Organising the Chaos
Many years ago I wrote a post about the “Getting Things Done” methodology. At the time, the book by David Allen had just come out in paperback, and was being rammed up people's noses in train stations across the land. Given that my life resembled the eye of a hurricane at the time, I started using some of Allen's ideas to help – and wrote about it. The blog post drew comments from all sorts of management and productivity consultants, adding their two penneth (and in some cases considerably more) to the conversation.
I thought it might be interesting to re-visit the subject – to take a look at what I use on a daily basis to stand half a chance of either remembering things, or knowing what I should be doing next. This will either lead to the most boring post in the known universe, or exactly the opposite. I can never tell which way things are going to go in a blog post – I never plan ahead (as you will see).
Tasks
First things first – I don't use a task list. Iknow I should, and I love the idea of having a task list, but I never seem to get around to settling on an app I'm happy with, or forming the habit ofusing a task list. I've tried out Wunderlist, Things (back when I had an iPhone), Toodledo, Remember the Milk, Backpack (now defunct), Todoist, TeuxDeux, and Google Keep. I sometimes use Keep, but only as a form of sticky notes – not in any organised manner. I also carry a filofax round, and a moleskine notebook – but they are more about scribbling things down – not for making organised lists of things as such.
Throughout the time Idid use a task list, I always struggled with knowing if something was a task, or a calendar appointment (which might explain why there is no stock task list on an iPhone – perhaps greater minds than mine have struggled with the same thought). I guess something that doesn't have a specific date is a task?
Appointments
Google Calendar kind of “solved” this for us as a family – mainly because we can have multiple calendars (one each, and a family calendar).It helps that we have Android phones, so we get the native app on our phones, but I understand other phones work equally as well. To be honest, I'm not sure what we did before Google Calendar came along – it's by far the easiest, and most powerful online calendar – and it's free.
Oh – hang on – I do remember what we did before. We both have filofaxes, which kind of work as a “backup”. The act of writing something down on paper tends to work really well to help me remember things – so doubling up the digital calendar into the filofax kind of “fixes” things in my head. It doesn't make me look at it though – which is really the same problem as the task list, and forming habits around checking it.
Last year we also had a paper calendar on the kitchen wall, in a place that we all walk past multiple times a day. We didn't bother replacing it this year, but may do soon – purely so the kids have an “at a glance” calendar to look at.
Notes
I have carried a Moleskine notebook around in my bag for years now. It's filled with pages of notes, diary entries, doodles, diagrams, and all manner of miscellaneous entries that probably made sense once upon a time. I first started carrying a notebook while working in London, and surviving 4 hours on trains each day – I would empty my thoughts into the notebook each morning and evening.
Since having a half-decent smartphone, I use a mixture of Evernote, and Google Keep. Keep is really the quivalent of sticky notes, or shopping lists – whereas Evernote has details about client sites, chunks of programmingI want to remember, excerpts from books, and all sorts of other things I call on from time to time as part of my work (I'm a software and web developer).
I don't really have any kind of “routine”, or “process” for dealing with anything. I write things down when I remember to, I put appointments in the calendar when I remember, and I find myself using the phone more and more. While Christmas shopping I took photos of products in shops that the kids liked as a quick and easy way of cataloguing them.
Now what was that task list app called again? (he says, tinkering with his phone).