Getting Things Done with Todoist — My GTD Setup

This is a follow up blog post to my previous post: Evernote and Todoist: REALLY Getting Things Done. It was prompted by an interest to setup a GTD workflow using Todoist.

I am a fairly new user of Todoist (web site) — a task management tool that is available across many platforms (one of the reasons I started using it). While I have implemented a Getting Things Done (GTD) framework using the Secret Weapon methodology for Evernote, I have not hitherto tried to do the same with Todoist. So — here’s how I would go about doing this. In general, my approach is to try and keep it simple enough where the framework itself is not a burden — but something that I can evolve as I go.

Important Caveat: One important note about this post — it presumes the use of Todoist Premium. Some of the features called out in this post are available ONLY in the Premium version of Todoist — specifically the following:

• Adding Notes to tasks
• Adding e-mail & mobile reminders
• Labels
• Custom Filters
• Task Search

In my opinion, only Labels is a critical aspect of the GTD framework I am outlining below. Right now I am trialing the Premium version (which you will be able to as well — if you complete the 6 things on the list after you sign up for Todoist). In a later post, I am going to try and figure out a way to get this to work without the Labels functionality and see if it still holds up.

Projects: I do a few things to keep things simple and organized. I start by defining a few projects. In GTD terms, they are not still projects (which need to be finite and time bound), but we can then get into the ability of Todoist to create nested projects — which will let us create actual sub-categories under these and also projects.

The categories I have are: Work, Personal, Recurring Activities, For Later and Lists of Stuff. I figure that I can track most of my stuff under these categories. Under Recurring Activities, as an example, I put my Daily Review and Weekly Review activities and make them recur — so they show up in my Today list at the right time.

Just as an example, I have created the following sub-categories under the Personal category. They don’t have to be sub categories, but I like to keep my thoughts & activities organized. I suggest creating broad enough sub-categories that can then contain specific projects. Try not to go nuts with sub categories. One level should generally suffice. After all — our intent here is to Get Things Done.

So — I then take the next step and create a project. As an example, I am looking into setting up my own domain name for the blog, and having it WordPress enabled. So — that project can be set up under the Personal > Blogging category as follows:

You start by setting up a top level task (Set up own domain) and then add sub-tasks under it. Again — don’t go nuts with sub task nesting — do what makes sense, and helps you get to the next activity that needs to be completed. Just in case, you are unaware of how to do sub tasks, there is a little 3 horizontal line icon that shows up when you hover over an entry — which you can then grab and move the task (or project) — either sequentially or hierarchically. Play around with the tool — its easy enough to figure out (I think).

So — now you have a project set up — and you have tasks that need to be done. Now we need to assign contexts.

Context: An important aspect of GTD, is to establish context for your tasks and activities. And the two most important contexts are When and Where. For this, you need to use Labels. You can set up as few — or as many — contexts as you please. But what I have found is that I generally use the superset I have listed here.

For When, I have set up 7 contexts: Now, Next, Soon, Later, Someday, Waiting, Weekend. I have assigned numbers to them so I can pick them off a list by just hitting a number. Now is things that need to be worked on immediately. Next is what will be done next and so on. Waiting is one that I found that I can use when I have done my piece and am waiting on someone else before I can proceed.

For Where, I have just 5 contexts: Home, Work, Internet, Phone, Town. Home and Work are locations that I need to get activities done at. Town is a catch all for when I am around town and need to get activities done (Groceries for example). Internet is a catchall for aspects related to web browsing, email, etc. And Phone is for making calls.

Just a quick update — if you want to add a Who context to the task, you can either go the route of Labels or if you are like me and have a lot of people you work with, just add a #Name to the task so you know who it is that you are working with on the task. This is especially useful with the 6-Waiting context.

Setting Timelines: Tasks should generally have a timeframe for completion — for this to be effective. Todoist does this well.

On trying to set a date, you are provided with options to pick a date from a calendar drop down, or assign some common dates such as Today, Tomorrow, Next week and In 1 month (those are the icons at the top). Where I think it is REALLY powerful is in its ability to use human language processing of date information. So you can type “Today at 10am” and it establishes the date and time for the task for you. As an example, my Weekly Review task is set up as “Every Friday at 5pm”. If you set a time for a task, you can also set up a reminder in the task (that is the clock icon right under the task). You can also set up priorities for your tasks — although if you are setting up contexts, this should not really be necessary — but could prove useful to some people when setting up filters.

Putting it all together: So — now that you have a task and you have understood contexts and timing, just put it all together:

You can add a context to your task by just typing @ (or clicking on the @ icon) which provides you with a dropdown of your contexts:

Just as an example, in the shot above, I have added the context @work and will add the context @1-now to the task above. I can similarly go thru and add a reminder for the task as well as a priority if I so choose. You can also add notes to tasks.

Filters: Filters can be useful to look at specific short lists of things that can bring together multiple contexts as searches.

For example, I have set up a filter here that I can check when I am at Home for all the tasks that are either due today or that are overdue. The query for that would be “(today, overdue) & @home”. It could be a useful tool, I think. I do use such searches in Evernote (a topic for another post) and find them to be useful.

Todoist comes with some canned filters, but I believe that the ability to create custom filters is a Premium feature.

Getting Things Done: There are many (seriously — do a google search) resources around how this works, so I am not going to do a deep dive into this too much. Some key things I think you need to do are:

1. Touch everything once: It is important that you touch everything that needs an action only once — so that you can be productive. So — it is important that you have a reliable and always accessible system in which you can file things. Todoist and Evernote are excellent tools to achieve this.
2. Learn about Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete: So everything that you need to deal with will fall into one of these categories. Do if it will take you less than 2 minutes to accomplish. Delegate if someone else can do it (remember to attach a waiting context to it if you need to follow up). Defer if you intend to come back to it later (attach a time context to it). And my favorite, Delete if you do not need to take any action (if you are someone that does not like to delete, you may archive instead — but get it out of your inbox).
3. Capture Everything: Everything that needs an action from you needs to be captured in your system (in this case, Todoist). Just add it to your Todoist inbox — don’t worry about anything else (contexts, timing, etc.) at this time.
4. Conduct periodic sweeps: I generally do sweeps every 2–3 hours during the day. The intent of the sweep is to go through the inbox and attach contexts, timings, etc. to tasks. Also a good time to categorize activities and identify projects and break those down. This is also where you may want to look at the Next context and reprioritize some of those to immediate or Now.
5. Focus on the immediate/Now: Your goal is to clear your Now list — so block off a piece of time (with no distractions — AT ALL) and start working through the tasks on your Now list. Experience the endorphin rush as you check off those tasks. Rinse and repeat.
6. Conduct Daily Reviews: I set up my daily reviews for the first 10–15 minutes of my day. This lets me gather my thoughts and put together the activities I need to get accomplished that day. It is also a good opportunity to do a review of the task list to make sure there are no pending activities — and also to capture anything else that comes into your mind that needs action. Remember that this is a planning and capture activity — leave the detailing for your periodic sweeps.
7. Conduct Weekly Reviews: My weekly reviews are the last thing I do in my work week — and I take 30 minutes for it. It helps me review the progress I made this week and helps me plan out aspects I need to get done next week. It is a good time to be appreciative and self congratulatory of the progress you have made — or contemplative of the lack of progress, and the contributing reasons thereof. Basically, you are focusing on strategy, learning and improvement as a core part of this exercise.

Alright — so that’s all I got for this one. I know that this may not be as comprehensive a treatment as some would like — but hopefully I have given you enough to get you started on your journey toward using Todoist for Getting Things Done. I hope you put it to use and conquer greater heights in your passions and pursuits.

I would love to hear about how you get things done, and how you have been using Todoist (or Evernote).

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