How to actually get your stuff done

in blog •  7 years ago 

About a year ago, I was browsing my app store for a nice tool to help organize my daily life. While doing so I stumbled upon a tool called OmniFocus. While reading the details in the description of this app and browsing through the reviews, I came across this acronym I hadn't seen before.

checklist-2589418_1280.jpgImage source

Reviews containing things like "As a true GTD practitioner, this tool is a must have…" and "The perfect GTD software out there" made me curious about this mysterious acronym people were talking about.

GTD, or as I found out after some google research, Getting Things Done is a method advocated by a guy called David Allen. In one of his books he gives a detailed description of his method and how to implement it.

Although I'm usually a bit skeptical about so-called self-help guru's trying to sell you their book, I've decided to give this one a go. While at my job the number of projects I couldn't get done was slowly growing, I thought it might be a good investment of time to read Allen's book.

Screen Shot 2018-02-03 at 14.25.04.png

I became familiar with GTD as a method designed to help you organize your everyday life at home and at the job. And the great thing about it, is that you can implement this method by some fairly simple rules and strategies. You can even implement small parts of it to slowly get used to each change.

So back to OmniFocus

After having read David Allen's book and trying out some of the methods discussed within, I decided that it was time to setup a digital tool that could help me further improve my system. While remembering where it all started for me, I got back to the app store and decided to go for OmniFocus.

I don't want to bother you with any details on the GTD method itself (just read the book!). However, OmniFocus is truly GTD compatible. It allows you to create and manage all your projects, errands and deadlines. At the same time, it is supported on a range of devices including phones, ipads, and smartwatches.

Screen Shot 2018-02-03 at 14.19.24.png
Image source: Apples App Store

If you need to get organized in life or on the job, I can truly recommend the Getting Things Done method and read David Allen's book. And if you would like to go digital, it is worth it to look into some good GTD compatible software! In my opinion, after doing some research and having hands-on experience, OmniFocus is a great candidate!

Disclaimer:

I am not affiliated with anything related to David Allen or OmniFocus, nor anyone who is profiting from the sale of anything related to GTD or OmniFocus. The only reason for writing this post is to share knowledge that might be useful and interesting to others. This information helped me personally and therefore I think it is worth sharing.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

I’d love a ton more of these kind of posts. And ill definitely check out this book!

Wow, thanks again! If I think of something I'll drop it here for sure!

Hm.. it is always interesting to find ways to become more productive! Good suggestions. Have you heard of Trello? I'm just starting to you use that, and it works quite well. Or is that not really GTD-compatible (sorry didn't read the book yet)? I also read about people using Bullet Journals these days. But maybe it is more something for schoolgirls and designers... :D

I also love Trello!

Hi @laracoe, yes I've used trello for work to keep track of short/mid/long term goals etc. However, i've migrated all that slowly to omnifocus just to have everything in one place. The thing I like about GTD is that you have the concept of an inbox in which you dump everything that comes up during the day or in your thoughts. Then once in a while, you process everything from the inbox by assigning them to lists or projects or directly just doing them.

Since you dump everything in this inbox, the things you normally are trying to keep track of in your mind are no longer there and you have time to think about other stuff :)

I'm not too familiar with bullet journals but I always change around the stuff I need to do or keep track of a lot. I think having a paper journal is not flexible enough for that reason. I might still try it one day! (Just dropped it in my inbox :P)

Thanks for your post and reading my article!