In this article I’m going to discuss how I moved from Omnifocus to OneNote for implementing the Getting Things Done methodology.
OneNote is a great cross platform general purpose digital notebook application from Microsoft. The cross platform nature of OneNote suits me really well since I have an Android, Mac and iPad and am constantly switching between each.
Omnisphere 2 i dont see install sounds. This doesn’t represent the only way to implement GTD. Customize it to suit your particular way of working (and share what you did in the comments!).
Windows/Mac/Linux (all platforms with Java): GTD Free, a Java-based desktop app, is one of the most straight-forward implementations of the Getting Things Done organizational system you’ll see. This may be the most popular GTD app for the Mac (though I’m not sure, so don’t quote me). The current version (1.4.5.6) is donationware, and there’s a free alpha version of iGTD2 (which I think might require payment once it’s officially released).
OneNote organizes content in Notebooks, Sections and Pages.
My basic setup consists of the following.
Each of those has one or more pages within each section. I’ll talk about each of these in turn.
A note about OneNote. Hyperlinks are your friend. I link individual project pages to my Project list. I also link out to Dropbox folders for things I have stored digitally. It saves a few seconds every time I need those items.
Collection
One topic I wanted to address at the Summit was: “Where is the GTD app?” in terms of a software tool that really “did it” for me. It hasn’t happened yet. Ultimate GTD app. At the Summit I briefly shared a vision of the “ultimate GTD app” which consists of 19 pages of hand-drawn drafts of the screens I would want to use. Gtd mac free download - WinZip Mac, Avast Free Mac Security, AVG AntiVirus for Mac, and many more programs.
The Collection section consists of a single page labeled Inbox. When I’m in a flow state and an idea pops in my head I can quickly get it into my Inbox using a number of methods. Auto tune 7 download full.
Getting Stuff into the Inbox
I wanted a way to get things into a single inbox in no matter where I am or what I’m doing. What I settled on is building out some workflows using the service Zapier and the OneNote API.
Zapier connects applications to each other via their application programming interfaces (APIs). With Zapier and the OneNote API I could easily append items on a page.
It’s the glue that makes my collection process easy. I’ll show you each of the workflows I’m using below.
Getting stuff into my inbox via Email is handled using the “New inbound Email” trigger and the “One Note” action within Zapier. It’s setup as follows.
This will create a unique email address that you can use to send content into Zapier.
Now, connect it to OneNote
I then add the Zapier email address to my address book so it’s available everywhere. When I receive an email that I need to take action on I just forward it to my inbox. I can then process it during my review.
Google Assistant
I want to be able to use the “Take a note” function on my Android to append a note to my inbox. Unfortunately, while OneNote supports “Take a note” it can only create a new page. This isn’t exactly what I want to do.
Instead, I rely on using Trello as an intermediary with Zapier.
I have a Zap setup that will Append a Trello card to my Inbox whenever a new card is created on a board. It’s pretty hacky but it works. You can follow a process similar to the one above but replace the New Inbound Email trigger with a New Card in Trello trigger.
Alfred
Alfred is a killer productivity app that lets you work more efficiently by giving you the ability to control actions on your Mac with the keyboard. One great feature is the ability to trigger automated workflows. This feature allows me to quickly capture ideas into my trusted system without interrupting my flow.
To get this to work, I use the Zapier for Alfred workflow developed by the gang at Zapier. You can follow the instructions on that link to learn how to get it running.
Once it’s running you can add things into your system by tapping a key and typing
onenote This is an item for my inbox
It’s a game changer for me because it keeps me out of the rabbit hole I often fall into when I break flow and enter another application.
Project Lists
David Allen defines projects “as any desired result that can be accomplished within a year that requires more than one action step.” Those projects should go on a project list. Within OneNote I have a section labeled “Project List.” This section has a number of pages.
At the top, is a page titled Projects. This page lists all of the projects that have multiple next actions. Then, I have a series of pages for projects that contain my project support material. Each of those is hyperlinked into the main project list.
Not every project in my Projects List needs a project support page but for the more complicated projects it’s handy to have everything linked up in one place.
A Project Support page uses the following template:
Page Title is the Project Name, I use the same name that appears in the Project List
Spotify premium app for pc. Then I have the following sections
Next Actions
This sections consists of a series of pages for each of the Categories or Contexts that I care about. Here’s my list but feel free to create your own.
Someday Maybes
I keep my Someday Maybe list in its own section. I do this in case I want to keep more than one page for Someday / Maybes.
Checklists
Finally, I have a set of checklists that I use to help keep me on task. I’ve always loved using checklists. If you haven’t read the Checklist Manifesto, I recommend checking it out.
Here’s my current set of checklists
Morning Review
I like to keep my system in check so every morning, I do the following:
Doing this everyday gets me ready for the day and makes my weekly review easier.
Weekly Review
My weekly review checklist is an expanded version of the Morning Review. I basically follow the process outlined in the book to get Clear, Current and Creative. The only variation is the things I check when I’m “getting clear.” I’ve described that below.
Getting Clear
I’ve mentioned that I use Zapier to get my stuff into my system. How do I deal with handling things while I’m on the go? I’m using a Google Pixel phone and the OneNote application. OneNote for Android lets me create shortcuts to specific pages right on my home screen.
I’ve created a link to my Errands page so I can easily check it whenever I’m out. There’s also a link to my Inbox which gives me another way to get things into my system.
Are you interested in using OneNote for implementing GTD? If so, you can download my GTD Template.
If you have your own tips for using OneNote for Getting Things Done I would love to hear them in the comments.
Posted in Productivity
2 CommentsJasonon November 19, 2018 at 7:01 am
Hi Joe, Nice blog post. Saw your link on the GTD page on Reddit. I like the way you organize your project lists. It can be tough to get things done as a new engineer without some kind of good system. This was helpful for me. Can you share a little bit about what you review with your checklists? Thanks for sharing!
ReplyJoe Cotelleseon November 19, 2018 at 7:38 am
Thanks for the feedback Jason. I just updated the post with my Weekly Review Checklist. My 1Scans folder is probably a blog post on it’s own.
I actually started GTDing years ago when I was an engineer too. It definitely helped me get my head around things. It’s probably going to take you time to sort out how to deal with your own project lists plus things in your Issue tracking system.
One way you can deal with that is just add a “Check JIRA” task to your Morning Review checklist.
Reply
Please share your thoughts.Joe CotelleseDoylestown,PA
My first professional job involved playing video games for 9 hours a day. After experiencing early signs of brain rot, I decided to teach myself how to write software.
My entire career is characterized by this “why not?” attitude.
I'm currently applying my experience at product development to help early to mid-stage companies develop a “product first” mindset. Osrs app for mac.
You can also find him at the links below.
Affiliate Disclosure
On blog posts where I discuss products I may include affiliate links. If you click on one of these links and buy something then I get a teeny-tiny commission. As of this writing I think I make enough to buy a cup of coffee once every couple of months.
I don't get any paid compensation directly to write product reviews. I think that's pretty scammy. Launchpad app on mac.
I have always looked for ways of working more efficiently, and being able to get the most out of every day by spending time on what is important and not necessary just the loud and urgent. What now seems like ages ago, I read a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen, and was intrigued by his approach to handling commitments, projects, deadlines — essentially anything that life hits you with.
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Most people are accustomed to the idea of a calendar, a trusted place for keeping time based commitments. GTD is about having that for all your commitments and not just the hard landscape of a calendar. It provides a way of getting things out of your head into concrete actions, which means that you don’t have to lay awake at night with thoughts swirling around. It also means that you can capture anything that is on your mind and be sure that it will be taken care of effectively, and in a timely manner. This provides the foundation for being able to engage with what you are currently doing with full confidence knowing that everything else is taken care of in an appropriate way.
Your head is for having ideas, not for holding them
— David Allen
There are essentially five steps to the basic GTD process:
For a deep dive into actually implementing GTD, make sure to read the book, since it will guide you through the entire process. There is also a GTD workbook being released later in 2019, which aims to act as a simple and practical guide for getting started with your own system.
OmniFocus
For the past decade, I have been using OmniFocus to implement my GTD system. I have seen it as a trusted companion, an external brain, that handles anything I throw at it. I have even written a setup guide, which guides you through the process of creating the views and workflows needed.
While it has been a battle tested companion for many years, I feel like I constantly have to fight the system, trying to mend it into doing what I want it to do. That coupled with the endless tweaking of perspectives made it hard to consider when asked to recommend a GTD tool to a colleague.
I did a quick review of current tools, trying out what seemed to be the most common ones. Part of this, I also ended up revisiting Things, which I used prior to moving to OmniFocus a long time ago. It has for the past 10 years become something of a powerhouse bundled into a beautiful and innocent looking package. This made the choice clear on what to recommend, but also got me thinking of trying it out for the duration of the trial period.
Things 3
The initial reaction when starting Things 3 is how clean and minimalistic the user interface is. Even though it has plenty of white space, it still manages to provide everything needed for a professional task manager, such as start and due dates for projects and actions, flagging (or starring in this case), tags and a hierarchical way of sorting projects.
While Cultured Code has written an introduction on how to become productive using Things, this is a walkthrough of my interpretation and implementation.
On the top level of the hierarchy are areas, which translate directly to areas of responsibility in GTD. This is where you define the areas of your life where you are responsible for the outcomes, and can include things like Family, Finance, Home, Client Projects, Company Strategy, but there’s no one-size-fits-all here so defining these areas is an important step of setting up the GTD system.
In Things, areas can have tags, and I use that to group the areas into different categories, like Personal and Work. This lets me, for instance, easily filter out work related actions when I know I just want to focus on the personal areas, such as on the weekend.
Areas can contain projects as well as actions, which means that even though an action is not tied to a project, it can still fall underneath an area. This is one of the places where Things really shines, as it provides a holistic view of an entire area, independent of the technical details of a specific action.
Projects and actions in an area can have different statuses, where the normal is that they are active and can be worked on. Another status is Upcoming, which means that the project or action has a future start date, and this means that they won’t be visible in the tags view so they can not actively be worked on until the start date and translates well to the tickler part of GTD. They can also be set to Someday, meaning that they will be inactive until a decision has been made to move them into active. This maps well to the Someday/Maybe lists in GTD.
The main “take action” view is Anytime, where all actions that don’t have a start date in the future or set to Someday are listed. There’s a tag filter part of this view, where you can choose which actions should be displayed based on the tags they have. This also maps well to the GTD mindset where tags can represent contexts, energy levels and time available. The tags can be applied on the fly, so there’s no need to create predefined views for the filtering you are currently looking for. It also means that it’s currently not possible to create a predefined view, but that hasn’t bothered me so far.
The coolest feature of this view is the ability to directly go to the project of an action in the list. This lets you easily access project level notes, see all next actions and other types of project related information. On iOS, there’s a back button that returns you to the previous view once you’re done in the project as well.
Actions can contain different types of information, such as a title and a note, as well as a start and due date, a project and any tags that you want. What differentiates an action in Things is the ability to create checklists within an action. This enables you to not only break down an action into smaller chunks of work, it also allows you to easily keep a log when working on an action that requires more than one session.
Being able to quickly jump to projects, or any type of list, makes working with Things very efficient. While most task managers allow searching for projects, actions and other information, no one does it as seamlessly as Things 3. The only thing you need is to just start typing. A search window will automatically pop up, providing you with relevant suggestions and allows you to refine your search and choose between potential matches.
Another very powerful feature is the way Things handles repeating actions. In OmniFocus, the next iteration of the action will be created from the one that was just completed. This means that if you need to, for instance, push the start date for a repeating action, all future versions of the action will have the pushed start date instead of the original. The same goes for other changes, such as flagging or modifying the due date. Things is different in that you create a repeating action, and every time a new version of that action becomes available, a separate instance of the action is spawned, which can be modified freely without affecting the repeating action itself. For me, this makes a lot more sense and provides the flexibility required when working with repeating actions.
Finally, Things 3 is visually pretty amazing. So much so, that I had to tweet about it.
Things is friggin beautiful. It’s not something I thought I would say about a task manager.
— Johnny Chadda (@johnnychadda) March 4, 2019
Organization
What makes Things so simple yet powerful comes from its simplicity and structure in how it allows you to organize all information. Areas and projects provides a distinctive structure, which at first may seem limiting, but that is also what sets it free from being something to tinker with.
I have a number of areas of responsibility for work and personal projects. Each area is tagged with an area group tag, meaning that all areas related to work are tagged work. Similarly, all areas belonging to my personal life are tagged accordingly. This allows me to later filter out actions and projects that I’m currently not interested to look at.
There’s no way of visually distinguishing areas in the sidebar, which is why I have created two fake areas which are just dividers. This is just to visually separate the areas into groups, and serve no real purpose other than that.
Projects are contained within the area they belong to, meaning I have no “loose” projects outside of an area. The only time that happens is if I have created a project on the fly from the Inbox and haven’t filed it properly yet.
Areas can, in addition to projects, also contain actions. This is a change from OmniFocus where I needed to have single action lists for all actions not belonging to a project. Now I can just stick them in the relevant area, which makes getting an overview over everything in an area so easy, because everything from projects, single actions, future projects and someday lists are in the same place.
When first moving over to Things 3, I retained the tags from OmniFocus verbatim. The @computer context was for instance split up into three categories:
That setup has been working great, and was necessary because of the way OmniFocus didn’t allow one to easily choose which tags to show on the fly without creating a custom perspective. When moving to Things however, choosing a combination of tags is easy, which means that I don’t have to limit myself to the three categories above. What I instead did was to separate the time and energy available tags from the actual context, which is the way it is recommended in the GTD book1. That also means that those constraints can be applied to which ever context I’m working from, be it @computer2, @home or @office.
I structure the time available tags hierarchically. Using the effect of inheritance, it allows me to for instance choose the “30m” tag, and have Things show me everything that takes 30 minutes or less. If the tags were ordered next to each other, I would only see the actions tagged specifically with “30m”.
The Today and Upcoming views are built into Things, and I use those as part of my Daily Review to get a quick glance of the day ahead. It neatly highlights the starred actions which I have marked as something I need to keep a special lookout for.
The Someday view is mostly used when doing the Weekly Review, and provides easy access to all the projects marked Someday. The inactive projects are spred out in their respective areas, and this view allows me to quickly see if any projects need to be activated.
Part of the Someday view is also the Guidance area, which contain lists for the higher horizons in GTD3. Another section is Reference, which contain lists that are not necessarily actionable, such as “Next time in…”, which is a place to keep recommendations for different parts of the world and is a great place to look when going to a new destination.
Finally, there are areas that contain Checklists and Templates. The checklists are what they sound like, a list of checklists for recurring procedures and is a great way to learn from past experience when dealing with certain things, such as packing for a trip or performing an interview. The templates are for recurring projects, such as when doing a new release or hiring a new person. The difference compared to Checklists is that Templates are copied for every instance they are used, and there can be multiple copies running at the same time (such as when hiring two people at the same time).
The Logbook is the last builtin view, and contains everything that has been checked off, either as completed but also dropped actions and projects. Reviewing the Logbook as part of the Weekly Review is something that I’m trying out now that I have moved to Things
Daily Workflow
The first thing I usually do when starting up for the day is to perform a daily review. This is not mandated by GTD, but I find it useful to know that my inboxes will be emptied at least once a day. This adds assurance in that I can add anything to my Things inbox and I know I will get to it the morning after at the latest.
Gtd App Mac Free Software
When engaging with the lists to actually get some things done, the main view I use is Anytime. The sidebar is usually hidden, which limit distractions and serves as a visual distinction in that I’m in “engage mode” and not something else. In that view, I use the standard GTD criteria to figure out what to do given my current constrains. The first thing I filter on is context, and depending on the amount of actions in that list, I continue filtering on time available and energy. Finally, I may filter on showing only work or personal related actions depending on the situation.
Integrations
I have integrated Things as much as possible with the tools I use on a daily basis. First, email integration is done using the Things Cloud service, where one can send email which then pop up in the Things Inbox, together with a link to the original email. This means that I can click that link and the corresponding email will be opened in Mail. I use this mainly for emails that I want to keep track of replies for. When sending the email, I just BCC my personal Things Cloud email address.
When processing the email inbox however, I mostly rely on drag-and-drop on the Mac and the iPad, or use the clipping shortcut. This workflow allows me to quickly handle the less-than-two-minute emails, and defer the rest to a list in Things with the appropriate tags attached, which are usually “do” and “high focus”, together with “5m” or “15m” depending on the estimated time needed. Once the email is added as an action in Things, I archive the email since I can simply get back to it using the link in the notes section of the action.
Slack is a big thing at work, and I have created an automation in Zapier where if I star a message in Slack, it will end up in my Things inbox for me to process at a later time. This makes handling Slack a lot easier, since I don’t have to rely on marking conversations as unread just to remember to handle them at a later time.
Weekly Review
The weekly review is one of the core parts of GTD, since it keeps everything up to date and relevant. It is essential for making sure that the trusted system remains trusted going forward. I found that the best way to get the weekly review done is to have it scheduled in the calendar, at the same time every week4.
OmniFocus has a built-in review perspective, but I found that not to be all that useful. The idea is great, in that you can have different review periods for different projects, but in practice there are shortcoming with that approach, since if you were to do the review on another day for some reason, the schedule quickly gets out of sync. I also found it easier and more approachable to just review the projects in the normal projects view.
In Things, there is no built in support for doing reviews. What you instead have to do is to just go through each active project and make sure that it’s up to date — it’s just as simple as that. As I go through area by area and reviewing the projects, I also take a look at all the projects and actions that are scheduled for the near future, so I know what’s ahead and if I have missed anything.
Gtd App Mac Free Trial
Someday projects may not need the same review period as active projects however, but they can be displayed in a separate view, which makes it easy to get an overview and focus on the projects that make sense at the time.
iOS
The first thing I noticed when using Things for iOS, and the iPad Pro in particular, is that the app and how you use it is almost the same as on the the desktop. This is huge, since it has been a major pain point in the past with OmniFocus, where I have refrained from doing certain things on iOS and deferring them to when I’m on the Mac. Things removes the entire discussion of a discrepancy, since the iOS app is fully featured and can do everything that the Mac app can do.
Since I use the third gen iPad Pro 12.9” as my main “computer”, it has been absolutely amazing to be able to use it without limitations, meaning that I can use keyboard shortcuts for everything in Things and now worry about being able to only do certain things on certain platforms. It just removes that discussion altogether.
There are a few things that work a bit different, and the way you choose which tags to focus on is probably the main one. On the Mac, there’s a ribbon on top of every view where you can choose which tags to show. On iOS on the other hand, there is a menu option to open the tag selector where tags can be chosen. Once a tag has been activated, adding additional tags is easy, since there’s a tag bar presented after choosing the first one, and tapping it will directly open the tag selector window.
When first starting out, I preferred the way choosing multiple tags on the Mac works, but have switched to preferring the way it’s done on iOS. What’s missing is a quicker way to get to the tag selection window though. Having to first tap the menu button and then choose the tag selector is one tap too many for something this essential.
Another thing differentiating iOS from the Mac version is the difference in how deleted tasks are handled. On the Mac, there’s a Trash which shows everything that has been deleted. On iOS however, this doesn’t exist, and you are limited to the built in “shake to undo” function to restore any accidentally deleted actions.
Things that bother me
While I am quite impressed by the power of Things, bundled in such a simplistic and appealing package, there are some things that bother me and would definitely make my life easier if they were addressed in some way.
First, one of the core features of OmniFocus is the ability to set projects and sub-projects as sequential, meaning that the second action will become available only after the first one has been completed. I never used sequential projects, since it’s way too easy for actions to become invisible if you forget that the project is in fact sequential. What I often used though is sequential sub-projects, which makes it easy to map out a sequence of events and how to handle them. What I would like to see in Things is a way to set actions under a specific project heading as sequential. This provides the best of both worlds, in that the simplicity of Things is intact, while still allowing for power features to be exposed in a simple way. My current workaround is to use a “pending” tag and the remaining actions set as Someday, but that is not really ideal. This is also the thing that could be a dealbreaker sticking with Things for the long haul.
Speaking of project headings, I would also like to see them for areas. This would allow grouping related projects in a simple way. I would like them to also be present in the left menu bar, which would allow me to group my areas into different parts of my life. The workaround for this is to have empty areas with a line for a name to create a divider.
Hp scanjet g4050 driver for mac os x 10.8. Like I mentioned earlier, choosing tags on iOS is pretty straight forward, however getting to the tag selector the first time is not. I have to first tap the menu button and then the tag selector. For something part of a core workflow, this should be exposed on the main view, like the current behavior when having chosen one tag already.
Another thing related to tags is that when selecting a tag, I would like to only see the remaining tags that provide a result and remove the other ones. This would help a lot when filtering the list to find the appropriate action to work on.
In the Anytime view, you can follow an action to its project, which enables you to quickly access project related information. Going back to the previous view on iOS is easy, just tap the back button and you’re back to the Anytime view with all tags applied. On the Mac however, there’s no back button, which makes it impossible going back to the previous view once a project link has been clicked.
Summary
I am amazed how well Things 3 works, being such a simple app at first glance. It supports the GTD workflow while still being opinionated in how it wants you to organize everything. I look forward to battle test it for a year and hope it will bring more clarity and help with focusing on the right things.
Best app to make flyers on mac. The only issue I had with the app itself was that an action didn’t sync properly from one device to the other. This was fixed by their support, which was quick and friendly.
Now that you have read this entire article, it would help me a lot if you could spend a minute to fill out this feedback form, which will help me better work on similar things in the future.
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