GTD practices, guidelines, examples

[Chris L]

I was wondering if any other GTD users of MLO would be willing to share
their practices, guidelines, or even example GTD files? I've seen the
ones that come with MLO, but I'm curious what others are doing.

c

[Kelly]

Hi:

I use GTD with MLO, but I don't use the GTD template. As far as I could
tell, using the GTD template would mean moving next actions from the
projects branch to the next actions branch, and that's what I was
trying to avoid by trying MLO. I've implemented GTD in the past with
both elecronic and paper lists, and found my system getting quickly out
of date because I found it too annoying to be moving around next
actions, etc.

So my current MLO setup is this. I have 5 top level branches:

1) Inbox - if I click on the MLO icon in my taskbar to get the rapid
entry box, anything I type goes into inbox to get sorted later - I
don't use this very often, but it's there just in case

2) Professional Projects - this has branches below it for all my
current, active professional-life projects. Within each of those
projects there are various tasks and subtasks. Most of these are set
with the "complete subtasks in order" option.

3) Personal Projects - this has branches below it for various
categories of personal projects (e.g., household, financial, health and
fitness, friends and family) and then tasks and subtasks under those.
Many of these are recurring tasks - for example, under financial there
is a recurring task to remind me to pay bills and organize our money
stuff bi-weekly, and under friends and family there are re-curring
tasks for birthdays, etc. I particularly like my birthday task set-up -
under friends and family there is a branch called birthday, and then
under that there are branches with each person's name. Under each
person's names there are theses tasks - decide on gift, buy gift and
cards, mail gift, call person on actual birthday. Each of these has
appropriate start dates and due dates so the person will get their gift
on time.

4) Someday/Maybe - this is set with the option "hide branch in to-do
list". Under this there are numerous branches - professional, personal,
books to read, dvd's to watch, restaurants to try, etc.

5) Reference - this is also set with the option "hide branch in to-do
list". Right now, there are two branches under this. One is passwords,
and there is a task for each password, and then the login name and
password are in the notes section. The other is gift ideas, but these
are slowly getting moved into the birthday tasks as notes to the
"decide on gift" task.

I interact with my lists in a number of ways:

- outline view - sometimes I like to look at the list of projects as
the outline and see the tasks below them (particularly during my weekly
review) - sometimes I'll pick a project and bang off a bunch of tasks
from it, etc.

- due date and start date view - most days I'll view all tasks by due
date and start date to see what priorities I have, urgent things to do,
etc.

- to do list - this is the real "GTD" part of the system - I try to be
good about setting places for all my tasks, so here I can see my next
actions for each project (and like I said, I have most set to the
complete in order option), and view them by place, which are my GTD
contexts.

I've been doing this for about a month now, and am quite happy with it,
and am planning to purchase MLO when the trial is up. I seem to have
finally found a system that is easy to maintain, where as before I was
spending a lot of time frigging around with my lists.

Hope that helps,

Kelly

[Chris L]

Kelly wrote:
> 2) Professional Projects - this has branches below it for all my
> current, active professional-life projects. Within each of those
> projects there are various tasks and subtasks. Most of these are set
> with the "complete subtasks in order" option.

Do you have both the "professional projects" itself and the top level
of each branch within marked as MLO "Projects"? I'm not completely sure
of this functionality yet and the ramifications of using it.

Thanks so much-- this kind of detailed sharing helps IMMENSELY. I keep
my notes in Evernote (I could only dream of a product that would
integrate something like MLO and Evernote or similar for notes and
reference materials).

c

[tomd]

> I keep my notes in Evernote

I keep notes in KeyNote from tranglos.com. Perhaps a discontinued product and is text only, but works for me perfectly, it's a kind of 3D outliner as apart from the outline it also keeps tabs so you have three dimensions in your file, which is what I miss in other outliners. Though I realize Evernote is way more powerfull with non-text features.

Tom

[julianw]

My GTD setup:

<Inbox> (This is where stuff first enters my system)
Contextual Next Actions (Actions that are not projects)
!Daily Routine
@Home
@Office
@Online
@Errands
@Calls
@Waiting For
@Read/Review
Active Projects
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Pending Projects (Branch Hidden In Todo List)
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Project Incubation (Branch Hidden In Todo List)
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Someday Maybe (Branch Hidden In Todo List)
@Read/Review
Place To Visit
Skills To Learn
Films To Watch
Long Term Someday/Maybe

I know this may seem a bit unwieldy but this is the best I can do with
my system until Andrey implements:

#F345 Customize project statuses
AND
#F515 @Waiting for/Excluded places' tab

Any suggestions welcome

[Kelly]

Right now I just have the projects below listed as projects. But as far
as I can tell, that only does two things:

1) Makes them visible in the projects view (i.e., if you are in the
outline view and tell it you want to view by project)

2) Allows you to give the project a status (i.e., not started, etc.)
and it will calculate % complete based on tasks complete. I never pay
any attention to this, because my projects tend to be long projects,
for which I only have the next few next actions defined anyway, and I'm
always adding to them, etc.

So unless I'm missing something, I don't see anything in the projects
functionality that is particularly useful to me (although I'm sure it
can be for other people). I think the projects functionality is one of
the main differences between professional and standard, so I'm thinking
of going with the standard version when I have to pay in a few weeks.
If anyone has other comments about the projects functions or
differences between pro and standard I'd be interested in hearing them.

I've started using Evernote too, but I haven't used it too much yet. I
find it useful for those bits of information that I don't know what to
do with, but don't feel comfortable throwing out. I haven't found
myself actually going back to it looking for information yet, so I'm
probably not using it to it's full potential. What kind of notes do you
keep in Evernote? And do you find the scrolling a bit awkward? I find
it hard to move around in sometimes.

[Chris Lott]

On 3/16/06, Kelly <kellymc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Right now I just have the projects below listed as projects. But as far
> as I can tell, that only does two things:
>
> 1) Makes them visible in the projects view (i.e., if you are in the
> outline view and tell it you want to view by project)
>
> 2) Allows you to give the project a status (i.e., not started, etc.)
> and it will calculate % complete based on tasks complete. I never pay
> any attention to this, because my projects tend to be long projects,
> for which I only have the next few next actions defined anyway, and I'm
> always adding to them, etc.

And projects can be used as a label in the to-do list, which I find
invaluable...

> I've started using Evernote too, but I haven't used it too much yet. I
> find it useful for those bits of information that I don't know what to
> do with, but don't feel comfortable throwing out. I haven't found
> myself actually going back to it looking for information yet, so I'm
> probably not using it to it's full potential. What kind of notes do you
> keep in Evernote? And do you find the scrolling a bit awkward? I find
> it hard to move around in sometimes.

It takes a little getting used to, but I feel pretty comfortable in
it. Essentially, everything except TO-DOs goes in Evernote. I've
gotten in the habit of hitting "send to evernote" with email and
documents and getting rid of most of them outside of the Evernote
instance. So a project in Evernote might have a string of emails, word
documents, specifications, web pages clipped from the web, etc. Pretty
much any info to support a project outside of the tasks themselves.

c

[RD]

Chris L wrote...

Do you have both the "professional projects" itself and the top level
of each branch within marked as MLO "Projects"? I'm not completely sure
of this functionality yet and the ramifications of using it.

I find it immensely helpful to have each project marked as MLO
Projects. Designating a project in this way allows the appearance
of each task on the to-do list with its corresponding [PROJECT NAME]
prefix (or postfix, although I find prefix much more useful when
scanning tasks in the list). This can be set up in TOOLS - OPTIONS -
TO DO LIST FORMAT.

RD

[Kelly]

Oh shoot! I do this too, I just forgot that it was a project thing. I'd
find the to-do list too confusing without it. So maybe I have to get
the pro version after all.

[Luciano Passuello]

My main use is to check the "By Projects" view during my weekly review,
paying attention if there are next actions under it or not. If not, create
tasks, delete/check the project or move to someday/maybe.
When all the projects in that view have the "plus sign" on their left
(sub-items present), I know my weekly review is done.

Regards.

[Matthew Horrell]

Kelly how do you manage calendar items

[Chris]

I've been dreaming of an MLO+EverNote+Calendar product... it would be
great if there was some kind of universal data exchange method like
the (mythical) Enterprise Service Bus concept in enterprise
middleware... so you could cobble together a best of breed solution...

[scoobie]

There's a guy who has usefully published his GTD setup on flickr as
screenshots.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trandell/sets/72057594094707412/

I came across this via the 43 folders user board