What is GTD*?

GTD is short for "Getting Things Done*". It's a system for personal productivity created by David Allen. Here's a more formal definition.

Here, you can learn about GTD, and how to do it using Note Studio.

Important:
Now, there are many different ways to do GTD, and Note Studio is only one of them. Unless his official website says otherwise, David Allen does not endorse Note Studio, and we have no connection with his company.

In fact, we designed Note Studio long before we heard about GTD. It's only after our users kept telling us how they loved Note Studio for GTD, that we thought we'd better investigate what GTD actually was. Now, we're converted!

If you're interested in GTD, why don't you check out David Allen's website. We highly recommend both the GTD book and the audio book.

* GTD® and Getting Things Done® are registered trademarks of Davidco

Note Studio GTD Refresher

11. Other Aspects of GTD

So what about the other parts of a GTD system?

The basic GTD system outlined by creator Dave Allen describes a number of other things:

Someday/Maybe list
Calendar
Tickler
Project Plans
Reference Files
Read and Review
To-do lists or Procedure Checklists
Goals

For a full explanation of these items, we again refer you back to David Allen's website.

But how do these fit in with Note Studio?

Note Studio and the Someday/Maybe List

The Someday/Maybe list is where you can store items, without committing to doing them in the forseeable future.

It's a good vehicle for multiple purposes:

if you want to put an item on the back-burner for a while, you can just move it to the someday/maybe list.
if you have a wild or crazy idea, that you might want to investigate in the future, you can put it here also.

One of the good things about some-day maybe items is that there's no guilt associated with them, when you see them. You can comfortably look at them, without feeling that you should be working on them. It's amazing how much freedom you experience from simply declaring that you aren't working on something right now.

It also works well, because you start capturing all those thoughts you might not normally put down. With some productivity systems, you might thing if I write it down, I'll have to do it. So you don't write things down, and consequently, because they aren't captured, they'll rattle around in your head for a while, and eventually will be lost.

The other impressive thing about the Someday/Maybe list is that it's surprising how often, during a weekly review, items come across from the Someday/Maybe list into your active items. After looking at items for a while, you'll find yourself saying 'you know what? I'm actually going to do that this week!'. You actually get more things done, when you start listing them on the Someday/Maybe list.

With Note Studio , you can either implement the list on a single page, or you could list each one as a separate project, using a new context called "SomedayMaybe". Whichever you choose, you can easily store these items in your GTD book.

Note Studio and Your Calendar

GTD doesn't place so much emphasis on the use of the calendar. This is mainly because of problems with how people use them.

Some productivity systems involve scheduling everything you're going to do in a calendar. GTD, on the other hand, is very aware that things change very quickly. You can get into the office, some urgent work comes up, and your plans for the whole day change. Or, something will just take a lot longer than you thought.

If you're scheduling your whole day in advance, that schedule is easily thrown if something more important comes up.

So the GTD approach is to minimise the amount of firm scheduling.

Of course, you still have to schedule things - particularly if they involve other people. For example, if you have a board meeting at 11am, then that's a 'hard' appointment - it's something you can't reasonably change. That type of thing can go in your calendar.

But GTD would avoid things like 'between 10am and 11am, I plan to clean up my filing cabinet.' Suddenly, if your boss calls a meeting at 10am, your plan is gone. Better to have it as an at-work action item. That way, you can fit it in whenever you have some free time, without the sense of failure you get if it doesn't happen when you planned.

Note Studio does not have any built-in calendar support. Why is this? Well, there are enough great calendars out there - both real physical calendars, and electronic ones such as on your computer or electronic organizer. It's just not what Note Studio was designed to do. So we recommend using your existing calendar in conjunction with Note Studio.

The exception to this would be if you have hardly any hard appointments. Some people have so few hard appointments, that they can manage them from within a Note Studio system.

Note Studio and Ticklers

A tickler file really makes sense as a physical collection of folders. You can put items into folders, which you then open on a particular date. In effect, you're posting things to your future self. This is good for bills, invitations to reply to, and so on.

Even though Tickler files were designed as physical things, you can still have an electronic version in Note Studio. Note Studio has a tickler tool, which allows you to enter reminders on particular dates.

The only limitation is that you can't put physical objects into your electronic system. You can't put a bill, or a piece of paper. So instead, you insert some text, which represents the physical item.

Note Studio and Project Plans

Note Studio is suitable for any text documentation. As well as writing documents, you are also able to link to files elsewhere on your file system. This makes Note Studio suitable for many people's planning requirements.

With synching to the Palm Pilot, you can have such documents with you, stored in the same system, whereever you travel.

Note Studio and Reference Files

Reference Information is stuff you keep around in case you need it later.

Often it will be paper-based. Unless you are scanning every single thing into electronic format, there's no avoiding having some paper items in your system. Note Studio won't help you with this.

However, sometimes you will store Reference information electronically. Links to external useful sites, copies of material you have grabbed from the web for reference purposes, and so on. Most people find that it's very useful to have a Reference book in your Note Studio GTD system. But it's not going to take away your need for a physical file system.

Note Studio and Read and Review Piles

This is very similar to reference information. This is stuff you're keeping aside to read when you get the chance. Magazines, journals, articles, reports, and so on. Again, because it's generally paper-based, Note Studio can't substitute this.

However, I find it useful to keep a read-review section in my GTD system. I mainly use this for online articles which I find interesting. I either store the link, so I can get to the article later, or else I copy the article and paste it into my Note Studio Read-Review section.

When do I make a link, and when do I make a copy? Well, if I think that the content might change, or disappear, or I may not be connected to the web sometime in the near future (eg, I'm going away somewhere), I'll take a copy. Otherwise, it's often sufficient just to store a link to the material.

Note Studio and To-do lists/Procedure Checklists

To-Do Lists

When you read Dave Allen's book, you'll see that he's not a big fan of to-do lists. One of the problems is that things don't always go to plan; your day changes, your plan goes out the window, and you don't get through your list. So what do you do? You make another to-do list, and transfer the items from the previous list that you didn't get done.

There are two problems with this.

Avoidance - you have items which never get done, but are instead transferred from list to list.
Unreasonable sense of failure - if you're like me, you may have found it surprising how much emphasis Dave Allen gives to achieving small victories. That's one of the reasons he favours very clear Next Actions, so there's no ambiguity about whether the action is complete or incomplete. He even wonders if you've ever added something to your list just so you can check it off. It's because these victories are important - they affect your sense of accomplishment, your sense of satisfaction, even your self respect.
Any time you don't get through your list, there is some sense of failure, in that you failed to get everything done that you hoped. Especially if the same item keeps not getting done, you are reinforcing that you are failing to get everything done.
GTD is big on celebrating little victories. Any time you can complete an action item, the project moves forward. You win. You'll never get everything done - you'll probably never have zero projects, or zero next actions. But you can always move one of your projects forward. And that's a victory, worth a little celebration, even if it's just a little internal applause.

But for each item you say you're going to get done, you either will or you won't get it done today. That is a fact. You will complete it, or you won't complete it. If you don't do it - and sometimes you won't - there is no value in having it on a list, where it fails to get crossed off. In fact, it's counter-productive.

If an item must be done on a particular day, then it should be on your hard landscape (that is, your calendar), not on a general to-do list.

Checklists

Checklists, on the other hand can be a very useful part of GTD.

What does a checklist do? Well, if you have any tasks you perform repeatedly, a checklist is a way of doing the thinking once, the first time you perform that task. After that, you're simply following a recipe - the thinking has already been done.

Checklists are great when there are a lot of details to remember, or where the consequences of missing a step are great. Pilots use checklists - it doesn't matter how many times they've done the flight, they'll still use a checklist each time.

Note Studio has good support for checklists. As well as providing checkboxes, which allow you to tick items off, it provides a template system, where you can make a checklist, then make copies of that checklist, so you can tick off items without marking the original checklist. This is exactly like making a photocopy of a checklist in the physical world.

Note Studio and Your Goals

David Allen recommends keeping track of your various goals. Recognizing that there are differences between goals for next month, next year, 5-year plan, and life goals, he uses an aircraft analogy, with terms such as 'runway level', 10 000 feet, and so on.

In Note Studio, you can keep track of these goals within your main GTD book.

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