implement GTD

It’s been 2-3 months since I started slowly warming back up to GTD, and about 3 weeks since I started setting this system into place. Some of these elements have been in use for a while, but not as part of a more complete GTD system.

Collection

1. Email Inboxes. I strive to keep them empty after processing and emptying my primary accounts a few weeks ago. Anything coming in is dealt with immediately or within the day. The delayed items are usually work-related items that arrive when I’m at home, or vice-versa.
2. PigPogPDA. This is a pocket reporter Moleskine that is always in one of my back pockets. It’s arranged in the style of the PigPogPDA which is basically a way of apply a simple template to pages to leave room for notes/titles and tabs. The tabs are basically quick-access points to things that have been collected but not processed, things that are active, and the current collection point. The reporter notebook is easier to take notes in “on the run”, and the tabs / margins make it easy to mark off what’s been processed so that I don’t have to worry about it (or just worry about it in a different way).
3. Other Notebooks. The most common one of these is a pocket gridded Moleskine Cahier that I use at work. It’s small and thin and easy to take to meetings, which is where it serves its purpose for handling Agenda items as well as collecting new actions. It’s also useful for brainstorming and regular note-taking. The Cahier’s are perfectly sized to dedicate to specialized contexts or projects.

It’s rare that I don’t have at least one of these notebooks with me. The “PigPogPDA” is always there, but tends to be used much more in personal life than in my professional life. The PigPogPDA format has proven quite valuable in keeping me close to the “Mind Like Water” stage since I have a common way now of marking of items that have been processed so I can move on from those pages without worry.

Processing

Processing means getting those collection sources to “empty”. For emails, it means deciding (a) if the message is spam (most likely), (b) has any actions and getting those into the action planning system (see next), (c) needs a reply. If the message can’t be processed immediately, it stays in the inbox. I used to sort messages with the newest at the top, but now I sort the opposite way, so that the top-most item is the oldest one and the one needing most attention. After being processed, all messages are filed for future reference. And sometimes, filing is the only processing action necessary. I’ve been applying this method for the last 2-3 weeks, and I feel great. I no longer fear my email.

Organizing

Most items that are processed end up in Tinderbox using Ryan Holcomb’s GTD template with further personal refinements. I share this document between my office and home/studio Macs with .Mac and iDisk. As long as I ensure that my iDisk is properly synchronized between locations, this has been working out great. My TbGTD document contains all of the following, grouped into “Professional” and “Personal” sections:

1. Active Projects and Actions. Most actions are processed and organized into an active project.
2. Someday/Maybe. The great someday/maybe list. I can’t believe how much of a relief it is to have this list around. For some reason, in my Tinderbox setup I seem to pay more attention to it. In meetings at work I’ll ask about certain projects I have on here to see if they’re still relevant while not having to worry about them daily. “Gone but not forgotten”
3. Objectives. meta and larger term projects, and often the seeding ground for new project ideas.
4. Next Actions in Context (aka, the main Agent views). This is where Tinderbox shines – dynamically combing the system for next actions in the proper context. After actions are planned and entered, they show up here. When I’m in the mode of actually getting things done, these are the lists I refer to. They’re devoid of the greater noise that accompanies looking at actions grouped by project, yet because they’re live links to the source action they can be modified. Getting from the agent view of an action to its original item is never more than three keystrokes away for when I need to get to the project itself.
5. On Hold. On hold items are also collected by an agent and I strive to keep an eye on this list to see what needs to be woken up or what might need to be moved down to “Someday/Maybe”
6. Due Today/Soon/Overdue. Also a collection of agents, these display and highlight actions / projects that have a due date.

The other main place, besides email archives, for processed items to end up is a DEVONThink database. Like Tinderbox, DEVONThink is a freeform hierarchical database that can deal with relationships between items. TinderBox functions best for dealing with plans, actions, and quick notes. DEVONThink functions best (for me) as archives / reference. It’s like a tighter and more specialized version of the Mac OS X Finder. Larger research notes also end up in here, even when they’re active, as it’s easy to find related documents in DEVONThink.

For the calendar, Apple’s simple but effective iCal is used. .Mac Syncing means my calendars stay in sync between home and work, and calendars can be sync’d to the iPod (or my phone if it were all fancy and Bluetooth). I don’t use a ‘tickler’. If there’s something far off that I need to remember, I can set a reminder in Backpack or just leave a note/alarm in iCal. The tickler just doesn’t apply to my life. I tend to do nightly reviews (which I’ve written about here before) in some form or another which is where I’ll find and set aside things I need for the next day, if anything.

Review

iCal, my Tinderbox document, and my notebooks are most heavily reviewed. No magic bullet here – it’s just something that I need to stay on top of. Tinderbox’s agents help by collecting references to all OnHold or Someday/Maybe items, regardless of where they are in the document.

Doing

Tinderbox’s agents, again, are the lifesaver here. Two Tinderbox windows I always have open are Professional Agents and Personal Agents, and inside each of those are agents that find actionable items for each context, sorted by placement in the overall document structure and priority. Holcomb engineered the core agents here just right. Somehow it all works out so that I’m never overwhelmed by what’s on my action lists here.

This is the key difference, for me, between using Tinderbox for GTD and using Kinkless GTD. In Kinkless, at least when I used it, I wasn’t comfortable in the ACTIONS view – the contexts tended to have too many items in them, culled from all projects. The optional ‘Next Actions’ special sub-section didn’t show enough. I don’t know if it’s because Holcomb’s Tinderbox templates make it easier to put things on hold, or if it’s because Tinderbox’s multi-window capabilities make it easier to switch between project (planning) mode and action mode, or if it’s Tinderbox’s live agents versus KGTD’s manually-executed scripts. KGTD helped me think in “Next Actions”, but I got overwhelmed in ‘Contexts’.

Wrap-up

I made a list tonight of many of the things that I’ve gotten done since starting on ADHD medication, which seems to have been one of the keys in helping me focus on my GTD system. The list is amazing. I’d gotten so few things done outside of work in recent months and felt totally out of control and drowning; now I’m clearing things off one after the other.

I’ve been trying to implement GTD since spring 2005, and now it’s almost the end of the year and it’s finally coming together for me. I don’t know if it’s the medication and the seemingly-improved ability to focus, the results of trying out so many different systems and settling on this one, or all of the above. In any case, I feel pretty confident in this system and more confident in my abilities to take on new projects than I’ve felt in a long time.

With generally improved focus in my life and a system that I’m finally building trust in (Tinderbox + GTDRules), I’ve enjoyed some rather good successes with GTD over the past couple of weeks.

I resumed reading the book and started building a new ‘In’ list over Thanksgiving weekend. I also used that weekend to clean out all of my email inboxes and restructure my email folders (adding a couple of folders in my two primary accounts for ’@ACTION’ and ’@WAITINGFOR’ to get the inbox to zero while retaining nearby action/waitingfor lists. I’ve kept my Inboxes empty since then and have responded to most items in @action.

I decided to use DEVONthink, which I’ve had in my collection for a while, to take over the job of reference / archiving. It’s a job that DEVONthink excels at. I’ve tried using DEVONthink in the past to manage action lists, to brainstorm, and it didn’t work as well (for me). It’s been good to remove the burden of attaching large text notes to items in my action system. I’d like to be able to archive or completely remove old actions from that system without worrying about losing critical thoughts, documentation, or notes for the future.

Tinderbox and the GTD Improved template from the Tinderbox File Exchange has been working well for managing projects/context/actions. Since it’s stored as a single file, it works great with iDisk for syncing between work and home offices. Some Mac outliners/information managers like NoteTaker and even OmniOutliner can store their data in files that are actually directories full of files and I’ve had obscure issues with those in the past when there’s a conflict.

The nice thing about TinderBox and Ryan Holcomb’s GTD templates is that they’re relatively easy to start customizing and making one’s own – tinkering contexts, prototypes, OnAdd actions (which let you auto-set contexts, importance, and other attributes on new actions or other items added to certain projects).

Since using this setup, I’ve been better at staying on top of projects and actions, better at doing my reviews, and so on. I’ve actually managed to get a lot of things done over the past few weeks. More reports to come.

I’ll admit – I only got about halfway through the book before I stopped reading it a few months ago. I tried to apply what I got from that half to my work/personal life with mixed success. It wasn’t a complete system, but it seemed to work… somewhat.

I think a large part of the problem was that I’ve been ADHD most of my life, which is one of the reasons I’ve had so much trouble getting things done. There are times when even when I have a good list in front of me of actions and all distractions should be out of my mind that I just cannot go straight through. Every time I have to switch applications on the computer, for example, I’d find myself having to stop and almost compulsively check web pages that I knew hadn’t changed and I had no need to see. It was a severe struggle sometimes just to work through some problems. I’d get them done, but it’d hurt. Applying some GTD techniques I picked up from the book and other users would help, sometimes, but most of the time it would only work out for one project or two. Nothing would really stick.

I finally realized that maybe something wasn’t quite right with my brain and went to see a psychiatrist. He’s a good guy and we worked through my issues together and decided to try ADHD meds. I was also dealing with depression, but we decided together that focusing on ADHD first might actually help with the depression – that the big weekends of “nothing getting done” were making me feel terrible, and if I could just get my mind to focus a little more I’d accomplish more and feel better about things in general.

This is my first week on the meds and they seem to have made quite the impact already. A side benefit of this is that I find myself tinkering with GTD systems again and I realized that I need to pick the book back up and start where I left off. Because when I put it down so many months ago, it was because I couldn’t focus and think through the middle chapters enough to take anything from them. So it will be interesting to see how it works out now.

I keep going through different systems for implementing GTD – each has their strengths and weaknesses. The most recent was Kinkless GTD which used OmniOutliner Pro. KGTD was pretty effective in getting me using GTD (at least, my version of it) style techniques a little more properly for the first time – finally I had both contexts and projects. It was pretty lightweight. But I had some issues with it.

Kinkless GTD Problems

• Upgrading not always easy. The software is still in development, and since it’s a collection of scripts for use with OmniOutliner, scripts and document format can change. After settling on version 0.67 or 0.69 (not even sure which version it is), I stopped upgrading out of fear and lack of time.
• KGTD does some clever tricks to maintain actions in contexts and projects. But these tricks means that you can’t really use the regular OmniOutliner checkbox to mark things as done, or deletion to remove the item, since a copy of the thing exists in other locations. When syncing old lists, old items would keep showing up and I’d remember “oh yeah, use those buttons I installed in the toolbar”
• Interferes with other OmniOutliner usage. The toolbar is a global setting, not per-document. This may be a Mac OS X application issue. But it means that using other OmniOutliner documents left me with a toolbar that was of no use. The toolbar can be easily hidden though.

Kinkless GTD is a good system and is a good showcase for the flexibility of AppleScript and Mac OS X application scriptability in general, and a showcase for what can be achieved with an application developer provides good scripting support for their application. But for me there were just enough annoyances to cause it to break down (slightly).

I liked the ability to have context lists and project lists. It’s easier to think things through in project mode, but it’s nice to be able bring up the ’@errands’ context and print it out before going out on errands, or referring to ’@home’ to remember all of the things you need to do at home. This is where GTD really seems to differ from other systems. I also liked its ‘Archive’ feature as a means of cleaning up old tasks and projects but keeping that information around – just off the ‘front pages’.

But I didn’t like how it didn’t fit 100% with how I was used to using OmniOutliner (a program I’ve been using since version 1). I didn’t like how even renaming an action would cause the older names to pop back up when syncing the context and project lists. I didn’t like that my other OmniOutliner documents felt a little awkward with the KGTD toolbar in place. OmniOutliner still excels as a very-rapid outliner / free-thinking tool, and that’s my preferred use for it.

After years of peeking and prodding at Tinderbox, I finally decided to drop the money to get that tool. It’s expensive. It’s not as good for very-rapid outlining as OmniOutliner is. But it has customization features that make it more effective for developing a GTD system that doesn’t interfere with other documents, and it has “Agents” which can be used to handle the separate context lists, or “due today” lists. Agents are queries, so they can match every action with the ‘Home’ context or that is ‘Due Today’ but ignore items marked ‘On Hold’. It doesn’t need to be synchronized to get these items. I’m just starting on trying this system. I’ll write up more soon.

I recently added Kinkless GTD to my arsenal. Kinkless GTD is a set of tools for OmniOutliner 3 Pro to provide GTD functionality – namely the combination of both projects and contexts. For Mac OS X, it’s the best solution for the money, as OmniOutliner is a good tool on its own. This has helped me get back on track with GTD.

I use .Mac and iDisk to share my KGTD document between work and home.

It’s definitely a “good enough” solution for me, at least for now. I’ve just never had anything deal with contexts properly before and now I’m noticing the benefits of them.

Also – I’m keeping an eye on the pricing for Tinderbox, which sometimes dips down to below $100 (usually it’s $165). Tinderbox is a larger and more comprehensive features which allow for a deeper and more dynamic GTD solution to be implemented (there are a couple of usable templates available for this)... But the tool is just too expensive for casual use.

While I’m still stalled out in the book, I continue to try and apply life hacks and work hacks and GTD based tips and techniques to parts of my life to see how they work out.

One that I’ve started playing with recently is GTD With Index Cards. I’ve been applying this primarily at work, and it’s working out fairly well so far.

My system is not as advanced or intense as the one that I link to above, but it’s getting me by. Basically: when I start to get scattered or freaked out or worried about a project, I go through the various actions that need to be done and write them one at a time on 3×5 index cards. Then, I arrange the cards into the steps necessary to complete the project, and go from there. If new things come up, they are put in the stack. If things need input or are deferred, I add a little note to the card and put it on the small bulletin board by my desk to keep them in sight, but out of the immediate pile.

This system brings together some things that I like in digital form, especially in outliners, but has many of the nice little ‘paper advantages’:

• By keeping the stack on my desk and keeping my desk fairly clean, I have an easy answer to the “wait – what am I doing?” question. If I tried to keep this list in something like an outliner or other task list, there are too many distractions on my computer as I cycle through things and I’ll forget that I’m just trying to answer the “wait – what am I doing?” question.
• By having one task per card, it’s not only easy to re-organize tasks/actions, but it keeps my mind from being overwhelmed by looking at all of the upcoming tasks/actions. I know that there’s more to come, but I don’t distract myself by worrying about the next three steps – or worse, an action that’s way down at the bottom of the list that needs everything else to work.
• Assorted satisfaction factors. On some projects, I rip up a card as I complete its action. On others, I keep the cards around but place a big checkbox on each one as I complete it and push them off to the side. At the end of the day, I may go through them and enter them into an outliner or project journal or somewhere else that will be saved and indexed on the computer.

This style of doing things doesn’t apply to all projects. Some have clearer paths and can come off of a single sheet of paper or pair of pages in a notebook. But the one-action-per-card can be quite useful for many situations. I’ve found it brought great relief to projects where I needed to do paper based thinking (it’s becoming easier for me to focus on paper) but needed dynamic flexibility. It’s brought even greater relief to projects that require a lot of little touches that I don’t want to forget but don’t want to be overwhelmed by, as it allows me to be better focused on the action at hand (most of the time).

I’m still stalled out in the book (stuck at the beginning of part 2). But I’ve been trying to apply the general techniques and tricks of the first part of the book and combine them with the tricks I’ve been using on myself for years.

A new trick that I’m trying is a ‘nightly review’, where I enter into my pocket Moleskine what I need to do the next day. It gives me the chance to evaluate what was done, what wasn’t done, and what sort of lists and actions need to moved forward (for example, grocery items that weren’t found last time at the store that I still need to pick up).

I center this review on a very small desk that I used historically for holding / charging my cell phone and for placing things that I needed to take with me when I left the house in the morning (bills to be mailed, etc). When I started carrying pocket notebooks again, I put my notebook and pen(s) here too. In my new apartment, this desk is more centralized and I gave it a lovely, small, dim lamp. It’s perfect for use when the day is quieting down and helps me focus on the review.

When I have the list for the next day ready, I leave the notebook open to that page so that when I wake up the next morning, the list is right there. I can then evaluate it before closing up the notebook and applying the Moleskine elastic band. This is enough for me to actually view and quickly re-evaluate the list. Leaving the book closed or putting it on an index card attached to the front would make it too easy to just grab and place in pocket without looking at the material.

I got through part one of the book, and got some good ideas. But I’ve stalled over reading part two. I’m about to move out of my apartment, and I think I’m a bit overwhelmed by the move. And while ‘Getting Things Done’ would probably be helpful, it’s also a bit overwhelming to start thinking about preparing and building a system at the same time so much is going to be torn down.

I am going to get back to reading part two as the move is going on so that I can plan my space at the new studio accordingly.

I’m almost done reading part 1 of the book, which gives the overview of the GTD process and other insights. Part 2 apparently goes into greater detail about many of the steps and tools and helpers one can use.

I am already feeling an improvement in my day to day life just in how I think about things. There’s more clarity, decisions are a bit more precise. It’s easier for me to decide to do something now in order to get it off of my mind.

I had been working on a submission for a compilation CD of local artists. The deadline was March 31. I had the recording all finished last weekend and since then have been starting to apply GTD techniques towards getting the rest of the submission together (bio, photo, etc) in time for the deadline. I finished most of it up last night and my “next actions” for today basically involved printing material and walking it over to the place for submission. Well, I also found out today that the deadline has just been extended a month to April 30.

Many friends were going “whew!” – apparently I was much farther along than they were! But I got to thinking – with this extra month, could I do better? Put together a more clever bio? Find / get a better picture?

But I decided “no.” I decided that I had everything done, and all that I needed to do to close this “open loop” (in GTD terms) was walk it over and drop it off like I had originally planned to do. It’s great. No more worries over the next month about “that bio I should be rewriting”

In the process of making the submission, I ran into some key people that are involved in another major project of mine – moving – and got some good information. An unexpected but nice consequence of taking action. That information is now collected and will soon be processed and organized.

The best action I can take now is finishing the book, and not feeling so confident about my current feelings that I say I’m doing well enough – what more do I need to learn?

In short – so far, reading this book has been a very positive experience. I still have a ways to go.

Getting a head start on some collecting and processing – especially processing – I did a long overdue Inbox cleanup of my main email account. It feels great, and it makes the email client more responsive since it has less items to deal with in the main Inboxes.

Now it’s much easier to see what needs to be processed.