The essence of weekly review in 2 minutes by David Allen. Have a look, it’s inspiring and keeps your head clear.

GTD starts to work FOR YOU as soon as you establish the synergy between the daily next-actions and weekly review. One can’t live without the other.

Android support has been an often-requested missing puzzle piece for TimeGT and for some of you even a deal-breaker.

We have been working on Android app but it’s not yet ready for public release. If you are interested in test-driving it as it becomes available, please email dev@timegt.com and let us know the devices you have.

Thanks!

As you might have noticed, TimeGT got a fresh look for the website.

Feel free to give us some feedback!

We also opened up the TimeGT Google Groups again and shutting down TimeGT GetSatisfaction service as Google Groups still seems a better medium for the communication.

Today, Mar 31st 2011, a new significant TimeGT destktop client update was released.

List of changes:

• Improved performance for pretty much any operation more than 400%
• Doesn’t show “(0)” counters anymore
• Added new menuitem under “View” menu to hide counters from projects, tasklist and tags (increases performance!!). Still showing counters by default!
• Added new menuitem under “Edit” menu to delete all archived items (tasks and tags) at once.
• Improved a bit the start-up performance
• Improved stability of the date-pickers
• Removed selected task name from the window title, became too noisy
• Renamed “No incoming changes” status button to “Sync idle”

Update is delivered automatically and also included with the latest installer and .zip. Go to Help-Check for Updates in desktop to speed up the update check.

DOWNLOAD TIMEGT!

Today we released a very significant upgrade to TimeGT.

This 1.3.3 version has number of performance improvements and most importantly syncing is now performing much faster.
New version also makes it faster to start TimeGT from new clients — instead of loading all historical changes it loads just the latest snapshot.

There is also now a menuitem to check your network connectivity to timegt services. And a long-awaited HTTP proxy support with an optional authentication.

Everything is still encrypted! As soon as the updates leave your TimeGT client they are encrypted with your own private key and server has no way of reading the contents of your tasks.

This upgrade prepares us for a very important next milestone — collaboration. Stay tuned.

Hopefully upgrade goes smooth for everyone. If there are issues, please post a feedback ticket (optionally private).

UPDATE! There seems to be some issue with the sync protocol so we had to take down the sync service until it gets fixed. Sorry about any inconvenience and we hope to restore sync service as soon as possible!

UPDATE2! All seems back to normal now and 1.4.0 released! Please start TimeGT again and it should prompt for an upgrade. 1.4.0 seems to be stable enough now. Thanks for the patience and let us know if anything looks weird!

This post has been re-posted to TimeGT Google Groups, which is now read-only. Continue reading to find out why.

So far our discussions and support has been going through the google groups and dev@timegt.com e-mail address.

Surprisingly, our mailbox reached way more inquiries than this google group, but still, both channels have been decently active.

In this situation where the number of TimeGT users have been growing quite a bit there is a good potential now to improve the community engagement process.

My primary wish for this transition is to start creating a searchable web-based knowledge-base so we can start organizing it centrally instead of replying to e-mails privately with information that could easily be publicly available.

There have been claims that bringing customer support to public might become a good source for competitors etc, but, I don’t really care — we’re here to build the best possible product so it can’t hurt us.

It is our best intent that this move will benefit everyone, so please, give it a try and submit any kind of ideas, questions, problems (and praise) to that nice Feedback button located at the left side of www.timegt.com website.

Let me know if you encounter any issues (ak@timegt.com).

When you’re feeling overwhelmed about your workload and just can’t seem to get anything done, there’s a nice strategy to help you through the day. Everyone naturally knows it, but due to its simplicity it’s sometimes easy to forget. Thus let’s recap!

The strategy is to break the large seemingly impossible task down into smaller chunks that virtually take no time to complete.

The chunks should be small, easy and require minimal effort to complete. If a chunk can be logically subdivided even further or takes more than an hour to accomplish, it needs to be divided even more.

This system can work in a variety of different settings. Let’s have an example.

Suppose you have guests coming over and you need to clean your place. If you haven’t done it in a while, this task at first may seem like it will take ages. You’ll feel defeated before you even begin.

Let’s break it down into smaller and more manageable chunks.

Assuming you have a kitchen, 2 rooms and a bathroom your ToDo list might look something like this:

1. Clean big room
2. Clean bedroom
3. Clean the kitchen
4. Clean the toilet
5. Vacuum all the floors

It’s starting to look better, but the chunks are still too big. Cleaning the big room might seem such a big task that you don’t even want to start. Thus it needs to be broken down even more:

1. Collect all the empty beer bottles (~5 min)
2. Clean the table (~10 min)
3. Organize all the cables on the floor (~5 min)
4. Dust the cupboard (~10 min)
5. Take the trashcan to the front door to be taken out later (~2 min)

Even the biggest procrastinator can move him/herself enough to take 5 minutes to organize all the ethernet cables laying around on the floor. The task seems easy, there’s a clear end in sight and it will get done fast.

Already the room starts looking nicer and this will generate enough momentum to collect all the empty beer bottles, clean the table and to go on from there.

Suddenly the seemingly impossible task of cleaning the entire apartment is progressing in small 5-15 minute steps that all lead toward completion. Do the same for the other rooms and the place will be clean in no time!

Like mentioned before, this method works for virtually anything, even if you need to create a web design from scratch for a new client or code a completely new feature for your work.

Whatever the job, to get it done fast, break it down into chunks that are fast to accomplish, easy to do and when combined, produce the outcome you’re looking for.

There’s an added bonus to this system.

Namely, it’s easy to divide the tasks into these small chunks.

If you’ve been putting off working on a task for a while already, you will automatically want to do anything other than the task itself.

Luckily your procrastinating brain won’t see subdividing the task as doing the task itself. Thus it’s effortless to create the list and once it’s ready, it’s easy to get started. It’s a nice way to trick your brain into doing what needs to be done.

And of course, when you’re coming up with the subtasks, enter them into TimeGT to easily keep track of them.

Has this method worked for you? Write in the comments below!

It’s time to celebrate the end of August with a new release of TimeGT! While not every requested feature made it in this time, we’re sure you’ll love the ones that did!

Time support

A much requested feature has been the ability to not only specify start and due dates for tasks, but to mark down the exact time for these events.

It is now possible to do this! Every entered date can either be an all-day event or feature an optional time!

And of course this feature also works seamlessly with Google Calendar integration for Hedgehog customers.

Search field improvements

The search field has gone through some tweaks that are hard to notice, but will make you wonder how you ever lived without them.

For example it’s now considerably wider, escape and enter provide much better focus handling and clear the search field more intuitively. An additional half-transparent “X” icon helps clear the field without the use of a keyboard. Any feedback is welcome!

In addition to that many bugs have been squashed and bolts under the hood have been turned… but these are too small to mention here.

To upgrade to the new version, either head to our download page or if you’re running version 1.2.0, just click the upgrade button once it appears.

Hint: if you don’t want to wait, the upgrade button will appear immediately after restarting TimeGT.

Most people would argue that they are good multitaskers. They believe it’s easy for them to do many different things at once and remain efficient in all of them. The trouble is, this is never the case in reality. Multitasking is one of the biggest myths of our society.

We live in an age of constant distractions, never knowing what’s going to happen next. At any moment someone could call on our cellphone with a really urgent topic. New important e-mails arrive by the minute and if we happen to be logged on to an instant messenger, we’re obliged to answer every incoming message ASAP.

On our computers, we always have different programs running: an e-mail client, a few instant messengers, a browser with dozens of open tabs, some work related programs, etc.

If we’re dealing with an extreme case (or with a social media evangelist), then the list also includes software for checking Twitter and Facebook updates, a reader for various RSS newsfeeds, different group chats and so on.

But we are good at this, right?

Haven’t we been practicing these skills so long that it’s become second nature by now?

Wrong. If you’re looking for a real definition of multitasking, it means to screw several things up at once.

Much like a computer (with only one single core CPU), we can also do only one thing at the same time. If there’s more than one thing happening, we need to constantly switch our attention between things. Computers do it so fast we don’t even notice it, humans are considerably slower.

In addition to this, unlike computers (and much like the original iPhone), we can only store one program in our memory at any time. Thus switching to another activity takes time, switching back takes even more.

It is said that it takes up to 15 minutes to regain focus once it has been lost. This means your 2 minute e-mail or the 2 minute Skype conversation with a friend suddenly loses up to 15 minutes of your productive time.

Sure you’ll only lose 2 and not 15 minutes of work, but the 13 minutes you’ll put into the task will be half as efficient as the 15 you would have normally given. You will have to catch your train of thought again and pick up where you left off. This takes time and energy.

It should be obvious that 15 minutes of work at full efficiency is much better than 13 minutes of half efficient work.

As a related problem, in our society we tend to associate being busy with being important. Since we’re so busy answering every incoming e-mail, talking to people and reading the latest lolcats or hacker news, we must be really important people!

Well, no. You still won’t get any work done. Be careful if you measure your importance by the amount of distractions per day.

So, what to do?

Obviously all of us have some very important projects, both personally and professionally, that we want to get finished. Getting these off our plate would bring the highest degree of satisfaction and enjoyment.

Thus the answer is simple: just do it! Right now, say your goodbyes and close all instant messengers. Don’t tease yourself with a “do not disturb” status, log off. The people there can wait until you have finished your work. Close your e-mail program and check it perhaps 3 times per day, not more. You’re not so important that it can’t wait 8h. Schedule time for e-mail if necessary. Close Facebook and Twitter. They are a source of constant interruptions. You don’t need them.

And now, focus on your work. If it helps to cancel out other noise, put on headphones, listen to Groove Salad on SomaFM or your favorite concentration music… and get cracking!

This is of course easier said than done, but important things in your life are not supposed to be easy. Every now and then you will feel the urge to check e-mail again or see what your friends are up to in Facebook. Resist that urge and slap yourself on the wrist if necessary. This will pay off quick!

It will be hard in the beginning, but know that life is hard if you live it the easy way and easy if you live it he hard way. This means if you give in to distractions and do what feels easiest and most convenient, avoiding doing the hard things that matter, it will be an uphill battle later on. If, on the other hand, you train your mind to only focus on things that are hard and challenging (like staying focused), the rest will be easy and your life will flourish.

Does this make sense? If so, put it in practice, starting now!