Before I implemented GTD, I had created a reminder system, similar to Flylady, to remind me about important recurring tasks that I tend to put off. I used Yahoo Calendar to schedule “appointments”, which Yahoo then emailed to my main account upon their occurrence time.
Flylady’s tips remind users about important daily household chores, like laundry, dinner, and quick cleaning (5 minute room rescue). Mine remind me about important recurring work duties, like answering my email, cleaning out my inbox, and invoicing.
I have daily, weekly, and monthly reminders for different tasks. They are timed to come to me at key moments of the day and key days of the week when I am most likely to actually do these tasks. Household chore tasks come to me when I am actually home. Work tasks come to me when I am in the office. Like Flylady, I limit myself to 15 minutes to complete these tasks. On super busy days, I limit myself to only 10 minutes per task.
Here is a partial list of some of the reminders. If anyone is interested in the complete plan, I’d be happy to detail it out with screen shots.
Daily Reminders:
- Laundry (sent every night)
- My “HotSpot” — my inbox (email is sent at about the time I get to the office)– I use David Allen’s GTD method to get through this in 15 minutes
- Respond to emails — again processing my email inbox using GTD
- Return phonecalls — I have to remind myself to do this otherwise this is the task I will put off, and the one that putting off will hurt me the most
- My five minute room rescue is actually just running through my whole house picking up for 15 minutes.
- Get something out of freezer for next night’s dinner
- Make coffee for the next day. We have a timer on our coffee that times it to finish brewing at the time we wake up — 6:00 am. If we forget to do it, I tend to lay around waiting for my husband to get up and make the coffee. And he does the same, waiting for me to get up and make the coffee. This leads to us oversleeping. Yet I can spring out of bed when I hear the beep that the coffee is done.
Weekly Reminders:
- Delegate Tasks (sent on Wednesday midmorning)
Usually by Wednesday, I can figure out whether or not I’m actually going to be able to do something I promised a client I would do. If I’m just too busy, a crisis distracted me, or the task turns out to be beyond my capabilities, I find someone else to do it, usually an employee or a subcontractor. But if I don’t remind myself to do this, the tasks build up so much that I get stressed and lose sleep.
Monthly Reminders
Like Flylady, I use zones to concentrate on cleaning up important areas. She concentrates on rooms, like kitchen, living room, etc. I concentate on systems. In addition to household zones (mine are kids rooms, kitchen, family/ living room, playroom, and yard), every four weeks, one of these zones appears for every single workday for 1 week, reminding me to clean them up so they don’t become monsters.
- Zone: Filing
- make sure projects have info sheet (Each web development project gets a project info sheet stapled to the front with usernames, logins, registrar info, mysql info, etc.)
- Zone: Quickbooks
- clean up
- add in mileage
- unbilled expenses
- follow up on late invoices
- Zone: Company website
I do so many websites for clients that my own company’s website is often neglected. Like the mechanic whose car is in bad shape. If I don’t remind myself to update my own site, it can become an embarrassment.
- Search engine optimization chores
- New content
- Link checking
- Zone: SugarCRM
Sugar is a CRM (customer relationship management) program that we use daily to track possible projects, leads, and assign tasks to different employees and subcontractors. If I don’t clean it up once in a while, it becomes a messy monster.
- Close out old meetings
- Follow up on opportunities
- Enter completed tasks into Quickbooks for invoicing
- Enter any new contacts or leads
Less Frequent Reminders
- Color your hair!
If I don’t remind myself to do this every 6 weeks, then I forget until I catch a glimpse of myself under some harsh fluorescent lighting and am completely embarrassed.
