industriousOne

Update: I have updated the article in response to the (excellent) comments. In particular, I have added several screenshots and more information on how I get information into Google Notebook

I’ve been using David Allen’s Getting Things Done for a few years now and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I get more done in less time. I spend much less time and energy figuring out what I need to do next. It has freed up mental cycles and allowed me to start focusing on bigger goals. And it makes me look good at work, where I have sailed through major crunches without breaking a sweat on more than one occasion.

If you haven’t read the book this article might not make much sense. You really ought to go get the book—it is inexpensive and will pay for itself in no time at all!

I’ve tried several different methods and applications for managing my action lists and projects, with various degrees of success. I spent the last year using paper (the Hipster PDA) for my action lists, with project information stored on the computer. Now I am entirely online—on Google to be specific—and I only carry paper for capturing new items.

Email

For starters, I forward all of my email accounts to Gmail. Under Gmail’s Settings > Accounts I created a new account for each forwarded email address, and selected the option to “reply from the same address the message was sent to”. People can email me at any address, and they get a response back from the same address. Very transparent. All of my email is now in one place and I can take advantage of the great search and spam features of Gmail.

Gmail accounts let me send and receive with different addresses.

I clear my Gmail inbox out a couple of times a day. I use a “Later”; label for things I want to check out later (like if someone sends me a YouTube link while I’m at work). If there is information I need to keep, I either send it to my inbox (in Google Notebook, keep reading) or directly to the appropriate project document (more on that in a second). Otherwise I just archive it and rely on the search features to get it back when I need it.

I also use Gmail to store all of my contact information. This is not as easy as it could be (why can’t I click on a person’s name in the From: field to pop up their contact information?) but it does keep everything in one place. Hopefully this part will improve in the future.

Calendar

I have no complaints with Google Calendar. I have a couple of different calendars, including a family calendar that I share with my wife. It has all of the reminder features I need. The integration with Gmail is nice: if an email contains a date and time, Gmail will offer to create an event on my calendar. When meeting requests arrive (forwarded from my Exchange address at work) I add them to my personal calendar, and then accept the invite so that it appears on the Outlook calendar as well.

In addition to tracking time-critical tasks, I also use Google Calendar to plan out my work day. I assign blocks to my tasks (30 minutes to process email, 60 minutes to finish feature X, and so on) and then drag them around to fit my day. If something doesn’t get done, I can drag it to the next day.

Using Calendar to plan my day. Stay on target!

Action Lists

Google Notebook is my solution for action lists. I keep one notebook for each context (@Home, @Work, etc.), one for “Waiting For” items, and one as an inbox for anything that pops up while I’m at the computer (which is most of the time). After using paper for so long, the drag-and-drop features of Notebook are hugely satisfying. I can quickly reprioritize a list when plans change, and even move tasks between contexts with a quick drag and drop. When a task is complete I simply delete it. Deleted tasks can be retrieved from the trash if needed, but this isn’t a feature I use very often.

My contexts listed in Google Notebook, with my (empty!) Inbox selected.

I tried to use Notebook to also manage my projects, but without the ability to tag notebooks it isn’t practical. I usually have between 20-30 active projects at any time, and more than twice as many inactive and someday projects. You really need to have tags to filter that down to a smaller working set.

More Google Notebook Tricks

If you use Firefox, install the Google Notebook extension (and then wonder how you ever lived without it). This little extension sits down in your status bar and provides a quick popup view of your notebooks. You can then drag and drop text, links, or images into the current notebook.

The Google Notebook popup, expanded to show all my notebooks…

…and the very handy context menu item.

When you come across some information that you need to act on, just drag it into your inbox or use the handy context menu option. Then deal with it as you would any other action item the next time you clear your inboxes. I use this feature so often that is has become second nature—so much so that I actually forgot to include it in the first iteration of this article!

Projects

I use Google Docs & Spreadsheets to track all of my projects, one document per project. Unlike Notebook, you can tag documents; I use “active”, “inactive”, and “someday”, as well as some more general topics such as “house” for everything related to…well, the house. I put my list of next steps at the top of each document, followed by any related notes or references.

Moving an item to an action list is as simple as selecting it and creating a new note in my Notebook, either by using the Notebook extension or a quick cut-and-paste. I also add the name of the project to the task, like “Buy more paint (< house)”. When I check an item off a list, I go back to that project and grab another task, a habit that helps speed up my weekly reviews.

Weekly Reviews

Speaking of weekly reviews…I load up Google Notebook in one window (not a tab) and Google Docs in another window, and then Alt+Tab between them (I could open both in separate tabs, but I prefer to use separate windows for this). I can see just my active projects by selecting the “active” tag. There isn’t much to talk about here; I am able to bounce around between documents and contexts and complete my reviews quickly. Much easier, in my opinion, then my old paper version.

Offline Capture

I am within easy reach of a computer for most of the day. But for those times when I’m out and about, I keep a half-dozen index cards (leftovers from my Hipster days), cut in half and stuck into my wallet. These are great for capturing notes, and also for giving someone a phone number. And I’m glad to no longer have to carry the Hipster around with me everywhere.

That’s It!

That’s my system…It still has a few rough edges, but overall the Google Solution works well for me. I’m spending less time on managing my tasks than with any other approach I’ve tried. All of my information is available anywhere I can get online, and backed by Google (which, despite the recent Gmail outage, has been extremely reliable).

I’d love to hear about any other Google tweaks that I might not have heard about!