Michele’s Freeminding

Far from being a GTD guru — I’m more of a not-GTD kind of person ;) –, I’d like to share my GTD setup with you.

The OS

It might seem pretentious, but I think the operating system you use makes a lot of difference on your productivity.
And my OS of choice is Mac OS X: it just works.

The Desktop

When I was a Windows user — indeed, I was one, but don’t tell anyone –, I used to always have a very cluttered desktop. As soon as I switched to the Mac, things changed.

I didn’t like to have to many items on the desktop, yet it’s not always easy to decide where to put stuff in your Documents folder, also because most items are just temporary.
So I came up with a way to better organize my desktop.

I have four folders:

1. Downloads for files I download and quickly get rid off;
2. links for links to pages I’d like to have a quick look at, but hadn’t got the time to do so when I found them — usually when I go through my feeds, but don’t have the time to read each item;
3. to_read is for links, PDFs, and generally speaking articles that I know are interesting, but still haven’t found the time to read. Those are usually more complex articles or manuals I often read;
4. dust is where I throw everything that doesn’t fit in the other folders. It needs to be periodically dusted.

For files on which I need to act quickly, I just put them in the middle of the desktop so that I can’t forget about them.

To-do

After quite a long time fiddling with various solutions — Backpack, Tadalist, Remember the Milk just to name a few — I recently found what seems to be working wonders for me.

A few days ago, I was reading the recently launched Carsonified blog and read how Ryan Carson — of Carson Workshops fame — manages his to-do list.
I’ve been using OmniOutliner since getting a Mac and always loved it, but that tip made it even better.

All you need to do is to create a new document — you can use any outlining app — and have two columns: Task and Cat.
Then you add three first-level elements: Others, This Week and Today.
You can then add second level items in Others to group tasks concerning different scopes — for example, I have 16bugs, Unilife, personal and school.
The Cat column is used to better categorize elements with the same scope — i.e. Unilife Business, Unilife Code, etc.

You then move tasks across the three top level items and you’re ready to go.

I added a column to Ryan Carson’s solution: Effort.
Basically, I assign an effort level to each task so that I can always pick the right task for the amount of time I have on my hands.
The task levels I use are: < 15 minutes, half an hour, about 1 hour and a few hours.
Mind you, it’s better not to have a few hours tasks, so if you end up having lots of them, you might want to further split big tasks in smaller chunks.

Distractions

Trying to work on a computer, which makes up 80% of what I need to do, is kinda difficult: I’ve got a lots of distractions at the reach of a click.
That’s why I decided to use a couple of tricks to reduce the amount of temptations.

I stopped using a local feed reader and started using Google Reader.
Having to go to a website to read my feeds adds a layer of complexity, thus reducing the lure of it.
I always have a tab open on Google Reader, but if I’m working I’m not using the browser, so I’m not distracted by it.

I know that you might think it would be enough to close the local feed reader when you’re working, but I like being able to instantly use my feed reader as soon as I want, and having to wait for a feed reader with a couple hundreds feed to start up is not exactly instantaneous.

Plus, Google Reader is great and it’s nice to be able to check my feeds from every computer connected to the Web.

Another thing I find very useful is having notifications pop up on my screen — thanks to wonderful Growl — when I receive an email.
If you like me feel the urge to go check your email as soon as your hear the new-mail sound to see if it’s anything important, than you lose a lot of time.
Instead, by having the subject and sender, plus a short excerpt pop up on screen, I’m quickly able to tell if that email needs my immediate attention or can wait.

Miscellaneous

I use a few other apps, too.
The most useful are definitely VoodooPad for storing my notes, thoughts, attachments and generally do brainstorming; and TextMate which is far from being just an ordinary text editor: with its great collection of bundles it can do wonders.

So what are your tricks? anything you’d like to share with me?

This post was written 1 year, 8 months ago on December 12th, 2006 mid-morning.