When is the last time you had a bad customer service experience? An even better question is, when is the last time you had an extraordinary customer service experience? If you’re like me, then the answer to the first question is “recently” and the answer to the second question is “I can’t remember”.

Raving Fan’s is about getting companies to help us answer the second question more often. It aims to make “Raving Fans”, instead of just “satisfied” customers. We’ll see just how good a job Raving Fan’s does on Sunday, when I’ll be posting my full review.

In the meantime please pick up the book at Amazon or your local bookstore. Both Borders and Barnes and Noble should be carrying it, so instead of waiting for shipping, go pick it up now. It’s a quick read so you should be able to bang it out this weekend.

Happy reading, risk-takers!

There has been so much written about Getting Things Done, by David Allen, that instead of writing a review, I am going to write about the additional resources there are on the web to make your GTD implementation better. Please note that this is not meant to be an exhaustive guide, only a listing of what I feel are the best resources and tools for GTD.

Websites and Blogs

• 43folders.com is a blog devoted to Getting Things Done. I would start with this post that is a great overview of GTD and also includes a crap load of links for more information, and will dwarf this post to some degree.
• Lifehack.org has pointers on productivity, GTD, and life hacks. They update pretty frequently and have tons of readers. Make sure to check out the Podcast.
• StevePavlina.com’s posts about Getting Things Done. Most of them don’t have much to do with the book, but they provide small systems for higher productivity, which would be approved of in the eyes of Mr. Allen.

Tools

• Hipster PDA created by 43folders. Index cards, a pen, and a paper clip. It doesn’t get any simpler than that, but used correctly, can solve very complex organization problems.
• The Moleskine (pictured left) is a notebook supposedly used by famous painters and writers, such as Picasso and Hemingway. I own 2. Check out some moleskine hacks at 43folders and their wiki. For a little more information than you’d ever care to know about Moleskine’s try the Wikipedia entry.
• The Palm PDA can be used for a GTD implementation, for those of you who like to push 1’s and 0’s around instead of lead or ink. See Charles Olsen’s write up, as well as Sylvia’s GTD resource list.
• Next Action Cards is a simple way to GTD, much like the Hipster PDA, but slightly more rigid.
• DIY Planner provides templates for implementing a GTD system similar to the Hipster PDA. (From Nate in the comments, thanks!).

Implementations and Tutorials

• Orielly DevCenter Getting Things Done with your mac. A good overview of implementation using a Mac. A little outdated, but a good read from the folks at Orielly.
• Foldedspace.org’s great implementation read. Who doesn’t love diagrams?
• The GSD System by Bill Westermann.
• Custom Moleskin Planner is Mike Rhodes GTD system centered around his moleskine.
• A Black Belt implementation that incorporates techniques in Mike’s and Bill’s implementations from above.
• But she’s a girl has a tutorial on using Tracks a Ruby on Rails powered app.
• Patrick Rhone has a great implementation of GTD using Backpack, 37signals personal organizer tool.
• Jason has a pretty lengthy and hands on implementation write up in his blog, which I found pretty well thought out and well illustrated.

Software

• Backpack, as mentioned above, is very useful for personal organization. Again, read Patrick Rhone’s awesome write up for how to use backpack effectively. Also see What’s the next action, a weblog dedicated to using backpack for GTD.
• Outlook Plugin was developed for GTD with help from David Allen. Outlook for GTD has help for using Outlook for GTD without the plugin.
• GTD for Lotus Notes. Link to a Yahoo group dedicated to using GTD with Lotus Notes.
• pyGTD is written in Python and can be used on a PC, Linux, and Mac OS.
• Tracks is a Ruby on Rails application specifically for GTD, as written above.
• Evernote software for taking notes. Very exhaustive. Webpages, images, links, emails, phone messages, sketches, and full documents. Windows Only.
• iClip is similar to Evernote but for OS X.
• Update: Kinkless GTD (kGTD) is a set of applescripts to be used in conjunction with OmniOutliner Pro that was brought to my attention after writing this post by 43folders. This project looks very exciting and I am most definitely going to experiment with using this for my implementation.

Other Resource and GTD listings like this one

• GTDtools
• Sylvia’s list is pretty good, but its a little old and some of the links don’t work.
• Wikipedia’s entry on GTD. Not as large as you would think, im pretty sure the Moleskine entry is bigger.

If you have any suggestions or recommendations for resources you would like to see on or off this list, leave it in the comments. I will be writing about my GTD implementation sometime in the future, when I have it refined to a point that I am comfortable with sharing it.

First, let me explain that I was originally going to be reviewing The Long Tail this week, but I never received the blogger review early copy that was supposed to be here last week. That’s ok, the book comes out tomorrow and I will buy and review it next week.

For this week, I bring a book into the mix that isn’t on the schedule, but that circumstances and a higher power has led me to believe I should read it immediately. That book would be Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. I’ve always had an interest in his books and that interest resurged this week when he launched his blog Power, Seduction, and War under the Festeringass.com blog network. After reading Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of Tucker Max’s interview with him, I couldn’t wait any longer to read what this man had to say.

A quick summary of 48 Laws from Amazon.com

“Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective,” writes Robert Greene. Mastery of one’s emotions and the arts of deception and indirection are, he goes on to assert, essential. The 48 laws outlined in this book “have a simple premise: certain actions always increase one’s power … while others decrease it and even ruin us.”