There’s have great conversations happening at Is GTD Showing Its Age? and What is a task, what is a note? @webwalrus asked me to put my cards on the table so here’s how I do it. This is my workflow, there are many like it but this one is mine.
Basics: I use Drafts, GoodTask/Reminders, and Obsidian.
Drafts is Drafts, I really don’t do anything fancy here anymore.
In GoodTask I have smarts lists at the top, a grouping of lists named after Areas of Focus, and a group of projects lists at the bottom.
In Obsidian, I have a few parts.
- First is a page titled “Scott Shepro is…” with headings per the first four of the Six Horizons of Focus and my personal entries at each of the first three levels; I can share mine if anyone is actually interested.
- At the Areas of Focus horizon, I have an embedded link to that page. I have two Kanban (plug-in) boards with columns corresponding to my Areas of Focus. One is titled “Areas of Focus” and the other is “Someday-Maybe-Ideas”.
- Finally, each project has a card under its Area of Focus column. Using the plug-in’s built in template tool, I create a project page for each project. That new document is a simply formatted page with some prompts for following the Natural Planning Process. Once I figure out the tasks I feel like figuring out, they go into GoodTasks. I can share that template if anyone is interested (it’s not particularly fancy).
- Capture: Drafts or “To Process” reminders list.
- Clarify: if it’s a single item, it gets titled nicely before it goes to a reminders list for a given Area of Focus and tagged with a context if applicable. If it’s a project or an idea, I take it to Obsidian and add it the to appropriate page where it gets a card under the corresponding Area of Focus to be figured out. Eventually, a new page is created from the card and the prompts on my project page template help me determine the purpose, vision, etc.
- Organize: A new GoodTask/Reminders list is created that corresponds to the project page in Obsidian. Links are copied and pasted back and forth. Actions get added to the list and tagged by #Doing, #ToDo, #Later. This is how I manually decide what next actions are available for projects where I’ve gone all the way through. If I only have one next action, it goes directly to #Doing.
- Review: I look at the lists and see where things are and decide what’s current or not. I can click on the link back to the corresponding Obsidian project page if I need some more clarity of why a given item is on the list.
- Do: I have three GoodTask widgets corresponding with three smart lists for which I think working from my phone is acceptable - Today, Calls, and Errands. Otherwise, I’ll get to it when I’m at my computer.
Not fancy but works for me.