A new productivity website went public today: Work.Life.Creativity. It has been organised by some of the big names in productivity blogs and I just wanted to give it a quick plug.
The website has a blog and a fantastic forum. Its aim is to create a community of people interested in all types of productivity from a simple to-do list on paper to more complex schemes such as GTD.
I highly recommend taking a look. Yours truly has already contributed a number of posts.
I am currently using Things by Cultured Code to store and organise my to-do lists. My usage of it is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done but Things can just as easily be used by someone who isn’t into GTD. Here I describe how I use Things.
Adding to-dos
I usually add to-dos using the Quick Entry panel.
I have this mapped to F2 and it can be activated no matter what application I am in (so long as Things is running). I don’t usually add any details such as tags at this point. I just click return, the to-do will be sent to the Things Inbox, and I can get on with whatever I am doing.
I often turn emails into to-dos. If you drag an email onto the Things dock icon it will open the Quick Entry panel with a link to the email as a note. (There is a bug in Things at the moment – you have to drag the email onto the dock icon twice.) Similarly a URL can be dragged onto the dock icon to create a to-do with the link as a note.
And of course I sometimes create to-dos directly within Things.
Organising to-dos
Next I add tags which are analogous to GTD contexts. I find tags most useful for keeping track anything I want to read. I then add a work or leisure tag and another with an estimate of how long it will take to read. Then, say I find myself with a half hour spare that I’d like to spend reading. I select reading, 30min and either leisure or work depending on the mood I’m in. And, hey presto, I have a list of suitable articles to peruse.
If a to-do is part of a project I drag it to the appropriate project in the Projects list in the sidebar. If it is a single task I drag it to the Next list. The Next list contains all active to-dos (whether individual or part of a project), not just next actions. I have my Next list set to display only the top item in a project thus creating a Next Action list. Read the rest of this entry »
