Traveling task management system

The most popular entry on this blog so far has been on using a Google Docs spreadsheet for time tracking. So I thought I'd add another personal productivity entry, this time on traveling task management.

I'm on the road pretty often. I love travel but it can be a sort of creeping disorganization. I get picked for the airport and my bags are organized, my papers are in particular pockets. Then I check in, now a couple papers migrate to a different pocket. Then it's through airport security, everything comes out of the briefcase and the pockets get switched more. On the plane I receive a map and fill out immigration forms... By the time I'm at the destination hotel I have a big pocket full of whatever paper, my briefcase has been juggled, and there's undifferentiated new stuff like receipts and area maps floating about.

Luckily, there's David Allen's Getting Things Done technique (there's an affiliate link to the book down below), which saves my professional life daily. The GTD approach assumes one is too busy to sort items as they come in and therefore suggests using an inbox that's essentially a catch all. "Collect now, sort later" is a decent summation of the first step.

However many of us, and most of the GTD book, presume a single, dedicated location for one's inbox and inbox management area. This should absolutely be the case at fixed locations-- you could look at my home office, my kitchen (the family gathering place), and my New York office and easily identify the workflow support areas. But what about in a car? a hotel? a hotel'd cube at my employer's UK branch?

So I developed an inbox system that works in "floating" contexts such as standing, say at an apartment's kitchen island or even a coffee bar, and seated, such as a hotel room desk. It unpacks and repacks in a minute. It travels inside a briefcase. It keeps me organized and also adds a sense of familiarity no matter where the vagaries of travel deposit me.

Unpacked, it looks like this:

Very few materials are needed:

• A file wallet to hold paper while traveling
• A computer, if you use one
• A pad and paper
• Divider materials for piles of paper, usually binder clips or colored construction paper

When I start out, the file wallet is either empty or has a binder clip with all of my traveling docs such as boarding passes and maps. I'll also have a clutch of binder clips or some sheets of colored paper.

During the day, any new paper goes directly into the file wallet. I usually try to put all new stuff at either the wallet's front or back, but life is too hectic to be dogmatic about it. At the end of the day, anything not organized within the wallet is considered "new". (This is why I prefer binder clips, it's more obvious what is still "floating".)

I find the paper journal to be useful essential still. I print my own notesheets using a word template (header for project, date and topic, lined or grid for notes, pages get filed by project later) and also have a scratch pad. Despite having started computer programming with a TRS 80 at age 8, I still find paper and pen to be reliable, quick access, no fuss data capture. On the other hand, although I can't imagine not needing a computer myself, I guess there are traveling knowledge workers somewhere who don't have to.

Then whenever I get the chance, preferably every day before dinner so I can enjoy it with a clear conscience, I process the inbox. It rarely takes more than half an hour and it goes like this:

1. Find a space slightly wider and taller than a placemat.
2. Empty the inbox into a pile.
3. Separate and line already collected piles at the top
4. Set out the computer and pen and pad.
5. In GTD style, process the top item on the inbox:
   • If it takes a few seconds, do it then.
   • If it takes longer, make a note on my task list, then file
   • If it's reference, file
6. Process everything in the inbox, through the computer and notepad, to a file pile.
7. When I'm done, bind all the file piles and put them in the file wallet.
8. Sweep file wallet, computer, and pen and pad into briefcase. Enjoy the rest of the day.

The nice thing about this is that it can be interrupted. It's best to always completely empty the inbox. But if I can't, a couple binder clips and a sweep of the arm closes the whole thing up and off I go.

I find that there are two main benefits to the system. First, it keeps me organized while on the go. Second, it's a helpful bit of routine when everything is up in the air. The hotel room electric sockets may look weird and I may not recognize the script used in signage, but at least my suitcase is in the closet, my toiletries are by the sink, and my inbox is on the desk.