How I Get Things Done
April 4 2007
On the 20th March, SUCS (Swansea University Computer Society) hosted its first ever ’Lightning Talks’ session, which went very well indeed. Nine SUCS members volunteered to do a ten minute talk on a subject of their choice, to be presented to their peers. I was one of those nine brave souls, and decided to do a presentation on procrastination and productivity. Some may argue that I may not be the best qualified person to talk on such a subject (being a serial procrastinator myself), but I read quite a lot on the subject and have tried many techniques for combatting it, some of which I discuss in my presentation. In keeping with the theme of procrastination, I decided to try and keep my audience focussed by presenting in the quick-fire Lawrence Lessig style. The best example of this presentation style I’ve ever seen is Dick Hardt’s fantastic OSCON2005 presentation on Identity 2.0, which I urge you to watch. If you haven’t already seen my SUCS Talk, you can find it (along with all the others) at http://sucs.org/Community/Talks. Please let me know what you think!
Anyway, this post is really intended to be a follow-up to my talk. Due to the time limitation there were a bunch of things I didn’t get chance to talk about, and which people have asked me about since the talks took place. So, without further ado:
How My System Works
In my talk, I briefly touched upon the fact that I carry a notepad around with me (pictured above). These tiny notepads are awesome for getting things out of your head (an important part of Getting Things Done!) and can be bought from WHSmiths. I carry my notepad (along with a tiny pen) pretty much wherever I go, so I can always jot something down as soon as it appears in my head.
On my Macbook, I use the fantastic Actiontastic (Mac OS X only) application to act as an inbox (like my notepad) and to process the things I need to do, assigning them contexts, projects, etc. Once everything’s in there and sorted out, I can tick things off and sync my tasks with iCal and my iPod so they’re always at my fingertips. It really is a fantastic app and it’s soon to go open source! If you’re not a Mac user, there are a couple of other options worth checking out: in particular, Actiontastic will soon be having a web-based little brother called Actionatr. There’s also the Ruby on Rails based Tracks, which looks pretty snazzy - you can sign up for a free hosted-for-you Tracks installation at http://tracks.tra.in/.
And that’s my system:
- Inbox: notepad & Actiontastic
- Process tasks: Actiontastic
- Sync tasks to iCal and my iPod (so for instance, if I’m out shopping I can whip out my iPod and check my @shopping context list for things I need to buy)
- Do those tasks!
Useful Links
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Software
- Actiontastic - OS X, brilliant GTD app.
- Actionatr - Soon-to-be-launched web-based version of Actionatr.
- Tracks - Free web-based GTD app that’s rather swish.
- http://tracks.tra.in/ - Free hosted Tracks installations.
- Of course, the list doesn’t end there - there are a whole load of GTD apps out there, but these are the ones I’ve found to be the nicest to use.
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Websites
- 43 Folders - Merlin Mann’s site about personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better. Fairly Mac-centric.
- Lifehacker.com - “Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time.”
- Lifehack.org - A site I’ve just found whilst searching for Lifehacker.com, but it looks fairly good.
- GTD Workflow Diagram - A free-to-download diagram of the GTD workflow (but you have to go through a silly shopping cart system).
- GTD Workflow - Advanced - An advanced GTD workflow diagram.