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David and his staff say GTD is really about the projects, yet I've resisted this step for as long as I've been doing it.

I have gotten the inbox for real physical papers. I have the work weekly review habit going pretty well (home not as much). I use a checklist to go through places where I may have collection leaks (email at zero, vmail at zero, inbox papers processed etc). I keep both gmail and work email at close to zero and get to zero a few times a week. I have somewhere around 350 discrete actions captured. I have set up home and work filing systems, with labels, and use them. But this is mostly runway level stuff. Now I feel like I need to glue my runway down to something - so that I can leave it without it coming with me. I think I've realized that some of the 50,000 level questions that I know are on my mind have answers in this middle layer of projects.

So it's time to make a project list. I am going to be fiddling with MindManager to create this and if I can get really fancy maybe have it pull tasks into Outlook. First, though, I just need to get all my projects captured, and have them in one place for reviews.

We get a lot of junk mail, way too much now that we're past the "discovery" threshold for the new address. So I spent about a half hour to start the reduction, which I'd done for our old address but not for the new house. I figured I'd write some tips for those of you who'd like to reduce your junk mail.

1. www.dmaconsumers.org is the first step, which will get rid of unsolicited mail. Choose the "get rid of it all" option. Note this only gets rid of place you probably haven't bought from before. It won't get rid of catalogs from companies you may actually buy stuff from. If you're like us, you do this online so the categories are a waste anyway. You will have to put in a CC number but it's to validate your address. They used to charge you $1, now it's free.

2. www.optoutprescreen.com
This is run by the credit bureaus and will get you off of credit card offer mailing lists.

3. go to www.catalogchoice.org, to remove yourself from catalogs you get from companies you do buy stuff from but don't want catalogs for. Keep this updated approximately quarterly.

The above steps take little time to do, but will take 2+ months to see the full benefit of since your name is already out there on lists. Given time, it does work.

4. Email to any other repeat offenders that you don't want their mail/catalogs.

Any other suggestions?

I won't be too wordy here since I'm tired, maybe more later... very stream of thought so sorry if it's a bit hard to read.

At the end of 07 here is my current GTD system:

Revolves around MS Outlook - work emails get the GTD add in treatment, and my inbox is almost daily at 0.
If it is a work task it goes into the appropriate context, project, and subproject (optional).
If it is a home task I type it in as Non-work, @home/@errands, and the appropriate subproject. Subprojects are most important but are also a little loose, as not all have a specific outcome (for example, I have Subproject Fitness - maintain gear). As such many of these will never go away but I don't have a problem with that so far.

If it is an input from phone, people talking to me, meetings etc, it goes into an Outlook task as well.
I have the tasks syncing via ActiveSync and I'm using Oxios To-Do to replace the crappy WM 5 task thing.

Capturing on the go - not the best at this, but I almost always have my phone so, either an Oxios task, which syncs back to outlook, or a sticky note which also syncs to outlook via Smartphone Notes app.

I have just added EverNote which I have syncing between home and work 'puters, and I have the phone beta also. I also have the portable version which means I can use it anywhere there is a computer via my USB drive.

Any stickies I take will now end up in EN. I am using EN as a electronic filer, reference tagged stuff.

I am also moving the Google Notebook entries I have used into EN as well. I will continue to use Goog Notebooks when away from EN but the goal will be to get things into EN.

I am trying to get to fewer collection points.
So, next hit is my gazillion email addresses, all of which can result in lurking actions. I have started with pointing one at gmail, and so far so good. Gmail seems to auto sort it, and it's also killing the Russian spam (WHAT GAME PLAY??) one of my boxes is innundated with. My gmail acct is finally at a zero inbox, with any resulting tasks going into... Outlook! Also, Gmail seems to be able to smartly respond with the right from address so we'll test this out a bit.

I will forward over my other email boxes in a week or so if this goes well.

Non electronic... painful....
work files are in order, with proper GTD labeling, and as of yesterday, even in alphabetical order.
Home files - non-existent per GTD system. Goal for this weekend will be to set up home files. Unfortunately this will mean purging lots of crud from my old files. I don't like this part. I will not be doing Aaron's files including his overstuffed "manuals" file as I have enough to deal with my own.

several piles of mail around the house BLEAH. maybe once I have proper files, I can do something about this. most days I hate the mail as it just adds stuff to piles.

weekly review: occurs weekly at work. occurs never at home. goal will be to add home reviews in 08. even tho I do these at work, I have no qualms with capturing home tasks at work (and even doing, to a limited degree). After all, if it is on my mind, it is taking energy away from my work, so the sooner its either captured or dealt with the better. same thing for work at home, on a limited basis. I tend not to worry about work things as much though, since I know my GTD system is working well there...

hmm maybe that is some proof after all - the part of my life that feels disorganized and worries me is the part I have least GTD in.......

things I am currently tinkering with... MindManager, Cyberpad digital notepad w/RitePen software, and maximizing my understanding of EN and MM.

Over on Jaiku I've gotten asked what is the story on Evernote, so since it may take a while to respond, I'm blogging it...

I'd heard about OneNote and Evernote for a while, as they've been mentioned on GTD Connect several times. I had only a fuzzy idea of what they do, but this week, my boss asked for some help with a problem and that led me to checking out Evernote. I am just learning it so this is very much a newbie's perspective. I've also not spent any time with OneNote but have a rudimentary understanding of it from the forums I've read. As background, I have been using Google Notebook for a while but in a pretty disorganized fashion.

Evernote is from what I've seen so far, foremost a capture tool. It comes with a grabber for the browsers, Outlook, and also includes a Universal clipping tool. So, in Firefox I now have an icon and all I need to do is highlight text and images then click to create a new note.

Otherwise, copy and paste work well, and it seems to retain the info of the source - a clip from a MS Word doc for example is automatically categorized as a Word doc. It also works with images, and if there is handwriting or text in the image, it will recognize it and not only does that become searchable, it also will transfer it to text. The purchased version works well with digital handwriting as well, which I will be migrating to with a digipad coming soon.

As for individual notes, you can tag them with as many categories as you want like you would with blog entries, Flickr photos etc, which makes it super easy to search for items. I understand this is a difference from OneNote where each item goes in one and only one place/label. There's also a scroll timeline so that you can see all the notes you've done over time. When you do search for a phrase, it is automatically highlighted in every note that contains it.

There is a Evernote mobile version I am testing out as well. It is a preview install but it works the same way the installed version does, minus the grabbers. It does have a grabber for a cameraphone snapshot. Syncing is a bit of a manual process and I hope they'll go the ActiveSync route before this becomes prime time. Still, having all the info on the phone is awesome...

I am just beginning to figure out a tagging system that will work for me and the nice thing is I can have a GTD tag structure, as well as a keyword tag structure. One of the nicer features is it comes with a Category (tag) intersection tool, which lets you find relationships between information you might not think of, as well as allowing you to map your data path. Overall, it's pretty neat.

And also as a newbie I am just beginning to explore filters and the custom templates that are out there for data capture. The "intro" learning curve is a short one, but now I'm on the secondary one which could be a slower voyage.

I will come back with some additional thoughts once I've used it for a bit longer....