Three major methods to improve personal productivity. Insights and tools on using GTD
Getting Things Done, Atomic Habits, and Zettelkasten Method are my core productivity methods. This article focuses on the core concepts of GTD, as well as the GTD tools and daily processes I use.
Traditional Chinese version
About five years ago, I started paying attention to how to optimize my work efficiency, including handling various messages inside and outside of work, problem-solving, and learning new things. I need to be responsible for many projects at work, and there are many things to handle and communicate. Outside of work, there are also some chores to take care of, as well as a large number of fragmented learning goals and materials, such as reading newsletters and so on. I need a better system to support me in advancing goals and professional growth healthily and efficiently.
I mainly rely on the following three methods:
Getting Things Done (GTD): A method for advancing goals and managing trivial tasks.
Atomic Habits: A method for building habits.
Zettelkasten method: A knowledge management and note-taking method.
These three methods can complement each other and solve problems from different perspectives.
GTD allows me to keep progressing tasks, not forget things that need to be done, and prioritize the most important tasks.
Atomic Habits can optimize my daily life, break bad habits of wasting time, and establish good habits to make repetitive tasks happen naturally.
The Zettelkasten method helps me build a knowledge system, avoiding the need to relearn things already learned, and making it easy to review related knowledge points that have been forgotten.
The importance of these methods
For me, the importance of these three methods is in the order of GTD > Zettelkasten = Atomic Habits, but the situation may vary from person to person.
I believe GTD is the most important for most people. There are many miscellaneous tasks that must be completed in life, and the brain finds it difficult to manage everything that needs to be done effectively. GTD is your second brain to manage tasks.
A few years ago, I realized the importance of Zettelkasten. As I get older, I learn too many things, but my brain cannot retain as much information as it did when I was younger. I found that many important knowledge points must be repeatedly learned, so I started looking for a good solution. Zettelkasten was originally developed for continuous writing output, but it can also be extended as your second brain for knowledge, helping you learn.
The importance of Atomic Habits depends on whether you have many bad habits, wasting a lot of time on trivial matters in life, such as using social networking apps, YouTube, Netflix, etc., or if you find yourself forgetting or procrastinating on certain goals, such as studying English for an hour every day, finishing a book every month, exercising three times a week, etc. These things may not seem as important as a task that must be completed, but they are crucial long-term investments.
None of these three methods are plug-and-play. Their core is some key mindset and frameworks, and adjustments need to be made according to your own patterns when actually applied, as well as finding suitable tool support. In this article, I will focus on introducing GTD, including the idea of GTD and the tools I use.
They're tools designed to lighten your cognitive load.
Getting Things Done: a secondary brain for task management.
Zettelkasten method: a supplementary brain for knowledge management.
Atomic Habits: achieve goals effortlessly, without conscious thought.
Getting Things Done Method
Tasks go into GTD
The GTD process is shown in the diagram. Two key points:
Inbox: Try to throw all kinds of trivial matters into the GTD inbox as much as possible and then execute or schedule them later. This can avoid forgetting, improve efficiency, and make better decisions. Items in the Inbox should be cleared at least once a day according to the process in the diagram.
Defer it: If you decide to do it but not now, there are three ways to ensure that it will be executed:
Set trigger conditions (Next actions in the figure): For example
Things to discuss with the boss in a meeting, set as “@boss” trigger condition (I like to use “@” at the beginning to indicate a person's name trigger)
Set the items to buy at the supermarket with the “supermarket” trigger.
Set what you want to accomplish today with the “Today” trigger.
Set the belonging project: The project can be seen as a medium to long-term objective. We will regularly review the project status and select key items to promote. Examples of projects are as follows:
“ European travel plan”
“Learn a Haskell book”. Chapters are tasks.
“[Continuous learning of recommendation system knowledge]”. I will enclose the project names in square brackets if they have no clear endpoint. Such as long-term learning goals for continuously collecting articles, podcasts, and other materials for digestion.
"[Taboola News Project]": Company projects may also be long-term.
Schedule it: Tasks with specific time points are suitable for managing in a calendar system (such as Google Calendar) rather than continuous tracking in a GTD system.
Image source: The GTD method: 5 steps to manage time and tasks
Triggers and projects
Each task can only belong to a maximum of one project but can have 0 to multiple triggers.
Usually, make sure each task has at least one trigger or project so that it can be found and completed in the future.
The due date and schedule
Many GTD software provide the function of setting deadlines, but it is recommended to make GTD more like a queue system rather than a scheduling system. Do not set the due date unless a task has a clear deadline, such as filing taxes by a certain date.
If something must be done at a specific time, managing it with calendar software rather than GTD software is more suitable.
Using GTD for regular tasks, such as studying English for half an hour every morning, is not recommended. It is more suitable to use a calendar or habit-forming software.
Don't confuse Getting Things Done with a calendar. They each solve different problems.
GTD stores queues of tasks, not events on the schedule.
Consume tasks from the GTD inventory
Triggers are very intuitive. They are usually tied to specific regular events, such as meeting someone, attending a regular meeting, leaving the office, before going to bed, going to the bank, etc. Just remember to check the GTD software when the regular event occurs. A good GTD system usually has mobile and desktop versions and can even detect your location to remind you in a timely manner.
Projects need special management and require establishing a fixed review mechanism, such as daily, weekly, and monthly reviews of items in each project. Specific behaviors for each review may include
Adjust priority order
Add or delete items
Set triggers and due dates. I usually set two types of triggers: “today” and “this week”.
Delegate to others
Delete project
The review frequency of each project varies. Important and complex projects may be reviewed daily or weekly, while long-term learning projects may only need to be reviewed monthly or quarterly. A good GTD software can set the review frequency for each project and remind you.
Getting Things Done Tools
The GTD-related tools I use include:
OmniFocus: GTD software on Mac and iPhone, launched in 2008, is now 16 years old.
Spark: Email software that integrates well with GTD tools like OmniFocus, with a shortcut to save emails to GTD and provide deep links to open the original email quickly.
Other OmniFocus-compatible plugins, such as Chrome extensions, can save web pages to OmniFocus.
OmniFocus has a very high level of maturity, such as synchronization between mobile phones and computers, integration with various software, and reminders for triggers and reviews mentioned above. In OmniFocus, triggers are called tags. If you do not use a Mac + iPhone, many other GTD software are on the market. The GTD method does not necessarily require dedicated software; it can also be implemented with a simple physical notebook.
Email Workflow
Spark is specifically mentioned because Email is something that I need to manage very carefully in my life. I subscribe to many newsletters, and my work includes Jira tasks, all of which rely on email as the main notification system. Email is highly compatible with external inboxes and easy to integrate.
Spark integrates well with OmniFocus and other GTD software, with a shortcut key (⌥F for OmniFocus) to add the email to the GTD software and a deep link corresponding to that email in the GTD software. Clicking the deep link opens that email in Spark in less than 0.1 seconds. I also use the ⌥F shortcut key on Arc (web browser) to send web pages to OmniFocus.
I apply the GTD process to my email management, as shown in the diagram below. My email inbox is cleared several times a day, with most emails going to archive and a few to trash. Time-consuming emails, such as lengthy newsletters, are immediately archived after being added to GTD software. They will later be prioritized for further processing through GTD.
You should have one single GTD system. It’s possible to create queues in the E-mail system, such as using various labels and marking stars. But that would make your process chaotic.
Setting up filters in email systems like Gmail to apply labels and automatically archive is crucial for email processing efficiency, but that's a topic for another day. Email remains the most universal platform for external communication and notifications. It's crucial to use it wisely and manage it well.
The GTD problems I encountered and optimization directions
The effectiveness of GTD depends on the following three points:
Allowing tasks to be added to the GTD system more quickly and conveniently. It’s better within 0.1 seconds on all platforms.
Effectively planning triggers and projects
Continuously review projects and optimize priorities
For the first point above, I currently feel that the integration of Slack is slightly inconvenient; there are no good plugins to save Slack threads to OmniFocus quickly; you need to copy the Slack link and then add it using OmniFocus’s Quick Entry feature. That needs at least five seconds.
Due to having too many things I want to do and learn, the number of projects has far exceeded my digestion capacity. In some low-priority projects, the speed of adding tasks is faster than the speed of completion, becoming another form of hoarding. How to effectively declutter is an important next step.
Conclusion
In conclusion, GTD, Zettelkasten, and Atomic Habits are all worth learning methods, with many specialized tools to support them, especially the first two. It is highly recommended to start optimizing personal productivity from GTD, as it can reduce short-term memory load, decrease life stress, enhance focus, ultimately achieve goals, and maintain work-life balance. I may write another article introducing Zettelkasten and my usage. As for Atomic Habits, it is recommended to read the original work or many summaries available online directly.