Notes on Productivity Home Page

Question: When you identify important projects, do you clearly define the successful outcome?
Do you clearly describe, either in the project title or description what success, even "wild success" will look like?  If you are not doing this, you are missing out on perhaps the most powerful productivity tool available to help you accomplish your goals and dreams: your brain.  In fact, if you don't regularly do this, you're leaving your brain in park, when it could be driving you to accomplish wild success.

Visualizing the Successful Outcome
Many years ago, David Allen shared with me that one of the first things he did when planning his first book, the best-selling, Getting Things Done, was to write the Wall Street Journal review of his book, first. He wrote the book review as he would like it to appear in print, even before writing the first chapters of his book. For many years, I've written my projects in the past tense -- as if they were "done" and I found that helped me to "see" done as the objective. I thought that David's example of writing a formal review of his book project was very clever and a powerful visualization tool, so I made note of it.

My Personal Application
When I set out to develop my eProductivity software, I followed David's recommendation and decided to write my own review. I decided to summarize the product in two sentences, each from the perspective of a different audience. eProductivity is built on Lotus Notes, so I decided that the Notes community would provide one perspective. Since eProductivity embodies many of the principles that I learned from David's book, I decided that the GTD community should provide the other.

Continue Reading "Define clear outcomes for project success" »

You're not using ActiveWords?!!  You don't know who Buzz is?!! You're in for a real treat!  Tech evangelist, Robert Scoble will interview my buddy, Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, on www.fastcompany.tv today at 10:00 AM PST.



Buzz is always an interesting guy to visit with. To refer to him the CEO of ActiveWords is too limiting. Buzz is perhaps the best networker in the tech world - he's certainly the most prolific. (There are probably only 2-3 degrees of separation between Buzz and anyone in the tech world you'd want to meet.) I've had the opportunity to work with Buzz on several occasions as we share a common passion for all things mind mapping, GTD, and productivity.

Buzz and I first began talking about adding ActiveWords support for Lotus Notes several years ago. We finally did it and, with ActiveWords and eProductivity, millions of Notes Users can finally control the most productive aspects of Lotus Notes, from anywhere - even when Notes isn't running! I wonder if he will demonstrate or talk about ActiveWords and Notes on the show? (Hint to Buzz)

Anyway, here's the link to the live broadcast. I believe the replay will be up shortly, too.

Update: Here is a link to a PDF of my ActiveWords Wordbase

As I prepare to take our eProductivity software public (It's been a private client-only solution for many years) I needed to find ways to support a growing community of eProductivity users. Since we are already a Notes and Domino shop, naturally I first checked to see what was available within the Notes community. This search led me to two outstanding tools: IdeaJam, by elguiji software and DomBulletin from OpenNTF.org.

IdeaJam is an amazing product that engages community by allowing people to post ideas and vote on others. IdeaJam wraps all of this in the normal social tools like RSS, comments, email alerts, tag clouds and so on. What's neat about the voting is that you can cast a vote to Promote or Demote an idea. So, over the course of a day/week/month, you can see how the popular ideas float to the top. If you are a power Notes user, then you are probably already familiar with the IdeaJam site that Notes users are using to tell IBM what features are most important to them. In the year that the public IdeaJam site's been up I think they have had more ideas and votes posted than McDonald sold Hamburgers in the same period! (Well, close.)



In the very short time that we've had our IdeaJam site up we've had several excellent ideas submitted and some of these are already in our development queue. I plan to blog more about IdeaJam as I get more experience with the process of involving users in the design process. You're welcome to check out our fledgling eProductivityJam.

Continue Reading "Two social productivity tools: IdeaJam and DomBulletin" »

This says it all...



Source: phdcomics.com.  Via: re:Domino

I read this morning that Alan Lepofsky has left IBM for Socialtext. As a friend of Alan's it both exciting and saddening to read this announcement. Alan's influence on me personally was one of the contributing factors in my decision to launch this blog by this title. Although I had no prior knowledge I have often wondered if Alan would not be more satisfied working for a smaller company. It always seemed that each time I spoke with him in person that he had more ideas and passion than he could comfortably convey through his blog or current position at IBM. Apparently Alan had those same thoughts as well.   IBM's loss is Socialtext's gain. I admit that, secretly, I was hoping someday eProductivity would be large enough to attract the likes of an Alan or Ed. It still is. I can think of few who had done a more exemplary job at building a sense of community around the Lotus product line.  Alan, I wish you the very best of success in all of your endeavors and I look forward to learning more about their products as I continue to read your blog.

All is not lost
Fortunately, the Lotus community still has Ed Brill to carry the torch for all things Notes and Domino and to act as our dedicated FUDBuster against attacks of misinformation. Please continue on, Ed!

What about those valuable Notes tips Alan used to share?
Alan's departure leaves a big hole in the Notes community in terms of sharing valuable insights on using Lotus Notes productively. For those of you that follow my blogs, you know that I often tip my hat to Alan's informative how-to posts. We share a common passion for helping people get Notes.  I've often considered the idea of asking Alan if I could syndicate some of his content here at Notes on Productivity to expand the reach of his blog, but he's done just fine so far without my help. As eProductivity launches this month, I plan to step up my own blogging about using Lotus Notes productively and perhaps share in the valuable service which Alan provided to the Notes community.

Alan, on behalf of many grateful Notes users around the world, thank for your service! I wish you the best of success!