While eating my diner, my mind started wandering again. Not that smart, with a wife and two kids who obvious should get my attention, but unfortunatly sometimes I can't control my thoughts. This time the topic on mind was 'Social Networking'. Earlier today I mentioned, twice, that I'm not doing so well as a social networker. Untill I got an epiphany about all this...

There has been a lot of tension the last weeks, because of the birth of Sara. Not caused by worries, but just the knowledge that Sara could come any minute combined with the fact that a birth is a special happening, made me alert, almost on edge, even though I was tired to the bone.

Usually tension doesn't make me restless, but most of the time really tired. It runs in the family 'cause my Dad has exactly the same. As if my natural defense system wants me to sleep. After waking up I usually am able to take a step back on difficult situations and relativate more.

However, having a child isn't an usual situation, it's special. That also seems to be the case on the side-effects of the tension. The last weeks I was very tired, slept badly and sometimes I even was cranky, which is quite unusual to me.

Luckily the last nights have been good. Sara is sleeping great and today I even skipped "siesta". I hope Sara will have the same "sleep cycle" as her sister Hannah.

The birth of a child is truelly a blessing and a very special marker / change in your path of life.

On 2007-10-22 @20:29, our daughter Sara Marije is born. A quick delivery with an happy end; Chantal and Sara are doing great. The first photos can be seen on her (dutch) website: http://www.saraosinga.nl.

After hearing and seeing a lot about GTD, short for Gettings Things Done, and attending the lecture of Matthijs Roumen, I decided it's time to GTD as well. I've tried David Allen's Outlook Add-In, which worked allright. But after two days I needed something else...

Main reason is that I don't like to install additional tools. The Outlook plugin is great, but I can't install in on my PDA or smartphone. And what if I'm somewhere else, let's say in an internet cafe, I couldn't use it. Also the plugin gave me some troubles. After marking a task as "complete", the originating email would still be in place in the @action folder... Maybe I should do have given it some more time, but now I have an adapted version, which works even with IMAP protocols: meaning you can use it in any mail-client.

My version probably lacks some GTD aspect's, but it currently works for me.

Context
With GTD you specify some contexts, like @work, @home, etc. Currently I have 3 mailboxes: Work at NHL, Osinga Software and Private (home). On GTD I'd probably should redirect all to one address, but now I use every mailbox as context.

As a maintainer of my own mailserver I could create more mailboxes, but currently I don't need more.

Actions
GTD heavily uses context, projects and subprojects as categories. Instead I use actions. In each mailbox I created folders, like @Call, @Read, @Email, @Internet, @Write, etc., all verb's which are specific actions I do in that context. For Osinga Software a main action is programming, therefor I created an action @Program.

All these actions are folders on the IMAP mailserver.

Procedure
With this set-up I can do roughly the same procedure as with GTD.

Collecting can be done the same way as in GTD, using notes, are whatever. Currently it differs: if I have paper, I'll write it down. Once behind the computer I use Outlook's functionality (ctrl-shift-s) to post a message into a @action folder. When I have no paper, I use my smartphone or PDA to mail it myself.

When checking mail (need to limit this to a few times a day), I process all incoming mails (and collected papers). From now a mail can be seen as a task too. If I need to do an action and I can't do it in 2 minutes, I'll move to one of the @action folders.

Once I complete an action (or when I don't have to do anything) I move the mail to a !Finished mailfolder for future reference. As in GTD I have a place to store all things I someday (might) want to do: the !Someday mailbox folder.

A weekly review is a must when using GTD and that's no different here.

Another important aspect of GTD is the Waiting For, where you place all things of which you need some kind of response of others. In my system waiting is another "action", it's a verb. When I write a mail and want to be sure I'll get a response, I cc myself. I'll get the message in my inbox and place it in my @Waiting folder.

I'm still in the beginning of this all, so I don't really know if it's definitly suites me. We'll see what happens. I don't have the illusion this works better than normal GTD; it's just another approach. As friend and collegue Martin Kuipers claimed: First rule of GTD is to setup a system you'll trust.

Some time ago someone stressed out to me that I should use existings tools for this weblog, like wordpress, instead of building my own blog-system. One of his arguments was that it's got so much to offer, with add-ons or plugins, that's impossible to write all that functionality myself. I must admit that this argument is true. There's a lot of great stuff already build and it can do more than this system propably ever will.

Nevertheless I still don't use wordpress or any weblog and I possible won't in the near future. Not to be stuburn, but for another reason. Programming is my addication and I like to build things. "Then build something that doesn't exists", you might say. I think thats's nearly impossible to do. Everything I can come up with, is already thought out by others. There are only few who can create something new, there are a lot who connect dots and build things which already exists (sometimes with additional features).

In my opinion building something myself is a great way to learn how current technologies work. RSS isn't something I know of, it's something I understand, because I built a RSS-generator myself. Second, it's nice to build stuff you actually use and last, but not least, I enjoy the programming.

Because a weblog needs a comments section, I finally have build that. It's even a system-wide comment system which makes it possible to comment on virtually everything on the website. Anyway, you can comment now on my blog-posts.

So I'll just keep on building things myself and enjoying it.