40Tech » GTD

Getting Things Done (GTD) With Toodledo, Using Pseudo-GTD Methodologies

Evan Kline — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:00:39 +0000

One of our readers previously wrote about Getting Things Done with 2Do and Toodledo. That great writeup focused on using Toodledo through 2Do, an iOS app. I have been using Toodledo ever since I first was blown away by it, although primarily through the web app (albeit via Fluid, a Mac app that turns a web page into a standalone application). Over time, I’ve developed a system of my own to implement some GTD methodologies within Toodledo. Here it is.

Background

True GTDers might scream when they see my set up, asking me where I’ve buried the body of GTD that I must have shot and killed. They may be right. It’s been quite a while since I read David Allen’s GTD book, and my system has morphed and developed since that time. I’ve recently been reading the book again, and I see just how far I’ve strayed, even with core concepts such as Next Actions. Part of this is by necessity if you’re a Toodledo user, as Toodledo doesn’t have automated support for Next Actions. Still, this setup works for me.

The heart and soul of my system rests with Toodledo’s saved searches. Toodeldo lets you slice and dice your data in almost any way imaginable, and then save that slicing and dicing so that you can quickly repeat it in the future. I almost never venture out of saved searches now.

Props go out to Proximo, a user in the Toodledo forums. His system was the launching point for my system when I started melding GTD with Toodledo. I modified his system when getting started, and I’ve further modified my system since then, so any bastardizations of GTD are solely my fault.

Before getting into the nuts and buts, a bit of an explanation is in order about how my real-life job fits (or doesn’t fit) with traditional GTD concepts. Projects, and a determination as to the next action required in any project, is at the heart and soul of GTD. A project is any outcome that requires two or more actions to complete it. In my real-life job, I do have projects, but my projects are outnumbered by unrelated one-off tasks. So keep that in mind as you review this system.

Collection and the Inbox

One of the first steps you should take when getting started with Toodledo is to take your Toodledo email address, and get it into any address book from which you might send mail. You can find your email address at Tools > More > Email Import / Export by clicking the “Configure” link. Sending a task via email is one of the more common ways for me to get tasks into Toodledo. I don’t worry about classifying or formatting the email prior to sending it. I do that later, when I go through my Toodledo Inbox.

I set up my inbox by creating a saved search to catch any task that hasn’t been assigned to a folder, as follows:

I named that search “No Folder” when I first set up my system, and never bothered to change it. In hindsight, calling that search “Inbox” would make more sense.

The Structure

My system uses Folders and Contexts at its base level. First, here is a look at how I’ve set up my columns, using a sample task that I’ve used input called “test.” You can see that my columns include the task name, as well as its folder, context, start date, due date/time, and notes.

Folders

My use of folders might be where I’ve strayed the most from traditional GTD concepts. You’ll recognize most of the terms, although I’m not using all of them in a manner that strictly comports with traditional GTD concepts. I do have folders for projects and stand-alone actions, but I’ve also added to this. Here’s a look at my folders.

The way I use these folders is to review an item after I input it, and decide if it takes one step or more than one step. If more than one step, I set it up as a Project by assigning it to the Project folder, and then using Toodledo’s subtask feature (this requires a Pro account) I enter the various steps of the project as subtasks. I like how, in Toodledo, those subtaks will appear in the Action folder (if that is the folder to which I assigned the subtask), but also in the Project folder if I expand the project.

The Action folder is where I put all of my standalone actions, or the subtasks of a Project – unless I put them into my Next folder. My Next folder differs greatly from GTD “Next Actions.” I use the Next folder for important items that I need to get to soon. GTD next actions, on the other hand, are all of the very next actions for every project, that would move each of those projects forward. While my job involves deadlines, it also involves tasks that don’t have strict deadlines, but do have time urgency to them. In my saved searches, detailed below, you’ll see that the Next folder is just one possible criteria in having a task percolate to the top of my radar. I found that just using a Next Actions list of all of my next actions, regardless of urgency or priority, wasn’t sufficient for me. In fact, I’ve recently been testing out OmniFocus, a Mac app that is much more true to GTD concepts, and my glut of next actions has my head spinning.

The Someday folder is where I file items that I’d like to complete someday, but I know I might never get to them. I generally use that Someday folder as a reminder of items, although you could break down those items into subtasks if you wanted to scope out an entire “someday” project.

The Follow Up folder and Tickler folder serve a similar purpose, and I’ve thought about eliminating one of them. I’ve used the Tickler folder to enter items that have specific due dates, that I don’t want mixed in with items in other folders. This folder is underused, as items with hard due dates usually just end up on my calendar, with sufficient reminders set up. Items in my Follow Up folder usually start somewhere else, but get moved to the “Follow Up” folder when I’ve taken the action that I can take, and am waiting on someone else. For example, if I have an item in the Next folder called “call opposing attorney regarding settlement,” I might move that to my Follow Up folder after making the call, and modify it slightly to reflect that I’m waiting on the return call.

Contexts

A context in GTD signifies the tool or location needed to complete a task, such as Office, Home, Phone, Errands, and so on. Here are my contexts:

I’ve kept my contexts to a minimum. My “Computer” context is really a context for 40Tech work. Computer work related to my job, for example, just goes in the “Work” context since I’m rarely not near a computer while on the job. You’ll notice that I don’t have a “Phone” context. I did have this context at one point, but eliminated it. I get so many voicemail messages on the job that it was too slow for me to enter them using the Toodledo interface or via email. I just keep a notepad by my phone now, dedicated strictly for recording information from voicemail messages. Phone related tasks that aren’t originated via voicemail just end up in my Work context. I should note, though, that in my trial of OmniFocus, I have found it much faster and easier to get information into the app, such that I’ve experimented with a Phone context in that app.

Use of Start and Due Dates

Another place where I drift away from GTD gospel is in my use of Start Dates and Due Dates. As mentioned above, I need some way to have my more important items float to the top of my list. Due Dates are one way that I do this, as I’ll show below when detailing my Saved Searches. Basically, I use Due Dates to set when I want an item to appear on my radar, not to indicate an actual deadline. For items that are truly due on a specified date, I put an alarm on my calendar, and my firm also has numerous other tools to monitor hard deadlines. I usually use Start Dates, on the other hand, to signify when a project or task first appeared on my radar, so I can keep an eye on stagnating items.

Saved Searches

This is where all the magic happens. My default starting screen (which can be changed in Toodledo’s settings) is my Search screen. Here is a list of my saved Searches.

And here are the search criteria for each of those items. For my Work – do today search, I catch anything that is “overdue” (using my loose definition of “due”), due today, due tomorrow, or Starred. This has significance during my review process, when I prioritize items (completely contrary to how you’re supposed to do things in GTD). As I’ll explain below, my system is fairly automated after the review.

My Work: queue search looks like this:

It catches items that I put into my “Next” folder or that are due in the next 5 days, but that aren’t due in the next 2 days or Starred. I’ve also put in criteria to catch items based on priority, but I don’t really use priorities any longer.

My Work Follow Up search is designed to simply catch the items that I’ve moved into my “Follow Up” folder, and looks like this:

I’ve mentioned my No Folder search above. It’s my Inbox, and is long overdue for a name change to reflect that. It catches items that I haven’t filtered into my system. My Home and Home Someday searches also deviate from GTD. My lists there, until recently, were simple enough that I just used it to catch items that were Starred or due in the next week, and that fell into the Home, Computer, or Errands contexts. My Home Someday folder caught everything else that used one of those contexts. My Personal all and Work all searches are just what they sound like – a list of every single task from either the office or home, respectively. It’s a way for me to do a review and make sure that I’m not missing something with one of my other searches.

The Weekly Review

The weekly review is a crucial part of GTD. I’m still working on an ideal method for automating this in Toodledo. Right now, I just work my way through each of my saved searches, tweaking and adding to items. For example, if I notice an item that is moot, I delete it or mark it as done. If a single action is better set up as a project, I set up subtasks for it. I sometimes jump over into projects to get the big picture.

And, most importantly for me, and in a deviation from traditional GTD concepts, I try to prioritize my tasks for the upcoming week during my weekly review. I don’t use Toodledo’s priorities, though. Instead, as mentioned above, I use start items or give due dates to specify when an item should appear on my radar. The way my saved searches are set up, this becomes pretty automated after the weekly review. I come in to work each day, and I see the important tasks for the day. If I need to quickly add a task to that day’s list, I star it, and the saved search for “Work – do today” catches it. If I star an item, I don’t need to bother with due dates.

Conclusion

This system has worked for me for over a year and a half, but it isn’t perfect. For one, while Toodledo is insanely customizable, it isn’t designed out of the box to be a GTD tool. As a result, I occasionally toy with some other GTD applications. In a future post, I’ll cover some of Toodledo’s main shortcomings as an electronic GTD tool.

Even though Toodledo isn’t perfect, it is one of the more powerful tools out there. The best part about it is that you can mold it to your own personal tastes. So, if my system doesn’t work for you, you may be able to tweak it. If you do, let me know in the comments.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

The Unofficial Guide to Capturing Everything and Getting Things Done in Evernote [eBook Review]

Bobby Travis — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:45:46 +0000

Just over two years ago, I wrote my first post for 40Tech. I had discovered the power of GTD while trying to manage life, new parenthood, and the crazy tech-startup marketing job I was working. I had also become an avid fan of Evernote. The mere idea that I could capture anything, anywhere, and put it in a searchable digital filing cabinet that I could carry in my pocket was mind-blowing for me. Naturally, I spent a large amount of time and effort in marrying together my two new obsessions. They seemed a great fit to me, and they lead to that fateful first post that is still one of the top articles on this blog: GTD in Evernote With Only One Notebook.

I say this post was fateful for two reasons: one, it set me on a path of productivity and tech that has, in many ways, defined my current career path; and two, it brought about a tremendous amount of great conversation and connections with people I likely would never have met, otherwise. One of those people was Daniel Gold, lifestyle and productivity blogger, and author of the eBook this post is really about — an eBook that would have made my life a lot easier if it had been around when I first considered implementing GTD in Evernote.

Daniel’s book, The Unofficial Guide to Capturing Everything and Getting Things Done in Evernote, isn’t a step-by-step how-to manual. It’s not a mind-bending piece of literature, and it’s not going to cook you breakfast. What it is, wonderfully, is a straightforward, conversational look at why Evernote is a great tool for productivity in general, and how easily it can be used to apply GTD principles effectively. The book never talks down to you, and it never assumes you know too much or too little — it is simply honest and genuine; experienced, but uncomplicated. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a fun and easy read, either.

Daniel starts out by giving you a little background on his own experiences in searching for a productivity tool that would change it all for him. This is a conversation that he is very open about on his blog, and one that he has brought to 40Tech through several insightful and helpful comments. He openly admits that he was just as lost as the rest of us, and that it was his search and his failures in discovering or hacking together the perfect productivity system that ultimately led him back to Evernote. Evernote brought him back to basics — back to simplicity and a straight ahead means of getting things done. This eventually led him to the sense of “mind like water” that inspired his eBook.

He does a good job of breaking down his GTD implementation in Evernote, giving plenty of examples while keeping things light. As I mentioned earlier in the post, the book is not a GTD instruction manual. It does, however, work well as an introductory guide to a system that has been working out very well for him, and is easy to implement.

If I had to pick out a negative — and a review isn’t a review if you don’t — I would say that my only issue is that there are a few rough patches in grammar and a few missed words that might cause you to have to re-read a sentence or two. Even still, the author’s message is always clear, so don’t let the nit-picky things hold you back. Besides, Daniel has stated that his eBook is going to receive quarterly updates — for free — that will include new content and will likely add a few edits in as well.

Conclusion

The Unofficial Guide to Capturing Everything and Getting Things Done in Evernote is an easy, informative, and entertaining read of approximately 40 pages. If you are looking for a decent overview of how GTD can be effectively accomplished in Evernote, it’s definitely worth the $5 price tag, especially considering the free updates for life that you get with it. [UPDATE: We now have an affiliate link that you can use to buy the book, which means we get a buck or two from each purchase if you purchase through that link.].

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

GTD, Producteev, Evernote — Bridged!

Bobby Travis — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:01:30 +0000

As you probably already know, GTD and Productivity are creatures that live somewhere deep in my bones. They speak to me, manipulate me, and generally run my life. Not in a bad way, you understand — even if they come across as a little obsessive, the little monsters really do have my best interests at heart. They’re the reason I’m always looking for new and inventive ways to refine and apply workflows. They’re also the reason that I’ve met some cool people who have their own little creatures that bitch and nag them into action.

During a recent conversation on Google+, with a circle of those people, we were discussing the benefits of both Producteev and Evernote as GTD tools, and how it would be great if they worked together. We decided to test out a means of making that happen, with Evernote as the ultimate collection tool, and Producteev as the magic task management/Google Calendar integrator.

Here’s what I proposed (have a read and tell me what you think):

The Gist of the Idea

The first thing to do is make Evernote able to send email directly to task@producteev.com. To do this, you need to register the email address that your Evernote uses (to email out a note) in your Producteev workspace(s). Now, any tasks in Evernote that you want to process into Producteev can be done directly from within EN.

The next thing you need to do is make sure your Evernote notes get to the right place in your Producteev setup. Producteev’s email2task functionality is fantastic. It incorporates a lot of simple language that allows you to easily do things like schedule a task from email by writing “Do this task tomorrow at 2pm” in the subject line (more on syntax below). If you are working in the Evernote desktop app, you can easily send out an email by selecting that option under Share, and then changing the subject line to reflect the appropriate email2task syntax. If you are in a mobile app, or unable to change the subject line for some reason, then you can simply change the title of your note to reflect what you want the email subject line to say.

These two steps make it possible to collect information in Evernote and share it with Producteev quickly and easily. Producteev can connect to Google Calendar, as well, for two-way sync (coming first week of February, 2012), which gives you the opportunity to finally connect Evernote to Google Calendar, if only by proxy.

Finally, using the Copy Note Link or Copy URL to Clipboard features found under the Note and Share buttons in Evernote, you can add the note’s own link to the email or note body, and leave an easy to follow link back to Evernote in any Producteev task you create.

GTD Use Cases for a Evernote-Producteev Bridge

You could manage your GTD system in Evernote, doing everything from collecting to archiving, but use Producteev during processing to set up automated reminders and Google Calendar events. You could also add in email or IM Producteev functionality to easily close and update tasks, including sharing and delegating without ever logging in to the tool itself.

You could also manage your GTD in Producteev and simply use Evernote as your main collection tool, as well as for keeping all of your reference material and archives in one easily searchable place. Producteev has many ways of inputting tasks, but Evernote can utilize voice, image, and text entry, as well as the clipper, and a crazy number of integrations, to collect and organize information.

Why Bother?

Evernote has superior collection capability but no true task management functionality.
Producteev’s notes system and ability to add attachments simply can’t compare to Evernote.

Notes

When you send an Evernote item into Producteev, the body is converted to a note. Actually, you end up with several notes, as any images that Evernote uses in the background of the note are added as separate (and useless) note items in Producteev. HTML is stripped out entirely, and this will sometimes leave garbage code in the text of the Producteev note. See the image below (thanks to Daniel Gold for doing the first test run!).
Even though the Producteev notes are in plain text, the note itself is still in both tools. In Producteev, the notes system can be used to conduct a conversation around the task with others who have access to the workspace, or to leave additional notes for yourself if you are using Producteev as your main management system.

General Workflow & Syntax

Collect in Evernote
Process to Producteev via Evernote email-out and Producteev email2task syntax (with scheduled items going to Gcal, as well, for the visual calendar)
Manage tasks in Evernote with Producteev used only for scheduling and reminders OR
Manage tasks in Producteev and/or email with Evernote for archival reference

Syntax tips can be found here, but the basics are as follows:

today, tomorrow, days of the week, next week, specific dates (today 8pm, August 10 8pm, 8pm August 10 when combining date and time)
done (to register a task as being completed)
@ to assign a task to a workspace collaborator (@Michael, @Michael Lewis, @Lewis, @ML)
* to indicate a priority level using our 1-5 starring system (4* or ****)
# to indicate workspace name (#Personal)
## to indicate the appropriate label (##Marketing)
“” to add task notes (“follow up” or ‘follow up’)
/ to have the beaver run searches for you (/today for a list of all of your tasks due by the end of the day)

Your Turn!

So what do you think of the possibilities of integrating Producteev and Evernote into one system that is relatively seamless? Thoughts? Concerns? Is this worthwhile? Let us know in the comments!

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

Review of GTD in Springpad & Which GTD Solution Nina Chose [Reader Workflow]

Guest Poster — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:23:34 +0000

Reading about how our readers approach their tech/workflow combinations has been both enlightening and a pleasure. You guys are smart — and we appreciate you taking the time to articulate your personal systems with us. Nina Kefer has already shown us two GTD setups in applications she has experimented with. Her Beauty and Brains: Getting Things Done™ In Style series has put an emphasis on mobility (from the iPhone), a beautiful user interface, and above all, functionality. She wraps up her series today with her own take on and review of GTD in Springpad (Bobby put together a slightly different approach here), and a final conclusion as to which GTD setup ultimately works the best for her – and might for you, too.

Beauty and Brains: Getting Things Done™ In Style, Part 3 – GTD in Springpad

In my previous articles (GTD With Awesome Note & Evernote, GTD With 2Do & Toodledo) I looked at different combinations of front and back ends to Get Things Done. However, if you’re after the seamless sync that only native apps can deliver you may want to consider Springpad. Like Evernote, with which it is often compared, it is basically a virtual filing cabinet, but its dedicated task management features give it an edge over Evernote, whose tick boxes and tags can be used for task management, but which needs a dedicated front end like Awesome Note or Egretlist to schedule them and set alerts on your phone. Springpad seemed to offer everything that I missed in Evernote – scheduled tasks and events, sorting by due date, reminders, sync with Gmail and Facebook contacts and with Google calendar – and the recent Evernote update, which emphasised social networking at the (temporary) expense of advanced features like saved searches, had widened this gap further, so I decided to give Springpad a go.

Springpad allows you to create as many notebooks as you need and drag them into whatever order you want, both on the web and on the iPhone. You can customise the background as well as the colour of the notebooks, although the choice for the latter is limited to a combination of twelve colours and textures. For my GTD setup I created nine folders:

Inbox
@Computer
@Contact
@Errands
@Home
@Waiting
Projects
Someday
Reference

Since the notebooks are quite big for the small iPhone screen and it isn’t possible to move or delete the Friends Stuff folder which occupies a prime location in the top left corner I had considered creating a Next Action notebook and making tags for the contexts, but then I would have had to open the notebook each time to check how many tasks are waiting in each context. Moreover, tags appear last in the list of options for filtering the “Stuff” in your notebooks and aren’t sorted alphabetically but by popularity, i.e. the tags you use most often appear at the top and the ones you use least are at the bottom. Using tags for contexts would have therefore involved a lot of scrolling and looking around and I prefer to have as straight forward a setup as possible. Fortunately, though, I’m able to view all my nine folders without scrolling, which wasn’t possible with Awesome Note or 2Do. Springpad also has categories, which should be the closest equivalent to contexts, but it is not possible to filter by category and categories are only displayed within tasks. To my mind, having to open every task to check its context in order to be able to complete as many tasks within that context as I have time and energy slightly defeats the object.

Within each notebook you can add a multitude of items: a note, a task, an event, a contact, a check list, a packing list, a shopping list, an alarm, a bookmark, a business, a restaurant, a wine, a product, a book, a movie, a TV show, a music album, a recipe or you can look something up on the internet. You can attach pictures and other files to notes, share tasks via email, Twitter or Facebook or make them public on the web. The iPhone app even includes a voice recorder and barcode scanner. However, it is not possible to share notebooks with selected people or teams without making them public – which means sharing them with the world.

On the web, a task can be scheduled, given a category or tag, have an alarm set and have a note, link, photo or other file attached. For special emphasis it can also be flagged. On the iPhone, a task can be scheduled, flagged, given a tag or category and have a note, photo or audio file attached. Tasks can then be moved freely from folder to folder as you work through them and sorted by due date, date added, category and name, both on the web and on the phone, and filtered by tag, alarm or flag. However, there are no recurring tasks and no plans to implement them. If a task is recurring you have to create it as an event, but this is only possible on the web, not on the phone. Also, Springpad doesn’t support projects or subtasks, so the closest equivalent is to create a checklist. While this is a more functional solution than the Awesome Note method of listing the subtasks in the body of the task/note, only the parent task can be scheduled, so you still have to create separate to-dos for each subtask as you work through your projects.

You can create contacts in Springpad, either from scratch or from existing contacts in Gmail or Facebook, but unfortunately it isn’t possible to link them to a task or event — to remind yourself to ring someone, or book a hotel, for example . It also doesn’t seem to be possible to add hotels or restaurants from Gmail contacts. They can only be created from scratch or by using the “Look it up” function, and for this to work you first have to tell Springpad which city to search for in “Add Nearby”, otherwise it will return US results or no results at all. Searches for wines, books, movies, albums or other product info are equally temperamental. For example, I used the barcode scanner of the iPhone app to scan UK versions of American films and while it recognised the DVDs and correctly displayed the price in pound sterling, it only searched US retailers and often came back with no results. By comparison, Red Laser found dozens of UK retailers, sorted by cheapest price.

Reminders are a bit tricky too. For example, if you want to add a reminder to a task you must do this before selecting a due date, otherwise the only choice you will be given is to set a reminder one or more days prior to the due date. The only available types of reminders are email or, for US residents, SMS. The iPhone app doesn’t offer local alarms, which means that you cannot disable data roaming if you want to receive reminders while travelling abroad. As a frequent traveller, I often depend on this app because internet access may be unreliable or not available at all, so I incur roaming charges for receiving reminders and depending on the country and phone plan this can be very expensive. It also means that reminders don’t work if the phone is in airplane mode. Finally, there is no icon badge to indicate overdue tasks; you have to open the notebooks within the app and tap on Alerts to see if any tasks are overdue or check your inbox for reminder emails.

The feature I was most excited about was the sync with Google calendar because mine syncs with the iPhone calendar, so I was looking forward to a fully integrated task and event management solution. Unfortunately, the way this is implemented in Springpad is not very practical. Springpad doesn’t actually sync with your existing Google calendar. It creates a new separate calendar, which is perfectly fine if you don’t want your tasks – which appear in Google calendar as all day events – to clutter up your regular event calendar. However, tasks can’t actually be synced to this calendar, only events can, and since these events appear on the Springpad calendar they don’t sync with my iPhone calendar because it syncs with my regular calendar, i.e. the one that is connected to my Gmail.

The only workaround appears to be to copy events manually from the Springpad calendar into my regular calendar, so I might as well create them there to begin with. I can add tasks that have due dates to my regular calendar via the iCal feed but, as with events, this is only possible on the web and these tasks then aren’t visible in the iPhone calendar either. Since there is no calendar view within Springpad, not being able to sync with the iPhone calendar means that here is no offline calendar view for your tasks. I understand that Google doesn’t allow sync with Google tasks, but other task managers are able to sync both events and tasks to Google calendar via the iPhone calendar, so it should be possible to implement a more satisfying solution.

At first glance, Springpad seems to offer everything that I am missing in Evernote – scheduled tasks and events, sorting by due date, reminders, sync with Gmail and Facebook contacts and with Google calendar – but upon closer inspection it doesn’t deliver, yet. It is brimming with possibilities and perhaps one day it will become the one-stop solution for task-and-everything-else management I dream about. However, currently there are too many shortcomings to make it a viable option for anything but casual use and its US focus severely limits its usefulness for international customers. Until these issues are addressed, it will remain just another virtual filing cabinet for me.

Conclusion: The Best GTD Apps for Me Are Below

So which of the other systems did I choose? I found Awesome Note to be the most intuitive and straight forward of all the apps I tried; it literally felt like shuffling magic paper from multi coloured folder to multi coloured folder. However, while I continue to rely on Evernote for filing away reference material, I discovered that for GTD I prefer a framework that is specifically targeted at task management, such as Toodledo. In combination with 2Do, I have yet to come across a task or project that I’m unable to process down to the necessary detail. Will I stick with it? Who knows. If Awesome Note found a way to use Evernote’s tags and sync with Google calendar, and Evernote brought back saved searches and list view, I may well be tempted back.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

GTD With 2Do and Toodledo [Reader Workflow]

Guest Poster — Fri, 13 May 2011 05:31:31 +0000

Continuing with our Reader Workflow showcase, we’re proud to present Nina Kefer’s second post in her GTD experiments series, Beauty and Brains: Getting Things Done™ In Style. In her last article, she showed us a particularly awesome GTD setup with Awesome Note and Evernote; focused on the iPhone, overall. This time around, she delves into a mobile frontend for Toodledo. Read on for Nina’s GTD workflow with the iPhone app, 2Do.

For an additional take on Toodledo and GTD, also check out our post on Getting Things Done with Toodledo using pseudo-GTD methodologies.

Beauty & Brains: Getting Things Done™ In Style, Part 2 – 2Do

In my last article I described my GTD system for Awesome Note synced with Evernote. If you prefer a tighter sync between front and back end, however, you’ll want to give 2Do a try. 2Do is an award winning productivity app that syncs with the task management website Toodledo as well as iCal and Outlook (via a sync helper). I use a PC, so iCal is not an option and I don’t use Outlook because it doesn’t doesn’t play well with Gmail, so unfortunately I had to make do without a desktop client.

The sync with Toodledo is pretty tight, albeit with some peculiarities. 2Do’s interface is designed to look like a colourful Filofax and comes with several pre-installed “calendars” or tabs, which are basically to-dos, projects and check lists that are pulled together in the “Today” and “All” tabs. 2Do’s tabs appear in Toodledo as folders and, as with Awesome Note, they can be easily renamed or replaced to suit GTD. They can also be moved up or down and assigned custom colours – I basically think of them as dividers in a lever arch file or personal organiser.

While Toodledo supports contexts, 2Do doesn’t out of the box, but this can easily be set up by creating tags for each context and then searching for each tag using the excellent built-in search function. These searches can be saved as tabs which will then sync to Toodledo as folders. Just like “normal” tabs, they can be moved up or down to whichever position fits best with your GTD setup. Note that tags cannot be created from scratch; you first need to create a task, then you can create the tags to tag it with.

The Setup

For my to-do system I use a similar setup as in Awesome Note. Since 2Do doesn’t have a dedicated inbox, I first created a new tab called Inbox. I then created a Next Action tab as well as saved searches for all my context tags. That way I can collect all next actions in one tab, but filter them by context using the saved searches. Since these are the folders I check most often I moved them to the top of the list, so they are immediately visible on my screen when I open the app. Alternatively, you can create a dedicated “normal” tab for each context. Finally, I created Project, Someday and Reference tabs and moved all tabs in an order that suited me best. I then manually arranged the corresponding folders in Toodledo in the same order:

Inbox
@PC
@Contact
@Errands
@Home
@Waiting (these appear as tags in Toodledo)
Next Action
Projects
Someday
Reference

Using 2Do

2Do offers an almost bewildering array of features, but they are elegantly tucked away in hidden menus, so the interface never looks cluttered. When creating your tasks you have the choice between three different types – to-do, checklist and project – that can be assigned six different actions: call, SMS, email, browse, visit and Google. Call, SMS, email and visit actions can be linked to the contacts in the iPhone’s address book and a tap on a task containing such an action will bring up the contact’s phone number or email address or show the postal address in Google maps. You can then call, text or email them directly from within the app.

A long tap on a task brings up a menu that shows what you can do with that particular task: mark as done, defer to another day, copy, share (via email, SMS or Twitter), delete, add note, take or attach a photo, record and attach an audio file or assign a due date and alarm. There is a choice between email alerts and local alerts, i.e. a notification on the phone lock screen that works even if data roaming is disabled or the phone is in airplane mode. For local alerts, you can choose between receiving a push message only or a message plus sound, with a choice of different alarm sounds. A red badge on the app icon shows how many to-dos are due or overdue and within the app overdue tasks appear in red font instead of black.

2Do uses two types of tags – word tags and people tags, the latter linked to contacts in the iPhone’s phone book – which make tasks easily traceable via the search function. You can also search by key word and date range, and searches you do frequently can again be saved as new calendar tabs, so in the future you only have to tap on the tab to bring up a search result.

Tasks can be sorted by status, priority (none, low, medium, high, star), due date, note, URL, alphabetical or manually. As in Awesome Note, you can sort each folder in a different way. The Today tab shows all tasks due today and additionally there is a focus button that can filter out to-dos that don’t fulfil certain requirements, e.g. due date or level of priority. Individual tasks can be moved from one tab to another with a few quick taps. Switching to landscape view in any tab brings up a calendar showing all tasks that are due in the current month. Finally, there is a nearby tab that alerts you when you approach a location connected with your task, but I don’t use it since it uses GPS and therefore guzzles battery.

Tasks, Subtasks, and Sync with Toodledo

I Get Things Done in 2Do in pretty much the same way as in Awesome Note: my Inbox and Next Action (and context) tabs are reviewed daily and Project tab weekly. As with Evernote, you send emails to Toodledo to create a task; you can specify folder, priority, due date and time, tag, repeat, and attach the body of the email as a note.

2Do supports subtasks, so there is no need for workaround like there is in Awesome Note. Each subtask can be given its own tag, due date, alarm, action and attachment and can be moved out of the project and into the appropriate Next Action folder, right from within the main task menu (parent and subtask can’t be in different folders). Alternatively, if you have created contexts tabs from saved searches, adding the appropriate context tag (@PC, @Contact, @Errands and so on) will make the subtask appear in that tab, with the project and folder name still visible. Finally, if you assign a due date, the task will eventually pop up in the Today tab. However, be aware that subtasks are a premium feature in Toodledo and in order for them to sync between 2Do and Toodledo together with their parent task you need a (paid) Pro account. In free accounts, subtasks sync separately from the parent task.

Tags, due dates and notes sync to Toodledo, but photos, location maps and audio files remain locally in 2Do as Toodledo only supports notes. However, this has the advantage that these files are available for offline use on the iPhone.

There is a reason why 2Do was voted Best iPhone Productivity app: in combination with Toodledo it offers pretty much everything one could wish for, except the option to sync your tasks with the iPhone calendar. It is quick and easy enough that you barely have to use the web, yet the sync with Toodledo is tight enough to be able to use both apps more or less interchangeably. Don’t be put off by Toodledo’s less than slick appearance either. It is a powerful and highly customisable task manager and there are a number of Stylish and Greasemonkey themes to pretty it up.

What are your thoughts on GTD in 2Do and Toodledo?

Nina lives in the UK and works in Financial Services. A frequent international traveller, she has extensive experience of managing life on the go. A trip to Japan opened her eyes to the possibilities of mobile phone technology and she has been attempting to achieve a similar level of connectivity ever since. This is her first technology article.

Up Next: Part 3 – Springpad

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

GTD On the Go With Awesome Note and Evernote [Reader Workflow]

Guest Poster — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 02:00:55 +0000

40Tech has a serious interest in productivity technology, especially as related to GTD (Getting Things Done). We love talking about workflows with our readers, sharing our own techniques as well as learning how you use technology to keep your life on track. As we’ve come to expect, grown-up geeks are fonts of information, and you’ve inspired us to invite you to post your genius here on 40Tech. The first to step up was Chase Mann with his combination of OneNote, Evernote, and Outlook for GTD, and now we are pleased to bring you the first of three posts by Nina Kefer. Nina is often mobile, and has put together three systems that she has tested extensively, using some of the prettier iPhone and web apps out there as her GTD hub.

First up: GTD in Awesome Note with a side of Evernote!

Beauty and Brains: Getting Things Done™ In Style

I have always been a firm believer in the principle of “Form Follows Function”. However, I do not believe that “Ornament is Crime”, as is often extrapolated by proponents of FFF. As long as eye candy isn’t at the expense of functionality I can’t see anything wrong with it. On the contrary, it actually helps me to Get Things Done because a pretty user interface makes me want to look at my to-dos and makes taking care of them fun. If my to-dos look bland or, God forbid, ugly, I avoid looking at them until I forget that they even exist. Thus began my quest to find a to-do system that is as beautiful as it is powerful. As a frequent international traveller, I often rely on my smartphone to keep my life organised, so I needed a system that was built around an iPhone app that stays in sync with the web and/or desktop of my netbook.

Part 1: Awesome Note

The first app I explored was Awesome Note, a note-taking-cum-to-do app that syncs with Evernote and Google docs. Notes created with Awesome Note are designed to look like real life paper notes that are kept in colourful manila folders. By default, the app randomly assigns one of fifteen available background patterns and a default font to each new note, but backgrounds and fonts are customisable, as are the colour, icon and default theme of each folder. You are limited to five folders per screen, but you can create as many folders as you like, arrange them in whatever order suits you best and then simply swipe through them from screen to screen. It’s a pity that GTD doesn’t offer more opportunities to sample the neat animation, like “turning pages” while browsing from note to note within a folder.

Being an Evernote front-end, Awesome Note’s functions, are very flexible. Every note can be transformed into a to-do, a check list, a calendar item, a page in a diary or photo album, or a birthday or anniversary reminder, simply by changing the view or type of note or by assigning a due date. You can also tag your notes and to-dos and use the built-in search function to look up tags or keywords. To help you keep on top of all the notes inside your folders, there’s a little notebook at the top of each screen that shows how many notes there are in total, how many to-dos are due today and if there are any unassigned notes waiting to be processed. Next to it, there’s a quick memo pad where you can jot down ideas, via keyboard or handwriting input, or draw a sketch. Lastly, you can share your notes and to-dos via SMS or email, send them to a compatible printer or lock your folders with a passcode. This may sound a bit overwhelming, but everything can be done with just a few quick taps.

GTD Setup in Awesome Note

Awesome Note comes with pre-installed folders, but they can easily be renamed or replaced and new ones can be created as necessary. For my GTD setup I created ten folders, five for each screen. Since the sync of tags between Awesome Note and Evernote is limited (more on that in a moment), I combined Next Action and Context to create five Action folders that I review daily. I placed those on the first screen, so I can see them as soon as I open the app:

1.1 @Computer
1.2 @Contact
1.3 @Errands
1.4 @Home
1.5 @Waiting

On the second screen I placed the folders I review weekly or less often:

2.1 Projects
2.2 Someday
2.3 Goals
2.4 Reference
2.5 Wishlist

Working With Evernote

As my back-end I chose Evernote because it has both web and desktop versions and is generally more versatile than Google docs. Sync between the apps is speedy, but due to their different functionalities not really tight enough to use phone, web and desktop interchangeably. For example, Awesome Note’s folders appear in Evernote as notebooks that are easily identifiable by the prefix [aNote], but while Awesome Note allows you to arrange the folders in whatever order you want, Evernote automatically puts the notebooks in alphabetical order.

You can attach up to nine pictures to a note, but they will only sync from Awesome Note to Evernote, not vice versa, and due dates, status, font and background formatting don’t sync at all.

Finally, although both apps use tags, tags added in Evernote don’t sync to Awesome Note and tags added in Awesome Note are merely included as a footnote in Evernote. Fortunately, the powerful Evernote search finds them there, so there’s no need to double-tag. Since I do most of my GTD in Awesome Note and use Evernote web and desktop only for convenient text entry and backup, none of the above was a deal breaker for me. I just numbered my folders so they would appear in the same order on all three platforms and didn’t worry too much about the order of the notes inside.

The “No Category” Inbox

The “No Category” folder at the top of the screen is my inbox where I collect emails, tasks and ideas that come to me during the day, things that I need to buy or adverts I see on my way to work and want to follow up later. This is easy since notes that aren’t assigned to a specific folder automatically get dumped in there, no matter what screen you are in when the note is created.

Emails and URLs can be copied/pasted into the body of a note, photos can be attached from the camera roll or taken from within the app, and Google maps can be added. Alternatively, you can forward emails to Evernote and then sync with Awesome Note. Making a note read-only makes URLs, email addresses and phone numbers clickable, but unfortunately there is no option to link notes to contacts in the iPhone’s address book, so they have to be copied over manually. Quick memos that are saved as notes also end up in “No Category” (whatever you scribble down on the memo pad stays there until you either save or clear it). These are great for basic drawing. For example, you can ask someone how to get from A to B and then take the sketch with you or email it to a friend.

I review my inbox daily and process its contents according to David Allen’s GTD methodology:

If a task takes less than 2 minutes, I do it right away
If it takes longer or I can’t do it where I am I move it to the appropriate Next Action folder
If it takes more than two steps to complete I move it to Projects and create a to-do for the Next Action in the appropriate folder

Time sensitive to-dos can be assigned alarms. Awesome Notes uses local alarms, so you will be reminded even if data roaming is disabled or the phone is in airplane mode. If a task should be delegated to someone else it goes into @Waiting with a review date to remind me to check up on and, if necessary, chase the person I have delegated the task to. Lastly, things I may want to do at some point in the future are parked in Someday and anything that doesn’t require action is either archived in Reference or deleted. If a note is moved into one of the Next Action folders it is converted to a to-do and, if possible, assigned a due date. Additionally, while Awesome Note doesn’t sync with any third party calendar, every folder, including “All”, has a calendar view that displays the to-dos within that folder, marked with the folder’s colour.

Next Actions

Next Actions that have been assigned a due date pop up automatically as they become due. A red badge on the app icon shows how many to-dos are due or overdue; within the app this is shown next to the red tick box at the top of the screen. Additionally, I check the Next Action folders whenever I have a spare moment. For example, when I sit down at my PC I check if there’s anything else I could do while I’m at it.

In order to make my tags more prominent in Evernote, I start the title of a to-do that I want to be searchable with the appropriate place, person or project name. This has the added benefit of being able to search tasks alphabetically in Awesome Note. Usually I sort by due date, but if I’m going to contact person ABC I can alpha-sort the to-dos in my @Contact folder to make sure I cover everything “tagged” ABC. One tag per to-do is usually enough for me – a place tag for to-dos in @Errands, a person tag for @Contact, a project tag for @Computer and so on – and it only takes two taps to sort. Awesome Note does have a search function for both tags and keywords, but no saved searches, so this doubles as a quick-and-dirty search.

The project folder is reviewed weekly, or more often if I have extra time. Awesome Note doesn’t support sub-tasks or checklists, so I list the sub-tasks of each project in the body of the parent note, e.g. Project XYZ, and then cut/paste them into individual to-dos as I work through that project. I do the same for checklists or shopping lists. Alternatively, if you want to be able to check off each item individually, you can make a dedicated folder and create a to-do for each item.

Awesome Note may have been created primarily as a note taking app, but its to-do capabilities are powerful and lend themselves well to GTD. The limited sync with Evernote forces me to keep my setup simple and fuss-free and the cheerful design makes Getting Things Done fun. I just wish that tags would sync properly with Evernote, as they do with Egretlist, and that tasks would sync with the iPhone calendar.

Let me know what you think of Awesome Note’s GTD capabilities in the comments!

Nina’s next iPhone GTD setup: GTD with 2Do and Toodledo.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

Reader Workflow in Action: GTD for Freelancers & Managing Multiple Projects

Guest Poster — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:07:20 +0000

We like useful tech here at 40Tech, and spend a fair amount of time talking about productivity related apps. We’ve written more than a few posts talking about ways we’ve used tech to make our busy lives a little more sane, and a little while back, we asked people to show us their own workflows. We wanted to see how our readers integrate tech into their daily lives to keep them productive. We received some comments on the post, some notes on Twitter and Facebook, and even had a few email conversations with folks, and have decided to feature a couple of the more involved methods.

Today’s feature, by freelance graphics and web designer Chase Mann, involves a GTD process that includes Evernote, Outlook, Microsoft’s OneNote, and a few other choice bits of technology:

Getting Things Done (GTD) with Evernote, Outlook and OneNote

I’m a freelance graphics & web designer that uses a tablet pc. In short, these are the tools that I’ve found work best for me:

Moleskin notebook & pen, Smartphone with Evernote app.
Dropbox to automatically sync all client files and research folders.
Outlook for Contacts, Calendar & Tasks. (connected with Gmail).
OneNote as my written-note capture and Working space (on my tablet-pc) with a GTD Notebook for current Projects.
Evernote as my magic, portable filing cabinet & reference library.

Reference Material:

I use Outlook Journal for time tracking from this article by Jim Boyce.
I setup Outlook & OneNote for GTD from this article by Michael Wheatfill.
I setup Evernote for GTD from this 40Tech article by Bobby Travis.

I then tweaked all these programs and setups to better fit my workflow needs.

The GTD Workflow

I begin my GTD workflow by keeping my Moleskin notebook and Android phone as my immediate capture devices, which I then process into my Evernote Inbox notebook. Because I have design software on both my desktop and my tablet pc, and I’m constantly making changes to client files and gathering research resources, I use Dropbox to have the most updated client files and research folders automatically synced between all of my devices.

My projects tend to be mostly digital so I rely heavily on email communications (and some telephone conversations), but I tell all my clients that I prefer email so we both have documented project conversations. Outlook has quickly become my main communications & scheduling hub. Once I am referred a potential client, I setup a meeting to discuss project needs via whatever medium they prefer. I always take notes during the conversation and then email a copy to the client as my first follow-up step. If the client chooses me for the project, then I make new notebooks in both Evernote and OneNote specifically for that client and that project.

As I have time to sort through my inboxes, I’m able to organize and set tasks up as Projects. All Projects get their own notebook created in OneNote. I also attach that notebook to all possible related contacts in Outlook.

Why the heck would I use Outlook? I love the integration of Outlook and OneNote (2010 versions). I like being able to take an email about a client meeting and actually turn it into a task AND an appointment on my Calendar. I love being able to set reminders on tasks and calendar items too. It’s my tickler system. Easy.

As I process emails, they either get turned into scheduled tasks, flagged with a reminder tickler, sent to Evernote as reference, or sent to OneNote for current working projects. A major benefit of sending an email from Outlook to OneNote is that any attachments on the email show up as attached files in OneNote. How cool is that?!

Using Evernote

From the beginning, I had decided that Evernote would be my magical, brain-dump, inbox, filing cabinet. My very own research and records department that I can conveniently carry around in my pocket and access via a variety of mobile options. I setup Evernote using Bobby’s article with some tweaks to better suit my workflow.

Since Evernote came out with sub-notebooks, I find it easier to use those on my Android phone. I created a “Clients” notebook with sub-notebooks for each client by name. “Inbox” is my default notebook and “References” notebook, because I like moving items out of the Inbox notebook as part of my review process. I also created a “Coffee” notebook because I’m heavily involved in the coffee industry.

For all of my own personal projects, I create “@Project-name” tags to easily find them and I created a “!clients” tag for quickly marking items for later processing into the actual client’s sub-notebook. Since I really don’t use Evernote for my GTD (I prefer Outlook and OneNote for that), the only other tags I used were Bobby’s suggestion of Reference Materials, with a “folder” tag for each letter of the alphabet … which I further break down into actual tags. So A, would also have Apple, Art, Amphibians, etcetera … whatever tags make the most sense to me when I capture the item.

I do most of my project research via the internet and send pages, selections and images to Evernote with the !clients tag into my Inbox notebook for later sorting. Next I sort through my research materials and send selected items over to the project’s notebook in OneNote and create a mood-board page so I can mix and match items organically and scribble notes wherever I feel like it.

OneNote

OneNote is my working desktop so I try to keep it tidy by not using it as a reference tool, even though I could. The reason I prefer OneNote over Evernote for projects is because with a tablet PC I have the freedom to scribble hand-written notes anywhere I like in OneNote — then I can right click them and convert them into typed text. I also keep a section called “Scribbles” in each Client’s section group so that I can scribble notes and ideas as they hit me, then I convert them into tasks or reference material during my daily review of projects. I try my best to stay organized as I go so I have less processing to do during reviews.

One extra thing I did with OneNote was to setup a Clients Notebook where I created a section-group for each client with a Projects section that has pages and sub-pages for each active project I have with that client. I have an All Projects section in my GTD Notebook that lists all my currently active projects which has a wiki-style link to the Client’s section-group, and the specific Projects section for that client (and vice versa). This way I’m able to move around quickly within OneNote. I have To Do lists in each Client section-group and have those wiki-linked to a main To Do list in my GTD Notebook. I also set up an Archives section in each of the Client’s section-groups where I send the individual projects when they are totally complete. This way I only have current working projects in the active Projects section of both my GTD Notebook and my Clients Notebook.

Another reason I prefer to keep Evernote for reference and OneNote as my Projects organizer is so I can use the power of tags in each program respectively. I like being able to list all my tags across all notebooks in OneNote and know that they are project-related.

When I’m looking for a reference item, I know to just search by tags in Evernote and copy/paste only the necessary bits I need (instead of entire articles or web pages) over into OneNote.

Reviewing

I do a daily review each morning so I can make new daily lists, and I do a Sunday morning weekly review. I do mine in the mornings so that I’ve not got a lot on my mind when I’m trying to go to sleep at night.

So that’s my current workflow – thought it is still developing and being refined. I’m curious if someone has done something similar, but with Google apps or other free apps?

Chase Mann is the owner of Aim It Media, a creative design and marketing company for entrepreneurs and small businesses. You can connect with him via his many comments on 40Tech, or catch him on Twitter as @AimItMedia, @MyCoffeePro, or @Creativarty

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

GTD in Springpad

Bobby Travis — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:43:06 +0000

I’m a GTD enthusiast. Rather, I’m a make-tech-work-for-GTD enthusiast, as is evidenced by previous posts showing how to incorporate GTD in Evernote and GTD in Producteev. Springpad always seemed like a good candidate for the GTD treatment as well, but, truth be told, the concept was a bit daunting. Springpad is a powerful tool. Over the last several months, the service has honed its user interface and focused its purpose, but there is still a lot going on under that pretty exterior. As such, a GTD in Springpad method required a certain level of commitment. Time, testing, that sort of thing. Don’t be scared, though — it’s the sort of commitment that tends to lead to really good things.

GTD Basics

For those of you unfamiliar with the particulars of GTD, the GTD in Evernote post gives a very thorough breakdown of the concepts and how to use them. I won’t leave you hanging completely, though. If you need or want a quick rundown of GTD basics, read the next two paragraphs. If you already know everything you need to and want to jump right into the Springpad method, skip down a bit to the Springpad Setup section.

David Allen’s GTD — Getting Things Done — methodology is essentially the process of collecting the information that is thrown at you throughout your day and shoving it in a box so you can ignore it until a scheduled processing time. This maximizes your in-the-moment effectiveness. At processing time, everything that takes longer than two minutes to accomplish is broken down into an actionable next step. If an item requires more than one step, it becomes a project, is added to your projects list, and the next reasonable step goes into your next action lists.

Next actions are where GTD actually happens, as they are broken down into contexts that relate to where you are and what you need to do — @home, @work, @computer, @errands, @meetings, @calls, etc. These contexts allow you to “set it and forget it,” freeing your mind to focus on what you are doing now, not what you need to do later. Anything that is not a next action is either something you are waiting for, something that you need to be tickled about at a later date, a reference item, a someday/maybe, or useless junk that should be expunged from your reality. Following these concepts with a little discipline, and a weekly review to check the status of your projects and tie up loose ends, can potentially bring your entire life into a smooth, much less stressful sort of harmony.

Springpad Setup

Now that the background’s out of the way, we get into the meat of how to make GTD work in Springpad. Depending on how you work best, there are several ways you could go about adapting the service to suit you. Daniel Gold, a frequent and very helpful commenter here at 40Tech, put together a system that does most of the processing right in the “All My Stuff” area of Springpad, utilizing the built in task items and their categories, as well as flags to highlight his next actions — check it out on his blog. He’s also written a Springpad E-Book [affiliate link]. Another system, by Marcel Chaudron, takes Dan’s method and expands upon it, opening several notebooks to get a clearer visual of where items need to go. Both systems are viable and will work well, depending on your needs and the way you process information.

I had to take things in a slightly different direction for four reasons:

A lot of what I need to get done comes in from various sources, including the camera on my iPhone, the web clipper bookmarklet/extension, manual entry, and especially email.
There is currently no way to change a type (note, task, event, bookmark, etc.) in Springpad.
Springpad does not allow filtering by the categories functionality built into the task item.
I use Springpad, at times, for many different things that I’m interested in or researching, and find that too many things in the All My Stuff area is overwhelming. For me, any system that involves visual overwhelm is a system that I conveniently forget about — in a hurry.

GTD Notebooks & Context Tags

To solve these problems, I opened four notebooks: Get It Done, Follow Ups, Reference, and Someday. I then did away with task categories completely and started to creatively use the nuances of Springpad’s dynamic tagging system.

Tags start out in alphabetical order, but the ones with the largest number of items bubble up to the top of the list. This makes any sort of alphabetic reference system impossible — but when the tags are used for contexts, you suddenly have a means to see, at a glance, which context has the most tasks, and therefore requires the most attention! It also helps that, aside from in the All My Stuff area, tags only appear in the notebook(s) that the tagged item belongs to. The downside of this is that you have to be careful when attaching items to multiple notebooks.

Once your notebooks are created, open up Get It Done (or whatever you decide to call it) and create the contexts that best suit your particular needs (mine were @home, @computer (the equivalent of @work for me), @anywhere, @call, @meeting, @errand). The Get It Done notebook will serve as both your inbox and next action area.

Note: If there is nothing in a tag, the tag ceases to exist. To create a list of tags that never dies, use a dummy item in your notebook — I chose one with an inspirational message — and add every tag that you plan to use to that one note.

Getting the information into the Get It Done inbox is as easy as the click of a button in most cases; sending by email is currently the exception, as all emails go directly to All My Stuff. This will change in the next couple weeks, when Springpad adds the ability to set type and notebook (and possibly tags) when you send an email into the web app. In the meantime, take advantage of the “sort by date added” feature in All My Stuff.

This next step is completely optional, but I recommend it if you are like me and freak out when you see long task lists. Create a tag called something like [untagged] and attach it to all incoming items. This will allow one-click access to sort your GTD notebook into inbox only items. This step works well for me because I like things in one spot as much as possible. If that’s not your thing, create a separate notebook for next actions, using the tags, and create one that is just meant to be an inbox. Springpad makes it very easy to move items from notebook to notebook, so the extra step will hardly be noticeable.

Everything Else

As you process your items into their respective contexts, you will to use some of the other functions of Springpad:

Reminders - Great way to set up an alert for a time-sensitive item. These can be configured to send to multiple email addresses and SMS. At this time, however, reminders can only be set in the web app, and on Android devices.
Events - Events allow you to sync an item from your Springpad to Google Calendar. You can’t change item types, so events will need to be created from scratch as you process the items in your inbox.
Tasks - In this GTD system, everything added to a context tag is treated as a task, so the Task item is somewhat redundant. If you like the task item’s format, and the ability to check a big checkbox when you are done makes you happy, then add tasks as you see fit. They will likely need to be created from scratch until Springpad implements type-switching (no ETA).
Checklists - Another way to satisfy the need to check off check boxes, checklists are a great way to maintain your projects list. As your small and large projects are completed, check them off. Remember, anything that takes more than one step to accomplish is considered a project. Checklists are also a good place to track your goals and other listable things.
Flagged Stuff - Clicking the little flag button in the web app (the command is in the upper right dropdown menu on the iPad and iPhone) will add the item to the Flagged Stuff area. This is a perfect way to highlight those next actions that need special attention.

If an item doesn’t fit any of the contexts, it will either go into the Follow Ups notebook, which has tags for Waiting For and Tickler items, the Someday notebook (tag it as suits you), be deleted entirely, or sent to the Reference notebook. In the GTD in Evernote post, Evernote had a tag set up that used tags for every letter of the alphabet. This doesn’t work in Springpad due to the dynamic nature of the tags. If you plan to keep reference notes and items in Springpad then I suggest you use category tags to group those items. You can also use specific keywords in subject lines or elsewhere and take advantage of Springpad’s search function. Notebooks that are specific to subjects or large projects are also a good idea. In fact, I encourage you to keep notebooks for large projects, as you can have next actions that ride in more than one notebook. This allows you to not only keep track of next actions that are specific to large projects, but also gives you use of the Board for those items, which may help you in your planning processes.

Another option for reference items is to export them individually by email. You could send them to whatever email-enabled organization tool you have, including Evernote and your email client. Each email contains a link back to the original Springpad item, making it easy to get right to it, and it also has a link for people to spring it into their own Springpad account. That last is fantastic for collaboration and backup purposes — though you can also collaborate by sending out a share link, or simply making the item or notebook public and sharing it on Facebook and Twitter.

Conclusions

The strength of Springpad as a GTD system is its flexibility. It is so easy to get information into Springpad and to change an item from one context or GTD state to another, including jumping around from notebook to notebook or even keeping one item in multiple notebooks. Combine that with the ability to access the app offline from all platforms, to bulk-edit items, enhance information on items that are related to products (mostly in the US at this point), and add events to Google Calendar — one place where Springpad will always have it over Evernote for me — and you can create and use a very solid GTD system.

I do wish that Springpad allowed for changing types, as that would cut out a step at times and just make things easier. I also wish that the iOS apps had the ability to add and edit reminders — Android does, as I understand it. With the way Springpad has been updating lately, though, I’m sure these features are only a matter of time.

UPDATE: Springpad adds autosave, backup, and export features! You can also add Types, Notebooks, and Tags directly to subject lines when sending in items via email. Oh, and viewing Springpad via RSS readers and full API access are also available. Check out the Springpad Blog for details!

Tell us about your experiences with GTD in Springpad.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

How to Meld GTD and Tech to Conquer Information Overload in the Digital Age

Evan Kline — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:00:38 +0000

David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) has developed a cult-like following, and for good reason. GTD helps you to be more efficient, and to, well, get things done. At the same time, tech is supposed to make your life easier, but at times it seems that it only drowns you with more and more information. Twitter, RSS, Facebook . . . how to stay on top of it all? Why not use GTD concepts to help you manage your digital streams?

Here is a look at a system that, while not pure GTD, does use some GTD concepts, coupled with tech tools, to manage the onslaught of information in your content streams. Disclaimer for you GTD fans out there: GTD is but one part of this system, and some of it has nothing to do with GTD. But you will see GTD influences in the system.

Let’s dive into it.

Headache image by Sarah G.

Prepare Yourself, and Your Content Buckets

The first step to not feeling overwhelmed with the onslaught of information is to have a general game plan in mind. Here are some tips:

1. Where Practical, Reduce the Number of Buckets

In GTD, a collection “bucket” is a place, such as your email inbox or a physical inbox at work, where you collect items to be processed. For purposes of this post, we’re going to use that term a bit differently. Here, a bucket simply refers to your various streams where information appears, such as Twitter and Google Reader.

As tech geeks, we have a disease that I like to call the “Shinies.” If you’re inflicted with the Shinies, you love new gadgets and tools. As a result, you may end up with an obscene number of buckets, as you try more and more new services. Step 1 is getting those services down to a manageable level. For example, I briefly tried out Foursquare . . . until I asked myself “why?” Nobody I know in real life was on Foursquare, and my life is decidedly unexciting. I spend most of my life at the office, or at home. So I pruned Foursquare out of my routine.

2. Don’t Make It a Chore

Keeping on top of information doesn’t need to feel like a chore. Unless it is your job, you don’t need to consume everything. Do you have over a thousand unread items in your RSS reader? Mark them as read. In Twitter, don’t feel the need to see all Tweets in your stream. If, as we’ll discuss below, you’ve set up a system to make sure that your most important information floats to the top, you don’t have to feel guilty about not consuming everything.

3. Prioritize Your Sources

Not all news sources are created equal. Set up your system to recognize that fact. In Twitter, create a list that only includes your favorite sources. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ignore the rest of your stream and just check out the list. Do the same with your RSS reader, creating a category for your most important feeds. When you have time, gulp down everything. When you don’t, focus on your most important sources.

Also, if you find that you are following people who cross-post the exact same information to several different streams (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.), you may want to make some hard choices and not follow them across all platforms.

4. Have Redundancy With Certain Important Types of Sources

What I’m about to tell you might seem to defeat the purpose of not consuming everything, and fly in the face of #1, above (“Reduce the Number of Buckets”). If you’re going to be ignoring some sources, you want to make sure that the important information floats to the top. To do that, make sure that you’re following sources that have overlapping content, and follow your favorite sources in two or more places. For example, I follow a few major tech sources that cover some of the same stories, such as Mashable and TechCrunch. I also follow Lifehacker on both Facebook and Twitter. If something big happens, I’m almost certain to see it, even if I’m only skimming my most important sources.

5. Get Rid of Sources That You Don’t Need/Use

As you fine tune your system, pay attention to the items in your various streams (such as Twitter and RSS) to see what you regularly ignore, so that you can weed out those that are “dead weight.” For example, after going through a spree of subscribing to the RSS feeds of many blogs, I slowly realized that there were many whose content I never read. They were just slowing me down, and keeping me from the good stuff. I pared those out of my stream, and Google Reader is much more manageable now.

6. Snack on Content Whenever You Can

Now that you’ve polished your sources into a manageable state, you need to be able to consume information when you want to (keeping in mind tip #2 – don’t make it a chore). If you’re sitting around waiting for a meeting to start, pull out your mobile device and catch up on Twitter or your RSS feeds. At the same time, recognize that some content is better suited for certain devices. We’ll identify some tools below for making sure that you consume content on a device most suited for it.

The Steps

Now that you have figured out some general ideas on how you want to manage your content, it is time to get down to the nitty gritty – the actual steps you’ll take to review the content. Your tools may vary, but here are the apps that I use:

iPhone: Twitter, Instapaper, MobileRSS

iPad: Twitter and Twitterific, Reeder, Instapaper

PC: Evernote, Instapaper, Gmail, Google Reader on the Web

A. Process Your Front-Line Buckets

The first step is to perform a cursory review of the content in your front-line buckets. Your front-line buckets are those places where you first review a stream of information, such as Twitter or Google Reader. Much, and perhaps most, of the content that you review won’t interest you. Consider this to be the step where you just pick out what really interests you. This will be an almost instantaneous decision with much of your content.

You’re going to perform one of three actions for each item that you review:

1. Forget it / Delete It

How you handle items in your stream will depend on what tool you’re using. If you’re scanning through Twitter on your iPhone, there’s a good chance you’re only reviewing the most recent items, and there’s typically no way to delete an item that you see in your stream. In Google Reader, you don’t delete an item, but you do mark it as read.

The concept is the same though – as you see an item, if it isn’t something you want to delve into more deeply, skip it, delete it, or mark it as read, as the case may be.

2. Read it Now

Your second option is to read an item now. This might be an item in your RSS reader, or it could be a link in your Twitter stream. The factors that could go into your decision will include your level of interest in the item, the amount of time that you have to review it in detail, and whether you’re on a a platform that doesn’t make it too much of a hassle to read the full item. For example, there are some sites that I know load very slowly on my iPhone, especially over 3G, so if I see an interesting link to one of those sites, I’ll push that link into the final category, which is . . .

3. Archive It

Some items are just too cumbersome to read on some platforms. For those, push them off for later reading on either a more suitable platform or app.

There are a few “review later” buckets that I push items into at this stage, depending on the nature of the content. In my system, content that I read later falls into three categories:

Want to read it, although maybe not right now, and then probably won’t need to reference it again;
Might not actually want to read it anytime soon, but I do want to save it for future reference;
Want to read it right now, but not on this device.

If it is a “read once and be done with it” piece of content, send it to Instapaper or Read It Later. Support for one or both is built into many apps, such as MobileRSS, Reeder, or the official Twitter app on the Iphone. With one click, you can send an item to Instapaper or Read It Later, for later consumption. You can then review nicely formatted versions of the content on multiple platforms. Instapaper, for example, has iOS apps and a web app.

If an item is something that you know you want to save for future reference, use an app like Evernote. Evernote is a great tool for saving and finding just about any type of content. You can send items into Evernote via a special email address, so it is easy to get any type of content item into your Evernote bucket. The types of items that I dump into Evernote are items that I know I’ll want to use for future projects, or perhaps items that I need for future blog posts.

You occasionally may come across a content item that you want to read as soon as possible, but that just isn’t practical to read on a mobile device. In those situations, I use the email functionality built into most apps (such as Twitter, or MobileRSS), and send a link to that item to my email account. Then, when I’m at my desk, the link is usually the first thing I’ll see.

In some situations, you may want to use a combination of archiving methods. For example, an item might be interesting, and you also want to save it for later use. In such situations, it only take a few seconds more to send it to Instapaper AND to Evernote.

B. Process Your “Review Later” Buckets

The processing of your front-line buckets is a step that you will perform whenever you can steal some free moments. By contrast, the processing of your “Review Later” buckets can be integrated directly into your overall GTD system.

Gmail, Instapaper, and Evernote are the glue that holds my system together. As noted above, when I process my front-line buckets, I dump a small percentage of items into Gmail, Instapaper, and Evernote. I review the Gmail items frequently, whenever I process email. I typically review my Instapaper items once a day, in an easy chair before dinner, on my iPad. I try to review my Evernote items once a week, during my weekly review, at which time I categorize and tag the naked items in my Evernote account.

Develop a system for reviewing your “review later” buckets, whether it is like mine or not. It can be whatever works for you, but the important thing is that you do it. Otherwise, the only thing that you’re doing with this GTD-like system is skimming quick content and weeding the trash out of your streams, without really delving into the items that you found to be most interesting. Twitter or Google Reader might not feel so overwhelming any longer, but you’ve just pushed that tidal wave off to Instapaper. If you have a system in which you process your “review later” buckets, you’ll find that you actually have time to consume content that you find to be enjoyable.

Final Thoughts

This system has worked wonders for me. I went through a long stretch of time where Twitter felt like a burden, and I had over 1000 unread items in Google Reader. Now, I regularly process all items in my streams, and take my time with content that I really enjoy. Isn’t that the whole point?

GTD concepts and tech are equally important here. GTD concepts influenced the system that I use, but the system wouldn’t be possible without the right tools. If I didn’t have an iPhone to “snack” during free moments, or an iPad that makes processing items fast and easy, I wouldn’t be much better off than I was before I started using this system. If I weren’t using MobileRSS or Reeder, both of which really speed up the review of RSS feeds, no system in the world could help me.

Do you have a system that you use? How about some favorite tools? If so, share your finds with us in the comments.

Here are some related posts that might interest you:

GTD in Producteev: Utilizing Multiple Workspaces

Bobby Travis — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:15:52 +0000

If you have read 40Tech over the past year, you may have discovered my minor obsession with productivity apps and methods. It’s a journey that began with my first post here: GTD in Evernote with Only One Notebook (posted a year and a week ago ), and continued through reviews of Action Method Online and on into my latest experiment, Producteev 2. I have really been enjoying Producteev, and have been using it exclusively for some time now — so I decided it was time to attempt a full GTD implementation, and see how it would work. After some trial and error, I’m satisfied. Check out a walkthrough of my method for GTD in Producteev, below.

The General Approach

Now let’s get right into it, shall we? There are a few possible ways to set up an effective GTD process in Producteev, including adapting the smart filters in the left tab, or extensive use of labels for contexts (this will work better if Producteev introduces labels that can be persistent across workspaces). Neither of those methods quite did it for me, though. I needed a system that would be able to provide me with snapshots of my task list in non-overwhelming chunks (by context), even in Overview mode. Currently, the Overview tab doesn’t show labels; and I like to use the smart filters and labels, both, to provide further subsets of task-data for easy, at-a-glance viewing.

To bend Producteev to my will, I chose to take advantage of their unlimited workspaces. I set up my main workspace as my “Brain Dump” inbox — I call it that because that’s what it is, and because the Producteev sidebar already has something named “Inbox”, that did not suit my purposes. I then created a workspace for every major context. I understand the collaborative power that Producteev brings to the table, but the fact is that most tasks in your day, when put into a GTD context, do not require collaboration. Your general task list is personal to you, and under Producteev’s current pricing model, you can set up as many personal workspaces as you need to, for free. For specific projects that require collaboration, or you need to keep organized with a “project management” approach (as opposed to task management), you can open up a workspace up specifically for that project.

Producteev and Your Email Inbox

Before I get into the details of mapping your contexts into workspaces, I wanted to talk a bit about incorporating your email into your GTD system. In the GTD in Evernote method, you can forward emails from your inbox directly into Evernote. You can do the same with Producteev, but with some added benefits: you can assign workspace contexts, specific labels, and even a handy date and reminder that will sync with Google Calendar. Judicious use of the forward button in your email client will enable you to process emails into next actions, projects, etc., right from your inbox. In fact, if you work in Gmail, Producteev’s Gmail Gadget brings a fully functional Producteev tab into right into your email client (it works much like the Google Chrome and Firefox plugins).

As I’m sure most of you do, I often find myself trolling Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader/Feedly, and numerous other services where I discover links that are related to things I am interested in, or directly related to my projects. Using a social media client with a “share by email” feature, or a plugin like Shareaholic, is an easy way to get those links or clips into your Producteev inbox (Brain Dump), or directly into the appropriate context. This makes for a very streamlined system, where everything you do online is working together toward the same end. Keeping your tasks manageable is the entire point of Getting Things Done, and Producteev facilitates it nicely, while working within tools you are already used to using.

A Note On Mobile

Producteev’s iPhone Client is currently the most functional way to take the entire Producteev service with you on the go. I’m not certain as to the state of their Android client. The web client is available from a mobile browser, but it is full-size, so expect to do some zooming and panning. If you are without an iPhone or web-capable phone, however, you might want to try using an email/IM/SMS combo-service (I encourage investigation, here) for notifications and task interactions. You can get your task list sent to your email daily, using Producteev’s reporting feature.

Setting Up Your Workspaces

I’m not going to go into too much detail on the methodology behind David Allen’s GTD System in this post. If you are new to GTD, I highly recommend you get a hold of the book or seminar (audio), or take a look at the GTD in Evernote post here on 40Tech. Mainly, I want to focus on the functional implementation of contexts into workspaces.

Please note that the Getting Things Done system, while it has many rules that have been well thought out, is mainly useless if you can’t or don’t adapt it to what suits you. What follows is a guideline, nothing more. Take it, improve upon it, or scrap it completely as your needs require.

When You Start

When you set up your workspaces, plan out their order beforehand. Producteev doesn’t have a way to reorder them yet. If you are already set up and using Producteev, you may have to recreate your system and move your tasks — this is actually a good thing, as starting from scratch should be part of your GTD process anyway. If you really want to keep a workspace, just recreate it and move all of the tasks. It’s pretty easy with Producteev’s bulk options, accessed by clicking the checkbox to the left of any task. You’ll have to recreate your labels, though.
Click on the + button in the upper right corner of Producteev to add a workspace. Create the following (case doesn’t matter and if you don’t like my names, they are easily changed later): @home, @work, @computer, errands, calls, waiting for*, reference, tickler, projects, someday/maybe*, “specific project(s)”.
1. *These are contexts that I chose to handle as labels within other workspaces, but could be handled as workspaces of their own. Read their sections, below, to see details.
For each workspace, click on the Workspace Settings button, or any of the little gear icons in the sidebar, and navigate to Communications Preferences.
1. This is where you will connect your various emails, IM accounts, and Google Calendar.
2. You can connect multiple accounts of each type — set up all potential incoming connections to make it easy for you to send items into your Brain Dump/Inbox (or whatever you call it), as well as easily be notified by or interact with your tasks.
3. Make sure you configure each connected account’s notification settings, per workspace. You can add all incoming emails and IMs to your main workspace, and they will have access to all of your Producteev account; however, you may not want to receive notifications in all of your email/IM accounts, or may only want certain workspaces to send certain kinds of notifications to you. Experiment and see what works best in your system.
4. DO NOT sync to Google Calendar without at least one scheduled task already in the workspace (use a dummy task to start). If you do, you will end up with a broken calendar subscription in your Gcal that has a long string of letters and numbers for a name. If this happens to you, delete the calendar from Gcal, head to the offending workspace in Producteev and disconnect it from Google Calendar. Schedule a task, then reconnect to and sync with Google Calendar. That should fix you up. If not… try again — it will work at some point.

Now you’re ready to get started!

Brain Dump (Main Inbox)

This should also be your default workspace. As per GTD principles, any new idea, unprocessed project or task goes here first. You can forward or send emails to it, including attachments (watch your space limitations per workspace); you can manually add a task from the Producteev desktop or mobile interface, or via instant messenger, Gmail Gadget or browser extension. If you’re brave, you can even allow other people to have access to this workspace so that they can send you tasks. Be careful with this last, however, as someone you invite to your workspace can view all of your tasks just by clicking on your name, unless you specify the privacy of the task. If you are going to be assigned tasks by someone else regularly, and want to skip email, then set up a specific workspace just for them, either for the project you’re or as a “sub-inbox.”

Sometimes, if I know where a task is going to end up anyway, I will add the appropriate hashtags (#+workspace, ##+label) to my email or IM, or add the info directly into the Producteev interface if I’m already there. This often takes less than a minute and saves me a step later.

DO NOT send out notifications from this workspace or schedule anything and leave it here. DO NOT connect this workspace to Google Calendar. The object of this workspace is to empty it (which has the side-benefit of a nice feeling of accomplishment!), and notifications here will drive you several stages of batty unless you actually enjoy spamming yourself.

GTD Note: Go through your Brian Dump inbox (and any others you may set up) daily, processing each task. Remember that any task that requires more than one action is actually a project and should be sent to the Projects list. All other tasks are sent to their specific context, sorted, and set as a next action by schedule, priority, label, and whatever other means you feel necessary as long as you don’t bog yourself down. Anything that can be done in two minutes or less, should be done immediately.

Producteev Note: Moving a task is easy. Click on the aforementioned little checkbox as you would with a bulk move, do it from within the task detail interface, or click on the workspace name that is to the left of a task in the Overview area. You can also change workspaces and add labels, notes, etc, by responding to task notifications from Producteev. In many cases, regular language is understood by the system.

@Home

This is the place for your next actions when you are at home and not on a call or on the computer – add labels as needed. Some suggested labels: kitchen, garage, bathroom, livingroom, etc.; or labels for recurring tasks that take place in different areas like “vacuum”. Whatever works for you.

@Work

This is the home for your next actions while at work (or for work-related next actions if you are working from home). Label this workspace as needed to organize yourself. If you have recurring or long term projects that don’t require their own major infrastructure to organize, use a project label here. If you work for more than one company, or have several freelance gigs going on, you can set up labels for them as well.

@Computer

This is where you put all tasks that need to be, or can only be done while on the computer. In this workspace I like to add labels like “read”, “review”, “research”, “experiment”, etc.

Errands

Out and about? This workspace is your friend! All errands go here as an easy way to keep on top of what needs to be done when you are on the go. Set reminders, add labels and remember to look here as you prepare to walk out a door.

Note on Recurring Tasks: Producteev doesn’t support recurring tasks, yet. They may in the future, but for now, you have two options: get creative with labels (though this is still somewhat limited), or sync the task to Google Calendar, then go into Gcal and modify the task as recurring. Sure, you are then relying only on your calendar as a reminder service, but the job gets done.

Calls

This is where you place all of your “to call” actions. Many calls need to be scheduled and require a reminder. This is one place that the Google Calendar integration of Producteev is a lifesaver. Remember that email bodies, and even responses to Producteev reminder messages that have quotations around them (” “), are added to a note for the task. This is a good way to keep on top of what you need to know for your call.

Waiting For*

A task that requires the action(s) of someone or something else before it can be done goes here. Many people will view Waiting For as a context unto itself and will want to make a workspace just for it. I tend to view Waiting For as a sub-context. It organizes better in my mind when I view what or who I am waiting on in relation to larger contexts like @work or Calls, so for me, Waiting For is a label that lives inside many of my workspaces.

Reference

I debated on whether to to put a workspace up for Reference at all. This is essentially your filing cabinet, wherein all things that need to be remembered but require no action, or no further action, go. I use Evernote for that and am saddened that Producteev has not yet discovered the wonder of the Evernote API (I would love to be able to access my Evernote content as well as to send tasks and notes into Evernote!). However! There are often times when I will want to keep track of a task and/or its notes even after completion, so I created the Reference workspace and a list of tags covering the entire alphabet for file-cabinet-like searching. I have this workspace set to notify me whenever there is a note posted on it, which helps in two ways:

If I allow collaborators in the Reference workspace, I can see when a note is posted and keep track of conversation.
I can forward the notification email to Evernote — it contains a link to the task and can live in my Evernote filing cabinet for easy and clickable later reference. If you like, you can simply do this with all completed tasks and not bother with a Reference workspace at all.

Tickler

This is where you put everything that doesn’t require your immediate attention, but you want to get back to at some point. Connect this Producteev workspace to your Google Calendar, as you will want to give each of these tasks a loose schedule that will “tickle” you with a reminder.

Projects

Everything that requires more than one action — and isn’t a reference item – is a project. Once these items are weeded out of your inbox and everything else is sorted, you open up the Projects workspace and hammer out next tasks for your project items, adding them to your inbox/Brain Dump for later processing (or directly to where they are supposed to go, if you’re ready for that). Use labels here to split things up (@home projects, @work projects, specific project names, etc.). This is also a great place to implement the starring functionality of Producteev, to allow you to sort your projects by importance.

Someday/Maybe*

Someday/Maybe is another context that could be a workspace of its own, but I chose to put it as a sub-set of the Projects workspace, using a label. This organizes better, in my mind — you should implement it whichever way works best for you.

“Specific Project(s)” (Large/Collaborative)

I’m not a hardcore GTD guy. I love the spirit of Getting Things Done, but there are still some things that need to be organized outside of the methodology, for me. Large projects that require their own organization (milestone structure and the like), or projects that require collaboration suit me better when they are in their own workspace. If I want to, I can move the next-action tasks for those projects into the GTD aspect of my Producteev system, or I can keep the tasks focused within the specific project’s workspace. I actually have a workspace set up just for 40Tech, where I put up a list of my upcoming post ideas, which are each projects unto themselves. There are other labels in there as well, and it can serve as a place for us 40Tech types to collaborate.

GTD Note: The Weekly Review is the lynch pin of your GTD setup, whether in Producteev or another system. Make sure you review all of your projects, as well as the health of your GTD implementation, in general. This will ensure that you keep on top of everything, as you will be able to see where things are lagging or doing well, and tweak your system accordingly.

Producteev Note: Overview Mode is a fantastic way to get a solid and non-overwhelming picture of your entire Producteev GTD system. There are several sorting options, the most useful of which (for the purposes of this system) are sort by Deadline, Priority, and Workspace.

So there you have it, a fully fledged GTD implementation in Producteev, utilizing multiple workspaces and added labels for easy snapshots of your task lists. It has been working well for me, so far, as it allows me to manage myself and everything I’m working on or need or want to do, while still being flexible enough to allow collaborations without overwhelming the system. GTD in Producteev also offers me the main thing that GTD in Evernote just hasn’t yet: easy calendar and reminder management. I need that…

Give the system a try and let me know how it works for you! Got a better idea, suggestions? I’m all text-based ears!

UPDATE: Producteev now supports recurring tasks!

UPDATE 2: Producteev has produced a 4 minute screencast that boils down the concepts of this post into a simplified method. Check it out below:

Click here to view the embedded video.