I am thinking of restarting development on my product, Foresight for Outlook.  To help with this decision, I have created two quick and easy surveys.  If you are using, or have tried Foresight in the past, would you take just a minute to fill out a survey and help me out?  I’d sure appreciate it.

If you are currently using Foresight, click here.

If you are not using Foresight, but tried it in the past, click here.

Thanks in advance.

PS: You can, of course, email me directly with comments, or leave them here if you like.

I continue to use Foresight every day to successfully keep multiple projects rolling forward and be an incredible asset to the company I work for.  I continue to also carry a lot of debt from the development of Foresight.  So, in thinking how valuable Foresight is to me, both as a productivity tool and as an asset, I’ve decided to put out a request for help.

• Are you interested in owning and running a software company?
• Do you have any ideas on how I might be able to sell Foresight?
• Can you “spin through your Rolodex” and see if you know someone who might be interested in Foresight, or could help me sell it?

Last month, Foresight had over 80 downloads –with absolutely no marketing besides a website floating around on the Internet.  I * know * that if someone can put the effort and TLC into Foresight that it needs that it can be a real success for someone.

Thanks in advance for your help; I sure appreciate it.

What a great way to end the week! So looking forward to some down time!

“Being comfortable” is the best theme for the lesson.  As I have written about at least once here, David Allen himself once told me, and I firmly believe that you have to be “comfortable” with your To Do list.  You have to be comfortable with what is on it, the size of it, the importance of things on it and the “do-ability” of things on it (all my words).  When it came to Foresight, I was getting uncomfortable with it as the do-ability was gnawing at me.  I knew with a full time job, with my children and my Fiancé that I did not have the time and resources to devote to Foresight.  One might think the decision seemed easy.  However, there was one item that kept holding me back.

Challenges

You would think with all the above reasons that I would just pull the plug.  However, there were a couple of things holding me back.  The first one was money & debt.  I have a relatively significant amount of debt built up from developing and deploying Foresight.  That debt stares at me every day.  When I started thinking about shutting down Foresight, a little nay-saying voice would say to me, “But you have to keep it going; you have to pay back the debt.”  And, it is that little voice that would keep me basically frozen, which is not a good state.

Action

Lately, my Pastor has talked a lot about a two themes:

• Things must remain in motion, otherwise they stagnate and die.  (For example, think about a stream of water in nature – if it flows, it stays fresh.  If it does not, it stagnates and grows crud.)
• Action is required to make progress in all facets of life.

In thinking about this, I identified that I was not taking action and thus things were stagnating and slowly dying.  I figured action – any action – was better than none.  Does shutting down Foresight help with my debt?  Well, not on the surface; the debt is still there.  But, taking action might help in the long run.

Giving

I’ve always been a generous person.  And, over the past couple of years, I have purposely tried to increase my generosity; to give more and to be a blessing to people.  Being that I use Foresight everyday to keep many projects (27 is today’s count) successfully moving forward, I decided that my success should be one major factor in taking action.  I said, “Foresight is still a great tool as it is.   Let’s let others gain what I gain out of it every day.”  It is my hope that with giving it away, my generosity will be returned by people who find it adds the same value to their lives and choose to make a contribution.  And, in continuing with the giving desire, it is my plan to give away a portion of those proceeds to charity, hopefully keeping motion, in motion, for some time to come.

Closure

So, even though my “action” on the surface may seem like it will not address my severest needs, I have high beliefs that it will.  On top of that, it brings closure to a chapter in my life, makes my To Do list comfortable again and allows me to move forward.

Per my promise, I have posted an un-locked version.  Simply download the current version from the main website and install.

I’ll write more about my decision in the next few days.  In the mean time, you can read more about it here.

Thanks everyone.  I appreciate everyone’s support – this was a fun and good adventure.

Just like most weeks, this week was another intense one keeping everything moving forward.  Let’s wrap up the week, and series, and talk about Friday:

• Had conference call right out of the shoot.  While waiting for it to start, banged through the DCL.  Being that I keep my inbox (well, inboxes, see my other post), at zero everyday, this was a breeze.
• Transitioned to my Next Action list (Projects Widget), and managed to hit about five different projects.  Again, I date things for follow-up, so three different projects popped up for follow-up, and I got them all done.
• The rest of the day consisted of work on one project.  I was able to get that one wrapped up; a nice way to end the week.

So, all in all, I think this was a relatively good week.  I helped a lot of people move forward on their projects.  Also, I moved forward on * all * of my projects (even if it was a quick glance during the Weekly Review to assure they have follow-up dates on them so they will pop up in the Projects Widget) even with all the interruptions.

What were the lessons learned from this week?

• Quick Capture Interruptions.
  • As I think I commented about this week, interruptions are the real killer.  You have to capture them and keep your focus.  I didn’t do as well in this area as I like and will need to focus on that more next week.
• Break the addiction to email, IM and Twitter.
  • These are all major sources of interruptions.
• Block out more time, especially when you have projects that require big chunks of un-interrupted time.
  • This, along with corralling interruptions, will be my goals for next week.

That wraps up this series for this week.  On the onset of this series, I had said that I had two goals for it:

1) To give you some ideas / tips / tricks on managing multiple projects.

2) For me to track what I’m up to – helping me see progress as well as possibly see where I can improve.

I hope this series helped you out; it did me and I have some great goals for next week to help boost productivity even further.  Make it a great, relaxing weekend!

As I’ve written about in the past, flexibility is a must to effective and relaxed productivity.  And, as I reflected on at the end of the day today, capturing and containing stuff is a must!  Here’s Wednesday:

Americano (this one is a deal breaker; I lived above – no flexibility for me on this one first thing in the AM!  Well, I lied again, I don’t go to Starbucks very often; instead, I bought one of their home espresso machines and keep plenty of beans in stock.  My Fiancé is an incredible Barista!

On to the Daily Check List….

• Voice Mail (had call from internal client and returned it immediately as I feel that if they left a voice mail, as opposed to email, they are desiring a call back sooner than later.  Glad to be of service to Mr. WW!)
• Check e-Mail (Though I still believe that this being my primary form of communication and job for my employer, I’m starting to feel I’ve become way to addicted again – it comes and goes – to checking email.  I feel like I’m in the movie “You’ve Got Mail!”)

Side Note: Wow; crazy day already (though, this is not unusual – hence why I want to write more about relaxed productivity).  Several things, a couple via IM, popped up and put me off down some different paths.  Fortunately, and as usual, they are related to current projects, so, progress has been made.  If they were not related to current projects, I would have Quick Captured them and got back on track.

Wrapped up DCL.  Wrapping up the “different paths” from above.  Then, I’ll stop, take a couple of deep breaths, and regroup to make sure I get my focus back.  Decided to drop the blogs today; especially with how busy it is today.

(Later that day…) Well, “wrapping up” really never happened.  Today ended up being a “chase several fronts” day and I now am noting that I didn’t make much progress on “Big Rock” projects.  Some, progress mind you – I have one thing checked off.  And, I’m going to SHUT OFF email, IM and focus on getting one more “notch in my belt.” for the day.

Lesson of the day, or at least something to ponder – how to stay pertinent and relevant in today’s connected society, without letting it eat you (and the important stuff you need to be working on) alive.  One things I didn’t do as well today as I usually do — and it’s pretty much in line with David Allen’s advice, capture everything that hits your plate, get it contained, get it off you mind and get back to -a- mind like water and -b- the important task at hand.  That ultimately needs to be my goal for tomorrow, use Quick Capture much more.

(To put picures in the blog, or not?  That is the question)

The secret to my success – follow-up’s; after I touch base with someone, or delegate something, I put a follow-up task on the project, dated, so it will pop up in the Projects Widget, reminding me, and basically forcing my attention back to that project.

This is something I’ve always done, but then had it really solidified for me when Jack Welch said in his book that * you have * to follow-up with people.  It’s the only way to make sure things keep moving forward – and that’s so true!

14 projects, 150+ tasks, yet this is what’s on my radar scope for today – exactly what I need to be working on.  I love my product!

* Americano

* Set my Twitter status – at the company I work for, we have recently begun using this as our In-Out board.  Having one “in-out” board in on location for a company of four geographically diverse locations just really didn’t make sense to me.

* Start processing my Daily Check List…

>  Clear Voicemail.

>  Clear E-Mail – as I mentioned yesterday, I * really * preach that one not do this and first try to jump into something important first thing.  Yet, I’ve been personally torn about this as, in my position with the company I work for, e-mail is the major way I communicate with my clients.  So, my alternative is I have two items on my Daily Check List – check email ** once ** in the AM, then once again at the end of the day — leaving the rest of the time to work on projects and not participate in “e-mail conversations.”  (See this post and series of posts for more ideas and information). 

Yes; every day, I do get my inbox to zero.

And, I’m glad I did as a client needs me to call them….

>  Check our enterprise management software for internal messages.

 >  Glance at my calendar and see what’s coming up over the next three days – making sure I’m ready for any commitments I made.  Generally, if I see something coming up (i.e., a meeting), I’ll divert at this point and work on any projects related to that, before I get to my project list.

>  I do have “Catch Up on Blogs” on my DCL.  I’m torn on this one.  I * so * want to keep up with things.  But, there is so much out there.  I have iGoogle tied to Google Reader, limiting what I see to only a couple of blogs.  I’ve been 50 / 50 on the “success” or value add of following blogs.  For instance, I love Seth, and this made me chuckle (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/weirdest-billboard-ever-or-brilliant-targeting.html) but probably wasn’t worth the time.

 This one was good and made me stop and think: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/who-spreads-your-word.html

 * Done with the daily check list.  Like I said yesterday, I’m hoping to do some fine tuning on myself with this series.  In this case, it sure feels like this took a lot of time out of the day already.  As Peter Drucker said, “No Thy Time!”  I started at 7:15, and it’s now 9:00am.  I’ve touched back with clients via email, I’ve talked with someone on the phone that needed to talk to me, and my decks are COMPLETELY CLEAR to focus on my projects.  So, even with reading the blogs (and, I forgot – doing some spiritual reading, which I’m also trying to get more in the habit on), and writing this post, I think I’m doing ok.

 * On to projects.  Which, because of doing my Weekly Review yesterday and having my Project Widget all ready displaying my Next Actions, I’m ready to go – no “guessing” at “what’s important or next.”

So, off to work…… More later.

Side Notes:

>> Missing from my day:

* Exercise / Workout – I used to run, however fell out of the habit a couple of years ago after accomplishing my goal of a 5K.  This is something I’ve got to get my way back to.  I have a plan; the subject of a great post I want to get to.