I’ve spent a fair amount of time organizing things, and I’ve spent enough time reading about how others organize things, to come to this conclusion: there is no one way to stay organized. GTD has some great ideas, but my eyes glaze over when I even look at that 260 page book that describes, in painful prose, the complex methodology for what I intuitively believe must be kept simple: deciding what to do, and when .
Here’s how I organize. I guess I should call it the “ity’s” system because it’s broken down into the six requirements that I have for any system.
“Integrativity”
Combine tasks into the calendar. I can look at a task list all day long, but unless it shows me how much I can get done today, the list is more of a distraction than anything else. This shows how our apps take the tasks from the list (right side), and actually place them into the free time in the calendar. Note how the duration of the task is reflected in the calendar, because it follows a time-line. Note also how the shaded part of the task list represents what cannot fit into today.
Flexibility
Why does one system not work for everyone? Because one system doesn’t even work for me. I need different systems depending on the type of day or week that I’m having. And I need to be able to recognize what kind of week or day I’m having. Some of these are:
- Clear out the overdue items
- Chip away at each of my projects
- Focus on one specific project
- Focus on my key priorities
- Be aware of everything
For each of these, our apps have a different filter view:
Overdue Items
The view above shows items filtered by due date. It’s a great way to focus on what hasn’t been done, with one click. If there are no ‘reds’ then I can move on to other things.
Chip away at each of my projects
This is what we call the “GTDo” filter because it takes the top (or current) task from each project in my project list, and shows them in one view. That way, my task list – and the calendar – shows only the most recent task. One for each project. When you mark a task as done, the next task from that project automatically flows in to replace it. In this next picture, the items with Flags are the “top” from each project.
Focus on One Project
Sometimes I just need to march through a bunch of tasks in one Project, and I don’t want to be distracted by everything else. Here I just tap on the “Prejects” tab, and open up the detail of the project.
Focus on Key Priorities
At the end of each day, before “closing up shop,” I mark the items that I want to do the next day, with a Star. That way, I can focus on just those and nothing else. This is easy, it just takes one tap.
Be Aware of Everything
This just shows everything in the task list, and also in the projects list, so that you can keep track of everything while focusing on the tasks that are in the calendar.
Connectivity
Devices
I’ve got too many devices. I’ve got a PC at the office, two Macs at home, an iPad, and an iPhone. Believe it or not, they each have their own uses. But the bottom line is, I need to be organized on each device. Now with our Cloud hub, that’s possible. I have SmartDay running on the two home macs, SmartPad on my iPad, and mySmartDay.com on the office PC. That way I can enter and view my information from any large screen, then grab it at take it with me on my iPhone or iPad. (We still working on SmartDay for iPhone, but for the time being, SmartCal for iPhone can connect indirectly).
Sharing
I share calendars with office people using Exchange. And I share personal calendars with my family using Google Calendar. Sharing is not simple; it’s actually fairly complicated. So the route we’ve taken is to recognize that Apple has already done a great job sharing iCal and the device calendarx with the “outside world.” So we just connect SmartPad and SmartDay with the iPad Calendar and with iCal. Apple’s calendars can be connected to any exchange or CalDav calendar (Google supports both) so I can easily view both in our own apps.
Simplicity
I never understood “importance ranking.” I mean, who has time to figure out if Task A is “1” and Task B is “3”? They all have to get done. And their importance changes often, relative to what I have going on that day. So I don’t have time to readjust numerical rankings every few hours. I find it much easier to just see everything in my list, and then drag and drop items up and down the list. And I find it easier to apply the different filters mentioned above, which lets me see my to-do’s in different contexts. Simplicity is always better.
Adaptivity
Some people just schedule their tasks into a static calendar. That’s okay, but it doesn’t help you if you don’t actually do those tasks, because they just slip into the past. There’s no accountability and there’s no notion of what happens when time passes – as it does, particularly if you don’t DO anything!
These two screen shots show what happens if you don’t “do” the tasks that are in your list. The first one shows the beginning of the day, and the second one shows mid-afternoon. If you don’t mark the tasks as “done”, they just follow you through your day. And guess what? Tomorrow you’ll find them in your calendar as well – until you mark them as done!
Accountability
There are two different ways to tracking progress, depending on how you like to see your results.
- The “History” view
- A Calendar view
History View
When you mark your tasks as done, they show as “done” with a strike-through line, in both the task list and the the projects list.
In the task list, they are shown for the current day only. This is a helpful way to stay on top of what you’ve accomplished each day. The next day, your ‘done’ item start over again. Sweet.
In the projects list, “done” tasks are shown for the cumulative project, so you can keep track of your progress over a period of days or weeks. Same tasks as in the list, just shown differently. And a convenient “Hide Done” button to show only the current tasks. Agin, for focus. A simple indicator also shows % complete.
Either way, the “History” tab shows all tasks that have been completed, by date. This can also be exported to Excel, for handy reference.
Calendar View
Another way to show completed items, particularly if your are visual, is to place them into the calendar at the actual times that you completed the tasks. In SmartPad, this is very easy to do. Just drag the completed task over to the time line in the calendar and it becomes an event.
