This page is part of a bigger context called Scheduling and self-management System. Following pages are considered being part of this context:

• GTD (Getting Things Done) (current page)
• The Schedule of Markus Gattol which links to
  • The index of Markus's to-the-net-published schedule data
• The PIM (Personal Information Manager) system existing of
  • GNU Emacs and some add-on software which is
  • planner-mode and
  • org-mode

Why I started the GTD Approach

Well, without proof, it is my opinion that at least 80% of us all are just like the fellow bellow... 80% or more of us are just reacting (instead of being on the active end, setting the tone, being pro-active) to their environments.

Those 80+% of us simply do not have a plan or even something close to GTD — they just react to current events and demands (also known as emergencies). Great... hm... or maybe not so much, as we also find this exact behavior with insects ;-]

YOU are not like him. Of course not...

The inventor of GTD David Allen makes it all clear. Here is what he said about other commonly known time management methods:

You can't manage time, it just is. So "time management" is a
mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective
approach. What you really manage is your activity during time, and
defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process
required to manage what you do.

        — David Allen

GTD in Short

GTD (Getting Things Done) is a principle or a recipe if you will. GTD rests on the idea that a person needs to move tasks and notes out of his/her mind by recording them somewhere else e.g. a paper notebook, PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), personal computer, etc. It is important to understand that the GTD approach his fully agnostic to whatever technology is used to actually implement it into a persons daily life — the piece of paper or ones personal computer — both will do, both have their individual strengths and weaknesses.

With GTD, one can move all the tracking and keeping an overview thing out of his head into some system e.g. personal computer which allows him to look up, reorganize and fiddle around on that information as needed. That way a persons mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks and making process in life instead of wasting precious time and energy on keeping track of tasks to do, notes to remember and various other things that suck time and energy from folks just to keep track on them and organize this kind of information.

Once the information (tasks, notes, commitments, miscellaneous information) is stored in the GTD system, one can forget about it and go for the next task, finish it and then go back to his GTD system, lock up things again, get an overview, organize/reorganize, make decisions, pick the next task, work on it until finished, go back to his GTD system and so forth. What distinguishes GTD from other time-management or action-management systems is the idea of grouping tasks by the context (defined as a place or set of available resources) in which they are to be performed.

With every new thing to do (e.g. task) one moves through the GTD workflow chain which, by sequence, is: collecting, processing, organizing/reorganizing, reviewing and finally getting to work on tasks. This happens over and over again as new things emerge on the horizon.

As said, the important thing here is, GTD is a well thought-out process and one does not need to bother about keeping track of task information and the like — this is done by the system used to implement the GTD (Getting Things Done) approach. Once familiar with GTD and the tool to carry it out, one will work more efficient, faster and with a lot more accuracy since he is able to plan things a lot better.

Long-term planning is made possible because a GTD system provides lots of data about how one is doing so he gets objective and independent information which he would not have available to him if he worked the normal way. People always think they are working efficient, as fast as possible and totally accurate... after using GTD for some time most people will tell you they were wrong before, since, when looking back, they can tell the difference and improvements that came into their lives by using the GTD approach.

GTD Principle

Unlike other time management approaches, GTD does not focus on setting priorities. Instead, GTD advocates that the two key elements in time management are control and perspective. To gain control and perspective, GTD provides three major models:

1. A workflow process
2. Several levels of focus
3. The planning method

Workflow

The first major model is the workflow process, which is used to gain control over all the tasks and commitments which one needs or wants to get done.The workflow process consists of five phases:

1. Collect
2. Process
3. Organize
4. Review
5. Do
6. Miscellaneous (unofficial i.e. the image shows it although GTD does not really mention it)

The image below pictures the workflow in detail with all five phases so one can get a better notion by looking at it while I am going to provide additional textual explanation further down. However, the image text is German but it should be easy for anybody to translate it into English if not fluent with German anyway.

Collect

This is the first out of five phases in the workflow model. Since I do have a dedicated image on this particular phase, I am going to cover it explicitly further down (Collecting and Input Processing).

Process

The second phase in the workflow model, also covered in detail further down (Collecting and Input Processing). Note, that the image of the Collecting and Input Processing section further down is part of the workflow image above — it looks a bit different but it is the same.

Collecting and Input Processing

This subsection covers phase 1 and 2 at once since they belong to each another.

Collecting is the first out of five phases of the workflow model. As we remember, the workflow model is one of the three major models. In this subsection, I will focus on the collecting phase which, in essence, is about how to process all incoming stuff on a daily basis i.e. capture everything one needs to track or remember or act on in a virtual bucket.

This bucket is not a real bucket like the wastebasket is but rather something virtual that is used as an assembly point for information from various sources e.g. a phone call, letter, email, personal conversation etc.

Then, no matter what system is used to implement the GTD principle one takes all that information from various sources and puts everything out of his head and into his GTD system. That is exactly what we are talking about here — collecting information from various sources, process it and finally put it into the trusted system for later use. The trusted system is the one used to implement the GTD principle.

This metaphor of the virtual bucket is actually pretty much the same as the leaky bucket algorithm (a well-known thing among computer scientists).

In fact, the leaky bucket algorithm can be used to describe exactly what we are dealing with when we talk about the first out of five phases of the workflow model which is collecting.

1. Usually, there are flows of different types of information (e.g. email, letter, conversation) to the bucket that may vary in intensity as we can see above.
2. This information piles up in our virtual bucket since all types of communication we have ends up in this virtual bucket.
3. Once the bucket has content we can start emptying it at any rate we feel comfortable with. Ideally one might consistently empty the bucket and transfer the information (from whatever source it came from) into the GTD system.

The great thing about the virtual bucket is, it is as flexible as the type of communication that transports information to the human being in the first place. Information received via a phone call might move quickly from the source it came from, through the bucket into the GTD system. It might be quite the same for information received during a conversation with some colleague — once back at the desk, one would move the information out of his head (which in that case would be the virtual bucket) into the GTD system.

Email or letters on the other hand might hang out in the virtual bucket until one decides to empty the bucket e.g. take email for example. The communication channel it reaches a person is the Internet and the virtual bucket in this case is ones personal mailbox. The information within the email stays in the virtual bucket (mailbox in that case) as long as one finally decides to read the email and then subsequently takes this information just received via email and moves it out of the bucket into the GTD system.

This paragraph is just of interest for GNU Emacs folks i.e. normal folks can skip it... At this point I would like to make a note on how elegant it is the way I handle the transition/interlinking from information in the virtual bucket further on into the GTD system. I use Annotations. What the all-in-one approach (all within Emacs i.e. email, chatting, PIM, etc.) provides me with is exactly this

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
      — Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

As we can see in the image above, the filling rate of the virtual bucket varies heavily and one cannot influence it. The emptying rate on the other hand is fully controllable by a person and thus it mostly becomes a steady flow out of the virtual bucket into the GTD system.

The one thing GTD does insist on is the importance of emptying the virtual bucket regularly. Ideally, the bucket is empty every evening and then starts filling the next day again and so on. Please note, that an empty virtual bucket does not mean a person accomplished all tasks, commitments etc. that filled the bucket. It just means one has processed the information that streamed into the virtual bucket. Processing then means what I explain below using the image to picture it.

Collecting and Input Processing - Pictured

The image text, again, is in German but it should be no big deal to translate it. The whole purpose of collecting and input processing information is, that any information (e.g. task, commitment, notes etc.) is put in the right place within our GTD system.

Collecting

We start at the very top with stuff (Zeug). This stuff is any kind of information that flows into the virtual bucket (Eingangskorb) below. As already mentioned above (leaky bucket example), the bucket fill rate cannot be controlled but the emptying rate can.

Processing

Processing means to take things out of the bucket and decide what do with them respectively where to place them within the GTD system. This is done based on certain rules which are:

Before we start taking a detailed look at the image I want to tell you about three basic rules about GTD when it comes to processing the input that the virtual bucket got so far:

• We start at the top i.e. with stuff in the virtual bucket.
• We pick one element at a time and process it until done then we pick the next one and so forth. Never ever do we pick more than one at the same time or put one on hold and start with another one.
• Once we picked an element from the virtual bucket we really process it i.e. it is prohibited to put it back in the virtual bucket once it was picked. If you feel the need to put it back and start with another one then you are already screwing things up. Process it whatever it is and do not put it back in the virtual bucket!

1. The image shows, that right after the virtual bucket comes the What is it? (Was ist es?). Of course, we need to know what we are dealing with i.e. we need to understand the meaning of the information we just took out of the virtual bucket. If so, we can move on, if not, we need to clarify on that immediately but not put it back into the bucket!
2. Then after we know with what we are dealing with comes the next step. Is it possible to carry out actions on the matter? (Kann man etwas unternehmen?). Depending if the answer is Yes (Ja) list item 3 or No (Nein) list item 4 we chose what to do next.
3. In case there is nothing we can do about the matter, we are left with three choices.
   • We throw it away (Muell). That is actually great since it just is not only of the radar but also out of ones mind and thus will not bother us ever again.
   • We mark it as maybe or sometime in the future (Vielleicht/Irgendwann). With my implementation of the GTD principle, that means I simply assign it a low priority from the beginning so it is not of the radar but out of my mind and thus does not bother me anymore. However, I may come to it again sometime in the future when I accomplished all other tasks that were given a higher priority.
   • We put it into our archive so we can access it if ever needed again (Referenzmaterial). I handle this pretty much like the one above i.e. assign it a priority even lower than all the elements in the above group (maybe or sometimes in the future). This way it is still on my radar and instantly accessible if needed but also out of my mind and thus it does not bother me anymore.
4. If on the other hand, we can do something about it, we have two choices depending on the information. The question we ask at this point is, can it be done in a single step or does it take a whole series of actions? This list item is now going to be discussed in detail since it is the one that will fit in most cases.

One step - general considerations

If some action is possible to accomplish it in just one step (1 Schritt) then we are about to ask ourselves What is the next step? (Was ist der naechste Schritt?).

One step - possible in less than 5 minutes

If it turns out the next step can be done swiftly say within the next 2-5 minutes (weniger als 2 Minuten noetig) then one should go ahead and accomplish it instantaneously. For example, I sometimes handle chats or emails like this — get to it, process it and be done with it. To match with the image, we are moving downwards the left side Yes (Ja) directly to Take care off (Erledigen). Great! We at this point we have not just one element less in the virtual bucket and out of or mind but also out of our GTD system since it is done.

One step - takes more than 5 minutes

In this case one is left with two choices

1. Delegate (Delegieren)the action to someone else who can handle it as well/better and wait until you receive a statement that it is done. If it is done go and mark it as done within the GTD system.
2. One takes care of it himself but postpones (Verschieben) the task.
   • The task can be scheduled at a specific time and date in the diary (Terminkalender) or
   • postponed to an unspecified date because it requires some more planning and/or belongs to some context. Either ways, it is move to one of the context lists and becomes and additional task which belongs to this context. It will then get picked up sometime in the future. The important thing again is, we have taken it out of the virtual bucket and sorted it where it belongs to so it is not of the radar but out of our mind since we put it into our trusted GTD system.

More than one step necessary

This is the typical thing with projects and such things. Imagine your boss sends an email to you and asks you to do XY. After you fired up your email application (MUA (Mail User Agent)) you have the information. You then take it out of the virtual bucket simply by knowing what it is and acknowledging that something can be done about the matter. Since you know it is not a single step but a whole series of steps you end up at the leftmost branch shown in the image above.

In the left outermost branch one deals with planning of projects i.e. things that involve a lot more than just a single step. The first box Projects (Projekte)is about the big picture (see levels of focus further down). The second box below is about making plans for projects.

We can see that there is a blue dotted line that points to What is the next step? (Was ist der naechste Schritt?). We already discussed that above — its part of the One step branch. That is exactly how/where we link back into the One step since every project can be fractured into single step tasks.

Organize

After we managed to get from phase 1 and 2 to phase 3 we are now dealing with how to organize all the data within our GTD system.

At this point we do not need to care anymore about how to collect (phase 1) and input process (phase 2) things. We are also not focusing on planning, reviewing (phase 4) or getting to work with things (phase 5) stored in our GTD system.

The only thing we care at this point is organizing/reorganizing things i.e. moving data around and assign it to certain context lists or look vigorously if the current state makes sense or if we have to reorganize tasks, rewrite notes or make changes to our schedule because the newly added appointment overlaps with some already existing appointment. Just to make it clear... This phase is not about planning!

The big difference between planning and this phase is, that during planning, one focuses/thinks on/about things outside the GTD system i.e. the real world which is about projects, commitments, meetings, family affairs, traveling etc. Organizing/reorganizing on the other hand is a merely non-complex (but very important) work where a person thinks and acts with focus on already existing GTD data only i.e. one does not care about projects and such stuff but he checks if the just added appointment overlaps with an existing one or if the newly added task already exists or if the new commitment creates a few new tasks that may actually justify it to create a new context list and move the just added task plus some similar which are already stored onto the newly created context list. Maybe some old context list gets superfluous because of that and so it can be deleted...

As can be seen, phase 3 (Organizing/Reorganizing) is more or less housekeeping and focusing on keeping already existing data in the GTD system up-to-date and in the right place at the right time.

As the image shows, Organizing/Reorganizing (phase 3) has two main categories:

• Base Categories (Grundkategorien). In essence, that is the whole data stored within the GTD system i.e. all tasks, commitments, notes, etc. (more on that further down).
• Check Lists (Checklisten) are lists or respectively procedures how to keep control about all the data in the GTD system. For example a person might have a list(s) with list items which are used to check against every task, note, commitment etc. This items can be pretty much everything
  • Checks if a task or commitment is morally all right
  • Check if it overlaps with another appointment
  • Check for potential flaws
  • Check if it does not cause environmental damage
  • Check if a task/commitment/etc. is within ones area of accountability
  • Check if a note is already stored within the GTD system
  • A check list, with list items in order to do cyclic checks e.g. every week. This one is in fact part of phase 4 (Review) as well.
  • etc.

Base Categories

GTD describes a suggested set of lists which can be used to keep track of items awaiting attention. Of course, those are the lists that we were also talking about phase 2. A selection of them are now discussed here (the image shows more):

• Calendar/Diary (Terminkalender) is important for keeping track of appointments, commitments etc. However, GTD specifically recommends that the calendar be reserved for what it terms the hard landscape i.e. things which absolutely have to be done by a particular deadline, or meetings and appointments which are fixed in time and place. To-do items should be reserved for the next action lists.
• Next actions - If we take a look at the image, those are the ones preceded by an @ e.g. make a call (Anfrufen). For every item requiring ones attention, one has to decide what is the next action that he can physically take on. For example, if the item is Write project report, the next action might be Email Fred for meeting minutes, or Call Jim to ask about report requirements, or something similar. Though there may be many steps and actions required to complete the item, there will always be something that needs to be done first, and this should be recorded in the next actions (Naechste Schritte) list. Preferably, these are organized by the context in which they can be done, such as in the office, by the phone, or at the store.
• Projects (Projektliste) - every open loop in ones life or work which requires more than one physical action to achieve becomes a project. These are tracked and periodically reviewed to make sure that every project has a next action associated with it and can thus be moved forward. No need to explain more since we already had that above.
• Waiting for (Warten auf) - when we have delegated an action to someone else or when we are waiting for some external event before we can move a project forward, this must be tracked in our system and periodically checked to see if the action is due and a reminder needs to be sent or if it is done so we can mark it as done. We also had that already above...
• Someday/Maybe (Vielleicht/Irgendwann) - things that we want to do at some point, but not right now. Examples might be learn Chinese, or take diving holiday. We also discussed that above...

Review

The lists of actions and reminders will be of little use if one does not review them on a regular (I do it every morning — this way, I am refocused and never get lost or confused). Given the time, energy and resources that one has at that particular moment, he should decide what is the most important thing to be doing right now, and get to work with it until done.

If someone is inclined to procrastinate, he may end up always doing the easy tasks and avoiding the difficult ones. To solve this, he can decide to do the actions of the list one by one, following their order, just like one processes things when he empties the virtual bucket (remember the three basic rules of phase 2).

If we take a look at the image of the workflow model, we can see that phase 4, Reviewing (Durchsehen) is exactly about all the afore mentioned. Although it is in German, one should have no problem translating things. Note the blue dotted line from Weekly review (Wochenueberblick) to phase 4. This list is one or maybe just the only check list somebody has. It is then used as a guide during a cyclic review e.g. weekly review.

It might be of great help, if one considers the levels of focus when he envisions/creates/adapts his check lists. The Levels of Focus approach is where I started with the whole GTD approach and which is my ultimate point of reference in order to never get lost in the mundane (that happens to most folks — I think that is one out of a few things which makes the difference between winners and losers).

It is so utterly important to not get lost but to stay on track otherwise you die sometime without having accomplished your life goals. To me, that seems to be one of the most awful things I can imagine — looking back and having to acknowledge that I did not manage to realize a single one of my life goals when I am about to die at sometime.

Phase 4 is utterly important to the GTD approach as a whole. At least weekly, the discipline of GTD requires that one reviews all outstanding actions, projects and waiting-for-items, making sure that any new tasks or forthcoming events are entered into the GTD system, and that everything is up-to-date. It might happen that one goes from phase 4 back to phase 3 or even to phase 1 entering a new element if it is needed. That is perfectly fine since that is what reviewing is all about — getting things done and get perspective and control over ones life.

Do

Any organizational system is no good if one spends all his time organizing tasks instead of actually doing them! GTD's contention is that if one can make it simple, easy, and fun to take the actions that need to done, one will be less inclined to procrastinate or become overwhelmed with too many open loops.

The image shows us three main categories

1. Criteria (Kriterien)
2. Type of work (Arbeitsweise)
3. Levels of Focus (Leitebenen)

Number 1, the criteria, are a very pragmatical thing. What kind of next action we do is determined by some context (note the blue dotted line), the currently available time, currently available resources e.g. people and last but not least the priority assigned to the action.

Number 2 (Type of work) is pretty straight forward.

• There can be work to do that is predetermined (vorbestimmt) e.g. one gets email from his superior which tells how to do, XY until AB. There is no choice here about how to do it, when or what to do here.
• The second type is work in our GTD system that is not predetermined but self-determined (selbstbestimmt) e.g. if we pick a random task so we can decide how to, when to do it and what to do about it.
• Currently accruing (gerade anfallende) work is entirely determined by a person itself so one has to deal and manage it for himself — actually that happens mostly intuitively so folks simply do that kind of work without the need to think a lot about it. For example if Tanja is in the middle of her weekend I bake a yummy cake... and see runs out of milk, she surely does not ruminate a lot about what to do. She simply goes and gets her milk to continue...

Number 3 (Levels of Focus) is explained in detail below.

Miscellaneous

The image also shows a sixth phase although GTD does not really mention it. However, this phase, as the image shows it, functions in various ways.

First it sort of summarized what one gets by using GTD (Getting Things Done):

• Clear out ones mind (Weg zum wasserklaren Geist) which is the result of putting things out of ones mind into the GTD system (see Abstract above) so one can care about accomplishing tasks rather then keeping track on them which results in
• Getting a grip on projects (Projekte in den Griff bekommen)

Second it makes a note on how to deal with ones archive by telling us we should

• Have a simple (einfach) system i.e. no complex thing
• It should be in range (Reichweite) so we can quickly access it i.e. if we had to bounce between the third floor where we have our office and the basement where we have the archive that is not what it should be. I have my archive in my computer(s) since I only have digital data to that is absolutely in range and things are always just a few keystrokes away. Of course I have an automatized backup system that clones any bit on several machines located all over the globe so chances I suffer data loss are pretty much zero — well, in case an asteroid hits us... ;-]
• Should take less than 60s to put things into the archive respectively same for information retrieval. Whatever one uses for his archive, old-school paper solutions or digital solutions as I do, it is absolutely crucial it takes not longer than ~60 seconds otherwise folks tend to forget what they are actually looking for or need to put their boss on hold for 20 minutes until... yeah!

The third thing is all about planning (Natuerliche Plannung) which I cover in more detail below. As we remember, planning is one out of three major models of the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle.

Levels of Focus

While the workflow part is associated with the control part, this one is all about perspective. To better understand why we are talking about levels think of a bird.

At first, the bird might sit on a branch on top of a tree (level 6) so he is able to see what is going on close to him but unable to see what is going on at a distance far away from him. The bird then decides to get into the air, climb higher in order to see what is going on further away (level 5). By doing so, he can see further with any meters he ascends but he also loses the detailed view he had before while still sitting on the branch. If we think this into the future, then it is so, that the higher the bird ascends, the less details he is able to see but on the other hand he is then able to spot things over a far distance (level 1).

The Levels of Focus are:

1. Life goals
2. Five year vision
3. Yearly goals
4. Upcoming projects respectively areas of responsibility (e.g. within next 30 days; see below)
5. Current projects (e.g. within next 7 days)
6. Current actions (e.g. today)

   

Like the bird, humans can ascend and descent but unlike a bird, humans can use their imagination to do so. Humans have long-term goals (level 1 and maybe 2), those are the ones that can only be seen when we fly as high as we can. If we do so, we can spot just a few at a far distance and we know they will be there until we die at some point.

While flying as high as we can, we are unable to spot things on the ground i.e. daily tasks and such but that all right since it is supposed to be like that — flying high, spotting the few huge things far away but not all the many tiny things on the ground.

As we descent downwards to ground we can more and more spot mid to short-term stuff but we loose sight on our life goals. When we finally land, we can see things in detail (daily tasks and the like) but we also know that what we see is rapidly changing from day to day.

I simply start at the top level (level 1, the highest altitude the bird can climb to i.e.life goals) and then any level below the current one gets his input from the level above. Finally one ends up at the lowest level (bird sitting on the branch) where he deals with daily commitments, tasks and such.

The fact that I am used to do it like the little bird makes it really easy. I have ~3 life goals and so the next lower level (5 year visions) has around ~8 things I care about. When I finally land on the branch I deal with tens of tiny things. I do not need to know about all this tiny stuff because all falls into place when I start with my life goals and then move down (from level 1 to level 6) to all my daily actions.

Please note, that adding a time frame to level 4-6 from above is my current individual fit i.e. for others level 6 might not be at daily focus but maybe hourly, weekly etc. Even I might adapt this some time in the future if it fits my life any better at this time in the future ...

It might then be that level 4 corresponds to a 90 days window, level 5 to a 30 days window and maybe level 6 to an hourly window. Ultimately, this only shows how flexible GTD (Getting Things Done) really is...

Planning

The GTD principle also says that the first two major models (the workflow process and the levels of focus) are sufficient most of the time to gain control and perspective on the majority of tasks. However, there are some cases in which more involved planning and thinking are necessary. This leads to the third major model, which is the planning method (the one we discus with the current section).

While the workflow model has a vertical focus/view on doing individual tasks respectively looking at particular contexts, the planning method has a horizontal focus/view on planning projects and thinking across topics, contexts and levels of focus at once. The planning model consists of 5 stages which are:

1. Defining the purpose (Zweck und Grundsaetze festlegen)
2. Envisioning the outcome (Ergebnis geistig vorwegnehmen)
3. Brainstorming (Ideensammlung)
4. Organizing (Organisieren)
5. Identifying next actions (Naechste Schritte bestimmen)

The psychology of GTD is based on making it easy to store, track and retrieve all the information related to the things one needs to get done.

GTD suggests that many of the mental blocks we encounter in regard to doing certain activities are caused by insufficient front-end planning (i.e. for any project we need to clarify what is to be achieved and what specific actions are needed to achieve it — most people just begin without ever doing this which is wrong since they loose control and perspective as time goes on).

GTD says, that it is most practical, to do this thinking in advance, generating a series of actions which we can later undertake without any further planning — at the beginning of a project, the goals need be clear otherwise we loose control and/or perspective.

GTD also contends that our mental reminder system is rather inefficient and seldom reminds us of what we need to do at the time and place that we can do it. Consequently, the next actions stored by context in the system that one uses to implement GTD acts as an external support which ensures that we are presented with the right reminders at the right time.

Textual Image Description: On purpose, I have decided to not provide a textual description for the image below although I did for the two others i.e. major model workflow and phase 3 (Collecting and Input Processing) of the workflow major model.

The reasons therefore is that I think, when a reader gets to this section, not for the first time but when he has already decided to make his work-life more efficient by using GTD, he should be able to figure it out for himself. It is then also a good training and a chance to practice the first two models since those need to be fully understood in order to understand major model three (planning).

Second to that, as I mentioned, while the first two major models (workflow process and the levels of focus) might be sufficient in most cases the third major model (planning) might often not be necessary to be considered. In other words, if one does not have to deal with projects and the like, he might probably not need it at all. I am dealing with projects all the time so major model three (planning) is absolutely vital for me — it works great after you get used to it!

It takes Time to understand GTD

Anybody should take a look at the images on this page and go over it several times until he can reproduce all steps of GTD in his mind. The next step would then be to have the images around to have a glance at them while starting to organize oneself the GTD way.

After a while ~3 months or so it should already feel pretty natural and one should be able to tell the difference from what it was before in comparison to the current style of work-life organizing himself. I am pretty sure 8 out of 10 folks will notice significant improvements going the GTD (Getting Things Done) way.

The rest had probably started out to fast without carefully reading and understanding what the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle is and how it works. As I said, before someone starts dealing with some sort of system (e.g. planner-mode and org-mode which I use for my implementation of GTD) in order to implement the GTD principle into his life, he needs to understand the GTD principle... that may easily take two weeks or so.

GTD Implementation

I was already using planner-mode before I read about GTD (Getting Things Done). I then figured, that planner-mode allows to organize myself based on the GTD principle pretty much out of the box. However, at that point I still knew little about GTD and so I started to read and create a few test cases to proof my assumptions about how I might use my PIM (Personal Information Manager) system to fully go GTD.

I decided, that I first needed to know the capabilities of planner-mode a lot better so I spend ~2 weeks with planner — reading the whole manual and playing around. Next I had to know GTD much better... took my about 1 month to investigate and study GTD and how it might play out for me.

After ~6 weeks I was convinced that using planner-mode in GTD style would have (huge) positive impact for my life so I started to dive into it with the clear goal in mind to have a GTD driven PIM system which is mostly planner-mode powered when I am done.

What can I say... I did it and it actually feels great. I was right. It had/has positive impact in my life. I fact, the more I practice the GTD thing the better it gets. I work more efficient than before, faster than before and can judge things a lot better. I even spot potential problems before they actually become real problems and last but not least my whole environment benefits since I publish all my PIM data to the net in real-time (!).

Yay, riding my planner-mode driven PIM (Personal Information Manager) system in GTD (Getting Things Done) style is great!

How to develop your individual GTD Style

This is about how to identify your personal, bespoke tailored, GTD setup. The outcome should be that one knows which contexts he is going to define in order to categorize tasks,

Start with a piece of paper and a pen. Do not hurry i.e. take your time even if it takes a month. The actual work of sketching a personal GTD style does not take that long (maybe 2 hours or so). It is the fact that one probably changes and adjusts things a dozen times until it is done.

It also does not matter how it is done i.e. one person may start drawing his ideas, using boxes and arrows and such, another one might just write things down and a third one might use a combined approach.

Below is a more or less ordered brain dump i.e. the reader can get a notion how I did the brainstorming to develop my individual GTD style. It really is/was brainstorming which can be seen on the lack of focus on grammar, spelling etc.... but then, that is how brainstorming is supposed to be right!? I simply did it here. Probably most other folks might use a pen and a piece of paper instead... GNU Emacs feels just like that to me ;-]

Important at this point is that one has already a good understanding of both,

• the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle and
• the technology he wants to use to implement GTD (Planner in my case)

otherwise he will fail and the outcome will be distracting not just to himself but also to others that might otherwise benefit from his GTD approach... as I said, better take your time instead of hurry through the process — it will not work anyway.

The listing below takes into account that I am using Planner to implement the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle...

Things to become certain about

• Skim over the planner manual again
• Figure how to interlink between BBDB, Gnus... and planner; Answer: see Annotations.
  • Figure what can be linked to besides Gnus and BBDB; Answer: take a look at planner-annotation-functions respectively take a look at Annotations.
    • gnus (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Gnus")
    • BBDB and ERC (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Contacts and Conversations")

Plan/Day Page Templates

• Create day pages and plan pages templates
  • Integrate notes <notes> summary (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)<notes>")
    • FIXME: planner-delete-section-text in planner.el deletes the former inserted Notes Index:\n<notes>\n from planner-day-page-template respectively planner-plan-page-template
      • Well, I simply put them in a separate Category called Index of Note Headlines... I guess I will stick to the current solution (workaround) since it is purely a matter of taste... no time to hack around it now anyway
  • Day pages
    • (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Customizing Your Day Pages")
    • integrate prev/next day links into day page template also put schedule before tasks and notes
      • FIXME: the last day pages Next Day link causes a warning since there is no next day
  • Plan/Project pages
    • Customize plan page template to reflect the natural planing method

Plan respectively Context Pages/Lists

• Do not create context (also known as project respectively plan) lists/pages like work or leisure time since projects might go across several of them. Next to real project lists/pages like e.g. aep (short for AEP (Autonomous Expedition Platform)) create also pages like email or phone and use planner-multi to put tasks on e.g. aep and email if you have to write email with regards to aep (that takes into account what GTD tells about creating context lists based on resources to carry out some task e.g. phone context list for phone calls).
  • Figure a long-term context page solution. Does it have to be a tree structure? How far can I go by structuring things on pages i.e. allout-mode style. What about using just one huge page as org-mode does?
    • Answer: I decided to not just use one page with many sections but several plan pages.
  • Possible plan pages are:
    • Per resource e.g. phone, email, car
      • Better create a project page called communication and add things like phone, email, etc. as sections
    • Per place e.g. office, home, Italy, Asia, etc.
    • Per long-term goal e.g. house if you are about to build a house,
    • Per entity e.g. person, company, organization etc.
    • Per programming language
    • Use decent formatting e.g. start per resource pages with resource.phone
  • Maybe also context pages for (see below) and then add/delete task on these pages with planner multi
    • delegated tasks (yeah, that is vital so I can easily keep track of work I delegated; I either put it on this context/plan with planner-multi as well when I create tasks or when it turns out a task is already in the PIM system I can easily use planner-multi-task-xref to copy it to the delegated tasks page as well. Then, when I finally get the info that the person I delegated the task to finished it, I mark it as done. Great! I love this... all so smooth and lovely.
    • waiting for accomplishment (not needed, see item above)
    • in progress (Not needed. With Planner, I simply change the status of tasks on the fly.)
  • adapt planner-trunk-rule-list (I decided to start with the rarest events i.e. plan pages at the top so those match first... just check out my .emacs.)

Tagging Tasks

• I decided to not have project pages like for example aep but to tag every task with the project he belongs to. That is not the same as the context pages/lists but this way, I get a lot more flexibility since as long as I stick to a unique code per project e.g. AEP: for the AEP (Autonomous Expedition Platform) things are unique across several context pages since I use planner multi.
  • It is then possible (maybe/probably I need to hack it into Planner) to dynamically show all tasks belonging to a specific project e.g. all tasks belonging to AEP by simply grepping through the project/day pages. In fact, I am planning to implement into planner-mode what org-mode already provides with agenda views (those are on demand, dynamically created views on the PIM data).
  • The tag codes are:
    • WP: for Web Platform also known as Website
    • AEP: for AEP (Autonomous Expedition Platform)
    • ELISP: for elisp stuff respectively <prog_language>: for programming language
    • MUSE: for Muse (the world-class wiki add-on package for GNU Emacs)
    • PLANNER: for Planner i.e. GNU Emacs planner-mode (the first-class PIM (Personal Information Manager) software running atop Planner i.e. a PIM system add-on to GNU Emacs.
    • GNUS: for Gnus
    • BSG: Battlestar Galactica
    • DT: Doctoral Thesis
    • DEBIAN: Guess what?!
    • EMACS: Guess what the 2nd?!
    • etc.

This is how a task would look like when tagged:
#B_ AEP: This is a task belonging to the AEP (Autonomous Expedition Platform) project. {{Rank: 5.00 - I=5 U=5}} {{Tasks:168}}

Task priority

• Assign Importance and Urgency based on the Eisenhower Method. Planner will then automatically create a priority (A, B or C) which reflects the ABC Method.

Check Lists

• What do I do about check lists?
  • how to implement them (see below)
  • what content should they have respectively what should I check my PIM data for on a regular (see below)
• Why not having a plan page where all tasks go no matter what context they are assigned with? Just add a page name to planner-multi-copy-tasks-to-page. More information on that matter at (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Multiple Projects").
  • That is a bad idea... for the why see below.
• Answer: I finally figured that it is of course logical to have tasks distributed with planner-multi to the Levels of Focus context pages as well. This way I got a check list for every level of focus which I can then visit on a regular and do it like the little bird i.e. get an overview and check if I am on track with a particular LOF (Levels of Focus). That means that every task I add to my PIM data ends up on one (or more) plan pages plus one of the level of focus pages as well i.e. any task added to the PIM data with planner-multi is added to a LOF (Levels of Focus) plan page (just one, not two or more). This guarantees that any task ever added shows up on one of the LOF plan pages (which I simply handle as my check list pages) it belongs to. It does not work for me to use planner-multi-copy-tasks-to-page to add any task to a particular plan page e.g. TaskPool all the time since I would not get a distinction into different LOF (Levels of Focus). Thus I do it manually whenever I add a task to the PIM system... it is just a matter of tab-completion anyway (takes me 0.4 sec) ;-]

Getting to grips with the GTD Implementation

• Start completely over with PIM (Personal Information Manager) system; migrate data to new PIM setup
  • Use planner-multi tasks
    • Change all the keybindings for task creation etc.
  • Take care of meta data files
    • global ID i.e. planner-id.el
    • cyclic tasks i.e. planner-cyclic.el
    • planner-registry.el

WRITEME

Still pending:

Random nice-to-have stuff i.e. scheduled to some point in the Future

• What about (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)RSS Publication")?
  • What is better rss or rdf?
• What about (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Authz Access Restriction")?
• What about iCal support (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)iCal Task Publication")?
• Do I need (Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Keeping Track of Time")?

The Technology used to implement GTD

You find all you need to know at the beginning of this page i.e. look out for the statement about Scheduling and self-management System.

How I use Planner...

How I use Planner to comply to the GTD principle and my individual needs...

This section is for those who would like to know how to go GTD with Planner i.e. how to use Planner in order to create a PIM (Personal Information Manager) environment that complies to the GTD principle. This section is not intended for folks

• Who just want to access (view) my to-the-net-published schedule e.g. coworkers, family, friends etc. Those folks should go here in order to gain information about how to read my schedule.
• Who just want to know about the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle since this section is about how to use a specific technology to implement the GTD principle i.e. it is not about the GTD principle. The reader who just wants to know about the GTD principle might be interested in all parts of this page except for this section.

For my general setup, the reader who wants to build something akin to my setup should take a look at my .emacs since I keep all my GNU Emacs related customization there i.e. also all Planner customization can be found there.

Different Types of Lists/Pages

There are a bunch of names for list and pages, either mentioned by Planner or GTD itself. This subsection will now clarify on them.

One cosmetic difference the alerted reader might spot pretty early is that Planner talks about pages whereas GTD (Getting Things Done) talks about lists. In the end, those terms determine the same thing. Generally, with the current page and any other whatsoever page on my website related to my schedule the terms list and page are interchangeable.

Planner

Knows day and plan pages. Day pages carry task and notes like information specific to a particular point in time. Although they are named day pages, one can also schedule task and notes like appointments onto day pages e.g. meet Alice at 14:30 in the office. Plan pages on the other hand carry task and notes like information that is specific to a project rather than a specific point in time. For more information on the matter please go here and return when done with reading there.

GTD

Talks about lists (context lists, check lists, etc.) rather than pages but as I already said — those terms are synonymous. Anybody who wants to do his life-work planning the GTD way needs to figure a way what he is going to use for all the lists GTD mentions (see above). As I said, the simplest solution might be a pen and some pieces of paper. There are numerous ways how to do planning the GTD way. I have chosen to use Planner instead of a pen and some sheets of paper or something else.

So, whatever technology one chooses, he must find a way to use it in way so he can comply to the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle.

I use plan pages for all types of GTD lists. Day pages are good to have but are not really needed the way I work and in fact I rarely use them. However, I am glad I have them around when needed. However, day pages are a substantial part to work the GTD way — it is just that 80+% of my tasks are not specific to a particular point in time i.e. I am mostly involved in long-term projects where it is simply impossible to determine a specific accomplishment date. I am glad if we make it to the estimated quarter.

Threefold Taxonomy or how to track Information in the PIM System

Like with most things in life, there is not just that kind of information with some particular things but also within the relation between those things. For example, take two books, one can read them and finally he has not just only the knowledge from each of them but a lot more — he is able to set the knowledge he gained from both into relation and actually gained more knowledge by thinking about the relation.

Actually, this is how knowledge gets born — we build it upon already existing pieces of knowledge by critically comparing yet existing knowledge — it is all about the relation between yet existing stuff that creates something new.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
      — Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

To get a better notion of the matter I thought it might be a good idea to show folks what scientist call an undirected graph in a way so anybody can understand it — I decided to use social networks as the example.

Anybody is part of one or more social networks. Those networks consist of two major parts. The individuals and the relations between them. So, what in the world has all that to do with undirected graphs?

Any social network can be pictured as undirected graph. If we take a look at the following undirected graph we can see individuals and edges which connect the individuals. The edges are exactly what I was talking about before i.e. the edges provide information about the relation between distinct parts (humans in this case but that could be anything e.g. books).

The following undirected graph pictures the relations between characters of the L Word, a television drama series on Showtime that portrays the lives, loves and learnings of a group of lesbian and bisexual women and their friends, family and lovers in Los Angeles. Folks should not get confused about the name The Chart — whatever it is called, it is a undirected graph... The Chart just sounds better and is more usable for the masses ;-]

A small portion of The Chart, covering some of the relationships established between the most important characters along the series during seasons 1 through 4. Pink signifies main female characters, blue signifies main male characters, purple and green minor characters featured in the series (female and male respectively), and gray signifies characters that are only alluded to.

So, why I am talking about all this graph and social network stuff? What has it to do with GTD, Planner and my schedule?

Well, I am now going to explain about how I organize the data within my PIM system and therefore it is necessary that the reader has a basic understanding of undirected graphs since that is exactly one way, next to the more conservative approaches, in which I organize my PIM (Personal Information Manager) data with Planner.

Taxonomy Style

Every task and any note that goes into my PIM system not just adds the information it carries to yet existing data in the PIM system but also additional information — I sort respectively tag any task and note so I end up with additional information stored in the relations between all tasks and notes. That is exactly the thing with graphs I was talking about above...

The great thing about Planner is, that although my approach or better said the GTD approach with Planner is still not common practice, I did not have to edit/change/add to yet existing Planner source code. Because of the fact that Planner is already surprisingly GTD fit, I can use the taxonomy I felt was best not just for my individual GTD style but for using Planner the GTD way in general. The way I look at all the data within my PIM system is from three different angles/perspectives which are

Vertical - Plan Pages

As I explain it in detail further down, all context pages I have are plan pages (as we already know from above). All information on a particular plan page is somehow related e.g. the page with the file name place.home.muse will contain information that is specific to a certain place (at home in this case).

So, whenever I look at a particular context page I call this a vertical view since it goes from top to bottom of a particular context/project but does not look aside to other contexts — it is just about one distinct context/project.

The way it is implemented with Planner works out of the box respectively it is the way Planner naturally works. Planner was designed with the notion of context/plan/project pages and day pages in mind. So, there was nothing for me do here since Planner already totally rocks in this regard.

Horizontal - Tags for Notes and Tasks

This is just another view onto my PIM data. As we already know, a vertical view looks at all the information (tasks and/or notes) with some particular context/project. The difference between this one (Horizontal View) and the Vertical View is that a horizontal view looks across contexts but does not go necessarily from top to bottom with any context i.e. it just looks at the information needed.

For example, if we have several context pages e.g. travel.before, place.home and lof.6 a horizontal view might look at all three of them at once. By doing so we might just look at all the tasks related to some particular event.

The way this is technically implemented is with tags. Tags are additional information that can be added to tasks and notes — we call this kind of information meta information also known as meta data. Below is a screenshot I just took from my desktop, showing GNU Emacs with an open context page in the window to the left. As can be seen, notes and tasks are tagged e.g. WP:, DT:, PLANNER:, DEBIAN: etc. are the tags to notes respectively tasks — this tags are meta information in addition to the actual information (tasks and notes). By the way, I have more information about the meaning of this kind of information available (it is not part of this page).

As I said before, adding, renaming, deleting tags is absolutely no problem with current Planner since the tags are simply part of the task/note description and we have a bunch of commands to alter it e.g. planner-multi-edit-task-description.

However, what is still missing since no one but me has gone so far until now is the processing and evaluation of tags e.g. creating some overview or some statistical data or whatnot based on tag information within the PIM system. No problem. Planner is free software so we will add this functionality — the important thing is that I have already started to tag my PIM information beginning with the first task/note I have added even if I am not able to use it as of now (November 2007).

However, adding some magic to Planner to make usage of the meta information is going to be the easy part — it would be a problem the other way around i.e. having the functionality but no tags. I guess I/we will start adding this processing functionality in mid 2009 or so — no time until then ;-]

Time - Day Pages

This is the third view I use and has been integral part of Planner ever since — same as with plan pages. I already mentioned day pages above. I also have two screenshots available on my website to in order to easy understanding.

Context Lists/Pages

At first I want to state that the terms plan page, context page or project page are synonyms i.e. those are three different names for the same thing. Maybe it is a good idea at this point to quickly skim over the introduction once more in order to restore the big picture of GTD (Getting Things Done) again since it makes a statement about context pages and how the fit into the GTD principle.

As we have seen above, the GTD principle demands us to have context lists in order to group information (notes, tasks) that is related to each another.

The alerted reader might remember the things I wrote above in the brainstorming part where I developed my own individual implementation to the GTD approach. I chose the context pages based on pragmatic considerations as well as my past experience with Planner and the knowledge about the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle.

The Implementation of Context Lists with Planner

Below is a list of all context pages I have in place so far (October 2007). This list also contains the check lists as demanded by GTD. However, since check lists (lines 21 to 26) have their own section, I am going to just discuss the non-check list context pages here (lines 1 to 20).

Before I start explaining the pages, one will find any of the currently available context pages on the index page. As time goes by, I may make changes to the current setup which can be seen below i.e. I may add/delete pages or simply rename some of them.

    FILENAME                      PAGE TITLE
    -----------------             --------------------
 1  delegated.muse                Delegated Tasks
 2  travel.before.muse            Before Travelling
 3  travel.during.muse            During Travelling
 4  travel.after.muse             After Travelling
 5  communicate.video.muse        Video Communication
 6  communicate.audio.muse        Audio Communication
 7  communicate.text.muse         Text Communication
 8  errands.muse                  Errands

Line 1 is the page where I am going to put all tasks that I have delegated to some other entity i.e. another person, company, etc. Lines 2 to 3 cover traveling. Those pages will have all information (tasks and/or notes) dropped onto them depending on the point in time e.g. a task about planning some journey will go on travel.before whereas a note taken while I am still on a journey will go on travel.during next to maybe resource.entertainment and of course one of the LOF (Levels of Focus) pages e.g. lof.5 if it is about a current project or it is expected to be done within the specific time frame for LOF 5.

Lines 5 to 7 are about communication. The distinction is made by the type of communication used. If I have to send email to somebody, I would put the task onto communication.text. If I had so schedule a video-conference, I would put the task onto communication.video and if I had a good idea during a VoIP (Voice over IP) or phone call I would put a note onto communication.audio next to the LOF page and maybe some other context pages that carry information related to the task/note that I currently deal with.

Line 8 is about errands. All things I need to get on a regular in order to master the mundane or things I need to get just once will go onto this page so I can put it there when I sense a demand/desire and be able to look up the information afterwards when I am in the position to actually get the stuff I put on the page before. Otherwise I simply fail to remember all those trivial stuff...

 9  entity.people.muse            Entity - People
10  entity.company.muse           Entity - Company
11  entity.organization.muse      Entity - Organization
12  place.otg.muse                Place - On-the-Go
13  place.home.muse               Place - At Home
14  place.office.muse             Place - At the Office
15  sk.science.muse               Skills and Knowledge - Science and Research
16  sk.it.muse                    Skills and Knowledge - IT (Information Technology)
17  sk.business.muse              Skills and Knowledge - Business (non-tech stuff)
18  sk.social.muse                Skills and Knowledge - Social Skills

Lines 9 to 11 are about those pages used to cover all sorts of task and notes like information about some entities I deal with. Those entities may be individuals, companies or organizations. I may add some more if needed (not sure yet).

Lines 12 to 14 are context pages where all information that is somehow specific to some place will go. For example, if I wanted to look up some information within the GNU Emacs manual where there is no urgent need but I just want to read some parts again, I might schedule the task to a LOF and the place.otg (otg - short for On-the-Go) page so I can pick it up whenever I sit on a plane next time or go from London to Paris by train.

If on the other hand I wanted to take a note that is specific to the office environment, then I would drop it onto place.office next to one of the LOF (Levels of Focus) pages and maybe some other context pages.

Lines 15 and 18 are about skills and knowledge specific to some particular domain e.g. sk.it for skills and knowledge towards IT (Information Technology). Tasks and/or notes like information that match that specification will go onto sk.it next to one of the LOF pages and maybe some other context pages as well if the note or task also fits into the context of those context page(s). Line 18 is about social skill i.e. about things useful to further extend my social network respectively my social skills. Line 17 is pretty much the same as line 18 but then it is about business related things — pretty much everything an MBA requires to be know in order to be granted to somebody.

19  resource.body.muse            Body
20  resource.entertainment.muse   Entertainment
21  resource.hardware.muse        Hardware
22  resource.software.muse        Software

Lines 19 to 22 are all about resources. As of now (November 2007) I identified four of them as can be seen. A task or note that needs a specific resource to be carried out or which is about a specific resource goes onto a resource page. For example, if I had to do something that requires a rack-mounted server in some DC (Data Center), the task would go onto resource.hardware since I need a particular resource to carry out another task. If I had to clean the keyboard of my computer it might also go onto resource.hardware since the task it is about a particular resource. Of course, the task will also go onto one LOF (Levels of Focus) page as well as maybe some other context pages.

23  event.muse                    Event(s)
24  lof.1.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 1 also known as Life Goals
25  lof.2.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 2 also known as 5 year Visions
26  lof.3.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 3 also known as Yearly Goals
27  lof.4.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 4 also known as Areas of Responsibility
28  lof.5.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 5 also known as Current Projects
29  lof.6.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 6 also known as Current Actions

Line 23 is where I put things that are somehow related to events (e.g. a concert or a meeting which could be part business and part leisure, etc.). As I mentioned above, lines 24 to 29 are context pages as well but those are somehow special — they are LOF (Levels of Focus) pages. LOF pages serve the special purpose of being my check lists. There is a dedicated section about them.

30  possession.house.muse         Possession - House

Line 30 is about my house. This page is where I put all kinds of information with regards to my house e.g. all task that needed to be done to construct the house (only those that includes me as master of the works) like for example coordination and checking offers. When construction finishes, tasks with regards to maintenance will find it way onto this page e.g. gardening (mawing the lawn, cutting trees, etc.), fixing the roof, etc.

The Usage of Context Lists on a Daily Basis

Since we already know check lists are context lists/pages as well, I provide an example of how to use context pages further down which includes LOF and non-LOF pages.

The only thing left to say here is how I decide on which context pages information goes that I have just taken out of the virtual bucket. I go through all the following questions sequentially and put each new information (tasks and notes) I add to yet existing PIM data onto matching context pages whenever I find a match:

errands Is the task/note about something I need to get?

delegate Do I delegate a task?

resource.<a_particular_resource> Do I need a specific resource respectively is the task/note about a specific resource?

place.<a_particular_place> Is the task/note bound to a specific place?

entity.<a_particular_entity> Is the task/note about a particular entity?

communication.<type> Is the task/note explicitly about some communication I have to do?

travel.<phase> Has the task/note anything to do with traveling?

sk.<some_domain> Is the note/task explicitly about skills or knowledge?

event.muse Has the note/task something to do with some event?

possession.<a_particular_possession>.muse Is the task/note about a particular possession?

lof.<a_number_between_1_and_6> What LOF (Levels of Focus) does the task/note fit in best?

Check Lists Pages

Check list pages respectively LOF (Levels of Focus) pages (the terms are synonymous) are not in any way different from context pages from a technical point of view nor the way I handle them with Planner. It is just the meaning respectively the way I use those context pages within the whole shebang that makes them a bit special so they become check lists.

The Implementation of Check Lists with Planner

Whenever I add some task or note to my PIM (Personal Information Manager) data, it gets added to at least one page — one of the LOF pages we can see below (lines 21 to 26). But the magic usually does not stop there. With planner-multi.el it is possible to add a task or note to more than just one plan page.

So, as we know that all my context pages (lines 1 to 26) are plan pages, it would theoretically be possible to add a new task to just one of them or to all 26 pages and of course any number in between.

I chose the context pages respectively plan pages where a new task or note goes like this:

• Any task and/or any note added to my PIM data goes onto one (and just one!) of the LOF pages depending on when I expect the thing to be done.
• Next to one of the LOF pages (also known as check lists/pages) the note or tasks goes onto whatever context page(s) they fit in.
• In sum I usually assign a note or task to two or maybe up to four context pages
  • one LOF (Levels of Focus) page plus (lines 21 to 26)
  • one or more of the context pages (lines 1 to 20)

21  lof.1.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 1 also known as Life Goals
22  lof.2.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 2 also known as 5 year Visions
23  lof.3.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 3 also known as Yearly Goals
24  lof.4.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 4 also known as Areas of Responsibility
25  lof.5.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 5 also known as Current Projects
26  lof.6.muse                    Levels of Focus - Level 6 also known as Current Actions

Adding a task or note to the PIM system is easy — one just enters all the context pages when prompted (see example below). By default, when a task is deleted and we are using planner-multi.el, it is deleted from all context pages at once. It is of course possible to delete/add a note or task from/to a single context page.

Example:

Let us assume during phase 1 and 2 (Collecting and Input Processing) of the workflow model (one of three GTD major models), while I am emptying my virtual bucket, I get information that turns out to be a task that cannot be done instantly because it takes longer than 2 minutes or so.

So, I add it to some context pages within my PIM system using planner-create-task or planner-create-task-from-buffer to add the task to say lof.3 since I expect it to be accomplished sometime during the next year. I also add it to places.otg since I plan to do it while I am sitting on a plane. Next to those two context pages I decide to add the task to sk.it since it might be a manual about some programming language (maybe some syntax description) I want to read.

Ok, so the task is now on three context pages but what if we figure it might be good to also have it on communication.text or if we wanted to delete it from sk.it for whatever reason? Do we have to completely start over again? No! Of course not. One might take a look at planner-multi-task-xref and planner-multi-task-delete-this-page.

By the way, it might be a good idea for the reader to check out my keybindings section for Planner in my .emacs. This section has keybindings for the two functions I just mentioned plus a lot of other keybindings to trigger some Planner magic.

Below is a screenshot of the part of my .emacs that shows my Planner keybindings. Since the whole keybindings section is to big to vertically fit into the left window, I simply show the rest in another window on the right i.e. same buffer, two windows.

The Usage of Check Lists on a Daily Basis

As phase 3 (organizing) of the workflow major model demands it, we check our current status by reviewing our check lists. Next to the example above, I either use planner-tasks-overview-show-summary for a general overview (image below) or planner-tasks-overview for tasks specific to a particular date or time period in order to gain focus and then open whatever LOF page I am interested in.

Another way would simply be to use planner-goto-plan-page. With my keybindings I would then simply enter F9 g lof.3 RET in order to jet onto the Level 5 also known as Current Projects page (line 25).

I go across my check lists every day or at least ever second day in order to figure if I am on track with what I currently do and if I am sailing into the right direction depending on what level of focus I am looking at. By checking my check lists, I simply do what I described above with the bird example. It is all about perspective and control of what we do respectively of what we are supposed to do in order to meet our self-declared goals in life (Level 1 that is).

Tasks Bubble down on the LOF (Levels of Focus) Pages

We already know, I distribute tasks across LOF pages from 1-6 by the time I create them. I do that depending on the time frame I think I may come to grips with them. I then always start my review process of the checklists at LOF page 6 (Current Actions) and make my way up until I end up at LOF page 1 (Life Goals).

Depending on the current situation I either pick the topmost task at the LOF 6 page or I may move a task from some other LOF page to the LOF 6 page in order to get to grips with it right away.

In fact, what I do is some sort of bubble sort thing — think of a glass of carbonated water and the ascending bubbles — in my case, the glas is simply turned upside down and thus the bubbles descend to the bottom (LOF 6).

Any task bubbles down until he ends up at LOF 6 at sometime. I do this by copying the task from some other LOF page to LOF 6 (using planner-multi-task-xref followed by planner-multi-task-delete-this-page on the other LOF page).

Cyclic/Repeating Tasks

(Info-goto-node "(planner-el)Cyclic Tasks") tells about how one could schedule recurring tasks automatically. An example can be seen with my day pages (I changed the time in the meanwhile as can be seen below).

Currently I do sport every day so I made my trainings lessons show up automatically. Below is the file (planner-cyclic-diary-file) that produces the output as can be seen when following the above link.

,----[ cat ~/.emacs_misc/planner/planner_cyclic/planner_cyclic_tasks_file ]
| Monday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
| Tuesday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
| Wednesday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
| Thursday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
| Friday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
| Saturday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
| Sunday 21:00-22:00 | Sport
`----