Projects: I do a few things to keep things simple and organized. I start by defining a few projects. In GTD terms, they are not still projects (which need to be finite and time bound), but we can then get into the ability of Todoist to create nested projects – which will let us create actual sub-categories under these and also projects.
The categories I have are: Work, Personal, Recurring Activities, For Later and Lists of Stuff. I figure that I can track most of my stuff under these categories. Under Recurring Activities, as an example, I put my Daily Review and Weekly Review activities and make them recur – so they show up in my Today list at the right time.
Context: An important aspect of GTD, is to establish context for your tasks and activities. And the two most important contexts are When and Where. For this, you need to use Labels. You can set up as few – or as many – contexts as you please. But what I have found is that I generally use the superset I have listed here.
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For When, I have set up 7 contexts: Now, Next, Soon, Later, Someday, Waiting, Weekend. I have assigned numbers to them so I can pick them off a list by just hitting a number. Now is things that need to be worked on immediately. Next is what will be done next and so on. Waiting is one that I found that I can use when I have done my piece and am waiting on someone else before I can proceed.
For Where, I have just 5 contexts: Home, Work, Internet, Phone, Town. Home and Work are locations that I need to get activities done at. Town is a catch all for when I am around town and need to get activities done (Groceries for example). Internet is a catchall for aspects related to web browsing, email, etc. And Phone is for making calls.
Getting Things Done: There are many (seriously – do a google search) resources around how this works, so I am not going to do a deep dive into this too much. Some key things I think you need to do are:
Touch everything once: It is important that you touch everything that needs an action only once – so that you can be productive. So – it is important that you have a reliable and always accessible system in which you can file things. Todoist and Evernote are excellent tools to achieve this.
Learn about Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete: So everything that you need to deal with will fall into one of these categories. Do if it will take you less than 2 minutes to accomplish. Delegate if someone else can do it (remember to attach a waiting context to it if you need to follow up). Defer if you intend to come back to it later (attach a time context to it). And my favorite, Delete if you do not need to take any action (if you are someone that does not like to delete, you may archive instead – but get it out of your inbox).
Capture Everything: Everything that needs an action from you needs to be captured in your system (in this case, Todoist). Just add it to your Todoist inbox – don’t worry about anything else (contexts, timing, etc.) at this time.
Conduct periodic sweeps: I generally do sweeps every 2-3 hours during the day. The intent of the sweep is to go through the inbox and attach contexts, timings, etc. to tasks. Also a good time to categorize activities and identify projects and break those down. This is also where you may want to look at the Next context and reprioritize some of those to immediate or Now.
Focus on the immediate/Now: Your goal is to clear your Now list – so block off a piece of time (with no distractions – AT ALL) and start working through the tasks on your Now list. Experience the endorphin rush as you check off those tasks. Rinse and repeat.
Conduct Daily Reviews: I set up my daily reviews for the first 10-15 minutes of my day. This lets me gather my thoughts and put together the activities I need to get accomplished that day. It is also a good opportunity to do a review of the task list to make sure there are no pending activities – and also to capture anything else that comes into your mind that needs action. Remember that this is a planning and capture activity – leave the detailing for your periodic sweeps.
Conduct Weekly Reviews: My weekly reviews are the last thing I do in my work week – and I take 30 minutes for it. It helps me review the progress I made this week and helps me plan out aspects I need to get done next week. It is a good time to be appreciative and self congratulatory of the progress you have made – or contemplative of the lack of progress, and the contributing reasons thereof. Basically, you are focusing on strategy, learning and improvement as a core part of this exercise.