I did these ‘scribbles’ posts for a couple of days, then nothing. I didn’t stop typing them up – I just didn’t write any in the first place. Now that I am scribbling again, I’m doing it in a different place. I’m experimenting with using my Mini Filofax again. It’s a bit of a trade-off, as these things so often are. The area of paper to write on is quite a bit smaller than in a Moleskine, so I’m using a lot more pages. On the other hand, though, the paper is better, and I can have separate sections for other things. I’m not keeping a real GTD system at the moment, but it’s still useful to have some lists, like a wish list and a shopping list.

It’s quite possible I’ll be back to the Moleskine within a day or two, or that I’ll try to stretch my jeans pocket to cram in my Pocket Filofax. I have a worrying amount of fun trying them, though, and that’s the important thing.

Latest Update: Removed PlannerLove – the site is sadly departed, and the domain has been bought by some domain squatters.

Sacha is currently writing the book on Emacs. When it comes out, it would seem rude for me to not buy a copy and read it. And she’s a small powerhouse of infectious enthusiasm, which will drag me back to Emacs. So, I’m giving up early and going back now. I know when I’m beaten. I’d just got myself nicely settled as a Vim user, too…

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Recently, I’ve been trying out a new way of doing GTD, and it seems pretty good to me. In the end, it was Emacs I couldn’t cope with using, but if you get on with Emacs, this could be for you. Let’s start with a disclaimer this time, though…

• This is one for the geeks.

It’s all based around using the Emacs text editor, which isn’t the easiest thing around to use, even just to edit a text file. It balances a couple of elisp programs on top of that, too, which let you do all sorts of clever things, using nothing but plain text. If you’re geek enough, though, and the idea of keeping everything in plain text appeals to you, this is one fast GTD system…

I should probably add another mini-disclaimer here to point out that I’m more of a wannabe geek than a real geek, so don’t think you have to be able to poo in C code, or reprogram your George Formby grill to pick it’s heat settings up as an XML file from your fridge. You need to be able to hack at text files, though, and not be too put off at reading manuals and learning a little elisp.

The System

Just so you can decide if it’s worth your while continuing, let’s start with a bit about the end result if you set up everything described in this article…

• You’ll be living in Emacs – all of your organizing will be done in Emacs.
• Plain text files will be used for storing all of your data. You could even edit the files with other programs, but you’d lose some of the automated stuff that PlannerMode provides – like duplicating tasks to a day page, a project page and a context page.
• Platform independent – you won’t have much problem if you decide to switch later from Windows to Linux or MacOS – they’ll both run Gnu Emacs and should be fine with all the other bits too. I’ve not actually tried any of this on other OSses, but it’s likely that most of the developers of the apps concerned aren’t running Windows.
• Create tasks in Emacs, by doing Ctrl-c then Ctrl-t. This will give you a series of little prompts for what, when, and projects/contexts.
• Daily Planner pages – every day has a corresponding page, listing all the tasks for that day, along with a section for scheduled things and a section for notes.

You can also get some idea of how the system will look in practice from eclair‘s screenshots, linked from near the bottom of this article.

Emacs

It’s all based on emacs, so you have to get that up and running first. There’s two options for this – Gnu Emacs, and XEmacs. Gnu Emacs seems to be used by more people, so there’s a bit more documentation around, and things are generally better tested with it, so that’s my choice. XEmacs integrates better with Windows, and has a nice simple installer, which is a bit of a help, but when you’re trying to get something running that you’re not familliar with, you probably want to go with whatever’s been tried by the most people. If you already use XEmacs, all this stuff should work just fine, but if you don’t use any Emacs at all, I’d go with the Gnu for now.

• Update: I’ve been using XEmacs more recently, and PlannerMulti, the add-on that makes GTD possible with Planner, doesn’t work as it stands with the newest version of XEmacs. It can be fixed by editing PlannerMulti’s code a little (thanks, Neilen!), but it might be another reason to go with the Gnu unless you have a particular liking for XEmacs. If you do carry out the linked fix, it’s the changes in the diff listed at the bottom of the post that worked for me. Entering tasks works slightly differently afterwards – instead of entering all of the contexts or projects you want to attach the task to with spaces between them, enter one at a time, and when you’re done, enter ‘nil’ (will usually be the default after you’ve entered the first one anyway). This may make more sense once you’ve read further on down, but it only applies if you decide to go with XEmacs and fix PlannerMulti yourself anyway.

Although Emacs is available for Linux and MacOS, I’m going to be assuming I’m talking to Windows users here. Hopefully most of it will be quite understandable for others too – most Linux users probably already have Emacs (or they use Vi and now they think I’m evil).

Getting

You can download Gnu Emacs from here – it’s the ‘emacs-21.3-bin-i386.tar.gz’ file you want (13Mb).

Installing

You need to unzip the file first, but it’s not actually a zip file – it’s a ‘.tar.gz’. If you’ve dealt with much Unix stuff in the past, you’ll probably be familiar with these already, but if not, they’re a tiny bit odd. It’s actually a .gz file, which contains a .tar file, which then contains the files you want. A decent unzipping program will handle these pretty easily, but you may need to open the .gz file, then open the .tar file inside it to get to the juicy bits upon which we wish to feast. If you don’t have any preferred unzipping software for this, 7-Zip does the job quite nicely, and it’s free. If you install that, just double-click the .tar.gz file, then double-click the .tar file/folder in the window that opens. In there, you’ll see the actual Emacs folder that we’re after- you can drag it from there to where you want it.

Once you’ve got to the Emacs folder, you need to copy it somewhere so we can run it. Although it should work ok pretty much anywhere, it’s really happiest somewhere without any long filenames – ideally, rename the folder to just “emacs”, and drop it in the root of your C: drive.

Under the “emacs” folder is a folder called “bin”. In there, there’s a program called “addpm.exe”. Run this, and you’ll get a nice icon for Emacs added to your Start menu.

Because of its Unix roots, Emacs will tend to refer to things relative to “~” – the Unix way of referring to your home directory. This isn’t set under Windows, and Emacs seems to assume it means the root of C:. Although this will work ok, it’s a bit inconvenient, and can mean a whole lot of messy files and folders all over the place. It’s a good idea to change this before we start. Right-click on My Computer, and select Properties. On the Advanced tab, click the button for Environment Variables. Add a new User variable, called “HOME”, with the value set to the folder you want to act as Emacs’ home. Personally, I put this under…

C:\Documents and Settings\pigpogm\My Documents\home\

…and just created a “home” folder in My Documents. This keeps it easy to get to, without cluttering up the root of C: any more than we already have.

Warning: Changing (or setting) the value of ‘HOME’ won’t affect many Windows programs, but you might find it upsets some. The only program on my system that was upset by it was The GIMP, which wanted to use the new HOME folder for it’s .gimp folder and font cache. When I started it and it started wanting to set up a new user, I just cancelled, and copied the .gimp and font cache files from where they were (under the docs and settings\pigpogm folder) to the newly created home folder. It then started again fine.

Setting the HOME variable isn’t needed to make things work, but if you don’t do it, don’t get all upset when Emacs does a poo all over your nice clean C: drive.

Learning

Emacs is not easy to learn. Even just being able to open and close files, and edit a bit of text is kind of tricky. Gnu Emacs does give you a menu in Windows, which helps, but to get the best out of it, you need to learn to use the keyboard for as much as possible. The best way to get started is probably to run the tutorial from the help menu. That will teach you most of the basics of editing, but you’ll need to spend a couple of hours going through it, at least.

PlannerMode

Modes

Emacs is always running in a mode. The main mode it runs in at any time is a Major Mode – which can also have any number of Minor Modes. Minor modes just change little things, like turning on and off font colouring, or changing how tabs are handled. Major Modes can change a lot more, like hiding some characters, making text display differently, or pretty much anything else. Many functions of Emacs can act differently depending on the mode it’s in. When nothing else is specified, it’s normally in Fundamental Mode. If it’s not, and you want to get back to normal, just switch to it by entering “M-x fundamental-mode” (and if that means nothing to you, you need to work through the tutorial).

PlannerMode is another mode. Planner, though, is based on another optional mode called Muse.

Muse

If you’re familiar with the idea of a wiki, Muse implements wiki-like functionality in text files.

Even if you’re not familiar with a wiki, that’s still what it does, it just doesn’t help you as an explanation

A few extra options for formatting are enabled, like beginning a line with a star and a space to make a heading, and anything in double square brackets is turned into a link to a file with that name. So, if you type the text “Write Article on PlannerMode » [ | : UK, US]” in a file in Muse Mode, the square brackets will become hidden, and the text will become a link. When you move into the linked text and hit enter, Emacs will open a file called “Write Article on PlannerMode”, in the same folder as the file you were editing.

If the file doesn’t exist, it creates it. The upshot of all this is that you can create new pages very quickly and easily, just by mentioning them elsewhere.

Muse can do other things too, like taking all the files in a project, and publishing them in some other format – like a PDF file or a web site – but the wiki-like functionality is what PlannerMode makes use of. Once it’s working, you can pretty much ignore Muse if you like – Planner will use it quietly in the background.

Getting Muse

Get muse from this page on the Emacs Wiki – I followed the link to the releases, and grabbed muse-3.02.93.zip.

You should go there to get Muse, to make sure you get the most recent release. In case there are problems getting it from there in future, though, I’ve attached the version I used to this article – there should be a link to it near the bottom of the page.

Setting Up Muse

To make Muse work, first you need to unzip the file you downloaded for it, and stick the muse folder from inside it somewhere (I renamed it from muse- to just “muse”). I put mine under the home folder we created earlier, in a folder called elisp (‘elisp’ is the language used for Emacs extensions). So, the folder for the .el files that make up Muse is “~/elisp/muse/lisp/”. ‘~’ is home, and the actual .el files are in a subfolder of the Muse folder called ‘lisp’. So, to make it work, we need to add a line to our .emacs file (the script that Emacs runs at startup). The .emacs file is in your home folder. At this point, you need to be able to edit files and save them again in Emacs without breaking anything. Edit the file “~/.emacs”. Add a line to the beginning that says…

• (add-to-list ‘load-path “~/elisp/muse/lisp/”)

This tells Emacs to look for extensions in that folder too. We could probably copy the lisp files to somewhere else that’s already in the load-path, if we wanted to, but it seems neater to keep them in their own folder. Anyway, this is what the documentation I found said, and it worked, so I’m not going to play with it.

You shouldn’t need to do anything else for Muse – we don’t need to make it load at startup, because we’ll let Planner do that for us.

Planner

Planner adds to the already nice bits done by Muse, and turns Emacs into a speedy plain text organiser.

Getting Planner

Now you need to download a copy of Planner – it’s available from the Emacs Wiki. Again, I visited the releases page, and I grabbed planner-3.41.zip.

(As with Muse, the version I used should be attached at the bottom of this page, but it’s only there in case of disappearing files – you’d be better off getting to most recent release from the real source.

Setting Up Planner

Very similar to Muse. Stick the ‘planner’ folder (rename all those version numbers away) in a folder under your elisp folder, then add a line just after the one for loading Muse…

• (add-to-list ‘load-path “~/elisp/planner/”)

Planner doesn’t use a lisp subfolder, so that should do the job. We need planner to load itself at startup, though, so we also need to add another line to our .emacs, after all the add-to-list bits. Make a couple of blank lines to space things out a bit, and if you want to add comments, do it on extra lines, and begin them with two semi-colons (so you could add a line at the very top that says “;; Set the Load Paths”, for example). Now add another line…

• (require ‘planner)

This tells Emacs that it has to actually load Planner (if I’ve understood this stuff correctly – do let me know if I’m wrong – I just know it works like this .

To be able to do GTD with it, we need one more thing – the extension that Sacha made for us that lets us use multiple ‘projects’ with one task. Without that, we won’t be able to use projects and contexts, so we wouldn’t be able to do GTD. Time for another line, after the previous one…

• (require ‘planner-multi)

Planner-Multi is in the folder with Planner, so Emacs already knows where to get it from.

This is probably a good time to create the “Plans” folder under your home folder – PlannerMode won’t start cleanly without it.

At this point, it really should be working, but it wasn’t for me. I’d have a try at this point, in case things work more easily for you – later versions of the files may fix this problem. Close and reopen Emacs, and do “M-x plan”. If planner starts up without errors, and gives you your “* Tasks”, etc screen, you’re good to go.

That didn’t happen for me, and the error tells you to look in the Planner manual. The readme tells you the wrong location for the manual, but I found the bits I needed to change on this page of the manual, on the current maintainer’s site. Once I’d added the lines listed there to my .emacs file, Planner started up ok.

Just in case the page vanishes (it’s not responding at the time of writing), here are the lines I added…

(setq planner-project “WikiPlanner”)

(setq muse-project-alist ‘((“WikiPlanner” (“~/Plans” :default “TaskPool” :major-mode planner-mode :visit-link planner-visit-link)

(:base “planner-xhtml” :path “~/www/Plans”))))

You should now be able to ‘M-x Plan’ successfully.

Using Planner

Planner is another Major Mode for Emacs, but you run it by typing “M-x plan” – this will always start PlannerMode, and bring up today’s page – if you’re already in a Planner page, it just switches to today.

When first run, it opens up today’s plan page – every day gets its own page, with three sections – Tasks, Schedule, and Notes.

You can just fill in the Schedule section yourself, in whatever way you like.

The notes section can be used the same way, but makes a little more sense if you follow a few conventions (start each note with “.#n“, where n is the number of the note, and number them upwards, creating newer notes at the top).

The Tasks section is where the magic of PlannerMode happens.

Tasks

Although the tasks section is just text, you can cause problems if you edit too much by hand – Planner provides shortcut keys and menu options for creating and modifying tasks.

PlannerMulti

PlannerMode has one limitation that makes it of limited use for GTD – you can only attach a task to a single project. The problem is that projects are also the only method available to implement contexts – so a task could be attached to a context or a project, but not both.

Fortunately, Sacha has hacked a way around this – PlannerMulti. It’s an add-on to PlannerMode that allows you to enter multiple ‘projects’ for each task. For GTD use, you can use it to attach a task to both a project and a context. If you followed through the ‘Setting Up Planner’ part above, you’ve already got this installed and working.

GTD

If you don’t already know about GTD, you’ll probably want to read my introduction before we go much further. It’s a way of organising all the stuff you have to do. You probably know about it, though, if you’ve got this far down.

Working the System

Open today’s Planner page…

• M-x plan

Create a new Task…

• C-c, C-t
• Enter the task description (“Look up Emacs on Wikipedia”)
• Choose a date…
  • Today: Enter – (the entry will keep moving forward if you don’t complete it, so you can treat this as can do, not must do, if you like.)
  • Tomorrow, etc: +1, +2, etc.
  • On the 14th of this month: 14
  • On Date: Type the date.
  • Undated: nil – (might well be a well-used one for GTD people – you actually type the word “nil”, then hit enter.)
• ‘Page’ is both Project and Context in GTD terms. Separate with spaces, so your projects and contexts can’t contain spaces. Examples…
  • SalesReport @Work-Computer
  • ServicingCar @Calls

Mark a task complete…

• Highlight the task (move the cursor into it).
• C-c, C-x
• Planner marks it as complete here and on any other pages on which it’s listed.

Viewing a Context – there’s a couple of ways…

• Find a task that’s in that context, put the cursor on the context name (should be a link) and hit enter.
• Open the context’s file – should be wherever your planner files are, usually “~/Plans/”, then the file is called whatever your context is called. So the @Work context is probably a file called “~/Plans/@Work”.

Working it Further

There’s lots more options – rescheduling tasks, modifying the projects they’re connected to, editing the title, marking as delegated, pending, in progress, cancelled, etc, etc. Rather than go through all the options here, though, you can find them all for yourself. Once you’re on a Planner page, there is a Planner menu – have a browse through it. It lists the shortcut keys next to many of the items. Experiment with what the options do.

To keep your data safe whilst you’re playing and learning, just keep backing up the Plans folder. The easiest way is probably to right click on it, Send To, Compressed Folder. When the .zip file appears (Plans.zip), rename it (maybe ‘Plans 2006-05-25.zip’, for example), and keep those copies somewhere safe. If things go horribly wrong, you can always bring the whole folder back to before you broke it.

Other Resources

Sacha

Sacha didn’t originally create PlannerMode, and doesn’t actually maintain it any more, but a lot of the work on the current version, including lots of the stuff needed to make it work with GTD, were done by her. You can find out more on her PlannerMode page – in the blog that she writes and updates directly through Emacs. She’s quite a geek, and creative too (she’s one of the writers behind D*I*Y Planner), which is a great combination.

Clair Ching

Clair’s old site has some pages with lots of good screenshots to show you what PlannerMode actually looks like in real world use. If you’re still debating if it’s worth the effort, check them out…

• Planner Newbie
• Screenshots
• More Screenshots

She had a new blog with more Emacs goodness.

Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers

OK, so it’s intended to be for writers specifically, but this guide from Randall Wood (hey, his first name is my last name) is one of the best introductions to Emacs around for us Windows users. He explains a lot of the terminology that can otherwise be a shock to the system – like a window being called a frame, and paste being called yank.

(Thanks to Clair for the link.)

Genehack

More of a productivity-side view than geek-side, this is another good article on how PlannerMode can work in reality…

• PlannerMode at Genehack

Related

GTD and Productivity

There are a few articles in our Productivity section, but the most popular ones are…

• The PigPog Method – doing GTD without a project list, one next action at a time.
• PigPogPDA – not really a GTD system as such, but a simplified system using a Moleskine notebook.
• GTD’s Dirty Secrets – what GTD doesn’t help with.

Text Editors

• Text Editors
• Text Editors for Writers

(Click on any pics to see them bigger in Flickr, with any comments and notes.)

Introduction

What Is It?

• A Moleskine hack.
• An extreme Moleskine hack.
• A simplified GTD system (What system? See our GTD Introduction), with relatively little actual organising. May be useful if you fancy Doing GTD Without Doing GTD.
• A complete personal management system for those who’s needs aren’t too complicated.
• A rather over-the-top system for dealing with just the capturing and processing end of GTD.

Quick Overview

The rest of this post goes into quite a bit of detail, which makes it all sound a bit more complicated than it is.

It’s just a notebook, you make your notes from front to back, in the usual way. You have a bookmark of some sort to keep track of where you’re up to, so you can quickly open it and make a note. The only ‘clever’ part is that you have another bookmark, which marks the point at which you’ve dealt with everything in some way. Doesn’t matter if you’ve actually done the things, or just made a note of them elsewhere – as long as you’ve processed them in some way, so you don’t need to look at them again.

Normally, the second bookmark will lag a bit behind the ‘main’ one, and at least some of the stuff in-between needs doing or adding to a list somewhere else (maybe just some other pages in the same notebook). Anything left behind the second bookmark is pretty much ‘archived’.

If that sounds like something you’d get on with, read on for more details, and ideas on how to implement it.

Translations

I never thought anyone would want to translate one of my articles – I’m honoured that a couple of people have done just that, though…

• There’s a Japanese Translation, done by Yuya Saito.
• I found what seems to be a German translation of this article – no idea how good it is, because my German is pretty near useless. Thanks to Daniel for doing it!

Why?

I was finding GTD a bit much for various reasons, but didn’t want to stop entirely – I needed to be Doing GTD Without Doing GTD. This is the system I came up with in the end. It’s simpler than GTD, and wouldn’t scale to the sort of level that GTD will, but it works pretty well for me, so it seems reasonable to think it might work well for other people too.

Equipment Needed

• Moleskine Pocket Reporter » [ | : UK, US] notebook. This is, after all, a Moleskine hack. Actually, any notebook could be used, I just find the Moleskine Pocket Reporter to be a good shape and size, and has all the right features. They’re relatively pricey, though, and aren’t easy to get everywhere, so you may want to substitute.

• Pen or Pencil. Your choice. Needs to be pocketable, and work well for quick scribbled notes, but if you can find something you enjoy using, all the better. I started with the Staedtler Mars 780 Leadholder, but I’m now back to using my old favourite Cross ion. The Pilot G-Tec C4 is another good choice – writes very small, so you get more notes to the page. Makes my writing look even worse than usual, though.

• Post-it Tags – available from most office supplies places, they’re little tags where the sticky part is clear, with a coloured non-sticky part – meant for adding tabs to books, much as we’re going to do shortly. Although I’ve specified colours for each use, it’s just to make explaining easier – use whatever colours you prefer.

Preparing

Page Template

Looks Like This

The basic page template is just a ruled line at the bottom, maybe two centimetres or three quarters of an inch from the bottom, then a line from the top of the page down to this line, about the same distance from the right hand edge. Doesn’t need to be exact, and you might prefer wider or narrower margins. Just see what you find works.

How To Mark

Trick I picked up years ago from one of my school teachers, for marking a ‘margin’ line on pretty much anything with some thickness to it – he used it for marking wood for cutting, but it works just as well on a notebook…

• Hold your pen or pencil in hand as usual, between thumb and first two fingers.
• Rest your second finger on the page.
• Press the first knuckle of your third finger (ring finger) against the edge of the pad.
• Slide down the page, using fingers as a guide – do it once or twice with the pencil just above the page, to get the idea, then lower the pencil and draw the line.

The result won’t be as perfect as a ruled line, but not far off, and you can do it anywhere without needing a ruler. Careful of paper cuts.

Why a Template?

The main section is for your notes and scribbles. Drawings, even, if you’re so inclined. The margin on the right is a space for notes added later – maybe actions arrising from the things on the left, or follow up clarifications.

The section at the bottom is for two things – space for the tags, and a space for titles for active pages. If a page is just for capturing quick notes and scribbles, it will be left blank, and just used for the tags. If a page is brainstorming or mind mapping of an idea, event or project, a title can go in the middle of the bottom section, where the tags won’t obscure it. Remember, the sticky part of the tags is clear anyway.

Titles at the bottom seems a bit odd, but it does seem to work, especially with the reporter style notebook and the tags.

Mixing with Other Ideas

The same template idea can be mixed in with other stuff…

• Leslie Herger, for example, uses a system with two pages based on the PigPogPDA idea, followed by two pages of general ideas and notes. The block of four pages tend to get used up around the same time, then she moves on to the next block.
• Peter at Getting (Some) Things Done …Eventually has mixed parts of the PigPogPDA with other things very effectively – adding the other parts of GTD to sections of the notebook.
• This system at azazil makes a system from a Moleskine diary, using ideas from this article, and hyalineskies‘ excellent system. Both of these have taken some ideas from the PigPogPDA, but built some great stuff on top of it, and made a much more complete system.
• I currently do something similar to the PigPogPDA, but using a Filofax. The ‘active’ marker is the ‘today’ plastic ruler, and anything that would be behind the ‘processing point’ gets taken out and archived elsewhere. My GTD-style context lists, and Someday/Maybe stuff just go in different sections.

Stock Up on Tags

The last page in the Pocket Reporter is thick card – use this to stick spare tags on – maybe one spare each of pink and blue, and a good stack of yellows. They peel off this page easier than the other pages.

Date The Edge

No, not the fella from U2. Use a Sanford Sharpie or similar marker to mark the date you start the notebook on the edge of the pages. When you’re done with this one, you’ll mark the end date on it, and they’ll all stand in a line on your shelf looking impressive

Using

Blue and Pink Tags

These mark out the boundaries of your active capturing area. I use a blue tag for the processing point (closest to the front of the book), and a pink tag for the collection point (closest to the back of the book).

• Blue Tag – Processing Point. Anything before this point has been processed, and you don’t need to refer to again – unless it has a yellow tag to mark it as active. I keep this one stuck on the left hand side, which makes it stand out better.
• Pink Tag – Collection Point. This is where you need to note down any new ideas. Sometimes, there will be notes beyond this point, but only when you’ve needed a full page for something. I keep this one on the right hand side, so it’s the only non-yellow thing on its side. You might want to keep all yellow tags on the left, so you can find the collection point by feel, and don’t have to look for colours before making a quick note.

Obviously, you can use whatever colours you like for this. I’ve picked yellow for the active markers, because they’ll be easiest and cheapest to buy, and blue and pink because they stand out well against the yellow and each other.

Active Tags

Anything that’s currently being worked on gets a yellow tag. I find it best to keep them all on the left side – that way, the pink tag can be found easily, because it’s the only tag on that side. Good for when you need to make a note of something quickly. See the ‘Variations’ note further down the page – I’m currently using a slightly different trick for active pages, which seems to work better than the yellow tags.

What Gets an Active Tag?

Anything that’s active. If you’re planning an article, or a party, or you’re working on a list of people you’ll need to tell about something, or a list of things you need to do this weekend, or…

You get the idea. Anything you’re still working on that has a page of its own. Single items should be moved into a list before getting a yellow tag.

Can Active Tags be Before the Blue Tag?

Yes. If you’ve processed all the notes past the point of that page, as long as there’s an active tag on it, the blue marker can move forward beyond it. The yellow tag keeps it active, and lets the blue tag move beyond the page.

Can Active Tags be Ahead Of the Pink Tag?

Yes. The Pink tag is your current capture point – if you’re only halfway down a page, and want to start working on a list, or mind mapping something you’re intending to do, you just move forward to a new blank page. The capture point doesn’t have to move forward, though, until the page it’s on is finished. In this case, you’ll have active work, with a yellow tag, further towards the back of the book than the pink tag. That’s ok.

Alternative to Active Tags – Page Numbering with an Index

I used a variation on this in my second PigPogPDA, and it seemed to work better for me. Rather than having the yellow tags, I started it by numbering all the pages, but skipped the first page (the first one after the card page, that is. The one that sticks to the card page a bit). The first page, I used as a kind of contents page for the pages that would otherwise have had yellow tags on them. So when I want to do a bit of brainstorming about something, or make notes on a specific subject, I scribble a title in the bottom part of a template page, then write the page number and the title on the first page. Things can be crossed out when they’re no longer active.

One page should be enough for the contents, continuing on the second side if needed, but you can always leave a second page spare at the start if you’re concerned about running out of space.

The advantages are…

• Less tags getting in the way – all those yellow tags are a bit of a mess.
• Faster to find a page. Once you’ve got a few active pages on the go, even if it’s not a lot of them, it can take a while to find the one you’re looking for among all the yellow tags. This way, you open the first page, look up the page you want, and flick to it.
• Quick reference to all active pages, making it easier to review what you’re working on.

The numbers are in the very bottom right corner of each page.

Capturing

Capturing is pretty simple, just as it should be. Open up a the pink tag, and make your notes. Draw a line across between items, all the way to the edge. The right hand side margin can then be used to tick off items that are done, or make little notes of actions coming from that note.

Processing

Processing starts from the blue tag (closest to the front of the book). You check each page, and if there’s anything actionable in it, you need to either do it, or clarify what it is and add it to an active list somewhere. That somewhere can be another page further forward in the book, or it could be a to-do list somewhere completely different.

If you’re just capturing with this system, the actual to-do list could be in a copy of Outlook, or index cards, or whatever other system you like.

If this is your entire system (it is for me), you just make lists as and when you need them further forwards in the book. If you’ve got several things noted down that you need to do this weekend, make a page for Things To Do This Weekend, and put these on the list. Then you can mark the items off. When each item on a page is marked off, move the blue tag forwards. Skip any active pages with yellow tags – they’re already marked as active, and when they stop being active, we’ll process them before removing their yellow tag.

Ideally, the blue tag should meet the pink tag fairly regularly – that means you’re all up to date with things. If they’re too far apart too often, you’ve probably got too much stuff between them that’s outstanding, and need to either start doing things more, or you might need a better Productivity) system. Or if you’ve got mostly crossed out items, with just a few that you’ve not dealt with clogging things up, you can move them forward…

Moving Things Forward

Sometimes, there’ll be something sticking the blue tag from moving forward, because it doesn’t really belong in a list, but you can’t (or can’t be bothered to) do it. Feel free to just copy it to your current capture point, and continue moving the blue tag forwards. If there’s a few of them, you could always collect them together in a ‘Stubborn Items’ list. You don’t want to build up too many active items, though. They’ll all need copying forwards to a new book when you reach the end of this one, or you’d have to carry two books around.

Reference Stuff

Personally, I keep reference stuff elsewhere – I need that stuff on a computer where it’s searchable and can be archived and backed up safely.

If you really want reference stuff mixed in with this system, I’d probably just get another colour of tags, and tag reference stuff with that. The blue tag would, obviously, just move forwards past them.

Archiving

Simple trick – mark the start and end dates of the notebook on the side, and they’ll all line up on a shelf with the dates showing.

Other Tricks

• The elastic on the Moleskine notebook can just about hold the tip of your chosen pen or pencil, keeping them together in you pocket.
• The back pocket in the notebook is just wide enough for credit cards and business cards, and it will also hold index cards and paper money quite nicely. If you can manage with only a few items, you might be able to replace your wallet – I have.
• Clip your mobile phone under the elastic too, and you’ve got yourself a PigPog Communicator.
• Number the last ten pages backwards – 1 on the last page, then 2, and on inwards. That way, when you hit the number 10 when using new pages, you’ll know you’ve only got ten pages to go before needing a new PDA.
• When starting a new book, mark up a page halfway through first, and make a note at the top of it to buy another Pocket Reporter. When the pink tab reaches that point, you’ll already have a reminder in place to replace your PDA well before it runs out.

Related

• nowMap – my latest simple system – a quick overview of what you’re doing now, on a single sheet.
• GTD Introduction – if you don’t know what all this GTD stuff is.
• GTD – The PigPog Method – if you’re after more of a small tweak to the basic GTD, to cut down on managing projects.
• 43 Folders – the finest source of inspiration for productivity hacks, especially with Moleskines and Apple Macs. Use the links there to buy your Moleskines if you’re in the US.
• DIY Planner – Organising and productivity with paper, with a more creative twist.
• Post It Flags – Post It’s range of flags.
• Mojo – Moleskine Reporter pads at Mojo UK. For US suppliers, see 43 Folders.

Once you’ve been doing GTD for a while (however half-assed your implementation), you start to find yourself thinking in GTD terms. You spot something that needs doing in the living room, and your mind jumps straight to “Hmm – tidy side table needs to go on @Home.” The problem is that this isn’t how GTD is supposed to work. You’re supposed to just capture the fact that the side table is a mess, and process that note later. Once you get used to doing it, though, you shortcut through the steps and just find yourself wanting to stick the item straight on the appropriate list.

The Theory

In theory, the way it should work is this…

• You spot the messy table.
• You make a quick note, “Living room side table messy”, and put it in your inbox. In practice, this could be a category in your Palm, a page in your notebook, or a real sheet of paper in a real in tray. The David has always said that the implementation doesn’t really matter.
• Later, when processing, you pick up the note, and decide what to do with it…
  • What is it? A note of something that needs doing.
  • What’s the next action? Tidying the table.
  • Will that action complete the loop? Yes. It’s a single action, not a project.
  • Can it be done now? I’m at home, upstairs, but yes, I could go and do it now.
  • Will it take less than two minutes? No. It’s really quite a mess.
  • Defer It: Add it to the appropriate context list – in this case, probably @Home.

The Practice

Once you’ve got the idea of GTD, what you’ll probably do is cut through most of that…

• You spot the messy table.
• You add Tidy side table in living room to your @Home list.

No Problem

You got the same result, and all that really happened is that you jumped instantly from spotting the situation, to the end result (well, before actually doing it, anyway). There isn’t a problem. You saved a bunch of time, and saved yourself a chunk of work.

Except…

Where it Might be a Problem

There are a couple of situations I can see where this sort of shortcut can be a problem…

• Avoiding Thinking: You’re just pretending to make the shortcut, but you’re really avoiding thinking about something, and you end up cutting out the middle steps, and putting something on your list that’s still stuff. It’s not really a single action, so you can’t do it. Using the sortcut is ok, but you need to take care that you are skipping the thinking parts because they’re really obvious, not because you just don’t want to do them.
• Your System Requires It: I found recently that I’d set up a system for myself that involved me making a checkbox or a dash before things as I captured them. Anything with a checkbox needed something doing about it; dashes were just there for information. The problem was that I had to decide which things were actionable before I’d written them down. Don’t do this. It’s important that your collection tool allows you to just make notes, and work out later if they’re actionable or not. Otherwise, you’ll either rush the decision so you can start writing, and get it wrong, or you’ll end up not making a note of some things at all, because you’re not sure how to start.

Conclusion

Generally, processing whilst collecting is ok, as long as you’re doing it because it’s become so obvious to you. Beware of the traps, though. Don’t let stuff end up on your action lists, don’t sidestep the thinking process when it is needed, and make sure you’re set up for noting down anything, anytime, without worrying about what it actually is until later.

Last Update: Added a link for Gretchen (one of the people who helped create the PigPog Method), to her new site – Girls Can’t WHAT? – inspiration for girls who can.

This article describes how I actually implement the GTD system using my iPaq and Microsoft Outlook, though it could be done just as well with almost any computerised lists. It’s my solution to the GTD problem of linking next actions to their project. If you don’t know what GTD is, you’d probably best start with my introduction. If you do GTD, but use paper and pen, have a look at MarkTAW’s Cascading Next Actions method – similar, but designed for paper users.

GTD is all based on David Allen’s excellent books. You’ll get far more from reading the books than from any web site.

• From Amazon US: – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.
• From Amazon UK – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.

Introduction

This article covers how I implement the GTD system – there’s quite a few other ways, which you may want to look at before reading this one.

The Problem

There’s a few problems that people have with GTD…

Actually Doing Things

GTD is great at organising what you have to do, and keeping you on top of everything, but if you don’t actually do any of the things, it’s only of limited help. Anyone who knows me could vouch for the fact that I’m probably not the best person to advise on that

If you really want my thoughts on it, see my post on GTD’s Dirty Secrets.

Weekly Reviews

A lot of people resist doing the weekly review. It’s pretty much vital for GTD that you don’t skip weekly reviews, but it’s a problem for many people. My system reduces the impact of missing one a little, but only a little. By making the review a bit easier, though, it might make you resist it less. It might not, but it’s worth a shot.

Connecting Projects to Actions

Ah. This is the one for the PigPog Method. This we can help with. Read on.

The PigPog Method

Background

I should point out before I start that the PigPog Method was produced through a long discussion between quite a few people on the GtD_Palm Yahoo! Group. It’s by no means all my idea, and in fact even the post where I started it all off was just me pulling together a few ideas I’d picked up from the group. Too many people to remember had valuable suggestions that, put together, made this method, but special thanks should go to James Cameron, Gretchen, Ricky Spears, Harold (I think?), and Teri Pitman.

The Basic Setup

Personally, I implement this using Outlook Tasks, but you should be able to apply the PigPog Method with almost any setup. It wouldn’t be a convenient system with paper, though, it really needs a computer of some sort. I’ve used the same system in the past with Palm PDAs and an iPaq hx4700. Both worked well.

For the most part, my lists are pretty close to the standard ones David Allen recommends. I keep any non-action stuff in the Memos / Notes, rather than Tasks, so Someday/Maybe goes there. My @Action lists are…

• @Anywhere
• @Home
• @Internet
• @Other
• @Waiting For
• @Work

There’s also ‘Agendas’ at the bottom of the list, for things I need to speak to somebody about.

What? Where’s the Projects List?

David Allen says we need a Projects list to keep track of all of those things we need to do that will take more than one action to be complete. That way, when we have ticked off the first action on that project, we won’t forget about it altogether. However, these things will only get picked up once a week at the weekly review. There is the risk that you’ll end up forgetting about something for up to a week, that really needed doing before. Also, I always found the ‘projects’ part of the weekly review to be annoyingly difficult and time consuming. For every project on the list, and it can be quite a few (David reckons 40-70 is common), you have to search for a matching action on one of the six (in my case – however many you have) @Action lists. If you don’t find one, does that mean you just didn’t look carefully enough, or is there really no action in your lists for this one? How do you know it when you see it? It’s not so bad if you look at the project and can remember what the next action was – then you will probably know where to look for it, and can make sure it’s there pretty quickly. If you can’t remember what the next action was, though, you could have a tricky time trying to find one.

In the PigPog Method, we get rid of the Projects list entirely. In a computerised system, it’s just not needed any more, and keeping track of it is a big waste of time. Using the example we used when forming the method on the GtD_Palm group, if your project was ‘Conquer Albania’, and the first action was ‘Place Army Wanted Ad’, the item on your tasks list would be Place Army Wanted Ad {Conquer Albania}. Your project and its associated next action are there together on the one line. This item goes in whatever @Action context list it belongs in. If you are going to place the ad on eBay, it would go in your @Internet list. Once you’ve placed the ad, you just edit the item to Responses to Ad {Conquer Albania}, and move it to your @Waiting For list.

Planning and Keeping History

If you like to plan your projects a bit further, you can put planned future actions in the notes for the task, and just copy and paste them into the subject line when you’re ready. I use a template that I inserted using Pop! (costs a little) on the Palm. You can also use TeikeiDA (free) if you know enough about Palm DAs (Desk Accessories) to be able to deal with the Japanese documentation (or if you can read Japanese), or use Shortkeys Lite (free) for Windows. Anyway, the template…

>=Outcome=
>
>=Plans=
>
>=History=
>
>=Notes=

Outcome is a statement of the desired outcome – how we’ll know when the project is complete. I’m actually completely hopeless about filling this in. Plans is for any actions planned in the future. History is for actions that have been completed, or notes of things that happened that were connected with this project – I timestamp these using another Pop! (or Shortkeys Lite) shortcut. I keep less history now than I used to – it wasn’t something I used often enough to need it, but you may be different – if so, remember to copy the information to somewhere else if you purge your completed tasks. Notes is for any other information. In the case of things like these blog entries, the notes will contain the actual article as I’m working on it. This is being typed into the Notes section of an Outlook task entitled Write {Blog: GTD: PigPog Method} right now. That way, all my work in progress is always with me in my Palm, ready to be worked on anywhere.

Advantages

The biggest advantage for me is that I never have to worry about projects not having a next action. I’m forced to think about what I’m going to do next with a project before I can update the system to the fact that I’ve just done something. That helps to keep things moving. I’m slightly encouraged to do more than one thing, as that saves changing the item as many times. The Weekly Review is less daunting, because the hardest part of it is automatically taken care of. There’s one less list to look at. When I find the item that says that I should write a blog entry about something, the notes from when I brainstormed about it are right there in the task item. When I come to review and proofread one I already wrote, the written article is right there ready.

Disadvantages

There’s only really one major disadvantage to this method – there can only be one next action. If you often have the sort of projects where you could do several different things next, depending on where you are when you have the time and inclination, this may be a problem. There’s nothing to actually stop you from sometimes making a separate action that isn’t physically attached to the project, but if you have to do that a lot, the PigPog Method may not work well for you. When you’re new to the PigPog Method, there is also the danger that you could tick off a whole Project on ‘auto-pilot’, when you only intended to tick off the action. To work around this, you can keep completed tasks visible, and purge at the end of each week, so everything gets an extra check before it’s actually gone. This also gives you a second chance to copy any history you want to keep to the calendar where it won’t get purged.

Conclusion

I find the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages, but then again, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this at all, would I? It takes away a lot of what I found unpleasant and difficult with GTD, and makes it all feel much more fluid. I’m a born fiddler, and I do keep trying different methods, but the simplicity of the PigPog Method has lured me back every time.

So far.

Other Resources

GTD Wannabe has made some macros especially for doing the PigPog method with Outlook – I’m honoured…

• Outlook Macro for Starting a PigPog Task
• Outlook Macro to Duplicate Tasks – I actually did this manually for a while – duplicating the task so I could check one off and keep better history – but it didn’t seem worth the effort in the long run. With a macro to do the work for you, though, it could be a good way of working.

There’s two little secrets and one Big Dirty Secret to GTD. Don’t get me wrong here – I like GTD – it’s a useful system, and it works well. There’s a couple of secrets that you’re never told, though, and one big secret. It’s time to let the secrets out.

(Drumroll…)

(Feeling the tension yet?)

(Maybe I’m giving this too much build-up.)

(Here goes…)

• The best way to get things done is to do them.

There. It doesn’t matter how much you push things around your lists, and how carefully you pick the contexts for them, if you don’t do them, you won’t get them done. Sounds obvious when it’s all spelled out, doesn’t it? Does to me now I’ve worked it out, but until I did, I could spend weeks moving things around my lists without actually ever doing anything.

Actually, I still can, but at least I know what’s going on now. I’m just no good at doing anything about it.

If you’re not careful, your GTD system itself can become a whole world of procrastination that you rarely escape from to actually do things. Anyway, this leads us to the second secret…

• The best way to do them is to start doing them.

Again, it sounds obvious, but how many things are on your lists that you haven’t started doing even though you’ve had time (if you’re honest). I can spend all day flat out doing absolutely nothing, and at the end of the day, I haven’t started on anything useful at all. I haven’t had time.

If you’re going to get any of those things done, you need to actually start doing them. The start doesn’t have to be much. Mark Forster has a simple trick that he refers to as just getting the file out. You make a start by giving yourself permission to do the smallest possible amount of work on something, even if it wouldn’t help at all, but you make yourself do that bit. It might just be getting the file out, or it might just be creating and opening a blank document that you could start typing in if you were going to do more. But you don’t have to do more. If you’ve been putting off doing the dishes, you could just put them in the sink and add some hot water.

The point is that the very small step isn’t offputting enough that you don’t start, but once you’ve started, you probably won’t stop and put the file away again. You probably won’t just close the document without doing anything else, and you probably won’t leave the dishes to sit in the water or drain the sink again – you might at least write a paragraph or two, or jot down a few ideas that occur to you whilst you’re there, or at least wash a few items. The key is to get yourself started.

OK. That’s the two little secrets. Ready for the big one? Oh, come on, don’t kid me – it’s just underneath this text, and I know you’ve already skipped ahead and read it…

• GTD is of no help at all with making you want to do things.

It’s a nice little method of keeping track of all the things you need to do, but if you don’t actually want to do them in the first place, it won’t make you want to do them when they’re on the lists. I even find myself resisting looking at the context lists, because I know they’ll be full of things I don’t actually want to do. The problem lies in making yourself want to do the things on your lists, otherwise you won’t start doing them. And as we’ve already covered – if you don’t start doing them, you won’t get them done.

So how do you make yourself want to do things? That’s a tricky one, and I don’t really have any answers. (No, come back. I’ve got a few ideas. They might help.) If your lists are too full of things you really don’t want to do, it might be time to have a good think about your life – is it what you want? Is your job something you actually don’t want to do? How can you go about changing it? Maybe you actually don’t want to do all that DIY work to get your house into the state you want it in, and you’d have been better moving somewhere that wasn’t described as “ideal for a DIY enthusiast” in the brochure.

Assuming things are basically how you want them, it might be that you just need to spend a bit more time thinking at the higher levels – working out why you’re actually doing some of these things – what’s the longer term gain from them? Visualise where you want to be, and how some of the tasks that are on your lists will help with getting you there – that might give you that extra bit of motivation to get going on them, or at least to stop being scared of looking at the lists.

Alternatively, just give yourself permission to go through your lists, and move a few things you really don’t want to do (and won’t cause any really huge problems if you don’t do them), and just move them to your Someday/Maybe list. You can always move them back once you get a few other things out of the way, but if you’ve not been doing them anyway, you’re not losing anything by getting rid of them – and it might just make the lists feel a bit more enticing.

Once you actually want to do the things on your lists, GTD is a great way to organise them – it will give you nice simple lists of the things you can do at any point, with a fairly minimal overhead. Until you want to do them, though, it can be just another way to put them off.

I’ve done GTD in an assortment of different ways over the years, and one idea I’ve kept coming back to, but never quite used for long is running the whole system in the computer’s filesystem. The idea is that GTD is just a matter of lists, and the list of files and subfolders in a folder is a list, so the one could represent the other. Most of the stuff I actually work with is in some sort of computer file, so it would seem like a sensible way to do it.

I’ve tried it out, and it does work. I’ve got a PDA again now, though, which makes a pretty convincing argument for keeping everything in Outlook tasks, so I didn’t stick with it for long. In the time I’d been trying it out, though, BigNosedUglyGuy had been asking about it, so I put some notes together to let him know what I’d been doing. That also means I’m halfway through writing it up – might as well finish the job and post it…

The Basics

We need a folder to keep everything in, with a few subfolders. The whole set of folders can live anywhere, really. In a Unix system, you’d probably make a folder under your home ‘~’ folder. In Windows, My Documents may well be a good place. You could also consider keeping the whole thing on a card or USB ‘thumb’ drive, so it’s portable.

Under this folder, we’ll have a few subfolders.

Subfolders

!!Inbox

‘!!Inbox’ folder (!! keeps it at the top of the lists), where you can chuck anything new. This just acts like a virtual version of the in tray from standard GTD.

Active

An ‘Active’ folder for all active tasks and projects.

A task that doesn’t belong to a project is just a file dropped in here. So that we can find all these actions later, we need to give them standard names – I decided to use names in the format ‘@@Context@ Thing to do.txt’. These files can be any file type – plain text is good if it doesn’t need to be anything else – and if the only content is the fact that you have to do the thing, it can even be an empty file. The name is what we’ll search for to create the ‘context’ lists.

Journal files are good on my tablet PC, as you can just scribble away at ideas in them. If it’s something to do online, it could be a .url file in Windows – so the file is also a bookmark to the page you’ll need.

Contexts

With a standard GTD system, you have several context lists to keep your next actions in. Instead of that, we ‘label’ the files, then use a search to find all the ones with that ‘label’.

Anything that needs to be done at home, for example, would be a file, with the filename starting with “@@Home@”. If you need to replace the light bulb in the bathroom, you might have a file in the ‘Active’ folder called “@@Home@ Bathroom- Replace light bulb.txt”. In this case, there’s nothing you’re likely to need to refer to about it, so it’s just an empty text file.

If you need to visit PigPog for some papercraft project ideas, you might have a file called “@@Computer-Online@ Visit PigPog for papercraft ideas.url” – this one is a .url file – a shortcut to PigPog, so you can just double-click it and be on your way.

Active – Subfolders – Projects

Under the ‘Active’ folder are also subfolders, one for each project you have on the go. They can contain files and other subfolders if needed, related to the project, so all your notes can go in there, and if the result is going to be a document or blog post, the actual work can be in there too. Next actions are files with ‘@@Context@…’ names again, but left in the folder for the project.

Next Actions – Context Lists

To see the next actions associated with a project, you just look in the project folder, and they should all be up near the top becuase of the ‘@@’ at the start of the filename. To see the next actions in a particular context, search for files named ‘@@Context@’. When you complete an action, either delete the file, or rename it and move it. On the Mac, you can use search folders to do the work for you, and in Windows XP you can save searches and run them again by double-clicking them. The only problem with this is that the location to search in can only be saved if it’s one of the locations in the drop-down list. You can save a search for a specific drive, but not on a specific folder. If you keep the folder on a drive, that’s not a problem, but it it’s under My Documents, you might find that searches take a long time. I’m sure there’s other ways of doing the search that could get around this, though.

Most desktop seach programs build an index rather than actually searching, so they’d probably be pretty quick still. The only problems is that they might be out of date with files that change often.

If you have lists for ‘@@Computer@’, and for ‘@@Computer-Online@’, you can get either one by searching for them, or you can get both by searching for ‘@@Computer’ without the trailling ‘@’. Keep this in mind when you decide what contexts to use, and you’ll be able to combine them a bit. That way, when you’re at your computer and it’s online, you can bring up a single list of actions at the computer – both on- and off-line.

Completing Actions

When an action is complete, either delete the file, or if the contents of the file are still useful, just rename it to something else. Once it doesn’t start with “@@Context@ ” any more, it won’t be found by your searches.

Good Points

• You can keep any files at all in there, and keep all the stuff relating to a project right where you need it.
• Easy to capture stuff when it arrives as a file of any sort, by just dumping it in the !!Inbox folder.
• Could be made cross-platform. If you need to work on Windows at work, and Mac at home, you could use the same set of files on a USB ‘thumb’ drive, and just use saved searches in Windows and Search Folders on the Mac. I don’t think there’s anything built into most Linux systems for saving these searches, but it could be made very smooth and easy from the command line with some simple scripting, I’m sure.

Bad points

• Not so easy to sync to a mobile device, compared to using Outlook.
• Never found a really quick way of capturing new stuff that wasn’t in files. Journal isn’t bad on the tablet, but on a normal PC, creating new files isn’t that quick and easy.
• Didn’t feel natural to me – definitely not using something designed for the job.

Conclusion

Well, it wasn’t for me. Might work well for someone else, though. If you don’t use a PDA, and need to access the same data on different systems at home and work, it might be a decent enough method. I’m guessing someone with a bit of scripting skillz could do some good stuff with this under Unix.

Alternatively, you could skip all this playing with your system, and just get things done instead.

Don’t worry, I’ll keep fiddling with new systems for you.

Introduction

I’m not really doing GTD any more. There. I’ve admitted it.

That feels better. Why? Well, it’s just too much to manage for the stuff I actually need to track. I can’t use a single system, as work related stuff has to remain at work, and personal stuff has to remain outside work’s systems. I suspect most people are in this situation, unlike the upper management level people David Allen tends to address his writing and seminars to.

At work, everything has to be in a specific online system, and there isn’t really the time to duplicate all that in another system to apply GTD to.

Personal stuff, like PigPog, can be managed however I want, but isn’t all that complicated, and there’s a big advantage to keeping the work in progress for these articles right here in the Wiki – it means that the whole process is more open, and anyone can jump in at any stage. Anyway, that’s just my reasons.

Who Doesn’t Need to do GTD?

• Anyone without all that much stuff to track. GTD is great when there’s lots of new stuff flowing at you. If there isn’t all that much, it may well feel a bit over-the-top. Not everybody has a life that complicated. Doesn’t mean it’s easy or they don’t do much, but it might not actually take much tracking.
• Anyone who can’t mix personal and work stuff. You could maintain two separate GTD systems, but you’re looking at a lot of overhead. Some people might need it anyway, but not everyone.
• Anyone with defined systems that have to handle their stuff. At work, there’s a system that everything has to be in so other people can see what’s happening. It’s not perfect, but there’s very strong reasons why it has to be used. For PigPog stuff, the ToDo page here in the wiki (no longer exists, but did at the time of writing) and draft posts for the blog can keep everything online, and for the wiki, gives anyone who’s interested visibility of what we’re planning and what we’re working on. Again, strong reasons (nearly the same reasons) to use those systems.

So Why an Article?

If we’re not going to do GTD, why another GTD article? Because there’s still a lot to pick up from GTD even if you’re not doing the full thing.

Things to Take from GTD Even if You’re Not Doing GTD

So what can we gain from GTD if we’re not going to bother with the whole system?

Next Actions

One of the core points about GTD is defining Next Actions – the very next thing you’ll do about something to move it on. This is still a great concept. I still think in these terms about things I’m planning to do. The first action for writing this article was just adding it to the ToDo page, so it was there, listed in public, with a quick note of what it was going to be about.

That one little action was enough to kick-start me into writing it.

Don’t think about all the things you’ll have to do – just the next one.

Capturing

In GTD, capturing is the first stage – any new ideas or thoughts you have should be captured – just scribbled on a bit of paper and chucked into your inbox to process later. I still think this is a really important thing – to let yourself capture thoughts and ideas without feeling the need to do something specific about them at the time, or even think about what you might actually do about them later. Just capture it. Come back to it later, and it might mean nothing, in which case, discard it. It might be a valuable idea, though, that if you’d made yourself try to think about at the time, you’d have given up and lost.

Make sure you’ve always got something with you to capture ideas, even if it’s just a folded up sheet of paper and a pen or pencil.

Lists

Keeping lists is something David Allen is very keen on – lists of things he might want to buy, things he might want to do, places he might want to go, or anything else. Lists are useful, and they can clear things out of our mind so we can stop worrying about them. If you find yourself trying to remember a list of things, write them down, and save your brain for something else.

Trusted System

Even if you’re not doing GTD as such, it’s worth having some sort of Trusted System. However much system you do have, make sure you can trust it. I found GTD too much effort to manage for the stuff that I was tracking with it, so I resisted doing it, and things fell through the cracks anyway – being too organised became a problem. Simplifying has let me trust the system I do use.

So, What Do You Do Now?

If I’m not doing GTD, what am I doing? Do I still have some sort of system? Yes. I do. It’s simple, and works pretty well for me. I’m calling it the PigPogPDA.

What About The Books?

If you’ve not read David Allen’s books, I still recommend them – even if you’re pretty sure you’re not going to do GTD – there’s still penty of good information and ideas, and lots more detail on some of the stuff I’ve covered here.

• From Amazon US – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.
• From Amazon UK – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.

Latest Update: Just correcting a few links.

If you don’t already know what GTD is, you may want to have a look at our GTD Introduction explaining it. This article is just a look at a few of the different ways that GTD can be implemented. It’s not very in-depth on any method, and is only really intended to give you some ideas before I cover the method I use – GTD – The PigPog Method.

GTD is all based on David Allen’s excellent books. You’ll get far more from reading the books than from any web site.

• From Amazon US – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.
• From Amazon UK – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.

Introduction

As I mentioned in our GTD Introduction, one of the unusual things about GTD is that it presents you with a complete workflow for managing all the stuff you have to do, so it might seem like there’s not a lot of scope for different ways for implementing it. However, there’s a surprising range of ways people have found, some following the GTD system exactly, some varying from it in a few ways. In this article, We’ll cover a few different ways, just to give you some idea of the variation that’s out there. It’s not going to be comprehensive – I’m probably only even aware of a fraction of the ways out there. My article is about how I implement the GTD system, so it seems like a good idea to cover a bit of the variety out there first – the way I do it isn’t the only way.

It’s also worth mentioning here that, although the very existence of this article claims the opposite, the truth is that the method used really doesn’t matter. It’s not important how you do it, just that you get things done.

Some Methods

Anyway, here’s a few ways people do GTD, in no particular order…

Paper and Pen

Even now, a lot of people get on just fine with paper and pen. The GTD system was originally designed to be run with paper and pen, in fact. Even the paper and pen fans have their ‘in-fights’, though – some will use any old bits of paper, and whatever pen or pencil comes to hand, some feel unhappy with anything but a blue-lined yellow legal pad. Some will use nothing but an expensive Filofax and a Mont Blanc fountain pen. GTD is all about making lists, and keeping track of what you have to do, so paper and pen will do the job just fine.

Personally, I just don’t get on that well with paper and pen. My handwriting is terrible. Although I don’t often find the need to search, searching by rummaging through a stack of paper is really annoyingly slow compared to a quick search on a computer. There’s also problems with capacity for carrying. With my iPaq, I can carry pretty much every bit of data I could want, whereas with paper, I’d have to cut down, and keep only a limited amount with me. Oh, and backups are really slow, too

Outlook

Outlook is a very flexible product, and you can use it to implement GTD in many different ways. Using too many of the more complex features, like linking items, can cause problems if you need to sync with a PDA. If you want to use Microsoft Outlook more fully, but still want to sync with a Palm device, you can do so with either KeySuite or Beyond Contacts, both of which replace the built in palm apps with an alternative that more closely mimics Outlook’s functionality. For Windows Mobile, Pocket Informant will give you a lot of extra features, and looks and acts much more like Outlook than the built in apps do.

Palm ‘Plain Vanilla’

Using just the built in Palm apps. This is what David uses himself. David just implements the same lists he describes in the book using the Palm ToDo application (or Tasks on the newest PalmOne machines).

Outliner

Lots of people find that GTD lacks a way of tying what you’re doing now with the ‘higher levels’ – your goals and focus areas. David only ties these together in the weekly review, but some people do find it easier to put everything into an outliner, where they can break things down by focus area. This forces you to think more about why you’re doing things, and gives you a good overview of what areas you’re actually working on. On the Palm, the main outliners used are ShadowPlan and Bonsai. Both are very good, and have very similar features. Until recently, ShadowPlan was somewhat lacking on the desktop, but the newest release (4.0) has a much improved desktop, and it’s Palm program has always been strong. Both products will also link items to todo items. Of the two, personally, I got on slightly better with ShadowPlan, but it’s worth trying both, and seeing which you get on best with.

On Windows Mobile machines, again, Pocket Informant can do outlines with its Heirarchical Tasks function, but these won’t show up on the desktop.

Life Balance

Although Life Balance (For Palm, Windows, and Mac) is centered around an outliner, it deserves a separate mention, as its way of working is a bit different. Using it really rules out several parts of GTD, but it certainly has its good points. You enter all the things you are working on into an outline, and for each item tell it how important it is, how much effort it will take, and where you need to be. Life Balance then decides what you should do, and it tells you. You just have to do as it says. It’s very clever, and although it’s a bit expensive, it’s worth a go if you like the idea of your Palm bossing you around

CyberPoche

Created by Jaques Turbé, CyberPoche (=CyberPocket) is a system for keeping everything in memo pad in the Palm (or any other text based system, really), and using keywords to make things pop up when needed. It’s explained fully in a page written by Jaques, and collated by Teri Pitman.

Projects with Codes

By just putting a code in front of all of your projects, and putting the same code on tasks relating to that project, you can easily find all the related tasks with a search. It’s a simple trick, but it can be quite effective, and save quite a bit of time at the weekly review. I tried this out for a while, using a five letter code for every project.

Dated Tasks

This is another system I used for a while. In GTD, David specifies that actions shouldn’t have dates unless they are ‘hard landscape’ – i.e. must be done that day. This system breaks that rule, but the dates aren’t for when you plan to do the action – they are for the earliest you might need to think of it again. This works very well on the Palm with Datebk5, as it integrates today’s tasks with the Calendar / Datebook view very well. The main problems with it that I found were spending time every day moving forward all the things that hadn’t got done that day, and finding things that I’d pushed forward, but then changed my mind and wanted to do sooner. On the plus side, though, the thought of keeping on moving an item forward one day at a time for a couple of weeks forced me to think a little more about whether I really wanted to do something soon, and if something would only take a few minutes to do, it soon became easier to do it than keep rescheduling it.

PigPog

OK, so this is really the whole point of this article. Put together with the help of a lot of other people on the GtD_Palm Yahoo Group, the method I use is what became known as the PigPog Method.

MarkTAW’s Cascading Next Actions

Mark has come up with a similar system to PigPog that works better on paper – Cascading Next Actions.

GTD – Getting Things Done – is a book by David Allen, giving a series of principles for managing the day to day tasks and projects we all have to do. It is based on the idea that if we get everything that concerns us out of our heads, and into a single trusted system, which is then reviewed regularly, we will leave our minds clearer, and be better able to respond to new inputs.

GTD is all based on David Allen’s excellent books. You’ll get far more from reading the books than from any web site.

• From Amazon US: – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.
• From Amazon UK – Getting Things Done, Ready for Anything.

Introduction

This article is intended to cover just the basics of GTD, so you can understand what we’re talking about here even if you’ve not read the book.. If you find the ideas interesting, though, I’d strongly recommend you buy the book, as it really does cover the ideas well, and in a lot more detail than I will here. Buy it through the links at the top, and PigPog will get a little cut

David Allen’s GTD involves clearing your mind of all the things you keep remembering and thinking about, that are nagging at you to do them. The idea is that if you can get these things written down, into a system you trust, and know that you’ll be reminded of them at the appropriate time, you can get them out of your head, and use all that spare head-space for something more useful. Storing cheese, perhaps.

The Workflow

One of the unusual things about GTD is that it gives you a full workflow for managing your ‘stuff’, rather than just a load of tips and tricks, or methods for dealing with one part of it.

David splits the process up into five distinct stages…

Collect

First, we need to collect all the things that are worrying us, or that we need to do something about. David calls this a ‘Mind Sweep’ – sweeping everything that’s on our minds into our system. He suggests one idea to a sheet of paper, and throw them all into an inbox to process later, but the actual method doesn’t matter too much, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the flow of ideas. In DA’s language, anything that holds some part of your attention is an ”open loop”.

Personally, I collect new ideas in my iPaq, either using the voice recorder, or Pocket Informant’s Alarm Notes, where you just scribble on the screen – it doesn’t convert the scribbles into text, just stores them as scribbles. Machines from palmOne have Notes, which is very similar, or you can download Diddlebug. Anything that can be used without needing to think much should do the job – index cards, sheets of paper, or whatever. A small packet of business-sized cards, with or without a preprinted template is a quick and portable capture mechanism.

Process

Processing is the act of going through all the items in your inbox, that you collected earlier, and deciding what they are, and what you need to do with them. They might need throwing in the bin, they might need storing somewhere for later reference, they might just need reading. For many things, though, you’re going to need to actually do something about them.

The question to ask here for each item is “What’s the next action?” This is the very next thing you would do about this item, if it was the apropriate time, you were in the right place, etc. If this one action would complete the item, then it’s just an action to do. If it won’t, then it’s a project, and you’ll need an extra reminder so that when you’ve done that action, you won’t forget about the item.

Organise

You need to keep organised lists of all the things you have to do, and although these could be arranged in various ways, David has specific suggestions for how to do this…

Action lists

These are the lists of next actions you need to do. David recommends splitting these into a few lists, based around ‘contexts’. A context is either a place you need to be, or something you need to have with you to be able to do that action. A list of phone calls could be one context, things you can only do at home or only at the office could be others. Your contexts are unlikely to be the same as mine, and we’re probably both different from David. MarkTAW has a nice article on picking contexts – it’s easy to get carried away.

David suggests placing an @ symbol in front of each of these lists – @ for Action – if you’re using computer based lists (Outlook, Palm, etc), the @ sign will make them sort to the top, which is useful, as these are the lists you’ll be referring to most often.

Projects

I mention above the idea that some items will take more than just the next single action to be complete. These things are projects, and you need to keep a note of them on a separate list, and try to make sure that everything on this list always has at least one connected action on the action lists.

Linking projects to their associated next actions is one of the most discussed parts of GTD, and the trick I use has become known as the PigPog Method.

Agendas

Things you need to talk to people about. If you group the items by person, when you’re next speaking to that person, you can quickly get a list of all the things you needed them for.

Waiting For

If you’re waiting for someone else to come back to you, or waiting for delivery of something you’ve ordered, but it’s something you still need to keep track of, it goes on this list. It’s for anything that isn’t for you to do, but that you need to remember about. You may need to chase some of these things up, but you’ll pick that up when you review, and then they’ll go into either an action list or your Agendas list.

Someday/Maybe

This is the list for anything that you’re not ready or not able to do yet, or just don’t want to. If you want to learn Swedish at some point, but you don’t have time to start yet, it goes here. If you have to prepare a report for your boss, but the relevant information isn’t available until next month, you’d make a note here.

Review

In many ways, reviewing is at the heart of GTD. If you don’t review your lists, you won’t be able to trust them, and your mind will worry about them again. That’s what we’re trying to avoid here. How often, and when, you review may depend on who you are and what you do, but David suggests a single review once a week. Many people find a smaller daily review helps a lot, too. The weekly review is where you tie up your projects with their actions, and make sure nothing has been forgotten about. It should also include getting all of your inboxes emptied, and all of your notes and messages processed.

Do

This is kind of the point of all this. If you don’t do things, you’re not really Getting Things Done. You’ve got all the things you want to do listed – the only question is how to pick which one to do now. Again, David has advice – and it starts with the way we organised our action lists. If you went along with his suggestion, you have your lists organised by context, so you can probably only do things from one or two of the lists right now anyway – so the rest of the lists can be ignored. After that, it comes down to how much time you have, how much energy you have, and how important the things are.

Results

Personally, I feel better organised using GTD than without it. I don’t have the type or level of workload that really needs it, so I probably get less out of it than some other people do. Lots of people report very big changes, though, and I’ve yet to hear of anyone who didn’t get anything out of it, unless they’ve been pushed into it without actually being interested.