GTD and OSX on C6

I’m going to document my current strategy for organization, roughly based on GTD principles, and then update it after a week of heavy testing. To be very honest, I haven’t read David Allen’s book and probably won’t, although if this system works at all I might find enough time to do it ;-). This system was devised with generous heapings of help from postings at Hawkwings and 43 Folders, the authors of which I consider to be serious productivity gurus. So what follows is not their fault, but if you like it, they get a good portion of the credit. That’s fair, right?

The Foundation

I use OSX, as my readers are well aware. I focused quite a bit of my research and energy on making the most of the built in tools in OSX and found that they’re really quite flexible for this sort of thing. I tried a lot of third party programs, including Kinkless GTD, Ghost Action, Midnight Inbox, Actiontastic, GTDAlt for TextMate and others. Ultimately, I settled on one possibly unlikely candidate: & ToDo / Task Management Application for Mac & Windows">EasyTask Manager. I’m not going to delve into discussing the merits and deficiencies of all of the above software. EasyTask provided a simple interface with Quicksilver support, iCal syncing and multiple calendar views that could be sorted by due date and priority. Obviously, it had the ability to sort everything by context and project. It has some rather glaring interface bugs and I don’t know how fast development is moving on it, but it’s usable for my purposes. Oh yeah, and it has a price tag, but most of the ones that I seriously considered did.

Besides EasyTask, the entire system works using iCal, Apple Mail and Quicksilver, with the optional addition of Google Calendars and .Mac. There are some necessary addons for each that are required, but we’ll cover them.

Mail: The Root of All Evil

Spam is the first enemy, and I highly recommend SpamSieve. It’s worked absolute miracles for me. Once you’ve got that under control…

I had my mail checking every 5 minutes, and making a sound on new mail receipt. It would send a chill down my spine and interrupt whatever I was working on. My first step was to change mail checking to every hour. I can always check manually if someone calls and asks if I got their email.

Most of my projects are initiated or immediately followed up by an email, so starting my GTD system with my email inbox made sense. The first ingredient here is a bundle called MailTags, which I had been using previously and now am fully aware that I don’t ever want to live without. Grab it and install it, it’s the basis of everything you’ll want to do to your inbox.

Sorting Email

I needed to be able to immediately sort incoming emails, either taking immediate action on them and archiving them or putting them into categories to indicate that they require action or response, or are being held or deferred. Rather than create folders for each of these, I created projects in Mailtags: @Action, @Waiting, @Hold and @Respond. The next step was to create Smart Mailboxes for each project, with each mailbox being set to show messages with the appropriate MailTags Project setting. Lastly, I wanted the sorting process to go as quickly as possible, so I grabbed Mail Act-On and defined rules for each project, setting a background color and a project for the selected message(s). I also made rules for the 1-5 keys to set priorities on each message, too. Lastly, I have a rule, (f)ile, that sets the project to “none”, background color to white and moves the message into an archive folder once I’ve completed the required action.

I add keywords (tags) to each message as well to help organize client emails and subjects together, since the majority of my clients do a terrible job of using any kind of descriptive subject in their emails. Adding keywords to preferences when you create them allows for the creation of Smart Mailboxes for a client or subject as well.

I’ve also started deleting anything that doesn’t require action or followup.

Now you’ve got an inbox full of color coded files, and Smart Mailboxes for seeing them sorted. However, I liked the idea of seeing an empty inbox. So I created a Smart Mailbox that only shows unread messages that aren’t junk mail and aren’t from a mailing list (lists get their own folders for free-time reading). If I don’t assign a context to a message when it comes in, it disappears (into the regular mailbox, don’t worry), so it forces me to organize on the spot.

Now we need a Tickler file. Some messages are advance warnings that you just don’t need sitting around in any of your inboxes for quite a while. Make a smart mailbox called Tickler and set it to show messages where the “MailTags Due Date is before 1 days from today”. Then just set a due date on a message and it will disappear until it’s time to review it again.

Next I needed to combine my unread Inbox and Tickler file into one mailbox, which requires both AND and OR logic in the Smart Mailbox. This is not default behavior for Mail. You can hack plist files but I chose a simpler route. I put the Inbox and Tickler mailboxes into a folder and then created a Smart Mailbox called @INBOX that was set to ANY of the conditions, listing Message is in Mailbox “x” for each box. Now I just check @INBOX, and my unread messages and any tickler messages will be waiting for me.

EasyTask

In EasyTask you can set a Project, a Context, a Start and Due date, priority and a status on an item, as well as include notes and links. I use Projects to notate clients and major categories, and contexts to notate the type of action required (Call, Paperwork, Physical Task, etc.). I use the status/priority to determine whether it’s an action item, deferred item, delegated, etc. The Contexts will be synced into individual iCal calendars. I have one context called INBOX that I’ll talk more about later.

You can create your projects and contexts first. Then enter a bunch of items and drag them onto a project or context and it will be assigned. You have to edit start and end dates individually by double clicking an item.

One thing to note is that any time you make changes in the drawer, you have to save them before selecting another item or they will be lost. You can hit ⌘-s or hit the save button. Double clicking and editing an item does not have the same problem.

EasyTask comes with a QuickSilver action for adding items. It can be handy when getting started, but I don’t use it much now that I have the system going.

iCal Setup

Because I had previously been using the Backpack calendar for most of my calendar needs, I had a pretty blank slate to start with. It might take some configuring if you’ve got a lot on your calendar and you want to change your system. What I’m doing is setting up a calendar for each context, which will then sync with EasyTask. Even without EasyTask this system would work fine, just using Mail, MailTags and iCal… EasyTask just gives me a little more control over my daily ToDo lists.

By syncing from EasyTask, all the work I did in there was automatically added into my iCal. If you’re not using EasyTask, use one of the methods I’ll get to in a second to enter your items directly into iCal.

So I’ve got calendars for Call, Paperwork, Waiting/Delegated, Physical Task, Web Design, Design, Online, Email, etc. The first thing I did was take another tip from 43 Folders and group my calendars into logical calendar folders so that I could easily turn off entire groupings when printing and viewing. For example, Web Design, Design, Online, and Email are all under the heading “Computer”, so unchecking Computer will turn off everything I can’t do when I leave my laptop behind.

Get familiar with the printing options in iCal. Carrying a 2 month agenda and the days ToDo list, sorted to your needs, can be a lot easier than lugging around a laptop. Scrawl notes and appointments and check off items, then when you get back to your computer you can update your system.

Lastly, iCal has some great options for sharing calendars. I share with Mac and PC users, so I chose to set up a Google Calendar that I can then subscribe to with iCal. I can submit events with Quicksilver and have them added into an events folder automatically. .Mac is a perfectly viable option, and iCal’s invitation options provide a lot of flexibility. If you use invitations, be sure to include handy links and notes in the notes field, it can save you time in the long run.

Inputting Items

As I mentioned, you can input items directly into EasyTask with Quicksilver. But in my workflow EasyTask is secondary, so I would rather input my events and ToDos right into iCal and then sync them into EasyTask for organizing. I have the aforementioned context in EasyTask, INBOX, which has now become a calendar upon syncing. If you have “Enable Advanced Features” turned on in Quicksilver and the iCal module enabled, you can call up Quicksilver and type a period to enter text mode, and then enter a string like “Tuesday — !! Proposal for Dunhurst Brothers”, press tab and type todo to bring up the Add iCal To-Do action, and then tab again to select the INBOX calendar. I put everything in the INBOX calendar when I input it because it makes it easy to find and edit in EasyTask when I want to assign start dates, add notes, etc. BTW, the exclamation points in the example string set the priority.

I also have a calendar folder called events, which contains calendars for Appointments, Meetings and Google Calendar. I can add an event by calling up Quicksilver and entering “Tuesday 9am — Dentist Appointment”, pressing tab and typing “event” to bring up the Add iCal Event action and then tabbing over to select one of the Event calendars.

Lastly, I can create ToDos and Events right from Mail using MailTags. There are buttons on the tag panel for each, and any events or todos that are created will be linked to the original message, and vice versa. This makes a great way to start tying the system together, which I’ll cover in the closing.

Other Apps

I accidentally fell in love with Yojimbo during my research. It’s been immensely helpful in organizing things that aren’t emails or todo items. I have created collections in Yojimbo that mirror my other schemes, Action, Waiting, Hold and Archive. I hid most of the default Smart Collections and unhid the Unsorted Items collection. That functions as my Inbox. Yojimbo can create a link to any item it contains, which can then be put into an iCal item. Tagging makes everything easy to sort and associate. I try to use the same tags in Yojimbo that I use in MailTags, to make it easy to remember and associate items with projects.

Shoebox is my solution for handling image organization. I won’t go into a full review here, but I will mention that it does a very good job of relational databasing, tagging and backing up images.

Bringing it Together

You can add links in the notes of events and todo notes in iCal. You can also add a URL. You can copy a URL for a message from MailTags, or a file from Yojimbo. You can link to Google Maps or any website for more info. You can add links to notes in EasyTask as well. Everything can be interconnected. That was one of my main concerns when I realized that there wasn’t an easy way to do this with one or two applications. But with these tools you can quite literally create a web of information. A ToDo item comes up and clicking its link takes you to the message that initiated it. The notes in the message link you to a website with more information. Another link takes you to a file in Yojimbo that you set aside for when it was time to deal with this project. I think you get the picture.

In Theory…

So this is how it’s all supposed to work, in theory. I’ll be putting it into practice and heavy testing over the next week and will report back with refinements and changes after that. I’ve done my research, and think that I’ve tried just about everything at this point, but if you think I’m missing the point of something, I’m always open to hearing about it.

applications» EasyTask» Geekery» GTD» iCal» mail» osx» productivity» quicksilver»