I’ve been managing my work life, and to a large extent my home life as well, using a GTD system since reading David Allen‘s Book Getting Things Done in 2006.  Frankly, it’s the only way I can stay sane — trying to juggle all the things in my head that go on with work, school, running my own side business, training for marathons or triathlons, and keeping up with my genealogy hobby is just too much without some proven method of organization.

I recently started using a MacBook Pro.  I bought one when the new Retina models were released in August 2012 and I’ve honestly made a conscious effort to use it regularly.  The fact remains that I’m very efficient with the Windows operating system — I know most of the keyboard shortcuts in Windows and the Office applications — and this makes me feel really slow and ineffective when using Mac OS X.  Using Windows on my desktops at home and at work only make the matter worse, so I decided a couple of months ago to use my MacBook Pro at work and as much as possible at home.

This meant giving up my note-taking software of choice, OneNote.  It wasn’t hard for me to switch applications — I like OneNote, but I wasn’t exactly in love with it.  I liked that it was portable across my laptop in the office and on the go, and my desktop at home.  Where I ran into problems was at my office desktop.  It has OneNote, but given that I work for an absurdly-risk adverse insurance company, their IT policy strictly prohibits anything that might make an employee productive, like SkyDrive.

I was already using Evernote as a filing cabinet, so to start using it as a note repository was a simple adjustment.  It has some organizational limitations compared to OneNote, but overall, they aren’t major issues.  I’m working to acquire a MacBook Air at work now that I’m in a traveling position again.  Since OneNote isn’t available on Mac OS X, I would need to adopt a different solution anyway.

I’ve also decided that I’d prefer carrying a notebook to meetings rather than a laptop — well, at least until I get a MacBook Air.  I’ve tried journaling in meetings before and while it works fine, I mysteriously just stop doing it after a couple of weeks.  I saw an article on LifeHacker the other day that showcases Bullet Journal, a productivity-oriented method of setting up a journal and decided to give it another go.  You can watch the video here:

In essence, the journal becomes a second inbox (or a pre-inbox) for my GTD system.  My plan of attack here is that I’ll record the following:

• Notes that are of moderate or high importance, being a little more strict than I have in past note-taking sessions,
• Tasks or action items that are single-action tasks or projects, and
• Diagrams as necessary

At the end of each day, I update my GTD system based on my notes from the day’s meetings, adding additional tasks as required.  At the start of each month, I’ll scan the previous month’s notes to Evernote for storage, making them permanent and searchable.

Will it work for me?  I don’t know.  I hope so.  I like analog note-taking.  I want it to work for me.  I bought an Evernote Moleskine journal and new pens.  We’ll see.