How many of you use an electronic device with a Getting Things Done software to practice effective GTD?

I know I am one of those. Currently my set up is to use Google Calendar together with Toodledo. But due to work, I use a monologue notebook to record my to do list.

I came across this post on lifehack.org that makes a lot of sense. It gross over how many people new to Getting Things Done will spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect platform to practice GTD.

I know the feeling of first finding out Getting Things Done through reading David Allen’s book and learning that there are so many software on Windows, Mac, iPhone that allows you to make yourself more productive.

Like what was mentioned in the article you either

1. spend a lot of time trying to find the right application
2. spend a lot of time entering and planning your action lists

I been through that stage and safe to say I seldom fell off the Getting Things Done wagon.

Taking a break from electronic GTD

But it wasn’t always like this. I tried so much applications, review so much applications that I forgot what is most important about GTD.

Its about being well rounded and executing each stage of the GTD process well.

What does that mean? You can’t just focus on one area of GTD. If you focus on collecting and planning and don’t review and execute, you end up pilling up your tasks.

Similarly, tagging everything based on context and not switching to them when you change context, you will end up pilling up your tasks as well.

Not reviewing your tasks, is the most dangerous. I fell off so many times because of this.

So what is my advice? Take a break from using an electronic device. Record your actions and collect them using a paper notebook.

What it does is to go back to square one and focus on the most important thing: The process.

When I went back to practicing Getting Things Done on paper, I realize a lot of short comings of not having things electronically

1. I cannot keep my list clean. There is no erase and edit. Instead I have to make sure I use a mechanical pencil and eraser and use very nice handwriting.
2. Maintaining a projects list is difficult. My main lists are list of my location context, agenda context with certain users and person. How can I relate those tasks with project? It is that difficult.

But having paper GTD has its perks. For one, my task collection and context switching Is much easier. It also lets me focus on the process of collecting tasks, planning them, doing them and reviewing them.

It makes me appreciate what I can get on a iPhone and Android To Do List app as well.

If you are confuse about Getting Things Done after some time, why not go back read the book again and review how you can practice that process on paper? I am sure you will learn a lot from that experience.

David Allen and Stephen Covey tried to inspire us that we need a systematic process and they provided their most effective process in Getting Things Done and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

While its most important to understand, apply and use them so that you gain the most from it, having a view of your own implementation greatly helps you and people you are trying to explain to, to understand how you do things.

In my getting things done article, I have a diagram to show you how I used to carry out getting things done with my smartphone:

My workflow here shows how ideas, thoughts and frustrations enters my system and how I systematically process them. I always go back to this diagram to keep me focus on effectively doing things.

Brett Swift, whom I got to know here from my blog also came up with one that shows how he carry out his GTD process:

How I created my flow chart

I created my flow chart with this Microsoft App called Visio. It is an industry standard to create network diagrams, software development diagrams and such. You need to pay for this.

Here is 10 reasons why you might want to get Microsoft Visio >

FREE Diagram tools

If you want to create a good looking flow chart for GTD only you might not want to spend money. There are free solutions out there.

Gliffy

Gliffy is a web 2.0 web app that does diagramming. The basic package is free but you can only have 5 public diagrams and only 2MB of upload limit.

That is quite minimal but if you only want to create one diagram you might want to sign up for this and create only one.

Diagramly

I really like diagramly because it is really no frills! They do not require you to do any form of signups. Create your diagram straight away!

Although it is a web app, you can easily create a good looking flow chart and save it as an image to publish or keep with you.

Here is what I created:

Create yours today!

You probably have procrastinated more than enough on doing things but there comes a time when you need to get things right.Why not start today?

Tune in to Productive Organizer and start with out Getting Things Done Series to make your life better today.

Ever forgotten something important?

Ever wondered how highly successful people manage their time?

Ever wished you had more quality time to spend with your family?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, read on. I hope these short educational tips will help you get control and ahead in your life.

Before beginning, I know that most of you will have this sense of procrastination of change. It is perfectly normal to feel that inertia in changing the way we currently do things or that the technique below may not work for all.

But tell you what, spend the next few minutes reading to the end and if you feel like it made some impact on you, give it a shot, it cost nothing and you got nothing to lose. If things don’t quite work for you, you can always revert to what you are doing currently.

The 10 steps are as follows:

Step 1: Jot down everything you wish to do or need to do that comes to mind at that moment

Ideally if you have a PDA or smart phone (a device which you carry around all the time) with a to-do list application or program similar to outlook, jot down the task that comes to mind immediately.

Alternatively the pen and paper would work too though not as inefficient.

Let’s call this list of things the ‘inbox’. A task could be as simple as “pick up milk on way home” or as complex as “design a management information system for client by end June”.

There are two kinds of items you should jot down.  The first is an action task.  These are task where you have a known solution or course of action to perform.  It should be written in a clear, concise and most of all actionable manner.  The second is an idea.  Pen down any thoughts or ideas you may have.  Use this opportunity to collate them and not let your creative spark be forgotten and go to waste.

Step 2: Clear the inbox

Either at the end of each day or at the start of the next day, go through your ‘inbox’ to categorize and sort all the items there.  The key idea is to place similar items together and rank its importance.  I’ll go through some concepts next.  From this stage on, you will likely need some form of an electronic organizer, outlook or to-do list application.

Step 3: Importance and Urgency

For each item, mark it with two properties, degree of priority/importance and whether it is time bound (has a due date or no due date).

We may have many tasks to do each day and by using the above, we can prioritize and focus on the high priority and urgent tasks first.  It helps us form a clear picture of what is really important (a necessity) versus what is a good to have (a want).

Step 4: Moving it to the right list

All tasks from the inbox should be moved into pre-defined lists that you have previously created to categorize them.  A tip is not to create too many of these category lists else it defeats the purpose of consolidating similar or related tasks.  An example of such pre-defined category lists could be “Personal”, “Investment”, “Job”, “Family” and “Someday”.

You might be wondering what the “Someday’ list is.  Basically for me, this list stores all my long term goal, wants and good to haves.  For instance, “learn to play golf”.  Collect all the things you eventually want to do here but currently have no clear deadline or requirement to get it done but hope to accomplish it someday.

Step 5: Tagging

Tagging simply means to use one or several words to be used as properties of the task.  It is an added dimension to group similar tasks together.

Let me illustrate, for instance, I usually tag a location with a task.  Say using the tag ‘mall’.  All my tasks which can be performed at the mall (e.g. “buy present for anniversary”, “pick up dry-cleaning”, “purchase garden hose” and “get 2 packs of dog food”) will have this tag.

Optimally if your to-do list has this search function, you can easily do a search on the tags to pull up all the tasks you can accomplish at the mall.  These may include tasks which you may not have planned for the day but for convenience you might want to clear the task now anyway.  Even if your application does not have this feature, you can manually scroll for these tags to aid yourself in consolidating similar tasks.  That way if you can accomplish them together, you free up more of our time in future.

Step 6: For a large complex task, use sub-tasking

Some task are rather complex and may require several steps in completing it.  If that is the case, you should create sub-tasks under this main task, detailing the small steps required.

Let me illustrate with a simple example, let’s say my task was to “arrange meeting for shareholders”.  I might have to do the following steps to accomplish this such as “check shareholder calendar to select meeting date and send invite”, “collect responses”, “book a conference room” and “order refreshments”.

As you may have noticed, I may not be able to finish the main task in a day depending on shareholders responses to the invite, but with sub-tasking, at least I know the task is moving along (i.e. something has been done) and I can come back to it later.

Sub-tasking is ideal for project management; it lets you keep track of what is due, what is outstanding and what is required for successful completion.  It also allows you to add additional task you might think of along the way that would aid in the main task’s successful completion.

Step 7: Create list for things to do today

Scan through your pre-defined category lists each day and determine what you want or can accomplish today.  Move these to your to do list for the day.  If your to-do list application supports due dates, those tasks due that day would have already been pre-populated for you.  You can also make use of tags to search for similar tasks you can accomplish in the same day.

As you scan your lists, make sure to delete any tasks that are redundant or no longer valid. Your list for the day may be lengthy and you may not have the time to get through all, but remember the two task properties mentioned in step 3.  Use this to determine which ones to handle first.  The remaining items can be completed another day.

Step 8: GTD (David Allen’s Getting Things Done) “two-minute rule”

Every time you read a task from your list or come to mind a task which can be performed in less than two minutes at that location and time, immediately, just do it!

Step 9: Keeping track of what is done

As you might have guessed, your completed tasks stays in your device’s memory provided you don’t delete it.  You can always pull up a record of what was done in the past.  This I feel not only serves as a diary of events but it also lets you record what worked in the past and what doesn’t.  For instance, if you had a complex task, say a project before, and the sub-tasks in it led to a successful completion, you can use them as a guide for your new project’s sub-tasks.

Looking through your completed records also serves as reminder for recurring events.  For instance, you may need to service your car every 6 months.  If your to-do list application had a recurrence event function, that task would have been created for you automatically.   Otherwise, you can always add this manually when reviewing my previous completed tasks.

Step 10: The psychological and time benefits

Free your mind; focus on the doing rather than spending effort remembering the things to do.  By adopting this organized approach, you will have one less worry in life about forgetting things that matter.  Furthermore, for me personally, I get a sense of satisfaction each time I strike off an item and at the end of the day when reviewing what I had accomplished.

Though it may seem like a daunting exercise initially, but once you get used to it, you will realize that the simple 15 minute exercise each day of clearing your inbox and building a list for the day will reap you much more time saving benefits later.  I have adopted this approach and not only am I getting more things done, I have more time for my family and leisure.

That’s it! Give it a go!

I wish you all the best in getting more productivity, having more control in your life and most importantly having more fun with your time! – Cheers

If you have an Android enabled phone and want to jump straight in at applying the above, have a look at the to-do list application I have developed below.  It is built with the above concepts in mind.

Note that though the concepts above relate to David Allen’s Getting Things Done methods, I am in no way associated with it, but I highly recommend you have a read of his book.

Another book I would recommend is Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

I think the Pomodoro Technique suits some people. My friend Wilson recently chanced upon it and find that it really helps him to focus on small amount of work at a time.

It also allows you to know when you should have a break.

If you are on the Android Smartphone you can check out Pomodroido which enables you to practice the Pomodoro on the Android platform. Here is my review of it >>

For folks who want to learn the technique, the ebook is FREE and can be viewed here >>

However not everyone agrees with it.

Colin T. Miller, a Yahoo! employee and blogger tried it and have this to say:

Pomodoros are an all or nothing affair,” he says. “Either you work for 25 minutes straight to mark your X or you don’t complete a pomodoro. Since marking that X is the measurable sign of progress, you start to shy away from engaging in an activity if it won’t result in an X. For instance…meetings get in the way of pomodoros. Say I have a meeting set for 4:30pm. It is currently 4:10pm, meaning I only have 20 minutes between now and the meeting…In these instances I tend to not start a pomodoro because I won’t have enough time to complete it anyway

Mario Fusco argues the following:

Aren’t we really able to keep ourselves concentrated without a timer ticketing on our desk?…Have you ever seen a civil engineer using a timer to keep his concentration while working on his projects?…I think that, like any other serious professional, I can stay concentrated on what I am doing for hours…Bring back your timer to your kitchen and start working in a more professional and effective way.

To a certain extend I do agree with them. You should be able to break and monitor your time in short intervals. But we human beings sometimes suffer from short attention spans and distractions.

This technique aims to address that by using a timer. I don’t think it will always work myself.

For me, I follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done using WAToDo! Android To Do List. The key to assign specific time tags to tasks so that you can focus on short task better.

Notice the *long, *medium, *short tags. WAToDo! is flexible enough for you to specify that.

Once you assign tasks with these duration specific contexts, all you need to do is selected location and time specific context to focus on it:

I am always a fan of task management that can be customized as close to your own workflow as possible which is why I really like Remember the milk, which is a very extensive web to do list that is available on the iPhone and Android smartphone as well.

One of the main advantage is that you can create Smart Lists based on search criteria and in this tip from a reader having a list of tasks you do at a certain location and at a certain time intensity is very good:

Having so many things to do, sometimes it’s so easy to get overwhelmed even when you’re organized with RTM! Even if those things take only a few minutes to do, they feel like mountains.

So, I find that if I can just do one or two things, then I will feel like I accomplished something. Even better, I could get the energy to do even more on my list.

I created a smartlist called “Today’s Quickies” which are any tasks that are due today and take less than 5 minutes to do. I used these parameters:

dueWithin:”1 day of today” and timeEstimate:”< 5 min”

It’s a great way to see all those little things that you can do and be done with!

What a great tip!

Interested to know more about Getting Things Done with mobile applications on the iPhone and Android? Take a look at our Getting Things Done series on step by step guides to apply GTD in everyday life.

You are probably right. I don’t have a lot of things on my Someday/Maybe list. This is probably because on a daily basis I have enough tasks to contend with then to add more things to it.

But essentially having an empty Someday/Maybe list could be a sign of a problem in that you did not plan for areas where you can expand your scope in other ways.

Tools for Thought discusses on this subject in this article and highlights 7 problems with it:

1. It’s a procrastination list
2. It’s too long
3. It’s teeming with fantasies
4. It’s not used for practical issues
5. It’s filled with many things in a few categories
6. It contains unresearched projects
7. It sounds non-committal

Its an interesting read for avid GTD practitioners.

[Read Article here >>]

Interested to know more about Getting Things Done with mobile applications on the iPhone and Android? Take a look at our Getting Things Done series on step by step guides to apply GTD in everyday life.

This is written by a guy with loads of experience in consulting for systems implementation and project management. Something that I am far far away from.

But essentially, here he shows you a personal GTD system that is basically free. It makes use of free Google Apps

Getting Things Done (GTD) , heard of it? Chances are you have and are probably using it to some extent. GTD is a extremely popular organizational method created by David Allen.It has been described as the productivity cult of the new info age.Over the years there have been many variations of this method, but the essence has remained same.The popularity of the system is evident from the number of systems that have become avilable that support. They range from simple papaer based systems to automated software systems. The post however is not about what GTD is , but about creating a GTD system using Google Apps.I will try to keep the information on what GTD is to the bare minimum, if you need more information or help on GTD. Just try Google search. There are a lot of excellent sources out there.(A comparison of the most popular GTD apps)

The Set-up

So why use Google Apps? Firstly It is free.All the Google applications used to set-up this system are free. Secondly it is accessible everywhere i.e You are not bound by system, hardware or software. You can access your system from anywhere as long as you are connected to Internet. You can even access it on your smart phones, both iOS,Android or Blackberry.However the most compelling reason for me is that I am yet to come across a application or a product which has all the components of a GTD system i.e. mail,to -do lists,calendar and a filing system.

Before jumping to the set-up details, lets quickly summarize the elements  of a basic GTD system

• The Inbox (Or the Capture System) – Dumping everything for later processing (Gmail,Google Tasks, Chrome Plug-ins)
• Next Action Lists – Storing your next actions (Google Tasks)
• Projects Lists – For storing your projects and associated tasks (Google Tasks)
• Waiting Lists – For your waiting and delegated tasks (Google Tasks)
• Calendar – For your scheduled events and tasks (Google Calendar)
• Reference Filing System – Storing for reference (Google Docs)

[Read the full article here @ around the CHAOS >>]

What does Aro do? If, say, Bill Gates sends Steve Jobs an email, copies me, and is talking about Larry Ellison, Larry’s name will have a little square around it. Click on that square and a new UI fans out, letting me see other info. It’s like Rapportive or Xobni, but done much better and for the mobile interface. It makes your phone much more productive than it would be otherwise and that’s why I feel it’s so important.

Think of it as a semantics crawler. If you have an email it will crawl the contents and intelligently come up with things that you will do with the information

1. location of a eatery outlet without exiting the client
2. make an appointment on Google Calendar without exiting the client
3. add a contact in your email without exiting the client
4. take a name in your email and find if this person was emailed, was in the meeting with me involved.
5. basically take all your meetings, contacts, emails and make a social graph to provide you a lot of shortcuts
6. help you tag this image to facebook, flicker.
7. make it easier for you to create calendar appointments.

Take a look at this video:

I soon realize that I was pretty wrong. He is probably a man with a very different idea how to make sense of productivity.

Stever created his own set of podcasts under the moniker Get-It-Done Guy on how to be more productive and efficient.

In 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, Stever explains to us what are the pitfalls that we might or might not be aware of that stops us from performing our tasks well and what are the great solutions to overcome them.

The 9 Steps:

1. Live on Purpose
2. Stop Procrastinating
3. Conquer Technology
4. Beat Distractions to Cultivate Focus
5. Stay Organized
6. Stop Wasting Time
7. Optimize
8. Build Stronger Relationships
9. Leverage

What I find is that, while much advice are similar to other productivity methods previously written, Stever does however highlight much tips that I find rather interesting and worth taking note of.

The new age productivity book for the new age worker

Probably very true. We thought that with so much empowerment with technology, we should be more efficient. Yet we often find that we take longer to finish things. Why is that the case?

Saving Time is one thing, telling people you saved time is another matter

I like this. It doesn’t really pay to tell people you are more efficient. Perhaps they will somehow discover this (let them do it on their own) but if you tell others how much time you saved, they are going to just load you with more work!

Steps to defeat Procrastination – Report your status update to a friend

This is rather unique. Stever thinks that what could probably help to improve the mindset to avoid procrastination is to let “someone” review your progress, providing that “boss” or accountability.

Will it work, probably. You need to find time to schedule a call to your friend and you don’t really want to be seen as utterly embarrassing of missing deadline or not able to do something, so reporting to soneone might just work.

Technology productivity – do not leave voicemail

Or rather, inform people that you will not check voicemail or only at a specific time.

This will prevent you from missing out anything in voice mail and 95% of the people doesn’t check their voice mail!

Conclusion

This book is rather easy to read and I consider getting one of it as an investment because it contains so much advice that works with so many different individual that you can circulate among family members and friends to value-add to your family network.

For me it is a cross between 4 Hour Work Week and Getting Things Done.

This book is out now in Amazon and I urge folks to give it a go!

We have reviewed quite a fair bit of task management application here on Productive Organizer (Take a look at my sidebars for reference) and many of them are focused on Getting Things Done.

Nubi Do is somewhat unique in that they have been very early to this yet not used by many. We hope that this post changes your opinion about them.

Price

USD 4.99. This for me is at the mid range section for iOS applications and specifically as a task management application

Flexibility is the key here

Nubi Do prides itself to be a very flexible task management application. It is catered to not just folks who only wants a simple list app but also people who does intensive tracking and planning.

How Many Levels of Hierarchical List/Projects

The downside for Nubi Do is that it has only one level. So what this means is that you can only have lists and tasks in the lists.

Can you specify GTD Contexts?

GTD folks would want to have categories to specify contexts or tags or classify them into

1. Time Specific
2. Location Specific
3. People Centric

In Nubi Do you can make use of Contexts. Each task can only have 1 contexts.

If that is not enough, you can make use of tags. Each task can have more than 1 tags.

Can you specify recurring tasks?

Yes you can. Tasks can recur Every Day,Weeks, Months or Year or Every specific day of the week

Task Entry

Task Entry have been made very smooth as the user can always key in the description of the task and not bother about keying in everything about the task.

If you require to key in more details, you can touch the task and key in more details.

One thing that I don’t understand is the need to specifically Pin to either Today or Next. Pinning as Next I can understand, since u specify that this is next to do.

But pin it to Today? I can only guess that its to make this task something you need to do today, as a quick reference.

Reviewing: A quick glance of what needs to be done

The front page of the application presents to you what are the tasks overdue, what you need to do today and what is next upcoming.

You are then presented with an Inbox to do your processing. And should you are doing your weekly review, you have all your lists of projects here to perform your reviewing

Reviewing: Calendar due tasks

What Nubi do does that is different from competitors is that you get a calendar that you can view at quick glance what tasks are due on which date.

And this Calendar is presented even in the task entry portion when you select a due date to your task.

So you can for example see that it is suppose to be done by this date but there are too much tasks so I postpone it by one day.

I think this is an important feature that might go down very well with some people.

Reviewing:Context/Tags tasks

At every page you are able to at the touch of a button go into context and tag filtering mode.

You however, can only view tasks in one tag or context but not multiple.

Importing and Exporting

Nowadays, the default for task management apps is to sync to Toodledo or Outlook or iCal.

Nubi Do does is enable the user to Import/Export from Google Docs.

Google docs is a good medium to import and export but I think people are looking for a cloud based method of synchronization rather than a file based import and export.

Nevertheless file based import and export has its advantages. And personally for me, I do prefer file based import.

Other FEATURES:

■ Assign priorities and due dates.
■ Attach text notes.
■ Search tasks quickly with a live search.
■ Delete, move or email multiple tasks at a time.
■ Lock & passcode protect individual todo lists.
■ Full screen note viewer with data detection so you can enter linkable email addresses, web addresses and phone numbers.
■ Multiple color scheme options.

Conclusion

All in all, a very competent task management application. Would I switch over from 2Do? Probably not. The cost of switching and reseting my whole system is too much. If 2Do works for me I will stick with it.

The plus side is definitely the Calendar review and the downside, is the single level hierarchy of lists/projects

If you like it do grab it off the market place