What are /r/gtd's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Pinging u/Suulace since they expressed interest too.

I'm a software engineer and use GTD both at home and at work. At work I've found it extremely helpful, though it may be the nature of my specific job. I get handed random tasks pretty constantly on several projects, so knowing 100% that they're all written down has been really important for my peace-of-mind. There have been many times where I've only been able to properly follow up on things at the right time because of the system. Before I used it I got fairly stressed out, trying to keep it all in my head. So yeah, definitely gets my vote and while the book is targeted at "business people", it's still all relevant. One caveat is that the author is a fan of paper, though he freely admits that he's a bit of a technophobe, lol. It's also less useful the fewer things you have to juggle, but imo still worthwhile even if you only have a couple projects to keep track of.

For tools, I'd recommend org mode for Emacs since you're in software. Emacs is good as a text editor to know anyway, and org mode can be as simple or as complex as you need. Personally I'd recommend tracking tasks and scheduled dates at a minimum since you can set it up to give you a list of things that you're supposed to have done on a given day, or if you're supposed to follow up with someone. On my phone (iOS) I use beorg, which has a subset of org mode in it which I can sync over DAV. Android has various org mode apps iirc.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions! Hope it helps some.

There's many ways to go about it. Atomic Habits (highly recommended on Reddit) is a good read that answers this question thoroughly, or you could start with this article: https://jamesclear.com/three-steps-habit-change.

I'm doing much better with my weekly reviews this year. For me, it was about accountability. I have a friend ask me whether I did my weekly review. I also use an app (Habitica) to track my success. I like the app because it will record a miss automatically, meaning I can't just "forget" to write down I missed that week. Good luck!

I've been using Nozbe for a while now built this flow chart for helping me assign contexts. In Nozbe I color context areas based on the type of context they provide, then I have different symbols to help me quickly identify them. Questions and feedback welcome!

Obsidian.md is an excellent piece of software I use. Moved to Obsidian a few months ago from OneNote and I am sooooooo happy with it. The downside is that there are no good plugins at the moment for capturing directly from the web.

Here is my Daily Review. It seems exhaustive, but if I do it daily, it takes about 20 minutes and is the most productive 15 minutes of my day.

• Fill/Empty Physical inbox
• Process notes from previous day
• Previous +/- 2 calendar days for next actions
• Clear Salesforce for next actions
• Clear out Cloze for next actions
• Clear out Asana for next actions
• Clear out LinkedIn for next actions
• Clear out iPhone notifications (app updates, voicemails, etc.)
• Process Evernote Inbox
• Clear out Downloads and Desktop folders on Mac
• Review YNAB
• Review LoseIt app
• Review project list
• Empty your Head
• Process OF3 inbox
• Review flagged list

Again, that seems like a lot, but hold on, it gets better - I have an Afternoon Review that pops up at 3:30 every day:

• Clean up office and desk
• Clear email
• Clear Asana
• Clear Text/Slack's I need to send
• Clear Salesforce
• Process notes
• Look at agendas for tomorrow's meetings
• Confront projects I've been putting off
• Empty your head
• Process OF3 inbox
• Review flagged tasks for evening, or defer all until next day.

The point is this:

• Doing the daily review helps me focus on what I need to do that day. If I did it the day before, it will take like 20 minutes.
• If I do my daily review, my afternoon review takes like 10 minutes. It will help me focus on the evening with my wife and child.
• This process compounds to the point where my weekly review is serious 30-50k foot level stuff.

Again, it seems like overkill, but having not done it and done the weekly review, that's way more work than doing this.

I'm also in sales, so if I stay on top of people, I make way more $$$

I use Reeder for news and blog feeds, but it also supports saving articles (either from a feed or by URL) to read later. But I can hardly keep up with my feeds as is, so I rarely get around to what I’ve saved. 😬

I have a three ring binder for each of my work projects, and take notes on a pad of paper that’s pre-punched. I picked up one of those self-inking date stamps and hit every piece of paper I take notes on with that thing, it’s such a stupid little joyful cha-chunk that I never forget to do it.

Each piece of paper gets a date stamp and a project name written at the top, and when the page is full or I change projects I tear the page off of the pad and put it in the binder.

Having a clear chronological sort of my meeting notes or scratch pad from calls or doing work has been hugely beneficial since I’ve started doing this like four months ago. Everything I do digitally sorts chronologically so isolating and storing physical notes and storing them in the same fashion has been ideal and has brought my paper experience in line with my digital one.

This is also far better than the ongoing general sketchbook journal I used to keep, which would just become a black hole of information that I’d rarely be able to find things in again.

As far as GTD goes, this all becomes Reference Material and any action items spinning out of them go straight into Things on iOS/Mac.

I use everdo: https://everdo.net/

​

I tried todoist, and although it is packed with features, it is not streamlined for the GTD workflow. Same goes for ticktick.

​

nirvana was true to GTD, but development has been stagnant for years now.

From what I can gather, it can be dealt with Asana and TickTick.

Both have calendar sync but might be a paid feature.

Asana lacks the 'habit' part ofcourse as it is a project tracking service, but TickTick has this too.

TickTick even has timers.

Todoist is a great option. I’ve been using it for a few years. It’s flexible and allows you to setup a GTD really easily.

It doesn’t have built in Pomodoro support but personally I like tracking Pomodoro in my notepad as I work.

Hope it helps.

The gold standard for GTD resources imo is the Getting Things Done Fast audio seminar. It's a seminar that David Allen did live, some years ago. He goes through GTD in a much more interesting and often funny way than the book, which is pretty dry. It gives lots of examples of how the systems and ideas work in real life, it's a fantastic resource.

The audiobook isn't in production any more so you'll probably have to download it, unless by some fluke your local library has it.

I’ve been using Asana for two years since I’ve discovered GTD and it’s perfect for my workflow. I don’t use it to collaborate with others but I wrote down some tips that you may find useful.

• I only use one Workspace which I call “Life”. I tried using multiple workspaces to separate professional and personal projects but I found it to be too tedious since projects cannot be moved back and forth. I also like the idea of just having one online “in-basket”.
• My online capturing tools are the Asana web app (I use Tab + Q a lot), Android app and Asana quick tasks. Emails are forwarded to the Asana e-mail ().
• All those captured tasks go under New Tasks.
• I found that it’s important to separate my project support materials from my project/action lists. It’s tempting to combine them but I didn’t want the support materials to be marked as “completed”. So I use Evernote instead and simply add the note link to the Asana task description.
• Tags are used for contexts (e.g. @staples).
• Today/Upcoming sections (for assigned tasks) are for Next Actions only. They are reviewed daily.
• Today tasks are the actions I decide to focus on today. During my Daily Review, I move some Upcoming tasks to Today.
• Tasks under Later are Tickler tasks. They all have due dates and they can be seen in the calendar during my Daily/Weekly Review. They have to be assigned to you or else they won’t show up in your main calendar.
• I regularly archive projects I’m finished with.
• I colour my projects based on the Area of Focus.

Hope this helps!

I don't usually get too caught up in contexts for the same reason, I can do most of the work anywhere. Trello works well for daily lists, as you can make repeating cards and/or lists.

My system uses a more concrete list of priorities and next actions move freely between the lists as the situation changes. (Example)

Nice! During my master's degree, I used Quire to implement the GTD method and did similar things as you did. It really helped me plan, manage, and track all my projects and exams (if you know what it was like to be an engineering student😂). I like that I can directly prioritize to know which one I should do first. I even use it for my daily life, for example I like to list out the movies I would like to watch and so on.

This 15 minute refresher is fantastic. I've been doing GTD for 4 years and I refer to it every quarter to remind myself of how it is meant to work.

Also, I like this simple Google sheets implementations of GTD. They are simple and everything is in one place so it is a good way of getting your feed wet.

https://lifehacker.com/getting-things-done-ten-years-in-1795707084

A bit more complex:

https://betterhumans.coach.me/how-to-implement-a-killer-gtd-system-in-google-sheets-ad9c9857a8bd

Take a look at GTDNext - it hits all of your qualification.

• purpose built around GTD
• Actual next action list, not a hack like many "gtd" apps
• Send to inbox feature from any email client/account
• 100% cloud, nothing to download
• Unlimited number of sub-project levels

Based on what you said above I think you would like it.

You can use evernote for reference materials, and put links in your tasks to those materials, but I wouldn't recommend using it for your task management app. In fact I wrote a blog post on why you shouldn't do that, in case you are interested.

I love articles talking about GTD. The more the better!

However, I don't agree that Workflowy is good for GTD. The picture in the article looks really nice and makes it look easy, but each of the lists in the picture only has 5 or 6 items. When you have 30 to 50 projects and 150 to 200 action items is when it becomes very difficult to use a normal outline tool like Workflowy. I know I've tried!

This is actually one of the primary reasons we created GTDNext. We love using outlines and WF in particular, but to use them for GTD we needed a way to add more "meta data" to each entry and use GTD style lists like Waiting, Next Action, etc. And we wanted to do this without all the manual upkeep and tagging that would be necessary with a normal outline app.

So with GTDNext we created the ability to create an outline of any depth, just like in Workflowy, but you also get automatic lists that show just the next action for each project. So you don't get overwhelmed looking at 100 or more actions.

Love GTD, Love Workflowy. Just not for GTD.

I used to do GTD on paper a long time ago and found the problem you are describing to be one of the main problems with doing GTD on paper.

I did have some success in marking the page number of my notebook where the main project was located. I did this for next action I wrote down on my next action list. This helped in tracking back to the project. However, it's not a perfect system and does take extra time.

If you do decide to try software, I would suggest taking a look at GTDNext (I am the co-founder) as we have tried very hard to setup a system that is based on sound GTD principles.

Any item can easily be made into a project and projects can have any number of sub-projects. This makes organization very easy.

Either way, good luck with your GTD Workflow!

Doit.im, clients for everything, and works fabulously. The development team is extremely quick and responsive to bugs and feature requests.

I've been using it since I switched away from "The Hit List" for all of my GTD work.

Sorry for the later reply. Here's the tl;dr to your question: design.

Things 3 just has this feel and aesthetic that OmniFocus severely lacks. I sent OF many emails over the years requesting they ditch all the lines and grids. This isn't excel… it's a task manager.

I think I was even so bold as to request they hire a new designer. Or even let me design for them, pro bono.

I always got back the standard, "Thanks so much for your feedback, we'll share it with our team."

But I have a feeling my comments just got lost in a database somewhere.

I was so invested in OF (no joke, I had over 1000 projects in there), that I never thought I'd pry myself free. But the system got so out of hand, so slow, and so clunky, I just declared bankruptcy.

I did a trial of Things 3 on my Mac, and I was in love the instant I started using it. It lived up to the hype of the Things 3 intro video, which I must have watched 10 times.

It was all the stuff I was asking OF to be.

But honestly, u/rberenguel said it best:

> OmniFocus is "too much"… There are too many ways of sorting, handling, preparing, ordering, tagging. Things3 constrains a lot what you can do, while offering most of what you want.

I feel the exact same way.

Things 3 does less. And I like that. I like that there is a rigid system that I need to conform too, with great flexibility in tags.

At the end of the day, you want to love the way your hammer feels in your hands. If you dread picking it up, hate how it looks, and get calluses from using it, it's time to find a new hammer.

Apple's Notes? Use the folders.

If that's too light-weight: Things

Also consider that you might have too much process in your task keeping, if it's more than just a couple of lists with a few larger notes.

Project is a list that contains everything that requires more than 2 actions to finish.

Reference: you dont have to work on it, don't have to finish anything.

So basically Project is a complicated action plan.

I've just read this article about how you can use a project management tool to organize your reference list: https://quire.io/blog/p/Quire-Peekaboo-and-GTD-Methodology.html

Thanks, I totally forgot about IFTTT... But there I also haven't found what I need. The closest are these two:

Trello tasks assigned to me sync Trello and Todoist

They both have the problem that they only work with tasks assigned to me - the tasks I need to synchronize are all created by myself - and/or cards and not checklist items.

Good question! I recently discovered that Trello might be a good tool for this. I don't follow the GTD schematic exactly, but I have a list for each of my high level horizons (everything else lives in OmniFocus). I've decided to look at it every single night as part of my daily review to remind myself what my goals/priorities/plans are.

I've tried both and while Nozbe has more platforms available (downloadable app, mobile, etc) GTDNext is by the far superior app in my opinion.

Some of the things I like:

• A real Next Action system. Actions from your projects are automatically promoted to your next action list. No so with Nozbe
• It uses an outline for your projects, so you can have as many sub-projects and actions as you want. Very helpful for planning.
• Has Areas of Focus, tags, due dates, schedule start dates, etc.
• You can email tasks into your inbox.

There is a lot to like. The new UI seems to make using it on Mobile more tolerable, but they DO need to make a mobile app. That's the biggest ding on them imho.

Thanks a lot! This comment wasn't only useful by itself, I did some digging afterwards and found this: https://www.slant.co/topics/1327/~best-cross-platform-to-do-list-app

I don't use a collection of text files for gtd but do respect the reasoning of those who do. If I were to do that, I'd use tagspaces (www.tagspaces.org) which is the best tool I'm aware of to be a front-end to plain text files and directories of anything.

Excellent workflow. We had the same problem about a year back - switching between to-do's, evernote, mindmaps and a dozen other tools ended up making us less productive and our output more mediocre.

So we started building germ.io - as a tool that puts the focus on Ideas and turning them into Actionable projects.

It does exactly what you've described through your post, except all in one place:

• a. Start out by capturing your ideas in free-form text. That's a nice, clean editor like you'd have on evernote.

• b. Break this down into more focussed branches - the different things you need to do to work this idea.

• c. Every idea starts in an "Ideation" state. That means you still need to work and plan it out before it's actionable. You can then make it "Actionable", set deadlines, and assign it to someone, till you can move it to "Completed".

• d. You can leave a germ as Actionable without a deadline, and it's automatically "Deferred".

• e. We also have a 4th state called "Not Taken" for the ideas that you've thought through but don't want to take up now.

I know you've probably invested a lot into building the right toolset for your problems, but if you get the chance I'd recommend you try out germ.io

The problem with almost every GTD app is it assumes "things" are "tasks" that can be summarized in one line, when most often the Things you want done are abstract ideas that you need to work on, polish and build till you can get it done. germ.io is a pre-project GTD app that lets you put the focus on ideas and turning them into structured micro tasks.

Give it a try - it's not exactly a to-do list, but chances are what you need is a place to organize your thoughts - not just your hours.

(disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of germ.io)

I think the problem could be your choice of tools. I love Evernote and use it daily. But not for GTD. It's like trying to fix a car with a Leatherman. Leatherman is a great multipurpose tool and it might work to fix your car, but there are much better tools available that are better suited to do the job.

I keep much of my reference material in Evernote. But I use GTDNext to track all of my projects and actions.

*Two of the features in GTDNext would specifically help you in your situation. * 1) Ability to filter your project and action list by your areas of focus. Like "work", "money", "side project", "family". Etc. This allows you to view the projects you need to work on for your current area of focus. Sure, you can do this with tags in Evernote. It takes a lot of extra steps... (leatherman) 2) The ability to only see the next action for each project. Evernote has no real good way to do this. If you have 100 projects (not unreasonable for a full life GTD implementation) and if each of those projects has on average three tasks that 300 tasks in your action list. That would drive anyone crazy and probably make them give up on their task list. (This is exactly what happens with most task lists actually).

The solution is to automatically filter the next action list to only show the next action for your project. When you complete that action the next action if the project automatically moves tot he next action list.
Again, you can sort of do this with Tags and many task managers do this with manually applied stars. (leatherman) But why not use a tool that is purpose built to handle this for you?

I wrote a blog article about this issue a while ago if you want more background.

Why not just not tag computer items by default? So if it has no context you can pretty much assume it is computer? That is pretty much what I do in GTDNext That saves me some time as I mostly just add context to phone calls and errands.

GTD is ultimately a system. If you find it hard to stick with a system, it's not gonna work for you.

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I recommend you start by tweaking your habits via the X Effect. I use this app to track my habits: https://everyday.app/

Foundational ones would be:

1) Wake up at x AM every day

2) Read/ Take an online course for x minutes a day

3) Walk x minutes

Once you find you can stick to such a system for 3 weeks and experience first hand the benefits of building routines, I'd adventure into doing GTD style stuff. Things like

1) Empty Inbox

2) Do Weekly Review

3) Work on @ Context for 30 minutes

Will become 2nd nature.

Best of luck!

Re: learning curve. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Don't try to do it ALL at once. Start simple and tactical. Look at something like this flowchart for a quick overview (there are better representations out there if you don't like this one).

Read the book for a quick overview and the "why" factor (basically your description of your life is the "why"). Use the tactical system for a while until you get into the flow (2-6 months). Then go re-read the book. You'll get a bunch more the second time through. I re-read it every time my life gets more complicated (bigger project, promotion, job change, whatever). My big "oh yeah" this time through was the section on planning - I've been using GTD for over a decade and never paid it any mind before, but it'll be useful now.

I use Due. I love this app for one reason: It will keep reminding you until you either do it, defer it, or delete it. The app plays a sound on an interval you set up (every 5 min, every hour, whatever) until you mark it as done. It's not an alarm because you don't have to turn it off to stop the sound. It plays a short 1 or 2 second sound like a text message would, and just keeps doing that on an interval.

This works great for me because, if I set an alarm, I'm just as likely to hit the button to turn it off and forget to do the action as I am to actually stop what I'm doing and go do the action.

Long time (4yr+) OmniFocus user here. Since I had a career change half a year ago and now almost exclusively use Linux during the day, I recently searched for a tool to replace OF2.

I tried everything web-based I could find, but most solutions didn't work well for me. Todoist, Nozbe, RTM, and other well recommended tools often lack more advanced GTD functionality like starting dates, sequential vs. parallel projects, good filtering and other ways to unclutter your projects/focus views (which is the main reason, I use GTD anyhow, so these functionalities are essential for me). Toodledo seems to be one of the oldest and most advanced web-tools for to-do stuff, but I couldn't stand the clunky UI.

I settled down with Nirvanahq https://www.nirvanahq.com/ two months ago and couldn't be happier. There's a free version, but I directly upgraded to Premium after a couple of days for extra functionality. It was the only tool, where I felt it wasn't a downgrade compared to OF2 (rather, an upgrade). It is mainly a webapp, but also supports iOS/Android apps for mobile. It very strictly follows GTD though, so it might be a tad more overwhelming than most To-Do list apps without such functionalities.

I'm a huge fan of http://todotxt.com. your data is immediately accessible/portable/backup-able. It follows the GTD principles, and since the raw data is yours you can filter it, mash it, and do it any way you like.

I used MLO a long time ago and liked it, but holy crap, it was expensive. Cost for the Windows app, cost for the phone app, and a monthly cloud cost to sync between them. I think they've changed, but I haven't looked back.

I use Things 3. Excellent UI, available on iOS/MacOS/iPadOS, no windows or web interface and have to pay for each platform (9.99/49.99/19.99) so a bit expensive. Reccomend you give it a look before you decide.

https://culturedcode.com/things/

In case you're still looking - Zenkit might be worth a try. It's got an iOS app and Android is on the way soon, and syncing should work just fine. You can learn more about how to set up GTD in Zenkit here

Personally I use Zenkit to manage my GTD (I work for them, but I'd choose to use it anyway). Zenkit is free to use, you can set reminders, and sync with your Google Calendar. It also has a 'Favorites' feature that I use to manage my contexts (e.g. I mark some tasks as 'Office', then check my 'Office' favorites list to see all of my next actions with that context tag).

I'm also a massive Pomodoro fan, so I try to use it alongside GTD when I can. In my office example above, I find it really easy to work through the list in Pomodoros. So instead of writing down all the things I need to do, and breaking them up into 25 min chunks, I just work through my office next actions list :)

For references I try to use Zenkit, just so I can keep everything in one place, but to be honest, I keep going back to Evernote because I've been using it forever and it already contains thousands of notes.

I'll actually be publishing a blog article about exactly how to use Zenkit for GTD, so I'll add the link to it here later.

Orgzly is pretty good, if your on Android. It hooks up with emacs Org-mode, which is a todo list/organizer/appointments/notetaking and the kitchen sink. So you can jot down your idea, and then edit it into a website/pdf/word doc all from the same place, so it also works well to organize your notes, with such things as org-roam, which is designed to implement the german notebox that is somewhat in fad now, like roam research.

Since it is a org formatted text document, you can have tables you can turn into spreadsheets in emacs, code samples that run in place in emacs and many more features.

Org format is like a variant of Markdown, so is simple to use.

never used then. I heard great things of OmniFocus but I don't have apple devices.
My next to do app will be taskwarrior. But that's way down on my someday list (sadly).

Unfortunately, Sunrise was probably the closest thing to what you envision. Ruined by Microsoft, natch.

Since the demise of Sunrise, I've adopted Google Calendar to serve as my "master calendar," and I use Zapier to link things between individual calendars (main, actions, and tickler) and Todoist and Evernote. It seems to work pretty well. (I can provide more details if anyone gives a fig.)

I don't think anyone will ever get a GTD app right for a number of reasons, but most are not technical challenges. It's mostly cultural/financial/legal, IMHO.

Workflowy might be a good tool for this. It’s the opposite of most systems, in that it doesn’t impose any particular system or structure on you. Think of it as an outliner, like a bullet list in MS Word, on steroids. You can zoom into bullets, tag items, and search/filter, and when you combine those, it’s really powerful.

Each client becomes a bullet/sub-list, and then you have a list of tasks for that client, or a project is just a sub-list under that client. You can tag tasks and then search for tags which makes it really simple to cut through the forrest and identify specifically what you need to work on now.

During a review you can tag stuff in whatever way fits your work. I tag stuff by day, by top priority for each client, by amount of time required, and so forth.

Then I can zoom in to narrow focus to a client or group of clients, then search for items tagged “thu call” for phone calls you need to make on Thursday, or “fri top” for all top priorities for al clients to be worked on Friday, or if I only have a short time before a meeting I can quickly find tasks that will take 15 minutes or less.

It’s a bit minimalist, not for everyone or every type of work, but it can be really effective if it fits your brain.

This would be decent if it had a pen holder:
https://www.amazon.com/911-Wallet-Briefcase-Emergency-Necessities/dp/B01C3FNZ5Q/ref=sr_1_25?dchild=1&keywords=notebook+wallet+for+men&pd_rd_r=dad2ba78-c692-4132-a212-f6766f82dd7e&pd_rd_w=WldMN&pd_rd_wg=3p9q6&pf_rd_p=0ec05f25-9534-48fe-9c3e-40b89957230e&pf_rd_r=6WZY17145W01WMHY581C&qid=1610037439&sr=8-25

I've been using Looper Habits on Android for the last 2 months and I check it daily for habits that should get done and lump them in with my calendar items. I like using this because I get the benefit of checking off an item and like to see the chain of how good I am at a specific habit as part of my weekly review.

I stopped using place contexts because I found my things to do were less and less dependent on place. I do work stuff at home, home stuff at work, personal projects whenever/wherever the opportunity arises, etc.

I tried what Scott Belsky talks about in Making Ideas Happen – using labels for amount of time/energy projects should receive, from "Idle" to "Extreme", then visualizing your projects along that energy spectrum to help keep your priorities straight. I recently abandoned that idea because I found the updating process too time consuming. I find I can keep and update that kind of prioritization in my head, especially when staying consistent with my daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly reviews.

For every new version of David Allen's context approach that I try, I find myself always going back to this: my labels are the 7 Areas of Responsibility that I've defined for myself, plus "Waiting On." If the basic original idea of contexts was to help know what is possible to do right now, and then do it, my labels work for me. Actually, my labels do more to help me keep a balance between my AORs.

For GTD on android - the perfekt app is Simpletask by Mark Janssen.

The app offers all sorts of intelligent features to deal with the GTD and similar systems. And if you are not into tweaking little details, it works wonderfully out of the box.

My life would only be half as good without this app. I mean that somewhat serious.

Recently a NextCloud version of the app was released. There is a cloudless version, too, if you like to use or own or no backup solution at all.

I'll second the plain text. It's future proof. Some applications will go away. Plain text lasts forever.

Orgzly is an Org-mode app for Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly

Simpletask uses the GTD methodology. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.mpcjanssen.todotxtholo

Both applications are open source and well supported!

I used DGT-GTD for a few years. It's decent enough and it integrates well with Toodledo.com. Unfortunately, development appears to have dropped off and it has some screen tearing issues on my non-explodey Note S4.

So, I switched to Ultimate To-Do List. It has a ton of features, but it comes with three predefined feature sets (Simple, Intermediate, and Advanced) plus a means to customize it (Power User). The widget is highly customizable, as well.

I recently tried taskwarrior, but went back to Toodledo/Ultimate To-Do list after about a week because it just works.

Consider MyLifeOrganized I use it in combination with the desktop client. Not sure how much ia restricted to the Pro Version vs the free version but it has almost all the features you requested but Pebble integration.

The interface is a bit old and clunky, bit a brand new version 2 with a clean modern interface is in beta testing at the moment (but no official Eta yet).

The desktop client is what I use most and is one of the most powerful clients out there. Unfortunately there is no Web version though.

Grabbed a few of these the other day https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09M46DWPJ . They are nice in that they are magnetic so can put on the white board in the office during design sessions/planning. Can put on my desk for deep work or the refrigerator in the kitchen for cooking.

in Gmail, I use multiple inboxes (not multiple tabs) as a Google Labs feature, and superstars. (You can have more than one type of star!) I found all this out on this Lifehacker article!

I use superstars for contexts (Next Action, Waiting For, etc) and labels for projects. I assign projects to an 'archive' in my labels when they're complete.

The multiple inboxes work on search criteria, and I have them keyed to each type of star. You can view up to five inboxes, and so I use:

• Red Bang for Next Actions,
• Yellow Bang for Someday,
• Purple Question for Waiting For,
• orange-guillemet for Deferred, and
• Red Star for Scheduled.

I have a hotkey for cycling through stars, and another one for assigning labels, so processing my email can sometimes take only minutes.

When I complete an action from that email I will assign a green checkmark, which is always a great feeling.

Hey there...

Man, I love reading stuff like this!

I recently discovered that I may have inadvertently saved my own life (not literally, but significantly and definitely saved my sanity!) by implementing GTD.

I too am an adult (big kid tho LOL) recently diagnosed with ADHD.

The more I learn about it, the more I'm just like......wow......if I had been diagnosed even a few years earlier - let alone as a child / teenager - my life would have been SO much better; even better than it is now. I'm happy & all, but I'd prob have a few million in the bank if I'd been diagnosed earlier! LMAO......

Anyhow, my ADHD therapist recommended this book & author / speaker to me & I can't recommend it highly enough to learn about....well, Adult ADHD....

www.amazon.com/Taking-Charge-Adult-ADHD-Second/dp/1462546854/

​

I thought I'd also share this link, as HSP's are about 25%+- of the population:

https://hsperson.com/

Love your story & Thanks for making this post!

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I appreciate this question because it is something I am struggling with too. GTD really promotes the “hard landscape” idea of a calendar and the tool I use to implement GTD, Todoist, doesn’t support start dates.

This question made me dig a bit more to try and find out why, in GTD, the calendar is sacred ground, only used for deadlines. Seems like it is a philosophical argument - that GTD approach is about indexing your lists so you can find the right things to do under the right conditions, quickly. Adding start dates is more akin to time-blocking which may or may not align with the right conditions for a given task. (For example, having low energy when a task pops up that requires high energy.)

I struggle with this since I like planning ahead and my next action list is long enough that it is difficult to filter and sort. So I have modded my implementation of GTD to include a list of items I want to consider doing on a given day. (Sort of like David’s tickle file idea.)

The philosophical argument runs deep too. For example, I believe adding a start date is one of the most requested features in Todoist. But they are adamant about not having one. Here is a link to how they suggest implementing a workflow that includes start times for tasks using their software. I found it interesting both as a user of Todoist and insight for why they don’t have this feature. Does Todoist Support Start Dates?

Ifttt.com can probably do what you want.

​

My favourite thing is "hey Google, add task: whatever I need to do" then it adds it to my todoist inbox for later review.

No one talked about IFTTT yet, I'm surprised. There is a "location" tag, so I imagine that you could get both phones to send a email to a given mailbox and then a recipe to trigger when this happens. I'll let you explore

Thanks a million. This is perfect it does Siri, you’re a genius. Apple Watch is now the perfect addition.

https://ifttt.com/applets/110759p-tell-siri-to-add-a-reminder-and-send-it-to-nirvanahq-inbox

I use GTD exclusively for my personal life; it's a huge help even though I don't do all the things. GTD is overwhelming at first, because it's so comprehensive and abstract. But you don't need to understand all of it to see benefits. If you've watched some videos and read some summaries, I think you know enough to start. Just go for it and try to do the basics. It will make more sense as you take the steps to try to make it work for you. Maybe find a tool-specific guide, like the basic one for Todoist. Then later, if you really want, you can go back to the source materials--but I doubt you'll need to.

A great program/app I have found that sticks to GTD in the truest sense is NirvanaHQ https://www.nirvanahq.com/.

They are slow to make updates or changes, but the product works. Not a whole lot of bells and whistles, just streamlined and will help you with GTD.

Last night, after I got into bed and turned off the lights, I remembered a commitment I forgot to capture. I said, "Computer, add 'e-mail Jeff about install' to my to-do list" and went to sleep. Today, at the end of the day, the task has been clarified and completed.

Being able to add items to the inbox by speaking when the idea hits really speeds things up. I'm using an Alexa, IFTTT, Gmail and FacileThings' e-mail inbox.

Link to the IFTT MAIL trigger (I just used FacileThings' inbox address instead of 2Do's): https://ifttt.com/applets/444355p-add-alexa-to-do-list-item-to-2do-via-email

You can do all of that with Notion, setting up your own workflow however you like (bonus it's completely free for personal use!)

Don't go overboard with this though, only set up the things you're actually going to use.

You can easily fall into the trap of assigning icons to every action, creating complicated automation set-ups etc. Use the KISS principle and keep it stupid, simple.

Sorry for the late reply, you can find the 2019 published edition here: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-free-Productivity/dp/0349423148

Published by Piatkus on 4th July 2019.

If someone needs in-depth information or further explanations check out this webpage from ionos.com it’s under productivity > Getting Things Done (GTD). There are flowcharts and diagrams if you’d prefer that to text.

OP has condensed it in an excellent way, but this is for someone who just needs a little more help.

Adding the link to make it easier; https://www.ionos.com/startupguide/productivity/getting-things-done-gtd/

Hope this helps!

The best I've done is to share particular Omnisync Server email addresses with people I work with so that they can email tasks into my inbox.

If you end up going with Trello, you might consider using an IFTTT trigger to push Trello tasks over to OmniFocus: https://ifttt.com/applets/324483p-trello-to-omnifocus

I'm afraid there aren't any really smooth solutions. OmniFocus is my favorite task manager, but it sure falls flat when it comes to collaboration amongst multiple people.

I've found an applet on IFTTT that automatically enters GCal events into Todoist and one that does the inverse, so running both applets should give you what you want. Todoist premium also can do this automatically through calendar integration.

I've now set up Todoist and GCal to just enter GCal events into Todoist, which I am pleased with. It works!

EDIT: I haven't checked to see how well it handles changes to existing entries in GCal, let me check right now...

Ok, it's as I expected, any changes made to an event in either app are not synced to the other. It only syncs newly created events. Damn.

EDIT 2: It seems that, with Todoist Premium, you could fabricobble an applet together that would at least sync completed/deleted tasks between the two apps. Will try that once I get Todoist Premium.

EDIT 3: Jesus... the Todoist -> GCal sync won't even put the event in the correct day or time slot. It just shows up as due at the time of syncing, rather than the time you specify in the app.

They're constantly adding supported apps/services. In terms of lists. It currently offers integration for Wunderlist and Todoist with more likely to be supported in the future. You can view their public roadmap on this trello board if you'd like monitor progress or upvote specific features https://trello.com/b/RXCPcX7U/kin-public-roadmap

Thanks! I really hope it can be useful for you :)

About the third-party analytics, I have the Firebase Analytics setup, which you can read more about on their website ( https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics ). I don't have all features enabled. I do have the basic integration which allows me to understand how many users I have per day, which country has the most users (to understand what localization I need to work first), which screens they use more (to understand if I need to re-create better screens), the retention (to understand how many users drop the app after installation), and how many users have experienced crashes (until now all users didn't experience any crash :D ).

Regards,

Filipe Martins

10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062265423/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_navT_a_GYX0WK0FKZGGAG8VJ8WR

A lot of people look to GTD to reduce stress. I think this helps attack the underlying problem.

Sounds reasonable! For saving money for particular things, I love using YNAB (You Need A Budget). If you have never heard of it, I suggest you check it out. The four Rules are found here https://www.youneedabudget.com/method/

I have done it several different ways. I've used MindMeister to mindmap out all my higher level horizons of focus and I've also used the outline features our tool GTDNext.com to map out the higher level horizons.

I think whatever tool you use it fine, as long as it is easy to access and you remember to look at it often. The problem for me with the mindmap was I didn't open it up often enough.

The issue with having it directly in your task manager, as you mentioned, is that it can "clutter your task manager". The way I got around that with GTDNext was to not capture the higher level horizons as tasks. I just made them "info" items in my outline. That way I could refer to them quickly without cluttering up my next action list.

Another way to handle this would be to treat your higher level horizons as any other reference material. So you could use Evernote for example and create a link to the note and add that link to projects that support your higher level horizons.

A lot of people use my tool GTDNext in the private sector. One strategy to use is to keep your private reference materials private in a company approved place. OneNote, Word, SharePoint, etc. And use your task manager to purely for tasks. Task names are usually not going to give away any of your super secret stuff.

"Finish project highlander"
"Call Bob about finance report" "Create project proposal"

Most Project and task names would not help anyone if they fell into the wrong hands.

I use Todoist and highly recommend it. They have all kinds of integrations that make my life easier. Todoist actually wrote a guide on how to start GTD with their software and tbh it includes a lot of great tricks that took me like 6 months to figure out on my own, I was actually kinda mad at myself that I hadn’t read it before: https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/getting-things-done

I have tried them all - NirvanaHQ, TickTick, RTM, Things, Omnifocus, FacileThings, and a whole host of others -- and for what you're talking about, I keep coming back to todoist. It's not a full-fledged GTD engine but you can use it like one, and for stuff like simple tasks and lists, it's fantastic.

Trello. Instead of talking about it, here's a GTD template in Trello. It's a mostly stripped down version of my own GTD board, so it's got a few weirdly specific things in it. But that way, you can see how you might actually use it. I don't want to dump all the details on you, but feel free to check it out and ask questions.

I personally moved over to Todoist, and would recommend it.

But if you want to find a comprehensive comparison of all your options with tons of reviews, head over to G2 Crowd

https://www.g2.com/categories/task-management#grid

I'd recommend you to use Kayako, because you can set up a Knowledge Base without problems. You can run it online, and in addition, you can use it to run an internal help desk, to bring a better support experience to your teammates.

Kayako has been engineered to make collaboration amognst team members as efficient and smooth as possible, because this is exactly what your company needs.

You can build a super complete and smart Knowledge Base, where you can educate your fellow teammates, and in addition, you can customize it visually and functionally speaking. It is a real complete solution, and you can request your own demo for free, to see if it fits your requirements: https://www.kayako.com/demo-request

Hey! Thanks for your comment. Yes things are going well with AM and still making improvements and extra help all the time. You are not the only one who felt overwhelmed when trying to get started with it! I made a video about this here: https://www.loom.com/share/b8843bc066424d9baa9c27f803f2b8c3?sharedAppSource=personal_library

I think GTD works well especially when you have a lot of relatively short tasks that don't need a lot of time to get into. With that kind of workload it often does feel like "bouncing around" because you switch tasks relatively frequently. Contrast this to a creator or work where you need deep focus for longer period of time throughout the day. I think the key is to try and at least do one thing after the other and not worry about the other things when doing one thing. I find the focus mode (where you only see one task at a time) helpful for this. Then you just work through the list.

I use the Pocket app, https://getpocket.com/ , to store all my articles I want to read. In my GTD system (todoist), I'll make a task to either read or purge some of the articles once/week so the list there doesn't get bloated.

I do not use Mac, so my comment may be useless for you, but here it is just in case. I personally find that organizing the file/directory structure itself to be more flexible than any software that hopes to outdo that structure.

How about mucommander? It's a free, open-source, cross-platform Commander-style browser with no frills but lots of keyboard shortcuts and flexibility.

I hear XtraFinder adds in several features that people like as well, such as tabs, built-in shell, and global hotkeys.

That said, I use simple folders, such as _inbox, _projects, and _reference as my top level, with a single text document or outline as the only file at the top level (which contains lists and my "dashboard").

Within _reference, I have separated by the type of file, such as audiobooks, books, camera, graphics (i.e. Not my photos), music, videos, etc., and then by topic. I personally prefer to have all videos together, then subdivided by "movies", "music videos", "diy_home_repair", etc.).

Within _projects, I either copy or link to longstanding reference information if related, or make a note within the project support document (usually a basic outline, if the project is big enough to even require one).

Hope something here helps... I do not use tags, because keeping them airtight and 100% up-to-date is too time-consuming for me.

You can do it. Three months ago, i had 22k mails.

I kept trying to delete stuff using gmail alone. Went down to 17k. But it was too difficult.

Then, i paid for one month account for mailstorm. Connected my gmail to it. Went from 17k to 2k with it. It was super easy as the app bunches all the mails from similar domains, people and so on.

Then switched to gmail for the last 2k as these were individual mails. So bunching just wouldn't happen.

Ofcourse i didn't delete every mail. Else, just select all and delete would have sufficed. I created multiple labels for personal/ and professional/. Gave appropriate labels to mails. Then archived them.

Then, i removed the promotions, updates, forums and social tabs in gmail. Made it all into one inbox.

Finally, using multiple inboxes feature of gmail, i have now 4 inboxes. #1 is the regular inbox, #2 is mails with label as defer, #3 is mails with label as waiting for and #4 is mails with label as someday/maybe.

Inbox zero wasn't an action. It was a project which spanned over 2 months. It seemee impossible and pointless to even bother with. I was able to do it. You can do it too!!

Now, i never wonder if i have ever missed anything to capture from my mails ever! Ping me of you have any questions about this!

No, don't get me wrong, I really like the hierarchical idea, since that works well for me. It just feels hard to use and wastes screen space compared to, for instance, Noteliner.

This problem comes up because at least a handful of "things" we put into our GTD buckets aren't really tasks yet. They still need to be debated, broken down and understood before you can get working on them. So when you make it an "action item" prematurely, it just sits there, gathering dust.

You might want to check out germ.io - a GTD tool that puts the focus on Ideas, and lets you make them "Actionable" when you're ready... Or mark them as "Not Taken" if you want to hang that thought around, but don't want to delete it yet. (disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of germ.io)

We're building a better gtd tool in germ.io (IMHO) that lets you progress your ideas from "Incubation" to "Actionable". An idea under incubation is technically when you still need to work on "how" you should get it done. Once it's actionable, you schedule it for now or later. But the idea is you don't spend your time on researching "how to get this done" once something is actionable...

I know of an active Reminders transparency layer. I use Good Task, that works directly with Reminders offering easier management, smart folders, tagging, etc. Many apps offer these, but then you sync to their cloud, etc. What I like about Good Task is that it natively works with Apple Reminders. And you can completely drop Good Task in the future and have your reminders stay behind. They have their own forum.

http://goodtaskapp.com

In not so many words an app is native to a platform if it was built specifically for that platform. The source code for apps that run on macOS is only available if the developers make it open source on GitHub or the like. You could then take the source code, make any changes you want and then compile the whole app yourself.

While that may not be an option for many of the popular task managers, there are some options that act simply as an interface for other apps. GoodTask and 2Do can both do this with Reminders.

Yes this is exactly how we built GTDNext - Most apps make you manually select the next action to show on your next action list. (if you remember) - With GTDNext we automatically move the next action in your project to your next action list after you complete the first one.

In GTDNext you simply press TAB+N to bring up the quick entry windows. Type your task press enter. Type another press enter. As many times as you like. These tasks all go to your inbox for later processing. Then just press the escape key and you are back to what you were doing before.

One of the things I like about using GTDNext for my GTD practice is that once I get a huge long next action list I can easily filter it down to what is important to me right now.

For example - I usually will filter my next action list by Area of Focus- so if I'm at work - I will filter by my work area and then all I see is my work items. This cuts down my next action list by huge amount.

To even further cut down the next action list you can use tags. Also, just today they added priority. I'm looking forward to being able to filter my next action list by priority.

Other GTD apps can do some of this too, but I just like GTDNext... (just a fan btw)

I would start right away. You can then tweak as you go and learn more. Have you decided what tool you are going to use? If not, give GTDNext a try. It is purpose built for implementing GTD and beginner friendly. Happy to answer any questions you might have. Good luck!

Empire539 is totally correct about how GTDNext handles next actions. It works really well.

In addition I just wanted to mention that if your project has sub-projects you can set GTDNext to only show next actions from the first project before showing next actions from the second or third sub-project.

By default GTDNext shows next actions from each sub-project. You can change that behavior if needed.

There are two activities here. Processing your email and capturing the actions in the email.

I tend to process my email several times a day. I have set three 30 minute blocks on my calendar. Sometimes I need to move them around, for meetings, but at least I have the time blocked off.

I forward any emails with actions to my task manager GTDNext - When I have time I change the title of the email to be my next action. So I can cut down on the "clarifying" step. Other times if I'm short on time I'll just forward it.

I use Outlook, so I have created some custom "quick steps" to automate the process. I have two quick steps I normally use.

The first one sends the email to GTDNext and then archives the email. The second quick step I have forward the email to GTDNext and then puts the email in my action folder. This way I have an easy place to find the email later to reply to it if needed to complete the action.

Good luck in getting going in GTD. I've been using it for years in the tech sector and have always thought of it as my secret weapon for success!

fwiw - I'm using GTDNext with IFTTT - I have DO Note setup on my iphone to send actions to my inbox. This used to not work, but now GTDNext allows you to created up to 5 email addresses that are unique to your account and can be used by any email sender to sent items to your inbox.

I use and love GTDNext. Today they updated again and now they have rich text in the notes for each action. Pretty sweet. It has all the bells and whistles. The only thing I wish they had is mobile. I think they are working on it.

You are describing one of the huge issues that many people have with GTD and trying to implement it with most of the current apps.

Let's say you decide to do some planning and write down all the steps of building your computer. Now every time you look at your list you have to see all those steps. That is not good, it makes it difficult to quickly see what the next step is and it also makes for a huge list if you have many of these projects. Remember, David Allen says that most people who have done a complete brain dump will have 150 to 300 "projects".

With GTDNext we try to make this much, much easier. By default we only show the item at the top of your list of items for each project as your next action. This goes on a separate "Next Action" list. Then as you complete each action, the next action in your list is automatically promoted to the next action list. Of course you can manually flag items to be on the next action list as well. Or make all your actions show on the next action list for projects where all actions can be done at once.

The result is much less overwhelm. If you try it, let me know what you think.

In the premium version of GTDNext we take a bit of a different approach. After you complete a task it will continue to show up in the project. You can hide it, but it is still there in case you want to view all the completed items for your project.

You can then archive the action or project when you are ready to not see all the those completed items. We also archive any deleted items, in case you made a mistake in deleting it.

Our thinking was that it's nice to see a completed task list, but after a while it get's way too long and starts to slow things down. Or makes it hard to find things. Using an archive allows you to keep items around for reporting or whatever, without clogging up your system.

Situations like this is why it helps to have a flexible system for sure!

In GTDNext you could handle this in a several ways depending on your needs.

1) If the action doesn't need to be done in any particular order, but still needs to be done, you could just add it anywhere in the list of project actions and click the "force next" button to make it available on your list of next actions. Even though it isn't the "real" next action for the project you can still make it show up on your next action list this way.

2) If you don't want to think about this action for a while, say till next week you could put the start date for the action as next week. Then when that date rolls around the action will become active and ready to be on your next action list.

3) If the action is really more of a sub-project you can easily start a sub-project within the main project and start it at the appropriate time.

Different apps will handle it differently, but that's how I'd do it.

For the naming of tasks I like to start with a verb that describes what I need to do, not what done looks like. So for example:

• Update TPS report
• Call Shelley RE: TPS report
• Finish writing TPS report

For projects I do that same, but with one key difference. In the notes area (for my bigger projects) I will write in capital letters the following.

WHAT IS THE SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME:

Then I will take some time to write out what "done" looks like. I find this helps out a week or two down the road when I'm either trying to remember exactly what I was asked or decided to do. Plus it helps with motivation, as I can see "done" in my mind easier.

For prioritization I usually go through my list of next actions and filter based on AOC, time available and energy. Then I pick a few to do for the current working session and flag them for my focus list. I try to just work off the focus list so I don't get distracted. I'm not sure how OminiF works so not sure if that translates. I use my own product http://GTDNext.com.

It's great that you are up to six months already! Nicely done!

Not nagging at all! I think I missed that question. I checked the app and it's only got a Dropbox choice.

That said, there is another version of the app (called Cloudless) which I think would store the file locally on the phone which could then be synced elsewhere...

Here's the github of that app too: https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android

I'll continue this conversation via email and elsewhere. Anyone else watching this space, feel free to check in on how we're doing!

I used to use "The Hit List" for a long, long time before I moved to the (cross-platform) DoIt.im instead.

If you want a rock-solid, fast, GTD app that does all that you need for Mac and iOS, The Hit List is the one for you. Give it a try! (I have no affiliation with the company, just a very happy past user).