GTD at work

My work-provided laptop uses Windows and it’s pretty locked down (mostly just MS365 stuff but there’s also some free/open-source type apps available too) and I read Getting Things Done the other day, and got really excited and wanted to try using it.

A good while ago I read through everything on Plaintext Productivity and I took a lot of that advice on at the time, but now that I’ve actually read Getting Things Done, I realise that I had the wrong idea when I was trying to copy some of the things. I realise that things that seemed a bit awkward were only awkward because I had misunderstood. I’ve been trying out different things for a month or two now and I think I’ve maybe settled on what I’m going to use.

Calendar - Outlook

I’ve always used Outlook calendar a ton (honestly it’s probably impossible not to use it at work) so I haven’t changed anything too major here. I’ve been okay at looking ahead and making my days realistic for a little while. The big lesson for me recently was about not filling up your calendar with stuff. Like, if you want to try and do something on a certain day, that’s great, but really if it’s not set in stone, it shouldn’t be on the calendar. So that’s what I’ve been working on, removing my little daily blocks of reminders so that my calendar really does reflect the things that I definitely need to be doing at the given times.

Something that bugs me is people putting in meetings on the same day, and I’d rather be able to discourage that. So I’m still quite happy, on a morning once I know what I’m doing, to just go through and block time out, to give myself room to actually do stuff without people chucking meetings in. Maybe this is unnecessary and maybe I should just decline meetings that are scheduled at short notice. Maybe that’s my next boundary to set, haha.

Reminders - Todo

I tried using Microsoft Todo for, like, everything GTD after watching this video about how to set it up. I think it probably could work, but I really wasn’t feeling it. I think for me, having the project list cramped down the sidebar just wasn’t right and it wasn’t easy to find what I actually had in there. The video’s suggestion about how to set up contexts is very clever though and that works nicely. One of video’s comments suggested using the ‘Important’ flag to mark things as a Next Action, and it worked but it seemed fiddly. Using the ‘My Day’ function to actually take from that Next Actions list to make your real list for that day was very good. I’m sure the method in the video would work well for some people, and maybe it’ll be right for me one day, but I’m just not feeling it at the moment.

I am absolutely going to use Todo as my ‘tickler file’ though, (or I think of it as my ‘reminders’, cos tickler is just a weird word). So something that I don’t want to have on my plate yet but I’m going to need to know about at some point in the future goes on a list called ‘Reminders’ in Todo. I have previously done this in Outlook, making an all-day event where the title is just the thing I need to be reminded about, and that works too, but it takes several mouse clicks to create, then several to copy and paste the reminder text elsewhere once the day arrives. It’s also not in keeping with the ‘calender is for stuff that’s set in stone’ rule. So I think Todo will be fine for storing these.

For me, the ideal here would be something like what the recent updates brought to Apple’s Calendar and Reminders apps, where you can see reminders on the calendar but they’re clearly different. I wonder about Microsoft’s thought process on it too because old Outlook had Outlook Tasks, which were viewable at the bottom of the calendar and ultimately gave you the same view. It feels like New Outlook is missing a bit of a trick here. As it stands, Todo can keep all of these reminders.

I’ll use this for pretty much anything really - anything that I can’t do at the moment because I absolutely need to wait for something else to happen first, or something that I just want to put off for a week because I want to just let the idea brew for a while, or maybe I know I’m just going to be too busy for it at the moment and don’t want it ‘clogging up’ my list, but I know it will need doing soon regardless.

Agendas - Todo

Taken from the above video, agendas also live in Todo. This is one of the parts that I may move later but this is something I liked when I had everything in Todo so I’m going to keep it for now. Anything where I think ‘hey I should bring this up in x meeting’ or ‘next time I have a catch up with x person I’ll ask about this’, I will put it in Todo. I have a list called Agendas, and for each meeting/person I have one task, with the things I want to talk about as sub-tasks.

Maybe it would be better to have one list per meeting/person but I’m thinking about how that sidebar felt cramped when it was full of projects. If it turns out that sub-tasks aren’t good enough, maybe I’ll try it, but usually a sentence or two is enough to remind me what I wanted to talk about, so I don’t think it’s necessary.

Project list & notes - Zettlr

One of the free apps that my company has allowed is Zettlr. Honestly I’d never heard of this before seeing it on Company Portal but I really quite like it! Maybe the nearest thing I could compare it to is… maybe Obsidian? I dunno. You give it a folder to work in, and that sits in the sidebar on the left, where you can see all of the .md files in that folder. You can create and edit those files using Markdown! You can put wiki-style links in to link from one file to another! You can put yaml at the top of the file to help with searching and tagging and linking! You can take that markdown as export it as a lovely Word Document or HTML or anything, cos it will convert it using Pandoc! You can enable Vim keybindings and pretend you are a badass!

I’ve taken a lot of the information from Plaintext Productivity sections about SublimeText and kind of forced it to work in Zettlr. I have a folder called @Drafts and everything for Zettlr just gets dumped in there. I have one file that’s called @draft that’s always open, and I use it as kind of digital ‘scrap paper’, with the understanding that I’ll be clearing it soon. It’s nice for making a start composing an email or for quickly noting something down. That file should be blank though, so the understanding is that anything that gets written down there is only going to be there temporarily

Anyway, projects! I have a file called @Projects that is just a list of active projects. This is another file that I keep open in Zettlr all the time. Zettlr uses markdown so it’s easy to put checkboxes next to these, although I’m not sure if it’s really needed. If I’m understanding GTD right, this should be a list of the stuff you have on your plate right now and works as a bit of reminder of what you need to be doing, so a simple list that’s easy to look down is what’s needed.

Because Zettlr does links though, I can really easily do a link from one of the items on this list to another file within Zettlr, and I’ll allow myself to write pretty much anything I want in these files. Mostly just brainstorming ideas and a brain-dump style todo list, if I want. I have been considering making these a little more formal, like defining the project’s outcome, actions, next actions, notes, reference material etc but that feels like overkill. It’s nice to have that room to expand though, I suppose!

So when I’m reviewing my project list, the list itself is right there, and then there are links I can easily follow to see whatever additional stuff I have written down in relation to that project.

Someday/Maybe - Zettlr

I might have this wrong, but it’s how I’m viewing it at the moment: the Someday/Maybe list is like the evil twin of the Projects list. They’re both lists of projects, the only difference is that if something is on the Projects list I’m actually currently working on it, and if it’s on the Someday/Maybe list then meehhhhhh. I feel that moving things from one to the other should be done relatively freely? So again this is just a file in Zettlr. If I happen to have expanded on the idea, great! That can have it own file too and I can link to it. If something is being moved between the Projects list and the Someday/Maybe list, I literally just need to cut one line of text from one and paste it into the other.

Capturing - mostly pen and paper

I think my favourite way to capture things is on paper. I’m just using a spiral bound A5 notepad thingy from the work stationery cupboard. I’ve used nicer notebooks before and I think the niceness gets in the way? With this cheap one, I’m perfectly happy to make a mess, scribble, cross things out, draw arrows, write something down that I’ll only need for the next five minutes and just generally actually use it. There’s some weird obligation to keep nice notebooks nice that makes me hesitate before I write anything. Maybe I’ll get over this one day but for now, keeping it cheap and cheerful seems to work.

I will use the notebook for pretty much anything, so any tasks that are asked of me, any little idea that occurs to me out of nowhere, anything that seems to help me get a job done by letting me brainstorm a little or by helping me to break the job down into little bits will all go in there. Every day or so (and definitely on a Friday during a big Review) I’ll go through the notebook and give everything a bit of thought. If it’s worth adding into the system, I’ll do so, then cross it off. If it’s not worth keeping, I’ll just cross it off.

I also have my @draft note in Zettlr that’s always open, which I use a bit like an erasable whiteboard I suppose, so I’ll happily use that too, with the promise to myself that the things I write will get thought about and go into the system asap, before I might want to use that @draft note for something else.

If I think of something work-related while I’m not at work, I will probably capture it in Drafts (the iOS/Mac app). I have a little action set up that will take the content of that draft and send it to my work email address, so it’ll be brought to my attention again the next time I’m working and check my email.

Email - Outlook

I follow the guidance on Plaintext Productivity for email quite closely and it seems to work well for me. I’m not good at filing email (and I’m not sure what I gain from it anyway), so other than a couple of exceptions I don’t bother. One of the things that I learned (and I’m a little bit embarrassed to say I never thought about before) is that your email Inbox is just for the incoming stuff, and there’s an Archive folder for emails that you’re finished with. Honestly, I never noticed that there’s an Archive folder already there in Outlook! And if you press Backspace when you’re reading an email, it will be moved to the Archive!

I try to use the 2 minute rule on emails that arrive in the Inbox, although I probably allow myself more like 5 minutes per email really. So I’ll skim-read the email, and if it’s something I can reply to or do super quickly, I’ll just do it then and there. If it’s something I feel like I need to get my head around, I will move it to a folder called To Read. If there’s some sort of action needed from me, I’ll flag it as a task, then I’ll take a second to write itdown as a task in Notepad++ - in my own words - what the email is actually asking of me. I don’t really monitor my flagged emails, but once I’ve done the task it makes it easier to find the original email so that I can reply to it.

The idea is once I start going through my Inbox, I look at every email in there, and end the session with an empty Inbox. Lots of emails can be archived instantly, and I’ll give myself a few minutes for the remainder to either complete the task immediately, move it to the To Read folder for later, or work out what I actually need to do and get that down as a Project or a task, as appropriate.

Next Actions - Notepad++ with AutoHotKey (using todo.txt notation)

Again, I’m taking advice from Plaintext Productivity and only writing down any actions that I realistically think I will get done that week. Being able to judge this well is a skill that I don’t yet quite have, but it’s easy to stop and adjust while I’m doing a big Review. I don’t actually have a complete list of Next Actions anywhere, as I think it would feel overwhelming.

Plaintext Productivity talks about using a proper todo.txt windows app, but that app isn’t available for me to use on my work laptop. Maybe one day I will ask IT if it could be allowed but actually at the moment, I’m doing alright with Notepad++, along with some bits from AutoHotKey to make things easier.

I have one document called todo.txt, and I use todo.txt formatting in it. Any task that I intend to do that week will be written in here. One line in the document equals one task. At this stage, I’ll have captured and given the task a little thought, so it will be written in a way that clearly shows what exactly I need to do. Getting Things Done talked about how having half-baked tasks on your todo list just causes you additional stress and makes you want to disengage from the list, and I was like ‘yes!’. If I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, my brain will just kind off slide off the task, and it will just sit on the list forever.

I use the (A) and (B) priorities to help prioritise my list. (B) is for tasks that I intend to do that day, and I’m learning to always aim low when I’m assigning myself tasks for the day. Assigning too much will just cause stress. Assigning too little isn’t really bad: if you do get all of those tasks done, take a couple of minutes, see what else is on the list and mark another couple as (B)s.

(A) is for what I’m working on right now, or what I’m literally about to start next. It’s actually shocking how often I will get distracted and forget what I told myself I’d do, and this is super handy.

I installed a custom language in Notepad++ for todo.txt (it was a while ago but I’m certain it was from Notepad++’s official GitHub list of languages). This just helps to colour-code the tasks depending on priority, and make Completed tasks a little bit less visible. It will also highlight +projects and @contexts.

I wrote some little AutoHotKey scripts to help me organise a little quicker. The scripts themselves are probably a topic for another post but the end result gives me these hotkeys to use in Notepad++:

• Ctrl + Shift + .: Mark the current task as complete (or if it’s already marked as complete, unmark it)
• Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow: Make the selected task an (A) priority
• Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow: Set the selected task one priority lower than current (eg (A) becomes (B), (B) becomes (C))
• Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow: Remove any priority from the selected task
• Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow: Sort each line in the document alphabetically (This is not done by AutoHotKey: it’s a function built into Notepad++. I just redefined the hotkey for it so it fit into my little scheme)

Sorting each line alphabetically puts the (A) task at the very top of the document, followed by the (B)s, and put the completed tasks at the very bottom

For archiving completed tasks, I have a done.txt file, and I’m not good enough at AutoHotKey to write a script to automate this. I found this lovely script that does lots of things todo.txt-related. I don’t use most of them, but I do use the archiving function. So when I’m ready for a tidy up, I press Windows + T to bring up the GUI from that script, then press the ‘archive’ button, and all of the completed tasks are moved to my other document.

I tend not to use the ‘+’ and ‘@’ notation for projects and contexts. I’ve tried it before, but it felt like I was trying too hard to shoehorn every task into a project, and then I’m not really sure what I gained from doing it in the end. I wonder if part of this is because I don’t really have functionality to be able to pull these out, or sort by project, but equally, I find that I don’t missing using them either. Thinking about it now, this is probably an opportunity to tighten up once I understand the system a bit better. I mean, if I don’t know what project a task belongs to, why am I doing it? 🤔

Actually using it

Each morning, I look at my calendar to see what’s scheduled that day, and get an idea of how much time I might have to myself. I will also look a couple of days ahead to see if there’s anything I need to get prepared for.

I will check Todo to see if anything is tagged for attention that day. At this stage, I will have a rough idea of how my day is going to look.

If there’s time, I’ll process my email inbox first thing. I will then look at Notepad++ and mark some tasks to be done that day. And off I go.

I tend to read ‘To Read’ emails while I’m eating lunch, and I will process my Inbox again after that. I would like to get to a point where I don’t check emails at any other time during the day but I haven’t got there yet.

During the day, if I have any thoughts or ideas, or if something asks something of me, I will probably write it down in the notebook. Towards the end of the day (or sometimes it’s at the start of the next day) I’ll give myself a few minutes to actually think about what’s noted down, and what I actually need to do, and when I might do it.

Towards the end of the week (before lunch time on a Friday seems to be best) I will go through the notebook again to make sure I haven’t missed anything, I’ll look down my Projects list and add any Next Actions to Notepad++. I might move things between the Projects and Someday/Maybe lists at this time too.

It sounds like a lot but it’s only a few minutes here and there, and it really does make a difference when it’s time to actually do something, to not need to think too hard about what I should be doing before I do it. And it really does let me get everything out of my head, which I think is helping me to feel less stressed.

Future Improvement

I would like to add to this by having a sort of ‘what did I get done this month’ kind of output. I am trying out keeping an Activity Log as mentioned on Plaintext Productivity but the habit isn’t sticking yet. Done.txt absolutely has a lot of information about what I’ve done but it’s too low level. I am thinking about those checkboxes on my Projects list - maybe that is where this information is?