Voice of the Masses: What’s your “Getting Things Done” tip?
In the last podcast, we talked about Emacs’ famous Org mode, an insanely powerful tool for doing, well, pretty much everything. Check out the comments for more feedback from listeners about why Org mode rules.
For our next podcast, we want to hear more tips: what FOSS software do you use for “Getting Things Done”? Are there specific tools or apps that help you battle through your daily work pile? Have you found a hidden gem you want to share with the world? Or do you simply have a file called NOTES.txt on your desktop with everything inside?
Let us know in the comments below!
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
Just one tip:
Don’t spend the whole f*** day testing new distros and do some work!
I have a few different things… Which probably isn’t helping 😉
1) GMail:
1a) Multiple Inboxes lab enabled. Search criteria set for the “second inbox” to “is:unread -in:inbox”
1b) Filters for all emails not sent directly to me to be auto-archived (and labelled for things I tend to check frequently)
1c) Archive mails as soon as any actions are completed.
2) Google Calendar + Trello via IFTTT
2a) Anything reoccurring that needs a present being bought (e.g. birthdays) has an extra reminder 1 month ahead of the date, and is tagged [Present].
2b) The presence of this calender entry triggers an IFTTT to add the reminder to my Trello board
3) Trello – basically everything else shared between my wife and I.
On the work side, I have a wide variety of ticketing systems and people shouting at me, so… I get things done at work by “who shouts at my manager loudest” 😉
I really like task warrior, it allows you to adopt a getting things done style.
Use the sync server and the android app to have access to your to-do items everywhere.
Remote server management over SSH… MC (Midnight Commander) licks them config files into shape!
Boredom.
Don’t fill the gaps in the workday with random news and entertainment. Make sure you are longing to do something productive.
Take breaks and make sure it’s a break from brain stimulation.
Lifeograph (http://lifeograph.sourceforge.net/) – I’ve recently started a new job, and this simple tool enables me to store todo lists and notes at the same place.
The irony of me writing here is ridiculous…
Anyway, someone needs to mention emacs org-mode. I don’t actually use it at the moment, but it can do all the ‘getting things done’ stuff with style, but requires quite a bit of commitment.
Personally, I use a desktop todo.txt, and a folder with files for each project I’m working on. Everything in there is a dated log-file of what I’ve done and what I need to sort out. If I type ‘NA: ..thing to do here… [_]’, then my script will compile all of these ‘next actions’ and put it in the TODO file for me. It’s a good tracker – but I need to go through the list more often – at least once a week, for it to be effective.
Also this is a great great post that came up on hackernews recently https://qotoqot.com/blog/improving-focus/
Wekan (formerly Libreboard) is a pretty nice Trello-like. I’ve tried using kanban boards before but it never took. Wekan is sufficiently easy to work with and decent to look at to have made it a mainstay.
Nextcloud has Tasks and it’s own Trello-a-like called Decks. They’re perfectly decent but like most NC plugins feel a bit lacking featurewise compared to standalone applications.
My recommendation would be to always keep something with you in which to record ideas or potential to-do items as and when they occur to you throughout the day, wherever you are or whatever you happen to be doing. This could be a paper notebook, but given that we all seem to have ‘phones with us these days any suitable note-taking app would be sufficient. Notwithstanding urgent items, you only have to review any entries you make here once per week and decide whether to action them or not during this weekly review (transferring them to an appropriate place in your own system should you decide to action them). It’s as simple as that! Getting into the habit of recording your potential to-dos as and when they arise in your mind reduces stress as your sub-conscious realizes that, as you have recorded everything, it doesn’t need to wake you up at 3 o’clock in the morning to remind you not to forget anything!
It’s important to note that GTD is not an organizational system. GTD (the book) was written to help you devise your own bespoke system that works for you as an individual. David Allen recommends that you make your system so much fun that you actually enjoy using it – that’s the key. I love and use org-mode myself, but would stop using it in a heartbeat if it stopped being fun!
The wonder of FOSS is that there’s a huge variety apps out there which you can combine in an almost infinite number of ways – play and have fun!
My only other tip would be try to ensure that whatever apps you use make sure that you can export your notes in plain text (both in the IT sense and the aesthetic sense – the plainer the better). I guarantee that if you can’t get your notes ‘out’ in plain text you’ll end up in tears if / when you realize you need to add some software to your GTD arsenal…..
My tipps would be to find tools that will be around for some time and you can rely on. Beside that you should want to use it and be able to use them without much effort.
I went from todo.txt, over Zim Wiki to Bullet Journals, to Doku- and TiddlyWiki and finally landed on Emacs with Org-Mode.
It’s very powerful and very adaptable. A lot of productivity tools are missing something or are meant to be used in a specific way. With org-mode you just make it behave like you want. What it doesn’t do so great at the moment is mobile sync. Syncthing just creates too many conflicts for me.
As a workaround I send myself emails when I need to remind myself of something or want to quickly take a note. I quite like this setup. Especially since I can send myself emails to work without having to see anything work related. It’s probably a bit ironic that I do it this way since so many people think of email as a waist of time :).
Speaking of email “Zero Inbox” is a great concept to work with and organize emails.
As a general tip I would recommend the book “Getting things done.” I don’t follow it’s method completely but it was quite inspiring and let me on quite a journey to discover new ways of organizing myself.
When moving to a desk job, Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor helped me improve upon my 3 words per minute typing average. Simple and unflashy but got the job done.
Pre-desk job, my best productivity tool was a keyring sized Swiss Army Knife with an invaluable built in pen. Most useful impulse buy ever.
TaskWarrior + VimOutliner, FTW
A useful tool I have used for a few years is ETM (Event and time manager).
I tried using KDE Activities, but ran into issues with Libre Office opening windows in other activity workspaces instead of the activity workspace in which I was currently working. Also, activities consumed too much RAM.
So I’ve gone back to using Project Libre (the name may have changed – I’m using an old version), but just for breaking project tasks down. Most of my work (developing interfaces between heathcare IT systems) involves set task groups, so I just copy/paste tasks from a general project setup into the specific project I’m building. I keep copious dated notes in the Notes tab. It has definitely reduced the number of Post-It notes on my desk.
If I have to go back to project time accounting again, I’ll use Gnome’s Time Tracker (or whatever it’s called these days – I haven’t used it since Gnome v2.6). It had nice summary reports. You just have to create tasks as you would like them reported. Using Time Tracker is how I determined I actually did have extra time available and caused me to quit griping at my boss about not having enough time to get things done (hint: reduce time spent on emails).
I use Task Manager. It’s can be used simply or in more complex ways. Its a list, a prioritising thingy, you can set dates to be done by etc. All very common, but it’s multi platform and if you store the file in dropbox is everywhere with you all the time.