Derek Scruggs

Great idea:

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.

An acquaintance of mine, a direct marketing guru, once told me that he writes the sales letter before he ever creates the product. Only after he’s explained exactly what you’ll get and why you need it does he set about creating the product. (And sometimes, if the sales letter isn’t compelling enough, he just abandons the product altogether, saving him a lot of time and effort.)

As you may have heard, my latest venture failed. It was an angst-ridden time leading up to the decision to close our doors, but once it was made, life brightened considerably. No longer were we a train going down a track, sensing that the light at the end of the tunnel was actually another train. Now we were once again individual people, not co-founders, and the horizon spreads in front of us like Rocky Mountain sunrise. Or something like that. Can you tell I wasn’t an English lit major?

The freedom that comes with a wide open future is liberating (though sometimes a little scary). One of the nicest things was cleaning out my to-do list. I follow the Getting Things Done approach to task management, which means I capture all of life’s open loops on a master list and review them periodically (ideally weekly, but that’s an area where I too-often drop the ball).

This means I had a looooong list of things to do. The vast majority of them had to do with various company initiatives — sales opportunities, feature requests, bug fixes etc — and I gotta admit deleting all those tasks was like taking a breath of fresh air after being underwater for months.

I narrowed my projects list from 25 or so down to about three: close the company, sell assets and find a job. Feel free to help me out on any of those.

I’ve been a devoted practitioner of Getting Things Done for almost five years. During that time I’ve experimented with lots of software to help me manage my to-do list, and I’m excited to have found the best one yet: OmniFocus is still in beta, but it ships January 8 and you can bet I’m pre-ordering it.

Not only am I fan of the product itself, but I’m also impressed with how it came into being. It’s origins date from Kinkless GTD, an amazing set of Apple Scripts developed by a guy named Evan (couldn’t quickly find his last name) that run on top of OmniOutliner Pro. I first heard about Kinkless from 43 Folders and quickly drank the kool aid. While it wasn’t perfect, it was the best realization of GTD in software that I’d seen so far.

The Omni Group noticed this phenomenon and, apparently being smart people, contacted Evan about building a dedicated product that suited his vision. Which they did. Initially they worked with Evan as a consultant (they also consulted with Merlin Mann at 43 Folders), but they just announced that he is joining the company full time as VP of marketing. What a great story – a company the embraces that community and delivers a product from the bottom up, to the point that the community’s most prominent leader becomes an executive!

OmniFocus has been in alpha for a while, but I didn’t touch it because I didn’t want anything buggy potentially destroying my to-do list. But a couple days ago they announced their public beta. I downloaded it immediately and gave it a whirl. There were a couple of crashes initially, but it’s already self-updated a couple of times since then and I haven’t had any crashes since Friday.

I’m extremely happy with it and am already becoming a ninja. I can’t tell you how psyched I am about this product. It’s a great step forward toward the ultimate “mind like water” state GTD promises. Great job guys!

An excellent secret-to-my-success post that I found via the Office Zealot Getting Things Done feed, which is back up after a few months of silence. Here’s his advice on how not to get ahead.

So many people I meet are unresponsive. They don’t return their phone calls promptly. They don’t answer their emails quickly. They don’t complete their assignments on time. They promise to do something and never follow through. They have to be reminded, prodded, and nagged. This behavior creates work for everyone else and eats into their own productivity. Sadly, they seem oblivious to it.

I’ve always been reasonably responsive, but since implementing GTD about three years ago I’ve found that I rarely let something slip through the cracks. As an example, my email inbox almost never has more than 10 messages in it, and by the end of the day it’s usually down to one or two. Every message is either answered, delegated or assigned to a task, usually within a couple hours of receiving it.

This practice has not only been helpful in establishing my trustworthiness as a business partner, but it’s also allowed me to manage my clients better. Too often I send an email or leave a voice mail with a client who doesn’t respond, or only half-delivers on the request I made to them. By not letting my inbox become a dumping ground, I’ve been able to keep both myself and my clients on task and thus deliver better results for both of us. (The concept of the “waiting for” has been crucial in this game.)