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

Every day, I am working more and more with other organizations.  This week alone, there were at least five times where I went though this time wasting exchange:

Email From Customer: We need to have a meeting / have you attend a meeting.  When is good for you?

Email From Me: Well, my Monday and Tuesday are shot.  Wednesday or Thursday are open for now.

Email From Customer, the next day: How about Wednesday Morning?

Email From Me: That got booked up.  Thursday afternoon?

 … And you get the gist …

 I said to myself, there has to be a better way to do this.  There has to be a technology solution.  I have heard about “Free/Busy Server” for years, but have never been successful at setting it up.  So, I tried again, and the instruction (as shown here, especially the part about the FTP setup), don’t work.  Plus, if the Free/Busy (FreeBusy?) file is behind a protected FTP site, how will someone be able to use it??

Has anyone else conquered these dilemmas – both the “Let’s Try To Schedule A Meeting Two Step” as well as Free/Busy? 

(Side Note: As some may suggest / think of, yes, Exchange does this – supposedly great – inside an organization – however, I’m talking about “Inter-organization” scheduling.)

I’ve wanted to write about this for months. I wish I could remember where I read about this; it’s been a great productivity booster for me.

In the past, I have written and advised that one should not put priorities on tasks. Instead, one * might * considered putting a due date on a task. A great example of this comes from the best tip I picked up out of Jack Welch’s book – that you have to follow-up with (on) people in order to be effective. To accomplish this, I create a task on a project and put a Due Date on it so it will pop up in the Projects Widget on the right day and remind me to do the follow up.

In the past, I would have to pull down the calendar and look forward a week or two to assign the due date. Not only did I have to go through the physical motion of pulling down the calendar, but the mental motion of thinking about looking forward on the calendar for two weeks out. But, not anymore!

In the Due Date field (or any date field in Outlook for the most part), just type what you want. i.e.,

• 1 week
• 2 weeks
• Thu (or any day of the week)
• 1 month

Outlook will automatically replace it with the correct date (once you move off the field). Quick, easy and effective!

I received more excellent feedback today on The David Allen Company – Getting Things Done Public Forum.

In response to one question, I added some content to the Foresight Web Site about why we sell Foresight under a subscription model as opposed to a “buy it once” model. Check it out by clicking here. I strongly believe in this. I strongly believe this is a true win / win model for both the consumer and for us. I also believe that this is the answer to why “buy it once” software modeled companies have a hard time surviving and keeping their products growing.

“How does [Foresight] compare to the official GTD Netcentrics Add-on?”

This is a great question; I appreciate the user asking it.

If you need to process a lot of emails, and you want to do it exactly in the GTD way, then they have a great product.

If you want to be focused, project oriented and manage all interruptions (not just email), then Foresight is what you are looking for. Let me show you…

Project Focus

I loaded and created a quick project in their product. As I often do, I create a project and brainstorm out the first few steps. As brainstorming goes, I think about different tasks that belong to different parts of the project. This is what I ended up with:

(Click image for a larger view.)

The list you get is not very helpful.

When I do the same thing in Foresight, this is what I get:

(Click image for a larger view.)

This was one of our biggest goals with Foresight. (In addition, this was one of my personal issues with other software packages out there.) The user can brainstorm out and organize their project in an order that makes sense to them. The project uses Outlook Tasks and Calendar Items which can be reorganized, collapsed and expanded. I could have, for example, put all of the above tasks under the calendar item if I wanted to:

(Click image for a larger view.)

A couple of other quick notes:

• In a similar fashion to their product, you can link emails to the project for easy and quick reference.
• Unlike their product, you can also link in your PC Files (Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, etc.) for quick and easy reference. No more looking endlessly through “My Documents” or a big hierarchy of folders to find your project reference (PC Files) materials!

Daily Focus

Another area where Foresight excels is helping you Focus on a daily basis. After I was done entering just this project and one other project with their product, this is what my Outlook Today window looked like:

(Click image for a larger view.)

I have never understood how Outlook Today is supposed to help you focus!

Foresight will help you keep focus and control up, while keeping stress down. Below is the Foresight Today window, which replaces the Outlook Today window:

(Click image for a larger view.)

You can focus on your Next Actions. You can see your commitments coming up over the next couple of days. You can remember things you need to do weekly (like the “weekly progress report” your boss or clients want, or, the GTD Weekly Review!). You can focus and keep, as David Allen says, all the other “open loops” out of sight.

Interruptions

On the Foresight Today window, you also see our Quick Captureâ„¢ widget. This is one of my favorites! When something (an interruption) comes up, I can quickly type it into Quick Capture and forget about it. If Foresight knows what to do with it, it automatically puts it into Outlook. If not, I can answer a couple of questions now to finish it, or, Foresight will remind me later during my processing time. Quick Capture lets me get back to focusing on my project and not let the interruption get me off track. More information about Quick Capture can be found here.

So, in closing, again, I appreciate the question. This was a great exercise for me personally, and for our company. It is also a great feeling as it reinforces that we are on the right track.

More information on Foresight can be found here at our main website.