An inside look at GyroQ

Dan Keldsen, host of the BizTechTalk series of podcasts, recently interviewed Nick Duffill, CTO of Gyronix about strategies for managing interruptions using his firm's software. In this fascinating podcast, Nick reveals some of the thinking that went into the creation of GyroQ, a desktop applet for Windows that enables you to quickly capture ideas, to dos and other information in a queue, and then send them to MindManager for organization at a later time.

One of the bigger challenges faced by knowledge workers today is handling interruptions - e-mails, phone calls, and other distractions that tend to take our focus away from the project at hand. Often, we're our own worst enemies in that regard, Dan pointed out, because our brains are constantly spewing out ideas and reminding us of things we must remember to do.

One of the tenets of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology is if you can deal with something in under 2 minutes, then you should do it and get it out of your "psychic RAM" immediately. GyroQ helps to facilitate that, Nick explained. You can do a mental core dump into the applet, and return to those ideas at a time of your choosing - at which time you can spend some deeper "think time" with them, organizing and adding detail to them.

Gyro Q also helps you to interact with your visual maps more efficiently. But rather than explain that to you here, I encourage you to listen to this podcast.

By the way, Nick Duffill is always a fascinating person to listen to; he has some of the deepest insights into leveraging the power of visual mapping I've ever heard!