Linked: “Finding Balance and Task Management”

via SpecialKolin:

Let me know what you think, though. Have you used an app like Todoist? Do you think taking things on gradually instead of all at once would be better for me?

I was feverishly a Things user for iOS & Mac back in 2008-2010. There came a time when I spent more time managing tasks than completing them and I sort of went bankrupt. My workflow today is that I force all of my tasks to arrive to me through email. I don’t receive any to-do anywhere else. Some times it’s an IM conversation but really, email is my depository even for myself. You’ll catch me 5+ times a day emailing myself reminders and I still reach Inbox-Zero every day. As I work for a European company, I wake up with 30 actionable emails a day, work through them by noon then focus on my own projects after lunch (which is when I’m writing this while reading RSS feeds).

GTD / ToDo applications are great. They really are especially if you’re bad at email. For future things in email that can’t get down right now which conflicts with Inbox Zero methodology, I add to iCal in a personal calendar appointment. Here’s my calendar:

How I Organize my Calendar

This was last week’s. Purple is work only tasks, mostly invites from colleagues. Green is my shared calendar with Heather. We put a header of H or A or H+A: before the appointment to indicate who is attending and the time, location, etc. It does mean I get notifications for Heather’s events but it allows us to coordinate plans when a friend asks me if we’re free Friday. Blue are personal non-work appointments which could be a real thing like going to the dentist but also are things like “Get a list to Eugene of bottles to bring to belgium” or “email mom back” and I put them at times where nothing else is going on but on the day it needs to be done. 

Calendar + Email are my GTD methods now. Nothing gets forgotten and everything gets done. It’s nice to spend over a hundred bucks on Things + OmniFocus but sometimes you can avoid it. The only time I would recommend someone get Things would be for project based tasks. If a project has 20+ tasks and you lose track of them easily or what order or what’s been done, that’s an area where Things could help.

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