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Since the beginning of November the Lovely Bride and I have been on an extended “vacation” of sorts, traveling from place to place visiting friends and family, staying in hotels or someone’s home (Thanks Phil!). At the moment we are staying with family in Hilton Head, SC (yes the weather is wonderful). It has been an amazing two-month-long journey of discovery and growth as we cope with being together all the time.

Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude. And Workflow.

One of the aspects of my life that has suffered a little has been my GTD practice. The workflow process has changed drastically, as I have not been accustomed to traveling for long periods of time. In addition, the infrastructure that I had created to support my workflow is unavailable. Since we are traveling by car everywhere we go there is no file cabinet, no bulletin board, no white board, not even a desk blotter.

The Home Office Setup
(Notice the Tickler File in the rolling cart on the right)

Not having a permanent place to keep my workflow tracking tools has made things difficult, to say the least, and is forcing a re-thinking of how I manage my tasks and activities. After doing some thinking about this, the first thing that has to change is the Tickler File.

Using a Traditional GTD Tickler File

Traditional 43 folder Tickler File Setup

The traditional Tickler File, as defined in Getting Things Done, consists of 31 folders for days of the week and 12 for the months. Its use is the epitome of simplicity: whenever a piece of paper enters your workflow and:

1. It will take more than 2 minutes to execute,
2. It doesn’t have to be done today.
3. Or it contains Time-Sensitive Information for the future.
4. File it in the appropriate numbered folder in the Tickler File.

For example, you receive an invitation to a party later this month and it includes directions to an unfamiliar restaurant. You would Process the invitation by:

1. Filling out the RSVP card and putting it in your Out-box to be mailed (less than 2 minutes).
2. Process the Time Sensitive Information by making an entry in your calendar system for the date and time of the event.
3. Process the directions by putting them in the folder for the date of the party, including any menu choices and possible instructions for attire.

Then when the day of the party arrives you simply look in the folder for that day (as you do every morning), retrieve the information and incorporate the instructions into your daily activities.

Special circumstances require a creative alternative

I now do not have a fixed location for my Tickler File, nor do I have access to the space that I used to enjoy in my home office. The complete set of 43 folders has been occupying a traveling hanging-file case that gets carried around from place to place. This takes up a lot of space in the car and requires that the case be brought into the hotel room so that I can keep up with the filed inputs.

I am sure that you can imagine the inconvenience of hauling this case in-and-out of hotels in Cleveland, Chicago, Lacrosse, Rockford, St. Louis, and Nashville over a period of 5 weeks. I will admt that by the end of November I was only taking it out of the car if we were staying somewhere more than one day, so I started looking at it less and less. I needed a solution that would:

• Not take up too much space (i.e. fit into my laptop bag)
• Be easy to access and process daily
• Be flexible- and powerful-enough to remain useful during the course of an indefinite travel schedule

Today, Tomorrow, & Later

A while back I answered a reader’s question about how to start getting organized and outlined a system for getting a grip on existing stuff and managing new inputs on a temporary basis until a new workflow can be established. I have reviewed this concept and decided that I can maintain my own GTD workflow with a similar system plus a couple of additional procedures, and on Friday I re-organized the Tickler File, cutting it down to 15 folders.

Click on the image to see full-sized

The 31 Daily file folders have been replaced by 3 that are labeled “Today”, “Tomorrow” and “Later”. Inputs that enter the workflow are prioritized as follows:

• Is it urgent?
  • If Yes - If it can be done in less than two minutes, then do it. Otherwise put it in the “Today” folder.
  • If No - put it in the “Later” folder after marking it with a due date. Enter a reminder for the due date in Lightning (digital calendar).
• Is it just important? Put it in the “Tomorrow” folder if I have time to work on it, otherwise it goes in the “Later” folder with a due date written on it (and enter a reminder for the due date in Lightning).
• Is it neither urgent nor important? Well, it should go in the trash unless it needs to be archived.
• Is it something that someone else can or should handle? Put the information in an e-mail and send it off.

This setup gives me the same long-range tracking as a full-scale Tickler File, due to the inclusion of January thru December monthly file folders. Since the 31 daily file folders have been replaced with 3 files it takes up a lot less space - and is portable enough to bring in-and-out of hotels/homes.

The Calendar becomes more important

The importance of keeping an eye on my calendar and the reminders grows tremendously in this format. Without paying careful attention to making and looking at calendar entries tasks and to-dos can get lost in the “Later” file and deadlines can be missed. In fact, now that this piece is in place I will be looking into improving integration between mobile devices, my paper planner, and the digital calendar systems.

Shane brings this up in the Work.Life.Creativity forum recently, see the discussion thread for more information on mobile calendaring.

What say you? Do you have any tips or tactics for me that might make this better? Is there something that I missed? Keep in mind that I am very paper-centric (although that may need to change!). I’d appreciate your comments below.