9 ms·

GTD is a great system; once you follow it (in some form), it quickly becomes difficult to imagine how anyone lives their life without it. I have found Evernote

GTD is a great system; once you follow it (in some form), it quickly becomes difficult to imagine how anyone lives their life without it. I have found Evernote to be a great tool to implement a GTD system. Evernote's greatest strength is its flexibility. It works on basically every platform and integrates with most other tools you use. It doesn't really tell you how to use it though, which is where GTD fits in perfectly. (And it turns out to be really helpful to integrate as much of your system as possible into one tool.) I found this site to be a great resource getting started with GTD and Evernote: http://www.thesecretweapon.org/ http://www.thesecretweapon.org/ My current system is very similar to what they describe, although I added a 'Waiting' status, which includes both things that need to be done at or after a given time, and things where I want to remember that I'm waiting on something outside my control (a reply to an email, for instance). I set reminders on everything in there. The one other significant tweak I made is to use notebooks instead of tags for the 'when' portion. Since every task needs to have a 'when', and since every note has one and only one notebook, this seemed like a logical fit. So instead of the 'Current' notebook they recommend, I simply use a Current stack containing a notebook for each priority level. I also use Powerbot to improve clipping emails from gmail. Anyway, the details don't matter and are easy to change. The main point is, give GTD on Evernote a try, and you'll be glad you did.

rahimnathwani 12y ago
I use Gmail, set up in a similar way to this: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t... You can use a second calendar in place of GTD's 'tickler' file. Just hide the calendar, and set the default reminder to 'email'. That way, you receive an email when you need to action a tickler, and can then assign that email to 'next action' or whatever.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Should be even better with Inbox too, since it's now easy to add your own reminders directly, and to snooze emails. Still, I like Evernote for its flexibility. Voice notes, pictures, clipped webpages to later reference, etc. Also ease of linking between notes and more flexibility and power in tagging than gmail (thinking nested tags on mobile). And I already used it in place of bookmarking for any reference material (since full-text search is so much easier than trying to catalog something I might need in years or never), so it made sense for me to use the same thing for GTD. But I imagine any functional GTD systems is going to do the job pretty well. What works best for each person will certainly vary!
  - Rafert 12y ago
    I've tried Evernote but I've fallen in to the trap of spending more time with managing the tool than getting actual stuff done. Like quanticle said, full-blown GTD is like nuclear fusion. I've got my own thing going with Inbox and Keep that works for me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
quanticle 12y ago
The problem with GTD, IMHO, is that it's the organizational equivalent of nuclear fusion. Yes, once it gets going it's self-sustaining and will provide you with clear benefits. But, in my experience, it takes a lot of work in the beginning to spin up GTD and keep it going until it gets to that self-sustaining state. I tried going with the GTD system for two weeks and it felt like I was constantly managing and updating all the various lists that it requires. I could never seem to get to the "promised land" where everything would stabilize and the system would become self-sustaining. In the end, I just ended up reverting back to keeping a simple to-do list in a text file.
- tempestn 12y ago
  I won't disagree with you. I run my own business, and I probably spent the better part of a week essentially full time setting myself up, plus a decent chunk of the next couple weeks. (Not that it would have to take that long, but I wanted to make sure I considered all my use cases and set up something I would really be able to use to the fullest.) However, the potential benefits are analogous to nuclear fusion as well. I used to use a (synced) text file as well, and having been on this system for about two years now, I'm confident it was worth considerably more than the setup time I put into it.
- collyw 12y ago
  Its amazing how effective the most basic options are (a text file). I used to use a google doc as my task list. Then we built in tables in to the company database for requests (a very poor idea by a new manager that had joined). Now we are onto Jira. While Jira has benefits, it is still way clunkier to use than a Google doc, and there are many features I miss.
- seren 12y ago
  The trade-off is that even if you are always updating the action list, you are supposed to get an overall better peace of mind. You are not spending your time in the shower or in the traffic jam reviewing the list of things you have to do tomorrow, because you know you have offloaded to an external system. Like any new habit you can't hope to form it in two weeks, you need so sustain the effort for at least a few months. (To be honest, I have experimented with various GTD systems along the years, and was not able to sustain it as well for longer than a few months. However, during crunch time, I find it an incredible tool)
hobo_mark 12y ago
> It works on basically every platform Except, you know, Linux :) It's also quite slow and I'd rather spend as little time as possible managing my time than waiting for the UI to load and having to mouse around for everything. (Not to mention all those times where some of my notes were synchronized into oblivion, never to be found again) I am much more effective using a hierarchy of text files and some simple macros to navigate it, works offline and it's incredibly easy to sync between machines.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  You don't have web browsers on Linux? ;-)
  - hobo_mark 12y ago
    Sorry, but switching to the browser window and opening a tab (or finding a particular tab in the list) takes orders of magnitude more time compared to using a global keyboard shortcut to pop up my program.
    - krschultz 12y ago
      You can create a shortcut to a website and accomplish the same thing
      - hobo_mark 12y ago
        There are more shortcuts inside the program itself... A time/task manager should get in and out of the way as quickly as possible, loading a website just won't cut it, for me.
- noyesno 12y ago
  True, they don't have a native client but it works well enough via wine.
- tempestn 12y ago
  I haven't used the web client much, so couldn't really comment on that, but I've found the windows, mac, and android clients to be very fast. Even full-text searching is almost instantaneous, and I certainly don't find myself waiting for the UI to load. Nor do I use the mouse much. Their keyboard shortcuts are quite extensive: https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23168552 https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23168552 Anyway, to each their own. I just wouldn't want someone to give EN a pass without trying it, thinking it's slow and lacks keyboard shortcuts.
solistice 12y ago
If you like the challenge of a steep learning curve, might I suggest org-mode for emacs? It's got tasks, todos, built in agenda calculation, and so on. Also it's shipped as default with emacs. For something like a "waiting" status, you can easily reconfigure the default to-do states on a global or per file basis, and even have several different sets of states for tasks. Here's a pretty handy guide showing what you can do with it, and then there's allways the org-mode documentation which outlines all features. http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html I've got a friend of mine who uses it for literally everything from notetaking to planning projects and billing project time, and I'm slowly getting into it as well. If Evernote's greatest strenght is flexibility, this will certainly give it a run for its money.
- dj-wonk 12y ago
  Most org-mode documentation I see is painfully long. Can you recommend a short video or document that makes a compelling argument that org mode is worth the trouble? I currently can't get a sense of the learning curve relative to the benefits. As a matter of context, I use Markdown text files when I want something lightweight and OmniFocus for when I need more structure.
  - solistice 12y ago
    Well, that is mostly due to the quantity of things you can do with it as well as the literal 1000 keyboard shortcuts it has (I got halfway through compiling an ankii deck, and i counted 400, I'll get down to doing the rest once I have time again). The link I have in the post above outlines an efficient org-mode workflow [http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html], but since that one is fairly mature and detailed, it's a long document as well. Then there's this fairly short video that just showcases the basic features [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGYet02bEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGYet02bEk] or structure manipulation. I could give a short overwiev a shot though. Tree based document structure : Start a line with * to create a top level headline, two * to do a subheadline, use as many ""s as you want to infinitely subdivide tasks and ideas. Toggle entire subtrees from view with a single key combination, or generate a sparse tree that only contains what you need. Tables: Autoformatting ASCII tables that start on a new line with "|". Mutate rows, columns, use emacs-calc inside of the table. Todo Items: Create todo's by writing a headline that contains "TODO" as in " TODO sth". Or pressing C-c C-t. Define different sets of todo states globally of per file. (Say BUG | RESOLVED WONTFIX) with any number of intermediate steps or finished states. Create TODO dependencies (just have sub-TODOs under existing TODOs). Add automatic notes to todo states, and or timestamps. Track how much time you've spent on TODOs exactly (say for billing). Refile entire regions into different files entirely. Say you had your "in"-file, and you're in your project view. You suddenly remember to go pick up milk. Type it into your project view, C-c C-w, autocomplete to your "in" file, refiled. Agendas : Agendas will cull TODOs, Deadlines, Scheduled tasks and Habits from all your buffers automatically. Want to know what needs to get done at work today? Generate an agenda of all TODOs, Deadlines and Scheduled tasks that have the tag :Work:. Done. The beauty of it is that you don't have to learn how to do all of that right away. If you know the basic commands you can already get a lot of use out of it, hell, if you know the syntax for TODOs and headlines it's allready usable. But org-mode is there for people who like to tweak their workflow. Everything is tweakable, rebindable, extendable, and it's not limited to usage as a personal planning tool. You can write HTML with it, or insert LaTeX and export to PDF. A lot of those long guides for org-mode have been written in org-mode. Edit: Now Hackernews formatting is messing with this a little, and thinks double stars mean indentation...now way to escape that though.
tomaskazemekas 12y ago
I have found Wunderlist to be better suited for GTD than Evernote. http://www.wunderlist.com http://www.wunderlist.com
- pwelch 12y ago
  Agreed. I tried to use Evernote for GTD but found Wunderlist just works a lot better. The Wunderlist App is fast and the general design leans more towards GTD. Evernote is still a decent app for keeping notes and filing things away but I've found Wunderlist much easier to use for the general tasks workflow of GTD.
  - Numberwang 12y ago
    I really like wunderlist, but struggle to imagine how it can be used for gtd. Evernote with tags is just superior. I'd love for you to convince me I'm wrong.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Can you describe in more detail what Wunderlist does better than Evernote?
drcode 12y ago
After many years of GTD, it's clear to me that the poison in any GTD system is items that are low priority and hard to turn into concrete actions. If you use GTD, items such as "Plan a better way to arrange the living room furniture" and "Look into what's involved to mend a chair leg" will slowly creep into your "Next Action" list, roost there indefinitely, and slowly drain your list of oxygen. Right now I'm trying Mark Forster's "Ultimate Time Management System", which seems to offer some relief to this problem.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  The key is to break down each todo into clearly actionable tasks. You can do this in Wunderlist with subtasks, for example. In my case, the more I break something down and make it concrete, the less likely I am to procrastinate.
- visakanv 12y ago
  "look into" is insufficiently actionable. How do you measure look into? "Google 'mend chair leg', write down best 3 posts, follow instructions..." those are actionable. "Look into", "manage", "take care of", "think about"... all pretty vague
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    The problem I experienced with "measuring 'look into'" is that you're not in a position to do so at that moment. "Google 'mend chair leg'" may be a proper task, but it does not capture what to do with it. "Write down best 3 posts" is not something you should commit yourself to before Googling; it's the vague act of "looking into" that generates such actions. You can't tell in advance if you'll need to read blogposts, watch videos, browse a subreddit, etc. In the end I created my own terms like RESEARCH and BRAINSTORM with well-defined actions attached. RESEARCH means "spend a block of time BFSing on Google until you feel satisfied", while BRAINSTORM means "spend time in front of a whiteboard/piece of paper and dump your problem until you're able to identify specific courses of actions, which then will become your actionable items". But in the end, I still feel that some problems are not well-suited for GTD - mostly those requiring to improvise as you go along.

rahimnathwani 12y ago

I use Gmail, set up in a similar way to this: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t... You can use a second calendar in place of GTD's 'tickler' file. Just hide the calendar, and set the default reminder to 'email'. That way, you receive an email when you need to action a tickler, and can then assign that email to 'next action' or whatever.

tempestn 12y ago
Should be even better with Inbox too, since it's now easy to add your own reminders directly, and to snooze emails. Still, I like Evernote for its flexibility. Voice notes, pictures, clipped webpages to later reference, etc. Also ease of linking between notes and more flexibility and power in tagging than gmail (thinking nested tags on mobile). And I already used it in place of bookmarking for any reference material (since full-text search is so much easier than trying to catalog something I might need in years or never), so it made sense for me to use the same thing for GTD. But I imagine any functional GTD systems is going to do the job pretty well. What works best for each person will certainly vary!
- Rafert 12y ago
  I've tried Evernote but I've fallen in to the trap of spending more time with managing the tool than getting actual stuff done. Like quanticle said, full-blown GTD is like nuclear fusion. I've got my own thing going with Inbox and Keep that works for me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

quanticle 12y ago

The problem with GTD, IMHO, is that it's the organizational equivalent of nuclear fusion. Yes, once it gets going it's self-sustaining and will provide you with clear benefits. But, in my experience, it takes a lot of work in the beginning to spin up GTD and keep it going until it gets to that self-sustaining state. I tried going with the GTD system for two weeks and it felt like I was constantly managing and updating all the various lists that it requires. I could never seem to get to the "promised land" where everything would stabilize and the system would become self-sustaining. In the end, I just ended up reverting back to keeping a simple to-do list in a text file.

tempestn 12y ago
I won't disagree with you. I run my own business, and I probably spent the better part of a week essentially full time setting myself up, plus a decent chunk of the next couple weeks. (Not that it would have to take that long, but I wanted to make sure I considered all my use cases and set up something I would really be able to use to the fullest.) However, the potential benefits are analogous to nuclear fusion as well. I used to use a (synced) text file as well, and having been on this system for about two years now, I'm confident it was worth considerably more than the setup time I put into it.
collyw 12y ago
Its amazing how effective the most basic options are (a text file). I used to use a google doc as my task list. Then we built in tables in to the company database for requests (a very poor idea by a new manager that had joined). Now we are onto Jira. While Jira has benefits, it is still way clunkier to use than a Google doc, and there are many features I miss.
seren 12y ago
The trade-off is that even if you are always updating the action list, you are supposed to get an overall better peace of mind. You are not spending your time in the shower or in the traffic jam reviewing the list of things you have to do tomorrow, because you know you have offloaded to an external system. Like any new habit you can't hope to form it in two weeks, you need so sustain the effort for at least a few months. (To be honest, I have experimented with various GTD systems along the years, and was not able to sustain it as well for longer than a few months. However, during crunch time, I find it an incredible tool)

hobo_mark 12y ago

> It works on basically every platform Except, you know, Linux :) It's also quite slow and I'd rather spend as little time as possible managing my time than waiting for the UI to load and having to mouse around for everything. (Not to mention all those times where some of my notes were synchronized into oblivion, never to be found again) I am much more effective using a hierarchy of text files and some simple macros to navigate it, works offline and it's incredibly easy to sync between machines.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
You don't have web browsers on Linux? ;-)
- hobo_mark 12y ago
  Sorry, but switching to the browser window and opening a tab (or finding a particular tab in the list) takes orders of magnitude more time compared to using a global keyboard shortcut to pop up my program.
  - krschultz 12y ago
    You can create a shortcut to a website and accomplish the same thing
    - hobo_mark 12y ago
      There are more shortcuts inside the program itself... A time/task manager should get in and out of the way as quickly as possible, loading a website just won't cut it, for me.
noyesno 12y ago
True, they don't have a native client but it works well enough via wine.
tempestn 12y ago
I haven't used the web client much, so couldn't really comment on that, but I've found the windows, mac, and android clients to be very fast. Even full-text searching is almost instantaneous, and I certainly don't find myself waiting for the UI to load. Nor do I use the mouse much. Their keyboard shortcuts are quite extensive: https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23168552 https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23168552 Anyway, to each their own. I just wouldn't want someone to give EN a pass without trying it, thinking it's slow and lacks keyboard shortcuts.

solistice 12y ago

If you like the challenge of a steep learning curve, might I suggest org-mode for emacs? It's got tasks, todos, built in agenda calculation, and so on. Also it's shipped as default with emacs. For something like a "waiting" status, you can easily reconfigure the default to-do states on a global or per file basis, and even have several different sets of states for tasks. Here's a pretty handy guide showing what you can do with it, and then there's allways the org-mode documentation which outlines all features. http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html I've got a friend of mine who uses it for literally everything from notetaking to planning projects and billing project time, and I'm slowly getting into it as well. If Evernote's greatest strenght is flexibility, this will certainly give it a run for its money.

dj-wonk 12y ago
Most org-mode documentation I see is painfully long. Can you recommend a short video or document that makes a compelling argument that org mode is worth the trouble? I currently can't get a sense of the learning curve relative to the benefits. As a matter of context, I use Markdown text files when I want something lightweight and OmniFocus for when I need more structure.
- solistice 12y ago
  Well, that is mostly due to the quantity of things you can do with it as well as the literal 1000 keyboard shortcuts it has (I got halfway through compiling an ankii deck, and i counted 400, I'll get down to doing the rest once I have time again). The link I have in the post above outlines an efficient org-mode workflow [http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html], but since that one is fairly mature and detailed, it's a long document as well. Then there's this fairly short video that just showcases the basic features [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGYet02bEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGYet02bEk] or structure manipulation. I could give a short overwiev a shot though. Tree based document structure : Start a line with * to create a top level headline, two * to do a subheadline, use as many ""s as you want to infinitely subdivide tasks and ideas. Toggle entire subtrees from view with a single key combination, or generate a sparse tree that only contains what you need. Tables: Autoformatting ASCII tables that start on a new line with "|". Mutate rows, columns, use emacs-calc inside of the table. Todo Items: Create todo's by writing a headline that contains "TODO" as in " TODO sth". Or pressing C-c C-t. Define different sets of todo states globally of per file. (Say BUG | RESOLVED WONTFIX) with any number of intermediate steps or finished states. Create TODO dependencies (just have sub-TODOs under existing TODOs). Add automatic notes to todo states, and or timestamps. Track how much time you've spent on TODOs exactly (say for billing). Refile entire regions into different files entirely. Say you had your "in"-file, and you're in your project view. You suddenly remember to go pick up milk. Type it into your project view, C-c C-w, autocomplete to your "in" file, refiled. Agendas : Agendas will cull TODOs, Deadlines, Scheduled tasks and Habits from all your buffers automatically. Want to know what needs to get done at work today? Generate an agenda of all TODOs, Deadlines and Scheduled tasks that have the tag :Work:. Done. The beauty of it is that you don't have to learn how to do all of that right away. If you know the basic commands you can already get a lot of use out of it, hell, if you know the syntax for TODOs and headlines it's allready usable. But org-mode is there for people who like to tweak their workflow. Everything is tweakable, rebindable, extendable, and it's not limited to usage as a personal planning tool. You can write HTML with it, or insert LaTeX and export to PDF. A lot of those long guides for org-mode have been written in org-mode. Edit: Now Hackernews formatting is messing with this a little, and thinks double stars mean indentation...now way to escape that though.

tomaskazemekas 12y ago

I have found Wunderlist to be better suited for GTD than Evernote. http://www.wunderlist.com http://www.wunderlist.com

pwelch 12y ago
Agreed. I tried to use Evernote for GTD but found Wunderlist just works a lot better. The Wunderlist App is fast and the general design leans more towards GTD. Evernote is still a decent app for keeping notes and filing things away but I've found Wunderlist much easier to use for the general tasks workflow of GTD.
- Numberwang 12y ago
  I really like wunderlist, but struggle to imagine how it can be used for gtd. Evernote with tags is just superior. I'd love for you to convince me I'm wrong.
tempestn 12y ago
Can you describe in more detail what Wunderlist does better than Evernote?

drcode 12y ago

After many years of GTD, it's clear to me that the poison in any GTD system is items that are low priority and hard to turn into concrete actions. If you use GTD, items such as "Plan a better way to arrange the living room furniture" and "Look into what's involved to mend a chair leg" will slowly creep into your "Next Action" list, roost there indefinitely, and slowly drain your list of oxygen. Right now I'm trying Mark Forster's "Ultimate Time Management System", which seems to offer some relief to this problem.

w1ntermute 12y ago
The key is to break down each todo into clearly actionable tasks. You can do this in Wunderlist with subtasks, for example. In my case, the more I break something down and make it concrete, the less likely I am to procrastinate.
visakanv 12y ago
"look into" is insufficiently actionable. How do you measure look into? "Google 'mend chair leg', write down best 3 posts, follow instructions..." those are actionable. "Look into", "manage", "take care of", "think about"... all pretty vague
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  The problem I experienced with "measuring 'look into'" is that you're not in a position to do so at that moment. "Google 'mend chair leg'" may be a proper task, but it does not capture what to do with it. "Write down best 3 posts" is not something you should commit yourself to before Googling; it's the vague act of "looking into" that generates such actions. You can't tell in advance if you'll need to read blogposts, watch videos, browse a subreddit, etc. In the end I created my own terms like RESEARCH and BRAINSTORM with well-defined actions attached. RESEARCH means "spend a block of time BFSing on Google until you feel satisfied", while BRAINSTORM means "spend time in front of a whiteboard/piece of paper and dump your problem until you're able to identify specific courses of actions, which then will become your actionable items". But in the end, I still feel that some problems are not well-suited for GTD - mostly those requiring to improvise as you go along.