Brian Gardner’s Revolution Wordpress Themes
To answer the question asked by Laurence in his comment to my latest post, I have indeed started using a new them from this blog. It is the superb Revolution Blog theme by Brian Gardner, which seems fairly recent, as it is (C) 2008.
I was really impressed by the quality of the design of this fee Wordpress blog theme when I saw it used on another productivity blog. Brian actually offers a whole range of very impressive themes based on Wordpress. Some of them are free, but there is also an excellent series of Revolution Premium Wordpress Themes“, which offers customizable themes for websites, newspapers and magazines, that wish to use WordPress as a CMS.
Says Brian:
“You might find this difficult to believe, but 12 months ago I didn’t own my domain name, had never touched a piece of WordPress code and knew nothing about blog design. In other words, everything I’ve done with WordPress and blog design in the past year has been self taught, using trial and error.”
Click here to view more details
Dennis Best on Getting things done (simply) in Leopard
Thanks to the Switchblog for pointing to Dennis Best truly excellent post on Getting things done (simply) in Leopard, which offers “Nine reasons not to use a separate app for GTD”.
A tenth reason, from the perspective of a Palm user, would be that with Missing Sync for Palm OS, tasks and calendar data would easily be synchronised.
GTD on PersonalBrain
The little productivity experiment I am conducting this summer, is to look again at how PersonalBrain can be used to implement Getting Things Done and write a few blog posts about it.
I would be very interested in hearing from people who are currently using PersonalBrain for their GTD implementation. If you are interested in contributing a guest blog post or some screenshots, with ou without comments, please let me know.
For the time being, here are a few screenshots of what I am up to.
GTD en français
N’ayant pas encore eu à ce jour l’opportunité de lire, ni même de feuilleter, la traduction française de Getting Things Done, je me demandais ce que les praticiens francophones du GTD pouvaient en penser? La traduction est-elle de bonne qualité ou au contraire décevante?
Je m’étais risqué il y maintenant deux ans à produire une traduction du Diagramme du flux de travail de Getting Things Done de David Allen, avec l’aimable autorisation de ce dernier. Mériterait-elle d’être revue et corrigée? Vos idées sont bien sûr les bienvenues.
Mindmanager GTD templates
I recently had to use a backup of this blog to re-import its content. As a result some of the links are no longer working, but I do not have time to check them at the moment. If you are looking for the Mindmanager GTD templates I released ages ago, you can find them at the following address: http://pascalvenier.com/1.zip
This blog is not dead but only sleeping!
I have been very busy cranking academic widgets and have been too busy to blog!
Among my most recent experiments in personal productivity have been the following:
- I have completely switched over to a free mind-mapping software, Compendium, which is quite a wonderful tool, allowing to create mind-maps inside each node of a mind-map!
- I am now using Nozbe for my GTD implementation, which I wholeheartedly recommend.
I hope to publish a detailed post on each.
I also have come across a most intriguing piece of kit, which I would be very curious to try. It is designed to “enable people to create effective and enjoyable workshops” and is named Thinkit.
Getting Things Done: The Science Behing Stress-Free Productivity
A post on the David Allen Company Forum draws attention to an intriguing academic paper, available for download as a preprint, which seems worth a read. It is: Francis Heylighen and Clément Vidal (2007) Getting Things Done: The Science behind Stress-Free Productivity.
Says the abstract: “Allen (2001) proposed the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method for personal productivity enhancement, and reduction of the stress caused by information overload. This paper argues that recent insights in psychology and cognitive science support and extend GTD’s recommendations. We first summarize GTD with the help of a flowchart. We then review the theories of situated, embodied and distributed cognition that purport to explain how the brain processes information and plans actions in the real world. The conclusion is that the brain heavily relies on the environment, to function as an external memory, a trigger for actions, and a source of affordances, disturbances and feedback. We then show how these principles are practically implemented in GTD, with its focus on organizing tasks into “actionable” external memories, and on opportunistic, situation-dependent execution. Finally, we propose an extension of GTD to support collaborative work, inspired by the concept of stigmergy.”
Happy New Year
Please allow me to wish you a happy and successful year in 2008.
“The night has been relatively calm”
According to Le Monde, the Directorate general of the French police was reporting on 1 January 2008, that “the night has been relatively calm, without notable incidents”.
The oddity is indeed that no less than 372 vehicules have been burned across France during the night (against 397 the previous year). A very strange tradition seems to have been invented to celebrate the new year.
Le système GTD simplifié de Gina Trapani
This post in French is a brief presentation of Gina Trapani’s Simplified GTD method.
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Gina Trapani, la célèbre blogeuse du non moins célébre site Lifehacker, vient de publier un très intéressant billet dans lequel elle décrit son système GTD simplifié. Avec un joli sens de la formule, elle le décrit même en huit mots: “Faire trois listes. Les réviser quotidiennement et hebdomadairement.”
- “Faire trois listes”
La liste des choses à faire ressemble beaucoup à la la liste des prochaines actions de Getting Things Done. Une différence fondamentale est toutefois, qu’elle comprend tout au plus “une vingtaine de petites choses, très faisables”, qu’elle s’engage à faire dans les quatre semaines.
La liste des projets est limitée à une dizaine de ceux-ci tout au plus. On est donc bien loin de la centaine de projets en cours que l’on rencontre fréquemment avec la méthode GTD.
La liste des possibles joue exactement le même rôle que dans GTD. Elle sert à recenser les choses qu’elle pourrait peut-être faire un jour. C’est une sorte de bassin de décantation.
Ses trois listes sont tout simplement gérées en utilisant autant de simples fichiers texte (.txt) et un logiciel éditeur de texte.
- “Les réviser quotidiennement et hebdomadairement”
Gina Trapani met l’accent sur la nécéssité de travailler à partir de ses listes et de les réviser et mettre à jour régulièrement. Ces trois listes ne sont utiles que si l’on s’en sert!
Son travail quotidien repose véritablement sur la liste des choses à faire. Au fil de la journée elle en supprime ce qui a été fait et ajoute les nouvelles choses à faire.
Elle procède d’autre-part à une rapide revue hebdomadaire, d’une vingtaine de minutes tout au plus, pendant laquelle met à jour ses trois listes.
* * *
Une bien intéressant méthode qui brille véritablement par sa simplicité. Or, comme l’écrivait Léonard de Vinci: “La simplicité est l’ultime sophistication”.
USBwine!
A great idea for Christmas: the USBwine! 
The video is in French - bien sûr! - but this should not be an issue!
See www.usbwine.com