Thanks for the great question. This might get a little long. Please bear with me on some background information.
Background Info
GTD at it’s core is based on the Tickler File system. Another name that was pretty popular some time ago is 43 Folders. The idea is that you have 31 folders for the days in the current month and another 12 folders for the months of the year. Some system may suggest having a few extra folders for the next couple of years to come. In the end, it all boils down to putting little notes in those folders to remind yourself of something in the future.
Sorted basically replicates this folder system by providing a calendar’s worth of daily lists on your iOS device. Reminders you have in each day can easily be moved from day to day (i.e. folder to folder) with a few taps.
Basic usage of Sorted
1. Capturing Ideas
Any GTD or task management system starts off with capturing ideas out of your mind and into a list. In the case of Sorted, you can capture them directly into lists or leave them in the inbox / unlabelled state. Then you can select them and tap on the calendar to schedule tasks for your upcoming days, weeks and months.
2. Planning
Each person will likely have a slightly different routine. I like to do my planning early in the morning. So the first thing I do is take a look at what tasks I have listed for today. If the list is overly long, then I’ll select some of the less important tasks and move them to another day. I then usually pinch my tasks together so they all start at 9am. I reorder the tasks to roughly fit the order I wish to complete them. Then I spread them out again to maybe an hour interval to see how much of my day is filled. I find this to be a great way to pace myself on the stuff I wish to do. Then I go about my day, trying to keep up with my rough schedule through notifications on my phone or Apple Watch.
3. Adapting
Of course, things don’t always fit neatly into one hour slots. If I overrun my time on something, then I open up Sorted and shift the other tasks later. That lets me see how my schedule has been affected because of the delay. If the delay causes an issue, I reorder some tasks around to make sure I have enough time to get the most important things done. On the other hand, if I finish something early then I have a choice to make. I can either shift some tasks up or take a little break to recharge my energy.
So, the key to me is that I have quick visibility on my schedule at all times. The speed with which I can move things around allows me to simulate the rest of my day when things change. Ultimately this allows me to make better decisions about how I use my time.
Lessons I’ve learnt about GTD
Lastly, I’m a strong believer of not over-complicating your task management routine. When I first got started, I always end up over tagging my tasks. I twiddled around with priority labels. Restructure and rework my system every few weeks. It was fun for a little while, but all I ended up doing was waste time and burn myself out managing tasks instead of doing them. I am definitely not the first person to have fallen into this trap. That is why I have purposefully limited the number of labels you can have in Sorted to one and made doing things in Sorted as fast as possible. Effective and sustainable task management is a marathon and not a sprint. So my personal motto now is “Do More, Manage Less.”
Conclusion
Anyway, my apologies for ranting on. As you can tell, this is a bit of an obsession of mine. Of course there are a lot more little tricks I use and stuff I learnt from my users who shared their workflow with me. Eventually, I think I will compile these tricks into a series of blogs for our community of Sorted users. Let’s end it here for now? Feel free to stay in touch.
Cheers / Leo
#StaySorted
Leo is the CEO of Sorted. Sorted is available for iOS download on the App Store.
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