JeffKirvin.net

I got a request on Twit­ter recently (hi, @girvo!) to update how I use GTD now that I’ve switched plat­forms. It’s pretty sim­ple, and if you’ve been read­ing my stuff recently, it should come as no sur­prise that I’m doing it almost entirely in Evernote.

I have every­thing in one big note­book now in Ever­note, using tags and saved searches to find things (à la Gmail). For things in my GTD sys­tem, I have two tags to use: “!GTD” (the intial bang sorts it at the top of the tag list and dis­tin­guishes it from the tag “gtd” which I use for notes about GTD) and “Con­text”. If I bring up notes with the !GTD tag, I see at least eight notes, some­times more:

.Projects

This is a list of projects, out­comes I want to achieve that con­sist of more than one action. For example:

Write Titanus first draft

Write Rev­e­la­tion first draft

Post to JeffKirvin.net at least once a week

Paint bath­room

.Someday/​Maybe

This is a list of things that have been on my mind, but I have no com­mit­ment to accom­plish them in the fore­see­able future:

Stream media from PC to TV

Use Wii Fit for workouts

.Wait­ing For

This is a list of things I have on hold until some­one else gets back to me. I con­sult this once a week to see if I need to ping people.

All of the lists that begin with an at sign are con­texts, and tagged as such so that I can have a saved search called “Task Lists” that shows only those notes.

@Computer

This is for next actions that require some kind of computer/​internet access, but no spe­cific resources (like my iTunes library on my home desk­top or the tick­et­ing sys­tem we use at work). Basi­cally this is stuff I can do with my iPhone if necessary.

@Home

Both house­clean­ing and com­put­ing tasks that require a com­puter at my house (iTunes and gam­ing stuff, mostly) go on this list.

@Work

This is for stuff I have to do at the office.

@Out

This is mostly for errands or things involv­ing my car.

@Phone

And lastly, a list for phone calls I have to make. This is usu­ally a pretty sparse list as I avoid voice calls as much as pos­si­ble, pre­fer­ring less intru­sive and time asyn­chro­nous SMS and email.

I cur­rently also have a cou­ple projects I’ve removed from the .Projects list so I can do “back of the enve­lope” plan­ning. For exam­ple, I have a note called “Fix Neon” con­sist­ing of:

Get engine diagnostic

Check heat issue

Replace wind­shield

Replace tail­lights

Fix dash­board short

Replace dri­ver door

Replace pas­sen­ger mirror

Replace steer­ing column

(yes, there’s a rea­son my friends refer to my car as the Mil­len­nium Falcon)

For things that are time-​sensitive, I sched­ule the next actions on my Google cal­en­dar. For things that have to be done at a spe­cific time, I put them at that time, but for most things that have to be done just on a cer­tain day, I sched­ule them as free, all-​day events.

For col­lec­tion, I can have any num­ber of notes, all tagged with “Inbox”. These can be pic­tures, voice notes, text notes, even clipped web pages. Every so often, I go through my Inbox saved search and process these, adding new projects or next actions to my core lists as necessary.

When I’m on the go and look­ing for some­thing to do, I’ll bring up my Task Lists saved search in Ever­note and open the appro­pri­ate con­text. When I’m done with a task, I sim­ply delete that row. Ever­note sup­ports adding check­boxes to notes, but doing so means I can’t edit those notes on my iPhone, some­thing that’s vital to my sys­tem. So I keep it sim­ple, my notes in Ever­note not all that dif­fer­ent from the paper note cards so many GTDers use.

To me, the real advan­tage of this sys­tem is that it will work any­where. Win­dows PC, Mac, Linux (through Evernote.com), iPhone, Black­berry, Win­dows Mobile or just about any­thing else that can use either the full or mobile ver­sions of the Ever­note web­site. As long as I have an inter­net con­nec­tion, I have GTD. And even when I don’t have an inter­net con­nec­tion, I have the cached ver­sions of my lists that I’ve marked as favorites on my iPhone, so I at least have older ver­sions to work with.

How are you using GTD?