From: Michael C. Wittmann (mwittmann_at_maine.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 02 2005 - 05:34:40 PDT
Thomas,
I smiled at what you wrote below:
> From my point of view, Blueprint is a good way to organize
> some larger projects and to deal with the dependencies between
> different
> parts and deadlines within these projects. My situation as a
> scientist has more to do with 50-100 small projects from giving
> different talks at conferences, doing lectures, developing
> software, organizing collaborations, getting research funds.
> The major purpose of trying to use GTD for me is to be reminded
> at the appropriate time and to get the project "out of my head"
> as long as possible (but not too long). The situation is very
> different
> for larger projects (writing publications, organizing a research
> project) where a software like Blueprint might be very helpful.
I am also a scientist, and understand the 50-100 small projects
mindset. Without my Newton to offload information, I don't know what
I would do. The Palm I tried (thinking of better connectivity, etc.)
was simply inadequate. My research tasks are different from yours,
but the mindset (and the torrent of deadlines) is similar.
Just last night, I made my "Plan for the Semester" in terms of work
load, review times, decision making times, and so on. In it, I had
the following sentence: "Don't use BP for tasks!" I am using it ONLY
to monitor the progress of large projects, namely how my students are
progressing in their research work. The actual tasks on their
projects are part of larger projects, but the BluePrint material is
only for checking to see if the flow of their work is moving along.
I hadn't realized what you wrote about Dates/Blueprint not talking to
each other appropriately. I have not used Dates all that much, I must
admit, since I go into Blueprint and check on each project every few
days. The deadlines aren't hard, so I can be that fluid.
This is a fascinating conversation, by the way. I learn a lot through
these sorts of things.
Michael Wittmann
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Sep 02 2005 - 08:00:01 PDT