Life Hackery
Getting Things Done with Room for More

Life Hackery
• Productivity Tips, Tricks and Systems that
keep you focused on creating great stuff,
what ever that may be.

GTD
• Getting Things Done by David Allen

GTD Systems
• Things
• OmniFocus
• Google for: GTD

GTD Basics
• Projects
• Contexts
• Items
• Actions

Things
• Simple To-Do List
• Filter your focus
• Organize into Projects
• Areas are Contexts

Inbox Zero
• A vow to not spend more time on any
given email then it deserves.

Email is Evil
• Robs you of your attention
• Derails your focus
• Everything is Urgent
• You’re paying mental debt, with interest, for
every unprocessed email in your inbox

My Verbs
• Delete(or archive)
• Delegate
• Reply
• Process

Delete
• You really don’t need it.
• Act on it, or get rid of it.
• If you really do need it, archive it. But don’t
go crazy...

Delegate
• If someone else can service them better, let
them.
• Give yourself a reminder to follow up to
make sure the email got taken care of.

Reply
• Don’t write a novel when a haiku will do.
• Get good at quick replies, and process
emails faster than ever.

Process
• Does this email require me to do
something now?
• If it takes less than an hour to process, then
Just Do It.
• If it will take longer, capture in your GTD
system, and move on.

Getting Started
• Set up an Email DMZ
• Quarantine your time
• Schedule an Email Dash, once an hour.
• Stay at zero by the end of each day.

Resources
• http://inboxzero.com
• http://43folders.com/
• http://gettingthingsdone.com/
• http://lifehacker.com/
• http://culturedcode.com/things

... with room for more
• If life has given you a full plate,
then get a bigger plate.

Thank you!
• Eric Marden
• http://xentek.net/
• http://twitter.com/xentek

Special Thanks
• Special Thanks to all the folks I ripped off
for the topic of this talk, including Merlin
Mann, David Allen, and Life Hacker.
• This talk was driven from my experience
implementing these powerful techniques.