So Much Stuff

I’ve been using the new beta of Evernote for a little while and have been giving thought to how to use it as a tool for implementing GTD. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

The Basic Idea

Getting Things Done is essentially based on keeping lists, notes, folders and a calendar. Evernote has no calendaring but can quite easily behave in a way analogous to the other units of GTD. The building blocks of the system are actions, projects and contexts. I have used notebooks for projects, notes for actions and tags to associate those actions with contexts.

Collection

This is where Evernote really shines. I’ve created a notebook called “Inbox” where I put everything I want stored for processing. Emails, images, notes, links: it all goes into Evernote, either directly or through the Evernote clipper, or by email to my Evernote account. Most GTD software has the problem of only being accessible through a desktop client or through the web. Evernote, because it has a desktop client, and a web interface and a mobile interface is perfect for collecting information wherever I am.

Processing

Now that I have a bunch of items in my inbox, I have to process those items.

Projects

If an is about a project I either find or create a project for it in my “Projects” notebook. This notebook contains a note for every active project. The body of the note contains a text “hook” for the project and a description of the project, maybe even project notes or brainstorming. Here’s the note for one of my projects:

“bookCases” is listed as the hook. Any materials associated with this project will contain that piece of text so I can find them using Evernote’s search. Using text like this rather than tags keeps me from creating too many tags and keeps the tags reserved for contexts. I’ve also included the desired outcome of the project and an image of bookcases I clipped from the web to inspire me to get this project done.

Actions

So now I know I need to get some bookcases - what do I have to do to complete that project? First I have to measure the space I’m going to put the bookcases in. I’ve created an “Actions” notebook to store all actions. I’ll go there and create a new note called “Measure space for bookcases”. In the body of the note I’ll include “=bookCases=” so it gets associated with the project (the equals signs are so I don’t find other notes including bookcases that aren’t for this project).

I’ve tagged this item with “home” as a context and “!na” to show it’s the next action to perform for this project. This means that later I can search for all my next actions or even all next actions for a given context.

The Ticker File

What if I want to defer an item for a later time? I put it in my Tickler notebook and just include text in the body of the note that describes the day of deferral. I just us @1 through @31 for the day and @January through @December. This uses text to mimic the functionality of the “43 Folders” of Getting Things Done. So if today is the 11th I search for @11 and see if there are any items I’ve deferred until today. On the first of May I’ll search for @May.

Additional Specs

To fill out the GTD model I’ve made notebooks for Waiting, Someday/Maybe, Read/Review, Reference and Archive. The archive is for actions that I’ve completed.   So my notebooks list looks like this:

 

That’s my implementation so far. Maybe later I’ll post again with a report on how this system is working for me and what further tweaking I’ve done.