The book of the week has been Getting Results the Agile Way
We had a lovely lunch at Farmicia in Old City Philadelphia and discussed how we apply agile processes to our lives. Alas, it sounds in text like one of the most soul-crushing things ever, but consider this:
- We all are very career-driven
- At the same time, juggle many community and outside obligations
- And some how make it seem effortless (hopefully)
Now, don’t you think there’s probably an underlying system that’s helping us out? While the book was somewhat interesting (my favorite part was the portion discussing “worry breaks”, where you set aside time for worrying and don’t let it interrupt your day) and free to boot, it was far more interesting hearing the many strategies people use to organize.
Here are some of the tools mentioned at our lunch:
- Trello, with boards for work and personal
- Physical scrum board, with larger cards for larger projects (such as the difference between remembering to make a dish for a potluck versus finishing a table or knocking out a wall)
- Workflowy (my favorite)
- TeuxDeux (very popular, browser based to-do app with an iPhone app available)
- OmniFocus (and other Omni products — Mac only)
Some of the people in the group had read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity