I read this blog post by Sylvia this morning and I really liked the idea of having a list of things to remember every day.

I went back to a document I have called “Purpose and Principles” that I wrote as part of my GTD system. In this document, I have a list of my Core Values and a mission statement. Inspired by the blog post above, I updated my list with my:

♥ Things to Remember Every Day

1. Stay calm and remember to breath.

2. Wake up with mindfulness (yoga and meditation).

3. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (— by Michael Pollan)

4. If overwhelmed, take 3 deep breaths and do a mind sweep!

5. I won't judge anyone (including me!)

6. Be curious about the world. Read books.

7. Sleep is essential.

8. Move your body a little bit every day.

9. Say NO! Avoid over commitment.

10. Celebrate progress 🙌.

I copied this list to the start of my daily physical notebook and I will also put a copy of the list on my whiteboard at home.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

This is a series of posts with reading notes of the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

My notes on Chapter 5 – Capturing: Corralling your “Stuff”

This chapter is all about capturing stuff, either physical or mental.

The book suggests as the first activity to go through our physical environments and put in our in-trays anything that doesn't belong where they are or that we think might have some potential action tied to them.

“You'll be gathering things that are incomplete, things that have some decision about potential action tied to them. They all go into “in”, so they'll be available for later processing. “ – David Allen

Let's say you identify that your printer has been malfunctioning for quite some time, and you want to do something about it. Instead of trying putting your printer in your in-tray (which will probably won't fit anyway) you just write on a piece of paper “Fix printer” and add that note to the in-tray.

This chapter describes a very detailed step by step method to go through all of our physical spaces:

• things on our desktops;
• things in our desk drawers;
• things in countertops;
• things in cabinets;
• floors, walls, shelves;
• equipment, furniture, fixtures, etc.

The idea is to look at each of those spaces and ask: “Any actionable items there? Anything that's out of place? Any broken things that need to fixed or trashed?”

It can be a daunting task depending on how much scattered stuff you have. For me, this exercise triggered a reflection many years ago: “Do I need to keep all this stuff?”. I'd say it was the first seed that got me into minimalism and then getting rid of 95% of my stuff and move to another country with only a carry-on and a suitcase.

David Allen mentions that it's not about “throwing things away that you might want”:

“You like having and keeping your twelve boxes of old journals and notes from college? You like keeping all kinds of nutty toys and artwork and gadgets around your office to spur creative thinking? No problem, as long as they are where you want them to be, in the form they're in, and you have anything you want or need to do about that captured and processed in your system.” – David Allen

Mental Gathering / Mind Sweep

After dealing with the physical realm, we move to what is inside our heads. This is also called brain dumping or mind sweep, and it's a valuable life lesson from GTD for me.

If this is your first time doing it, David suggests setting aside 20 min to 1 hour to grab pen and paper and start clearing your head.

We should go for quantity: use one sheet of paper for each item and add them to the in-tray, one by one. They will be individually processed in the next step.

The book provides a useful “incompletion trigger list” to help the brain dumping. The list is quite extensive, it covers every topic I can think of in terms of professional and personal aspects of our lives. The list is also available publicly in this link.

The results of my capturing

I did some physical collecting this weekend after reading this chapter and added a few things to my inbox. One of them was an empty box I got a few weeks back that I wanted to repurpose as a cables and accessories container for my home office. It was forgotten in the living room all this time, and it's in my in-tray ready to be put to use.

I used my small capturing notepad that I keep at my desk and did a 20-minute brain dump. I will confess: I have been neglecting this practice for a while. I'm thinking of incorporating a quick daily brain dump in my routine.

I usually collect things as I go, throughout the day, and it is often done digitally, adding to my Nirvana Inbox with my computer or phone. But there is something about stopping everything else to do a mind sweep session that gives immediate relief from stress. It feels that if it's done on paper, it's even better: I force myself to slow down to capture.

I did the same thing at work this morning, and now I have 2 in-trays to practice the Clarifying (Processing) step, which is covered in the next chapter.

My two full in-trays: Work (left) and Personal (right)

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

This is a series of posts with reading notes of the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

My notes on Chapter 4 – Getting Started: Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools

This chapter gives some tips and tricks to get started with the capturing process.

The first thing is to acknowledge that we need time for this. David recommends a weekend or holiday to avoid external disturbances. It will be intense if you're doing it for the first time!

Dedicate two days to this process, and it will be worth many times that in terms of your productivity and mental health. — David Allen

Setting up the space

The second thing to do is to set up a space, in your home and at the office (if you work in one). Have a central space to serve as your “central cockpit of control”, it might be your work office, your home office, any space with the basics:

• a writing surface
• an in-tray
• space for digital tools/computer/laptop if you use one

Also, if we go to an office during work hours, we will still need a space at home. I have a work office (I don't work from home) and a home office, so I have in-trays in both locations.

A side note: I remember when the pandemic started, and I had to work from home during the lockdowns, it was an easy transition. I already had a desk with space for a computer and an office chair at home, while some people really struggled those first months to try to find a space at their homes and set up something. So, thanks, GTD! 👍

Another point is that the space at home doesn't need to be a separate room, it can be a corner where you can fit a desk and a chair to work from. For some years, when I was living in a tiny 1-bedroom apartment, I had my desk on a corner inside the bedroom (right beside my bed!). It worked!

Tools

David Allen then lists what we need to complete the setup: in-trays, stack of plain letter-sized paper, pen/pencil, post-its, paper clips, stapler, scotch tape, rubber bands, an automatic labeller, file folders, a Calendar, wastebasket, devices and notebooks.

From all those items, I think the only one I don't have at all are rubber bands. Oh, I also don't keep a stack of plain paper (I don't have a printer). I use a small spiral notebook as my paper capturing tool. I've only recently acquired a labeller, and it is very satisfying to have things labelled in a nice font. Though I still have to replace my handwritten reference archive labels using my new labeller.

There is a discussion about where to keep the lists. We can do it the “low-tech” way: pieces of paper kept in a folder, or we could go “mid-tech” with loose-leaf notebooks or paper planners, or we can be “high-tech” with our lists in a to-do app. I'm mostly high-tech for my lists: I use a digital calendar and an app (Nirvana).

“Keep in mind, though, that the tool you use will not give you stress-free productivity. That is something you create by implementing the GTD method.” — David Allen

Filing System

Non-actionable but potentially relevant material should be organized in a general-reference file system. These files are: articles, brochures, notes, printouts, manuals, documents, membership cards, etc. Having a dedicated space to store those items avoids the uncertainty and anxiety of figuring out where to store them. If they don't have a home, they will start accumulating in horizontal surfaces, creating clutter and “psychological noise”.

The filing system has to be easy, fast and fun to use. It's also good to make sure we are not storing unnecessary duplicates (a hard copy of something we only access though the Web, for example).

“In the fire zone of real work, if it takes longer than sixty seconds to file something where it belongs, you won't file, you'll “stack.” — David Allen

David recommends using one A to Z alphabetical physical filing system. For the digital systems, he also recommends the A-Z approach.

My physical references are sorted alphabetically, as recommended. But my digital files have always been organized in major “life topics”. I don't know why or how, but I came up with these folders way before I knew what GTD was. I still have them more or less unchanged for 12+ years:

• 1 Education
• 2 Finances
• 3 Fun and Interests
• 4 Personal
• 5 Work
• 6 Home
• 7 Reference
• 8 Photos Archive

The last good practice is to purge our files (digital and physical) at least one a year. I usually take a look at my physical files and recycle some things that are longer current or useful. I have a very small file storage drawer, and I like to keep most of my paperwork in digital form anyway.

Now, I never really purge my digital files because I don't have the issue of lack of storage. I focus on keeping things organized in their folders, and that's enough for me.

My Space at Home

Here is my setup at home:

I'm happy with my space, it has everything I need close at hand. For some years (in the tiny apartment) I didn't have the storage space on the left, so my in-tray was on top the file drawer cabinet on the right.

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The next chapter is about capturing stuff. So after we have a space set up, we can start with Step 1: Capture.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

This is a series of posts with reading notes of the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

My notes about the first chapter: “A New Practice for a New Reality”

The first chapter of the book discusses the problems we have today as knowledge workers. We are living in a reality with constant new demands and no clear boundaries. Work tasks can be often ambiguous, and we have to figure out for ourselves how to execute them, while being bombarded with information.

One of the key aspects of the method is to manage all of our open loops. Everything, mental or physical, that has come to our attention and that we have not yet determined their meaning, is considered to be “Stuff”. Stuff comes through life's random inputs: emails, calls, invites, demands, ideas, conversations, bills, etc, etc.

So, mismanaged open loops will pull at our attention if not managed appropriately. I find that to be painfully true. This was my first “a-ha” moment when I read the book 11 years ago. I was keeping everything in my head, and I couldn't understand why I was feeling so overwhelmed and stressed.

David Allen explains why keeping things in our heads is NOT ideal:

A big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means as soon as you tell yourself that you might need to do something, and store it only in your head, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time. Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. — David Allen

I have that feeling every time I don't write things down. And, as David Allen points out, the reason why things are on my mind can be:

1. I haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcome is

2. I haven't decided what the next physical action step is

3. I haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system I trust

The starting point to reduce overwhelm is to capture and organize all the “Stuff”. That way, we can start building an inventory of next actions that can be implemented or renegotiated. It requires us to define what “done” means and what “doing” looks like.

What I really like about this book is that it really goes into the nitty-gritty on HOW to capture and organize all that “stuff” (to be covered in the next chapters). And the method includes (and integrates) both personal and professional areas: it is really a full life management system.

In the end, the promise is to have “Mind Like Water” or be in the “Zone”, in a state of perfect readiness. The image behind this analogy is imagining throwing a pebble into a still pond:

How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact. Water is what it is, and does what it does. It can overwhelm, but it’s not overwhelmed. It can be still, but it is not impatient. It can be forced to change course, but it is not frustrated. — David Allen

I can say from experience that I had mornings and afternoons in which I was in the “Zone”. It's when I have a clear image of what needs to be done, I have well written next actions and my mind feels free to prioritize things and focus.

But this was just the introduction. The next chapter will go into the famous Five Steps.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I have this project in mind: to re-read the “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” book by David Allen this year.

I’ve read the book twice already (first time in 2012 and a second time in 2019). I’ve probably skimmed it a couple of times to search for specific information throughout the years as well.

But I want to do a full re-read taking lots of notes. My plan is to publish some of those notes in this blog, such as:

• My current thoughts on the methodology
• Comment on concepts that I might have a new understanding
• Comment on things I haven't noticed before on my previous reads
• Note things that worked out well in my system
• Note things that didn't work out that well in my system

This is one of those books that we always get something new out of it every time. It covers a lot of universal concepts that are meant to be almost timeless.

I hope to revisit the main concepts and do a diagnostics of my current system, identifying opportunities to make it simpler and better adapted to my current reality. I want to focus more on the process, not the tools. I also want to go deeper into the Higher Horizons of Focus (Goals, Vision, Purpose and Principles).

I will be reading the updated edition published in 2015, in the digital format.

This is one of the books that changed my life: it gave me valuable insights that I applied in both my personal and professional lives. Everything I've accomplished for the past 11 years has been on my Someday/Maybe list at some point.

I'll be using the hashtag #GTDnotes for this series of posts. Stay tuned!

Getting Things Done is not simply about getting things done. It’s about being appropriately engaged with your work and life. — David Allen

List of all the published posts (update):

• GTD Notes: Chapter 01 – “Mind Like Water”
• GTD Notes: Chapter 02 – Five Steps
• GTD Notes: Chapter 03 – Project Planning
• GTD Notes: Chapter 04 – Space and Tools
• GTD Notes: Chapter 05 – What has your attention?
• GTD Notes: Chapter 06 – Processing guidelines
• GTD Notes: Chapter 07 – The Buckets
• GTD Notes: Chapter 08 – The Weekly Review
• GTD Notes: Chapter 09 – How to Engage
• GTD Notes: Chapter 10 – Planning Tools
• GTD Notes: Chapters 11, 12 & 13 – Power of the Key Principles
• GTD Notes: Chapter 14 – Cognitive Science
• GTD Notes: Chapter 15 – GTD Mastery and Conclusion

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Work is a huge source of stress and anxiety to me. That's why I have all sorts of coping mechanisms and tools to help me feel less overwhelmed.

There is one habit described by Cal Newport that has been extremely useful to me: the Shutdown Ritual. It is also described in more detail in his book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”.

I block off 30 minutes on my Calendar at the end of the day to focus on this ritual. Sometimes it takes me 10 minutes, sometimes it takes me half an hour. The idea is to have something to nudge me into doing it, even if I do it partially. This is my recurring Calendar event:

I have the following recurring action in my to-do app (Nirvana):

So this action shows up in my Focus list everyday, and I always move it to the bottom of my Focus list, so I'll get to it last. It goes like this:

==> End of Day: Shutdown Routine ☄

1. Process Meeting Notes from the day: I have a paper notebook that I carry with me wherever I go around the office, especially in meetings. I take notes, as much as I can. At the end of the day I look at the notes and check if there are any actions I need to add to my Nirvana Inbox or notes I want to add to my projects notes.

2. Capture: Then I do a quick mind-sweep of tasks I failed to capture and add them to the my Nirvana Inbox. If I have enough time I will process and organize them. If not, I leave them to be processed during my morning start-up routine the next day.

3. Check off any completed tasks: sometimes I can only find the time to mark a task as completed at the end of the day, and it feels good! 👍

4. Review my Calendar for tomorrow: I ask myself “Do I need to prepare anything?”. It gives me an idea of what lies ahead.

5. Finally I ask myself “What things do I want to achieve tomorrow?” I flag those next actions to the ⭐Focus list in Nirvana.

6. Say 'Shutdown Complete'! : this is Cal Newport's suggestion. I don't actually say it out loud, but I say it in my head.

If I don't have time to do the complete routine, I will prioritize doing only Step #2: Capture. That's the most important step!

Doing a quick mind sweep can make all the difference! I can leave work and transition to my evenings feeling less stressed and confident that whatever I have to solve at work will be there patiently waiting for me the next day. There's no reason to loose sleep over it. By taking a few moments to sweep through my thoughts and jot down any lingering tasks or ideas, I'm able to mentally detach from work and fully engage in my personal time.

Regularly doing the complete shutdown routine brings powerful results. As I review my day's accomplishments and outline tomorrow's objectives, I feel more organized and I also find myself approaching challenges with a clearer mindset.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

For the surprise of absolutely no one, I'm back with the Nirvana app for my tasks and projects. 😏

I lasted roughly 2 months with my 2-accounts setup in Microsoft To Do. All the integration features offered by MS To Do that I thought were detrimental to my daily setup ended up not being that important.

Drawbacks of Microsoft To Do

Over the past two months, I've found myself utilizing the file attachment feature only once.

Although the option to flag emails in Outlook and synchronize them with Microsoft To Do seemed promising, it didn't significantly impact my workflow.

The handling of recurring tasks also posed a challenge – the lack of separate copies meant that altering the due date by a day affected the entire task series.

While Microsoft To Do serves me well during less hectic periods, I've noticed a pattern: when faced with complex projects at work, I tend to feel overwhelmed. This is where I remember the effectiveness of the Nirvana app to deal with it all. Nirvana just makes more sense with how I compartmentalize multiple projects and next actions.

This brings to mind the classic GTD (Getting Things Done) discussion about linking projects to next actions.

The truth is: there is no right or wrong way to do it.

The fundamental principle is: maintain a a list of current projects to review weekly and assign one next action to each project to move them forward. That's it. But for some people (like me) it is beneficial to group next actions by project. Occasionally, the project itself defines my entire focus for the day.

Microsoft To Do attempted to facilitate this organizational aspect with hashtags, but it felt somewhat loosely structured for my taste. Without a centralized list of hashtags, I found myself typing various versions of the same hashtag for a single project, leading to confusion.

Also, the pop-up hashtag list that appears when adding a new task doesn't work when editing a task post-insertion, requiring me to recall the correct hashtag or go search for it.

The 2-accounts setup also was a bit cumbersome, because in my head I didn't have one unified Inbox. I prefer having no friction at all for capturing things. Capturing tasks should be effortless and instinctive, without any unnecessary cognitive load. However, I often found myself contemplating whether a task belonged to my work or personal account, disrupting the capture momentum.

It took time and experimentation to determine what truly suits me. Through trial and error – as you can see documented in my GTD Journey blog posts – I've gained clarity (finally!). Microsoft To Do is undeniably a great simple app, yet Nirvana resonates more closely with the natural functioning of my mind.

All that being said...

The little things that make me come back to Nirvana:

• Nirvana guides me towards a more disciplined GTD approach by neatly categorizing everything into predefined sections. This alignment with GTD principles removes the need to invest excessive time in personalizing settings (a big win, especially for someone like me who can get lost in endless customization choices!).
• Nirvana handles recurring tasks better than many tools, since it doesn't bother me with them until the start date. This clever approach involves creating new instances of tasks for their upcoming occurrences. I can even adjust individual due dates without disrupting the original sequence. Also, I appreciate the option to set deadlines and determine how many days in advance tasks appear in the “Focus” section (I use that a lot!).
• The way Nirvana integrates next-actions with projects is amazing.
• It has Start Dates (very hard to see in other apps).
• I love how Scheduling works by keeping a next action hidden until they are ready to appear in the “Focus” section.

After years of back and forth I've come to this conclusion: Nirvana aligns closely with my personal work style and preferences, making it my preferred choice over Microsoft To Do or any other task managers.

At the end of the day it's all about trusting the system and regularly reviewing my lists (weekly reviews!). Consistency is key – the more consistently I engage with my system, the more reliable it becomes, reinforcing my confidence in it.

I feel that I completely trust Nirvana right now👍.

So, I’ll renew my promise: I will stick with it for at least a year and re-evaluate.

#GTD #productivity #MSTodo #Nirvana #apps

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I changed my task list manager again! 😆

I know I promised I would wait a year before rethinking my use of Nirvana but… I got some more pressure from the company I work for, where everything is becoming Microsoft 365. Considering that I use Outlook 365 for work every day and I also have a personal account, I decided to switch back to Microsoft To Do.

Here is why:

• Integration: my work teams started assigning tasks to people and they are showing up in MS To Do. I didn’t want to have to copy tasks to another app, and then loose track or get confused about what was on my plate. In this case the integration makes things consolidated in one tool, making my life easier. Also, there are work periods when I deal with a lot of back and forth emails, where I’m waiting for something and/or have to follow up. The Outlook integration here makes things less confusing. (previously I had to forward the email to Nirvana, and manually add a link to the message so that I could find it later… some things fell through the cracks on a couple occasions, so the process was not reliable).
• Having multiple accounts on iOS: Now we can switch between multiple accounts on iPhones. Just until recently this was only possible on Android phones. This solves one of my earlier issues with MS To Do, where I couldn’t access my work lists using my personal phone and vice versa. I know I could solve this by having everything in one account then sharing the lists, but I prefer to have them separate.
• The looks 😍: I really LOVE Microsoft To Do aesthetic. I love using emojis and honestly I missed some colours in my daily tasks.
• My Day: This functionality is great to manage my attention/focus deficit! And because it resets everyday, it forces me to select the focus of the day.

Now, the setup!

I follow the GTD Methodology Official Guide and my system didn’t change much from last time. I have similar setups on both my personal and work accounts. Here is my personal setup overview:

Lists without groups:

• 📥INBOX (Shared): I created this as a shared point between my personal and work accounts so that I can move things I captured on one account to the other. The idea here is that when I’m capturing it doesn’t matter which phone or account I have on my hands, it has to be quick and easy to capture something. I’ll deal with it later.
• 🎯My GTD Dashboard: This list is a quick reference link to documents that are outside the task manager, like my dashboard spreadsheet (used for planning), my system overview (a description of my system) and master project lists. These master project lists are long time records of my projects that I update once a month or so.

Groups of Lists:

• P R O J E C T S: I separate them between active projects “Projects-Personal” and “Projects-Inactive”. Inactive projects are the ones that I started but for some reason were put on hold, or I am waiting for something, so they are not active. I revise this list during my weekly review.

* N E X T A C T I O N S📌: each list is a different context, classic GTD

• L A T E R 🔒: I created this “LATER” list for actions that I don’t want to engage just yet, but soon (next week, maybe). It’s a middle ground parking lot between Someday-Maybe and Next.
• S O M E D A Y: Lists to group different topics for all Someday/Maybe’s.

• Noisy Deadlines: I capture ideas for blog posts and have links to my archives folder where I store images, file references, etc.
• Recurring: All of my recurring tasks, including Daily Reviews, My Routines and GTD Reviews.
• References: various lists that are non actionable items.
• Checklists: Travel and GTD Checklists.

Using hashtags to identify Projects

I’m still using hashtags as a way to search similar items. So for example, in my projects list I have a keyword to identify that project and so I can use that same hashtag on my next actions. Clicking on a hashtag will show all related items with it.

Shared Lists

I shared some lists between my personal and work accounts so that if I update one the changes will be reflected in both accounts:

• INBOX
• My GTD Dashboard
• Recurring
• Vacation Dates
• Checklists

Final thoughts…

I’m getting used to this new system which feels to me a bit more focused on executing (via next actions by contexts). In Nirvana I tended to let things parked in my next actions list longer and it wasn’t as engaging for me to act on them. It seems now that capturing and processing is faster.

I’m exploring the integrations available between Teams/Outlook/MS To Do to start using them to my advantage, including the “Flagged email” list.

Also, I really like “My Day”!

So, I’ll renew my promise: I will stick with this system for at least a year, unless it becomes unbearable. 🙋‍♀️

#GTD #productivity #MSTodo #apps

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.