There are many articles and personal experiences of how people are using the GTD method to get things done stress free. I think the human bring is not built to not remember things and when you should do them. Hence the use of tools, paper to capture information is helpful.
Here is what works for me using these 2 tools. Evernote and Remember The Milk. You can search for Evernote GTD and Remember The Milk GTD
The important thing is for you to use the method that works for you every day, regardless of how it’s done. I’m using the following as an ideal, but there are flaws in my executing them (as Katherine could tell you about following up on scheduling a doctor’s appointment)
Evernote
- I setup a private email address in Evernote so that I can email notes to myself from anywhere
- I do not use bookmark services when I come across something to read, I email it into Evernote with the #read tag. Then I setup a smart folder for the tag ‘read’ in order to read it later
- When I’m on my laptop and want to capture something, I print it to PDF into Evernote.
- I follow this method of GTD with Evernote with 9 notebooks. The most important folder is my 3_ASAP folder of my important projects
- All notes I capture using any other tools eventually goes into Evernote, that is my single source of truth for anything that is not time sensitive.
- I also have a 91_Passwords folder where I put in all my passwords but for a password, I either encrypt it in Evernote or if it’s one of my 10 or so passwords I use, I put the first and last digit but everything in between, like L…….1 just a s a reminder.
Remember The Milk
- I love the web interface for Remember The Milk to capture tasks and group tasks together. So I create my personal projects and work projects and create tasks that is needed complete the projects. I first create a search #project, #NNN then save the search. Then every task I create falls into that project
- I also setup a private email address in Remember The Milk so I could email myself tasks with tags #project, #NNN, where NNN is the name of the project
- When I have something to read and if I think it’s time sensitive I would also email it into Remember The Milk with #read tag or with #project, #NNN tag
Daily Ritual
- On my Firefox bookmark, I have a Daily folder where I put in all the links I should visit at least once a day. Yahoo!’s corporate portal, my bug list that I’m assigned to, the list of un-triaged tickets, 3 of my personal blogs that I should write something for, NYTimes.com, Mint.com to check my finances, Remember The Milk for my task for that day.
- Everyday I’m trying to get my Inbox to zero, anything I need to get to a later time, is forwarded to RTM or Evernote
- I schedule slots on my calendar to work on my tasks so no one can schedule meetings into those slots
Weekly Ritual
- Friday’s I tend to organize my Evernote, Remember The Milk list. Review what I’ve done over the last week and make adjustments.
Monthly Ritual
- I review my job description and adjust if I’m not doing what I’m suppose to, or I may need to add/subtract something from my job responsibilities and write down an agenda to talk to my manager about
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