I’ve been really enjoying the Office 2007 beta, well, most of it. I’ve got a weird quirk with Excel right now that gives me some kind of vbs error every time I open it. And Powerpoint is just too unbelievably slow. So slow in fact that I refuse to use it. But Word and Outlook are definitely great to use. I’m a big fan of the pretty gooey look too. I’m sorry, I just can’t help it.

Anyway, one of the first things I noticed was that I couldn’t find stuff, like commands. I’m so used to using the old menu bars, especially in Word and Excel, that I couldn’t figure out what part of the ribbon I was supposed to be looking at. It took me days to figure out that if I wanted to run a macro, I need to allow the Developer part of the ribbon to be shown (like writing a macro really requires you to be a developer!).

And this is how I figured it out: I did some scouting around and found a great set of pages. Here are three links that can help you figure out exactly where a command is in the new programs. They’re interactive pages that let you navigate in the old menu bars and then tell you where the command is now. So, in my case, I used the one for Word, and navigated to find out how to play a macro. Here’s a shot of the result I got:

And here are the links. I hope they help you as much as they helped me!

• Interactive: Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide
• Interactive: Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 command reference guide
• Interactive: PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 command reference guide

For a while now, I’ve been enamoured of David Seah’s productivity posts. Don’t worry Dave, I won’t start stalking you ;) He’s a talented “freelance New Media Developer” with a very sweetly designed blog on various things. I subscribe to his posts about productivity, and occasionally surf the rest of his blog.

Now, Dave is a relatively new inductee to the GTD cult, but has seemingly always been a devoted admirer of practical productivity principles. Like me, he seems to like tweaking his system to make himself more productive, even designing new forms to track various things. Unlike me, he knows how to design beautiful forms, and describe them in fun ways. For example, who can resist trying out the “Task Destruct-o-Matic” form in order to track how much work you’re putting into a particularly unsatisfying task?

I’ve been meaning to blog about a particular form of Dave’s that I’ve fallen in love with. I’ve been slow for two reasons: (1) I’ve not been blogging much because I’m too busy either getting things done, or reading about getting things done ;) and (2) I wanted to make sure that I really loved the form enough to keep using it. I didn’t want to point you to something that didn’t end up working out for me.

A Better Productivity/Procrastination Tracker

I’ve been trying out various things for the past couple of years to keep myself on track in terms of my productivity:procrastination ration. I started off by not tracking anything. From there, I moved to a time tracker that I could click on in my task bar to keep track of exactly (to the nanosecond) how much time I spent on various projects. While this was useful for making sure I didn’t work overtime as a Teaching Assistant, it didn’t do much else for me. Then I tried various experiments with 15 minute dashes, (10+2)*5 scheduling (see 43 Folders), kitchen timers, widget timers, etc. etc. etc. Eventually, I stumbled upon Dave’s Printable CEO Series. The forms were interesting, and I played with them now and then, checking out each new one. Finally, he created the Emergent Task Timing form, which suits my working style perfectly. I prefer the wide version, which is essentially 12 hours of dots marching across the page. Each dot represents 15 minutes, and can be further sub-divided into 5-minute blocks. Dave explains exactly how to use it on his blog, including a screenshot of one of his filled-in versions. I use it basically as he describes it. Write down a couple of projects that you want to be working on. Every 15 minutes (thank you Dig_clock widget for Yahoo’s Widget Engine), evaluate what’s your doing. Fill in dot(s) as appropriate. As the day progresses, I can see how much time I’m spending on real work/research vs. “Reading Blogs” or “Lunch”.

I really liked this system the first day I tried it, but wanted to see how long it kept my attention. Well, it’s about three months later and I’m still using it faithfully. At the end of each day, I count up my dots to see how much work I’ve done. Then, as a further tracking device, I just jot that number in my calendar, so I can see at a glance how much I’ve accomplished in a week or month.

A couple of things that I really like about the form is that I can see at a glance how my day is going. In addition, the fact that I have a chime ringing every 15 minutes serves to remind me of where I am. For example, if I say to myself, “I’ll just read one post” in my feed reader, and all of a sudden, the chime rings, then I know that I’ve just killed 15 minutes. At that point I can either start working again, or renegotiate with myself. Basically, it’s a chance for a fresh start every 15 minutes. Another thing that I like is the fact that there’s something fundamentally pleasing about filling in dots. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know if it’s a colouring-book fetish leftover from my childhood or what, but it works.

Online Version

If you track Dave’s blog at all, you’ll notice pretty quickly that he’s not one to let his work get stale. Perhaps it’s his procrastination monster, but the results are positive. He keeps tweaking his forms until they are perfect, and it’s great for his fans. He’s recently put out an online flash version of his Emergent Task Timer. Very sweet! Now, instead of having to print out the form and fill in the dots yourself, you can just click click click away. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction for those interested in a truly paperless office ;) I’ve just started playing with the online version. I may not stick with it, since I really like the paper version, but it makes a nice change.

Categories: GTD, productivity, procrastination