Thinking Rock is a free organizational tool based on David Allen’s GTD system.

From the website:

Thinking Rock allows you to collect your thoughts and process them into actions, projects, information or future possibilities.

Actions can be done by you, delegated to someone else or scheduled for a particular date. Projects can be organized with ordered actions and sub-projects. You can review all of your actions, projects and other information quickly and easily to see what you need to do or to choose what you want to do at a particular time.

Click here to learn more about Thinking Rock.

How to keep your inbox squeaky clean. A video presentation from Merlin Mann of 43Folders.

Want to make sure you have great follow through on your projects for the year? How about your priorities, have you got them all sorted out? If you’re the type of person who needs to write everything down to get organized, you’ll benefit from David Seah’s Concrete Goals Tracker for 2008.

Here’s a description from the site:

The Concrete Goals Tracker (CGT) is the original Printable CEO™ form, created one evening in 2005 to alleviate my desire to have a “trusted personal CEO” that would tell me what to do. I figured since I couldn’t hire anyone to do the job, I might be able to go the cheap route and print one up on paper :-)

New for 2008 are write in your own goals PDFs with suggested methodology for how I put together a good “worth doing” list, which is an art in itself. I’ve written instructions on how to create new year’s resolutions using these forms.

Click here to download the nifty Concrete Goals Tracker 2008 

Getting Things Done or GTD is David Allen’s system for personal productivity. I gave away a free copy of the audio book in a contest before. Here’s a summary of the book:

This video shows how you can create your own GTD notebook easily and more economically in lieu of the folders and containers suggested in the book. (Then again I think they weren’t meant to be taken literally). Here’s the video:

What better way to celebrate the New Year than with a Pimp Your Work contest? Here are the specs:

The Pimpin’ Prize:

• a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done in PDF format (a $15 value)
• a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done in mp3 format (I forgot how much this cost, but Amazon says $26 and some odd cents)
• a bunch of other GTD resources in PDF Format (planner templates, the advanced workflow, etc.)

The Rules:

1. First, you must write a blog post listing your New Year’s Resolutions. It’s best to include some productivity related resolutions.

2. Make sure that ABOVE your New Year’s resolutions is a link to BOTH this post AND the Pimp Your Work blog, announcing that you have joined this contest. Here is the exact URL for the post: http://www.bizzia.com/pimp-your-works-new-years-resolutions-contest/

You can say something like “I’m joining this GTD contest sponsored by Pimp Your Work”

3. If you list via your blog, your entry will automatically be placed via pingback in the comments below. If you don’t see it there, then leave a comment below with a link to your entry.

If you don’t have a blog, simply list your New Year’s resolutions in the comments section of this post, and you’ll be qualified for an entry.

4. Deadline for entries is December 29, 2007. Wait until January 1, 2007 for the announcement of a randomly drawn winner! (There’s only one winner for this contest.)

What are you waiting for? Share your New Year’s Resolutions the Pimp Your Work way!

Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits is a popular productivity blog based on the principle of keeping things simple.  His blog and ideas are a breath of fresh air for those whose idea of productivity is buzzing around like a bee and surrounding oneself with as much tools as possible.  So far, Leo is best known for creating the Zen-to-Done (ZTD)  system.

Here’s a summary of what ZTD is all about: click here for a post from Zen Habits

ZTD is an answer to David Allen’s popular Getting Things Done (GTD) system of productivity.  GTD has its own flaws, as Leo noticed, so he decided to improve it.  Here’s a short description from his website:

Zen To Done takes some of the best aspects of a few popular productivity systems (GTD, Stephen Covey and others) and combines them with the mandate of simplicity. It makes things as simple as possible, and no more.

Zen To Done: The Simple Productivity Ebook is a comprehensive collection of the simple productivity tips and techniques developed and practiced by Leo himself.  Apart from the guide itself, the ebook also has resources, forms, and additional material that will help you get more productive - the zen way.

Price: $9.50

Since it’s affordable, and I’ve been a big fan of Zen Habits for awhile now, I’m getting this as a gift for myself this Christmas.  I’m getting my mom a copy too - since she’s always too busy to take a little breather.

I’m going to implement some ZTD techniques more extensively in 2008.  Will let you know my progress.  I’ve found other productivity plans and techniques quite cumbersome, so maybe some of the ZTD concepts have the simplicity I need.

How about you? What productivity style do you use?  Do you have your own system or do you subscribe to an existing system such as GTD?  Share it in the comments!

Something for all you Backpack fans…

37Signals relaunched their Backpack service today. The app’s back end code was completely rebuilt from scratch, according to Jason Fried, and the service also got a new UI to match some of 37Signals’ other recently updated products (such as Basecamp). The design still feels very familiar to any 37Signals app user, however. Source: 37Signals Relaunches Backpack Organizational Tool

I have to admit that I haven’t gotten into Backpack much.  I know, shock, gasp, etc.  I’m just into that many web-based tools.  However, given that my laptop is on the fritz and I won’t be getting it back until week after next…

My friend Ben Yoskovitz laments a common problem we all have faced dealing with folks via e-mail…not getting a critical question answered:

And that’s frustrating. You can’t keep asking the same question over and over, and presumably you’re asking the question because you really want an answer.

Tip: The last question you ask in an email is the one that will get answered.

People will skim your email, get to the bottom and see a call to action. If you’ve peppered your email with other questions, it’s very likely people will miss them, or won’t bother responding. They will key in on the last question. Source:Simple Email Hack: Get Your Questions Answered : Instigator Blog

 Is it that simple?  Yeah, it is.  People like action items.  And when reading people tend to forget stuff along the way of an e-mail (remember people read 30% slower on screen and with 50% less comprehension–you might also like to know these other quirks in our brains).  By the time you reach the end, yeah a reminder of the question is needed.

I think the same thing works for proposals.  At the end of the document, just summarize the next steps.

Simple tips, but it might save a bunch of “you still haven’t answered the key question that I need to move forward…” e-mails.

 Did you know that to Gmail trishussey and tris.hussey are the same?  Yep.  And if you say do something like tris.hussey+pyw@ you can have a whole new e-mail address to filter on?

You can reformat your existing Gmail address by inserting dots (periods) anywhere within your Gmail username. The Gmail Help pages explain:

Because Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won’t change the actual destination address. Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your Inbox, and only yours.

 Source: Gmail Tip: Reformat your Gmail address with dots - Lifehacker

While having nearly infinite e-mail addresses might seem like more of a pain than it’s worth, there are tons of reasons why this is an awesome thing to do for streamlining your work.

Okay say want to have all stuff from an external vendor tagged in Gmail for easy searching.  Give them say tris.hussey+b5media@ as your address then build a quick filter that tags all e-mail coming in with that as B5media.

You can extend this idea for contests, support, family, friends, enemies.  Whomever.

Myself I didn’t realize that the “.” in my Gmail address was superfluous … I’ll keep it anyway.  I like it.  BTW, and very important to note, the “.” ignoring bit does not work for Gmail for your domain.  I don’t know about the “+” but a little testing can straighten that out.  Actually…I use Gmail for Domains for One By One Media so I shall test it and get back to you.