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Webinar: 3 Hidden Secrets to Using Contexts and Tags for Tasks in 2021

Are you using the best contexts or tags for your tasks? Or none at all?

If you read the 2001 version of Getting Things Done by David Allen, you may know that 20 years later, in an era of new technology and working from home, the original contexts must be updated and customized.

Perhaps you already use (or tried to use) your own contexts or tags, wishing that there were more clear directions. It’s hard to figure out the best way; some have even argued they are unnecessary, but is that true? Finding the right way for you is an effort in frustration.

In this webinar we’ll use the latest research to explore the secrets of task tagging i.e. contexts. You’ll learn why we use them all the time, mostly without knowing how. Yet, they are powerful when properly customized and applied.

Furthermore, you’ll see why you may need to update the way you tag your tasks in order to increase your productivity, not once but several times. You’ll see why this is especially true for ambitious overachievers: they don’t have a choice but to keep changing.

Save your spot: Thursday, January 28th 2021 at 6pm Eastern
https://live.remo.co/e/3-hidden-secrets-to-using-contex

Join us in this free, interactive session. Then, remain for a few more minutes to complete an exercise with other attendees at your private, virtual tables.

Finally, this webinar is based on a deep-dive article I wrote which will be launched during the event in text, audio and video formats.

We have a lot to learn from each other. See you there!

Francis

Update: The webinar replay is available free for a limited time here.

  

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On a Personal, COVID-Related Note

During the Time Blocking Summit in March 2020, one of our presenters was stuck in China. She couldn’t commit to doing a live session because she had no idea where she would be.

“How strange” I thought.

Just a few days later, life here in Jamaica abruptly shifted into its first COVID-19 shutdown. Schools were instantly closed and people stopped commuting to their offices. Advertising and communication paused as projects were cancelled.

Here at ScheduleU, we also paused, unsure how to proceed. While we had lots of post-summit action-plans in place, they all seemed to be inappropriate. The pandemic was spreading and people were passing away. As you know, this was unprecedented.

I’m sure your life took a few surprising zigs and zags.

But I’ll bet you never stopped time blocking. Neither did I. In fact, it became an even more important tool to use in a time of massive distractions. Such as…

While I waited to see what direction to take, I decided to do some routine maintenance on my server in May. Fortunately, it revealed a malware attack which too down all my websites, including this one.

With a major virtual conference only weeks away (in another niche), it meant that I had to drop everything and focus on addressing the emergency. Once the event was over, I turned my attention to recovering my sites from the blighted server.

That was last week.

Thankfully, we are some four months away from hosting the next Task Management and Time Blocking Virtual Summit on March 4-6, 2021. Plus, I’ll be bringing the Mighty-Taskers online community back to life as a key component.

This has been a uniquely challenging year in so many ways.

How has your year been? Send me a note on Twitter.

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Meetings, Awful Meetings

Have you ever been stuck in the middle of a meeting that simply sucked away your very life-force? As you looked back at what brought you to that position, you may have been overwhelmed.

There were simply too many reasons why the experience was so bad, some of which seemed to be socially formidable.

A few years ago I sat down with Garrick van Buren and we had an in-depth conversation about all the powerful forces that produced such defective experiences. For example, we looked at the design of Outlook and other meeting software. Plus the social freedom people have to call superfluous meetings.

The end result we thought, would be a simple podcast – an audio recording.

But that was before I changed the format of my podcast interviews. Now, they had to produce some kind of interactive that put the discoveries from the conversation into play. With that high standard I decided to pause the release and create “something”.

Well, that something – a simulation about the culture of meetings that takes over companies unwittingly – took about a year to take from the moment of conception to its finalization.

And they are both available here. Listen to the conversation and experience the simulation. Enjoy and learn from them both!

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A Time Blocking Summit

We can get a bit excited here at ScheduleU, right?

After participating heavily in the Productivity Summit recently concluded, it wasn’t hard to make the decision to have our own summit.

So please save the dates – March 5-7, 2020 for the very first Time Blocking Virtual Summit.

Unlike most other summits which are a bit like binge-watching on Netflix, this experience will be more like watching an NFL game, then immediately seeking out other fans to interact with. (And maybe even a star player or a coach here or there.)

You see, we are creating maximal opportunities for learning and fun interactions with other people which means that your odds of having a great experience are dramatically increased.

It’s right in line with the latest research as you may know.

Can’t wait? The registration website is under construction here, so you can watch things unfold in the next few weeks and months.

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Productivity Summit – Save the Dates

This is an interesting development… a productivity summit that will be rather unique being held on Friday/Saturday – Oct 4th and 5th.

What makes it special?

First of all, while I have participated in a number of summits by providing short presentations, this time around I am involved in the planning. Ray Sidney-Smith is the owner of this particular effort and he’s bringing together an interesting group of experts in four tracks: Productivity, Technology, Organization and Business Development. I’ll be the Track Leader for Productivity.

Furthermore, I’ll also be in charge of the Interactive Space, in which a number of quizzes, games, branched scenarios, simulations and other interactive digital activities will be offered. As you may know, these greatly enhance learning and are usually a lot of fun to play.

Usually, summit participants are only given a chance to be passive absorbers of visual and audio content. Consequently, they often give only partial attention, playing the content in the background while they do other work.

Interactives require active involvement, which leads to faster learning. Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever seen this offered in a summit of any kind!

Finally, this summit takes place on a MightyNetworks community platform, within an already existing network – the Personal Productivity Club. Attending the summit actually means becoming a temporary member of the community. Once it’s over, you’ll have the opportunity to continue being a member for free.

In most summits, you don’t have an opportunity to interact with other attendees or even the presenters once their bit is done. Here, you can take several next steps to engage, share, ask questions, debate, delve into details, clarify fuzzy areas or just hang out. As you can see, this summit takes things to another level that is quite remarkable.

You may find that even if you have heard a speaker like me before, grappling with the same ideas in the form of a digital interactive or with other people is quite a different opportunity that should be a lot of fun.

Early registration is free and available here. If you can’t catch the live event on those days, or want to replay them at will in the future, there is a fee you can pay for lifetime access. The price will vary depending on the day you sign up, but the general rule is that the earlier the better.

You should also know that I am a paid affiliate of the summit and receive a monetary benefit from each paid subscription. Therefore, your contribution will help fund the work I’m doing here at ScheduleU and 2Time Labs.

So don’t miss a beat. Jump in and sign up here and let your colleagues know.

Francis

P.S. As of this moment, ScheduleU/2Time Labs will be offering more than half the summit’s interactives! More details to come.



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Our Beta Community Continues

As I promised in an earlier post, the name of the community was changed to the Mighty-Taskers’ Community.

A Mighty-Tasker is someone who places a high demand on themselves to manage a great number of tasks. They typically are juggling at least 100 discrete tasks and use sophisticated methods and tools.

As a result, they are quite busy people, and this remains the only place I know where they can gather with others of like mind.

Come join the Beta Testing as we perfect this new network.

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How Scheduling Everything and GTD Work Together

In this video of a speech I gave at a recent GTD-DC Meetup, I explain how an increase in time demands must lead to an approach that relies on your calendar.

As you may know, this flies in the face of David Allen’s thoughts on the matter in Getting Things Done, first edition (2001). In my talk, I worked my way to this piece of good/bad news in this examination of task management, science and GTD.

Take a look.