Advanced GTD topics

In the last section, we talked about the basics of Getting Things Done (GTD). As you start applying GTD in your task management, you may find cases that are not covered in the basic introduction. In this section, we will expand GTD usage, and introduce some new techniques.

In the GTD book, David Allen talked about 6 levels at which focus can be directed. He used the word "altitudes" as if watching your daily activities from an airplane.

task_gtd_horizons

For most people, we only manage tasks at level 5 and 6. It is a bottom-up approach. We can easily get lost in the details and ignore those really important things for the long term. If you want to have a top down vision, you can create a root category "Horizons" under the "GTD" folder. Under "Horizons", you can have two sub-categories: "Goals" and "Roles". In the horizons of focus list, levels 1, 2, and 3 are all about goals at different degrees. Level 4 is about your roles which include areas of focus and responsibility. There is no need to create categories for the last two levels because they are already covered by the "Projects" and "Next" category. You can then write down your lifetime goals as sub-categories under "Goals", write down your visions as sub-categories under these lifetime goals, and major steps you have to take to achieve those visions under the corresponding categories. Under "Roles", you can have several roles like "Father", "Husband", and your job role. The purpose of this list is to reflect the fact that your tasks and projects are both goal driven and role driven. Once you have finished a project, instead of dragging it to the "Completed" category, you can then drag and drop your finished projects into these categories. It can be used as a way to track what you have done to achieve those goals or fulfill the responsibilities of your roles. All this certainly adds extra work. If you don't like to spend the extra effort to track your projects for long term goals, you can skip this section and concentrate at the managing tasks at projects level.

Because the data of different modules are all stored in a single database, integration between modules is made easy. You can create a task from the references or notes modules, and you can also file a task as a note. These can all be done with drag and drop.

When you are in the references module, you may want to check something about a reference. Instead of going to a tasks folder, creating a new task, and writing down which reference you want to double check, you can just drag the reference (or several references) and drop it to a task folder on the left. Biblioscape will create a new task automatically with the reference already added to the Detail field. You can just type something like "Check again in library" as the title and click the Save button. You can do the same thing when you are in the notes module; just drag a note (or several notes) to a tasks folder. Biblioscape will create a new task for you with the title of the selected notes added to the task's Detail field.

Another important part of GTD we haven't mentioned is filing some of your non-actionable tasks as references. When you clear your mind by writing down everything in the Collect stage, you don't need to worry about wether the things you type are actionable or not. In the Process and Organize stages, you can drag some non-actionable things to the "Someday" category if it can become actionable in the future. You can drag the rest to a notes folder. Biblioscape will create a new note automatically and the note will have the same title as your task. If there is text in the task's Description and Miscellaneous fields, the text will be added to the note's body. The original task will be removed from the tasks module. The reason is that you don't want to keep non-actionable things in the tasks module. David Allen suggests to file all non-actionable things as references. The Notes module is the best place to store this freeform text.

So far we have introduced 3 top level categories to organize your tasks. These are: Focus, Places, and Projects. Although these can satisfy the needs of most people, but you are not limited to just these. For example, you may want to add another category called "People" and list several names under it. You can then file tasks under those names. There is no limit on the number of categories you can file a task to. Filing tasks to more categories certainly add extra work. Over time, you can find a good compromise between these two approaches.

For some projects, the order of doing each task is very important. For example, when building a pond, you must prepare the foundation before laying the first brick. Biblioscape provides two views of your tasks. In the tree view, you can re-arrange the order of your tasks by click the Up (Ctrl+Up) and Down (Ctrl+Down) button. Once you have set up the order in the tree view, the tasks will be displayed in the same order in the table view. For GTD users, clicking the Next category will list all next tasks in the table view grouped by project. If you have ordered tasks for a project, tasks will be displayed in the same order here. You can evaluate and identify the next actions and drag them to the Today category if needed.