The Lonely Savage

Productivity, Efficiency, Getting Things Done, these catchwords of the 21^st century are everywhere. While I sometimes think they are taken to extremes, I definitely agree that they are important. I once wrote a post of my own describing the way  I’ve implemented the GTD philosophy into my life. This post is mostly obsolete today and I feel it’s only fair to write a new post on the subject. If parts of this entry feel familiar it’s because I’ve copied and revised portions of my previous entry.

Goals and aspirations
The goal of any productivity system should be to increase productivity while decreasing the amount of things you need to carry around in your head at any time. Sure, it’s easy to think “Milk, bread and maple syrup? I’ll remember that!” before you go to the store, but how about if you have ten of these shopping lists to keep track of? How about if you also need to remember to return a DVD you rented? Or if you also need to exchange a pair of pants that you discovered had a hole in them? … While needing to call customer services for your cable modem, and they were only open between five and six in the evening?

If you could keep track of all this while living a normal life, you probably don’t need a productivity system, but for most mortals, it’s a handy tool.

Software and hardware
To get everything set up the way I want it, I am running two pieces of software (Things and Evernote) on as many different platforms as possible. Evernote is installed on my iPhone, my MacBook Air, my home computer and my work computer. Things is only installed on my iPhone and MacBook while I wait for their over-the-air syncing issues to be sorted. I also keep a Moleskine notebook and pen handy at all times. If I’m going to a meeting or a lecture of some sort, or if I simply have a long time that I’ll be spending on my own without access to the laptop, I bring two Moleskine notebooks. More on this later.

Note that I use other pieces of software and hardware as well for data retention and so on, but Things and Evernote are the two pieces of software that I use for things that are In Progress. As soon as I’ve finished writing, for example, the biography of a character in a book I’m working on, everything about it disappears from Evernote and Things and enters, for example, VoodooPad.

What I do
Using these two pieces of software and the two Moleskines, I keep track of two things: Tasks and Notes. To me, these are two very distinct things and bear no relationship with each other.

1. Tasks are actionable things that require me to actually do something. A task is also clear, precise, and contains either only one defined step.
2. Notes are free-floating pieces of information that may or may not be relevant to me at some point. This includes memorable quotes, book titles, home pages, thoughts and ideas. I might write a chapter outline for a book I’m planning, take a picture of a pair of shoes I might buy later on or something similar.

The tasks are handled brilliantly by Things. Notes, on the other hand, are handled excellently by Evernote. Once I had the two pieces of software in place, I put in place the systems needed to use both of them.

Tasks and Things
Things separates everythings into Tasks, Projects or Areas. A project is something with a clear beginning, middle and end, something like “Paint the living room”. This project would contain tasks like “Pick colors”, “Buy paint and equipment”, “Clear out furniture from living room”, “Paint living room”, “Move furniture back”. Once all of these tasks are completed, the entire project is done.

An area,however, doesn’t have a clear beginning, middle or end. It’s never done. It is a field of work that can (and often does) continue indefinitely. Things like “Physical Health” and “Writing” are examples of areas that would later be filled up with projects of their own. A project under the area “Physical Health” could be, for example, “Do 100 push-ups in a row”, containing separate tasks leading up to this.

Once I had populated Things with the different areas that I felt were relevant, I decided that the next thing to do was to fill it up with tags that the individual tasks could use.

The first tagging system I set up was related to time. I created a number of tags related to how long I estimated a task would take. They tags were named : <5 min, 5-15 min, 15-30 min, 30-60 min, >60 min. Any task that takes more than an hour is generally best broken up into several mini tasks to allow for a better and more streamlined way of operation, but sometimes we can’t escape long single tasks. Dividing the tasks this way allows me to quickly find a suitable task when I have a spare half hour and nothing to do.

The next couple of tags that I set up were the difficulties. There was only a need for two different tags here, I found, and these were easy and difficult. Everything else that falls outside of these two tags is just left untagged.

The last group of tags have to do with the way that a task is performed when it has to do with interactions with other people. It includes the following: e-mail, call, meeting, sms and visit. Again, this allows me to quickly find out what to do when I have time to spare. If it’s during working hours and I have some time to spare, I figure out if I have any outstanding tasks tagged “call” or “e-mail”, for example.

I add new tasks to Things mainly on my MacBook as this gives me the most freedom to write details, add relevant URL:s, cross reference documents and so on. I will add an event using the iPhone if it is on the lines of “Buy new jeans” or “Mow lawn”, but then only in the Inbox. I will later edit the event to add tags and move it to the right project and/or area. Quick tasks that do not belong to a project (for example, “Buy socks”) can end up in the Today-category.

Many notes, however, come to me using the first of my two Moleskines (Ruled Notebook Pocket). I use it as a simple inbox for things that later become tasks and events. I may take notes such as “Customer X needs detailed report by Friday”, “John’s birthday party is on Saturday, get a present before then!”. Very often, picking up the iPhone, starting Things and creating a new note would be too much work. Also, playing with your iPhone during a business meeting makes people wonder if you’re just playing around on Twitter or answering a text message, so the Moleskine makes for a better impression, too.

I check this Moleskine notebook a couple of times a day while at my computer so that I can create tasks out of the notes that I’ve made. I then strike through the text in the Moleskine so that I don’t have to worry about it anymore. It is now in Things and will be handled when the time is right.

This is stressed often, and I would like to stress it again; any GTD system is only as good as the way and amount that you use it. There have been some complaints about the entire evangelization of the GTD philosophy – a friend wrote a good one – but essentially this is how I see it: Add tasks to Things if they are not standard routines. Doing the dishes, making the bed, putting clothes on, taking the subway to work etc. are not tasks, they are routines and habits. Ordering a hotel room for your upcoming business trip, however, is a task.

Notes and Evernote
Evernote allows me to capture anything and access it anywhere, making it one of the best notebooks I’ve ever come across. Like Things, one of the first things I did was to divide my base notebook into various notebooks. Essentially, anything that qualified for a project in Things qualifies for a notebook in Evernote, so I created separate notebooks for my book projects, for World of Warcraft, for health and so on. I also created a catchall notebook named “Inbox” (my default notebook) where I could place random jots and scribbles that were either unrelated to projects that I was working on or which could spawn new ones. I then go through this Inbox regularly (at least once a day) to move things to relevant notebooks or create new ones.

Tagging my notes in Evernote, however, was unlike tagging my tasks in Things. While the tags in Things related to the time, difficulty, place and method of doing a thing, the tags in Evernote only refer to the contents of the note. If I’m saving a picture of a face that I think resembles what I want one of the characters in my book to look like, I might save that picture with the tags inspiration, face, and the name of the character and/or the book project title in question.

I also carry around a larger Moleskine notebook (Plain Reporter Notebook Large) that I can use during meetings, lectures, brainstorming sessions and discussions. This Moleskine is a “first stop” for notes before I translate them into Evernote, similar to how the previous notebook worked for Things. The reason that I don’t use the same notebook for both is that I don’t strike through my notes and ideas in this notebook when done. Mixing the two types of note-taking in the same book would be confusing.

A Day in the Life
I think the best way to describe the way my systems work is to using examples from all four of my sources (Things, Evernote, Task-Moleskine, Note-Moleskine) during a typical day.

• On my way to work, reading the newspaper, I see an interesting article on a subject that I want to know more about. I grab my iPhone, snap a picture of it in Evernote and save it in the “Stuff to do stuff with”. Some time later, I will be checking this category and will be reminded to study the subject further. Naturally, I could also have just written a quick note about it in the task-Moleskine, but in this case, it felt more like an ‘idea’ rather than a ‘task’. Sometimes the difference is vague.
• When on the phone with a customer, I learn that their latest shipment contained two broken parts. I will have to talk to a number of people (sales, supply, order, etc.) regarding this, so I jot down the following in my smaller Moleskine (Which I use for tasks, remember?): “Talk to X, Y, Z about faulty shipment to A. Parts B and C were broken”. After the call, I take some time to create three different notes in Things (one for each person to talk to) and tag them correctly, putting them in the “Work”-area. In this case, the tags would be the names of the person to call in that specific task, the name of the customer, the word call, the time-tag 5-15 and maybe work to show that it’s work related.
• During my lunch break, I take fifteen minutes to enjoy the weather and plan my fantasy world a little. I’m working on the religious system in one of the nations, and begin jotting down ideas and thoughts into my (larger) Moleskine notebook. After a while, I’ve got a pretty good thing going, but I’m missing a few names, dates and things like that. I decide that I’m done, I write: “TO DO” with a box around it so that it quickly catches the eyes and add: “Names for deities X, Y, Z and the dates for event A and B”. When I’m back at the computer, I add these tasks to Things (striking through the words ‘TO DO’ in the Moleskine) and copy the relevant information that I finished into it’s right place in VoodooPad.
• While writing this entry, I realized that I should probably incorporate the way that I use VoodooPad to aid in my productivity, but decided against it. While Things and Evernote help me to get things done, VoodooPad helps me keep track of things that I’ve already done. I decided that it might be a good idea to write a future entry on VoodooPad, so I highlighted the sentence where I mentioned it, right-clicked it, and clicked “Add to Evernote”. I then dragged this new note into the notebook “Future Blog Entries” where I store random things that I’ve thought of that might make for good entries. I can then work on the details in that Evernote-entry until it qualifies for a notebook of it’s own.

Bringing it all together
Summing up, Things and Evernote take a very important part in organizing my day. Using these two tools has enabled me to put my mind to better use as I can leave the “remember this!”-bits in Evernote and the “do this!”-bits in Things. The two tools allow me to do one thing at a time without forgetting the remaining million that I also want to do over time. They allow me to stop a project at any point and then quickly pick up the pieces when I want to return to it.

You might not use them in the same way as I do, but I do recommend you try them out.