Organization

Getting Things Done with Google Voice Monday, November 30th, 2009

One tenet of Getting Things Done is to always have a tool that you can use to capture thoughts and actions as they pop into your head. I get crazy ideas in the oddest places and times, so it’s important to have a tool at my disposal to quickly capture them. I always have my cell phone on me, so it’s a natural choice for a capture tool. I needed a service that I could dial into and leave a message which would be then transcribed and in my inbox when I returned to my computer. For a long time, I’ve been using Jott , but Google Voice has taken over as my tool of choice for capturing next actions and ideas.

Why the switch to Google Voice? Set up your Google Voice Account for Getting Things Done Calling your new capture tool for the first time Setting up more automation

Google Voice has become a vital part of my GTD workflow. Even if you’re on a low tech system like an excellent Moleskine , using Google Voice as a capture tool when you’re on the road is a safe and free alternative.

So I’m a big fan of David Allen’s GTD System . For a long time, I’ve been looking for a personal information system that could help me get the job done.

I’ve been extremely impressed with the early versions of Things . I’m starting to get very excited about their iCal sync feature .

If you’re looking for an electronic version of David Allen’s system, this is the tightest app I’ve seen for it. I especially like the “Areas” feature, as most apps I’ve used lack this feature.

Once I have the ical feature, I will be able to sync this info with my PDA. That’s really the only problem with Things in its current build. Once I’m able to access this information on the go, I’ll feel a lot better about having an offline app for this type of organization.

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Congrats to the people over at Gapminder for getting nominated for a webby. Check their site out because not only is their message so important, but their presentation is really impressive. I was particularly attracted to the interactive graphs in tools – it’s a great way of getting their message across.

I’m all about statistics, but I think what really grabbed me was the ability to manipulate the graphs to get the data displayed the way I wanted so that I could do “my own” analysis. You can think about this as it relates to your business development. This can function as a great lead generation tool. Do you have customers in different segments where you can plot their average income gains as a result of purchasing your product? What about investors that want to see the projected impact of your business on the market? Quantitative studies like this are great, and so is giving your audience data that they can play with. This has many implications. In general, you present your ideas to people with limited time – how quickly can you get your message across?

Data visualization and interactivity are two very important subjects in a world where information is constantly being thrown at us. Presenting it in a way where the user can quickly understand the message and easily manipulate the data is vital to effective communication.

I think the guys over at Quibblo are trying to get this idea across en masse. There are tons of sites where you can design surveys and polls, but they’re the only ones I saw that presents the data nicely.

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