My road-tested GTD setup using Todoist

A key part of my working from home habit is the Getting Things Done technique. This is how I’ve set it up. How does it differ from your setup? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

Getting Things Done has revolutionised my productivity. I’m now confident I know what to do and when. More importantly, I’m confident when I don’t need to do anything, so I can enjoy my down time. This post isn’t to extol the virtues of GTD, but to get into the detail of how I’ve implemented it, as the GTD technique leaves the implementation to individual preference. 

Everything is paperless for me (at least as much as I can), so my GTD implementation is totally electronic also. I’m omnivorous in which technology I embrace, so I need my GTD setup to work across Echo devices, Android tablets, iPhones, Apple Watch and on the web. My primary tool of choice is Todoist, and is available across all these platforms.

Capture and Clarify

The first element of a GTD setup is Capture.  I’ve tried to reduce my capture channels as much as possible so that I can be confident that nothing gets lost as it’s passed to me, which is why I funnel everything into my Todoist inbox. All my multiple email addresses are now aggregated into Spark (app only, no desktop client), and anything that needs actioning gets sent to my Todoist inbox. I use Feedly to aggregate my RSS feeds, and anything that needs actioning, or perhaps some dedicated time for reading, also gets sent into my Todoist inbox. Finally, I still have some paper that comes my way, which goes into my IRL inbox on my desk. As this gets processed, I transcribe them into tasks that into my Todoist inbox. 

Inevitably, there are many more capture channels than can be aggregated into Spark, Feedly or my inbox. A couple have integrations with Todoist: Slack, my work Outlook email. Most do not have integrations: LinkedIn messages, WhatsApp messages, my notebook, voicemail, the table by the door, my wallet, telling me stuff - these need to be transcribed into my Todoist inbox.

Then comes processing the captured items. I take each item from my Todist inbox, top to bottom, and Clarify them by adding enough detail that they turn into actions, organise them into Projects, do the actions according to your Context (or what you feel up to doing next).

Sometimes clarifying needs additional contextual information, which GTD calls Project Support. I keep as much electronic as possible, in OneNote. I chose OneNote after a dalliance with Evernote because Microsoft seems disinterested in charging for a pro-level software, at least for now. Any that can be digitised, including photos and web clippings, here with titles that enable cross-referencing to the Todoist action. I also add the URL of the page as a comment to the task, to enable one-click linking of action to context.

But oftentimes you can’t get rid of physical stuff, so I also have an expandable folder comprising of clear plastic A4 wallets to hold this stuff. It’s important to process the stuff before putting into this folder, to avoid it becoming another capture channel, yet another thing to keep track of.

Do the easy tasks first

One of the powers of GTD is that it quickly filters out noise from your inbox by asking some simple questions. The first is: is it actionable? If it isn’t then it’s one of: poorly defined so you need to clarify it some more, not worth doing so you bin it, good to remember so you archive it (again in OneNote), or perhaps it needs to be done at a future date or just sometime in the future perhaps when there’s some more information. For actions to Incubate, Todoist enables adding time and date alarms and integrates with Google calendar so that you can diarise it. If you need to develop further information, that becomes an action into the inbox.

If it is actionable, GTD’s second question is to decide: if you can defer it (use the same technique as Incubating), if you can delegate it (email it with the supporting the OneNote web page if applicable), if it can be done in 2 min then do it now, or if you need to set some time aside to do it.

The 2 minute rule is probably the most powerful tip for me. 2 minute is all it takes to write an acknowledgement email, to look something up in archives, to schedule a meeting. However, it’s not long enough to compose an email with information content, or write something new for the archive, or write a good agenda for a meeting. So the 2 minute rule filters out all the low brainpower tasks which can be done immediately.

Get to work!

The first scan gets to the list of actions that require work to complete. The scan also familiarises yourself with the actions, so you’ll inevitably start prioritising them. Todoist has a day view which presents all the tasks with time dependency, and has tags to describe priority and other categorising features. GTD recommends you do the tasks according to your context. So if you’re at your computer, do your computer-based tasks. However, understanding your context is quite nuanced, and is the area that has seen the most change in my GTD workflow.

I’ve set up the priorities for be:

1. Overriding priority, do it right now - used sparingly

2. Impactful actions - stuff that makes an immediate difference

3. Possible actions - things I can do right now, without waiting for someone else, or need to develop any new information

4. Default

I’ve set up the context labels also: 

• Someday and Soon to filter out the actions that need thinking about at a later date

• Watch List and Reading to classify entertainment recommendations

• Agenda For and Waiting For to capture the actions from other people that will enable me to do my action

• Offline because some stuff needs actual physical labour rather than pressing of keys

• Online because most of my world is online

• Networking because I find this to be really hard, so put some special focus

• Decision because some decisions need consideration even if I have all the information, and this gives me permission to take the time to think

My day is then organised by these tags. Todoist has a powerful query feature which enables me to create views that gives me my work list for each of my contexts. These are (together with the filter):

• Urgent tasks (P1 or those requiring a Decision)

• Impactful tasks (P2)

• Next actions for work (P3 or above and in my work projects, but not in my reading or deferred lists)

• Next actions for personal (P3 or above for actions for stuff for my family, so gets different focus)

• Next actions for errands (P3 or above and in my home projects, but not in my reading or deferred lists)

• Agenda for stuff to talk about with my wife

• Agenda for others

• Entertainment list (reading and watching)

• Final long list for my Weekly Review

Future changes to the workflow

One of the features of work in lockdown is that pretty much all work is online and remote, so the online label no longer provides any help to contextualise better. Others have had success in using 10min, 1h and 1d labels, in order to guide how much effort that will be needed.

Todoist has a gamify element called Karma. You set a number of tasks to complete each day and each month and watch your progress up the Karma ranking. I’m not getting through the same number of tasks now as I did before, so I need to reflect on whether I’m capturing the right actions, or perhaps not binning enough.

However, these are tweaks. Todoist + integrations + GTD has served me extremely well over the last 2 years, and I recommend the approach to everyone.