I found this interesting while re-reading David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. It’s the six steps of natural planning: Defining purpose and principles Outcome Visioning Brainstorming Organizing Identifying next actions According to Allen, this is the way in which our brain plans virtually any task. What I found thought-provoking here, is that we probably process…
Inarguably, one of the most important pieces of the GTD methodology for time and task management is the weekly review. This critical ritual involves the practitioner ensuring that inboxes are emptied, reviewing his or her lists and making necessary adjustments to projects and tasks so that contexts, priorities, next actions and other elements are accurate. All…
I’ve been using OmniFocus for about a year now and it seems like the right time to post a comprehensive review of it and how it’s worked for me. I’m an extremely diligent GTD (Getting Things Done) practitioner and frankly, both my personal and professional lives would be a mess without it. GTD is a time-…
I get asked quite frequently about my task management workflow in general, and specifically how I keep projects organized and quickly/easily refer back to discussions in meetings or emails from months earlier. Here’s a look at how I have things set up. And I’ll add some additional posts about the actual setup of individual tools…
Overview I recently switched to OmniFocus as my GTD application for Mac OS X and iOS. Now, I realize this goes against my initial criteria for finding a new GTD system, which included a requirement that the system be cross-platform, but my computer usage — even at work — has shifted to almost entirely Mac OS…
Overview I recently evaluated Appigo’s Todo Cloud 7, formerly known as Todo Pro. It does just-short job of supporting the GTD process. For example, it doesn’t have project status (e.g., Next Action, Someday/Maybe, Waiting) or projects, though you could, in theory, use tags for the statuses. They use lists rather than projects, which aren’t significantly different in…
Overview It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Producteev wasn’t going to do the trick. It doesn’t support the GTD process sufficiently. For example, it doesn’t have project status (e.g., Next Action, Someday/Maybe, Waiting) or contexts, though you could, in theory, use labels for both of these. There’s also no Inbox. The…
I was reading an article the other day on Lifehacker that showcased how to use Apple Reminders for GTD. The idea was that it’s so deeply embedded in iOS and OS X, that users of those platforms should find it beneficial to use it for GTD-based task management. This raised another question in my mind,…
Overview It took some time for me to rule out Toodledo. In all honesty, I think it’s one of the more GTD-oriented and powerful solutions available. I do want to call special attention to the fact that this application handles Next Actions in a manner consistent with the way GTD tasks should flow. This has…
My office was a total mess. I had two file cabinets full of papers that I may or may not ever need one day. I’m not a pack rat when it comes to documents, but if there’s a chance I might need it, it got filed. Filing papers takes a few minutes, so it was…