Welcome back to another video. It is francesco here for the keep productive youtube channel
This video will be a useful guide to embracing filters with context inside of a task management application
Now this methodology can be replicated in tools like ticktick and todoist and many more that have a filtering ability
And what we'll be talking about is something that is mentioned in the book getting things done by david
Allen, giving you some tips of how to craft
Filters to find tasks easily and manage them much more suitably during your work day
Now today's video is sponsored by sanebox. We'll share a little bit more about them. Later
so this video was inspired after a recent office hours I did with todoist and actually
Nested inside of the course, uh called gtd in 21 days or well at least it's called gt. Like a boss
That is produced by thiago forte. I'll include that link in the description
Now the goal is so that when you open your filters
It brings in relevant tasks that are built around scenarios that you can essentially build
Based on your own situation now if you're using todoist and which i'm using for this video
You do need to do this premium to access the labels and filters
There's a smashing quote that I think we should start with from david allen
Which is you have more to do than you can possibly do you just need to feel good about your choices
And that's definitely something that relates in this
Context so the first thing that you should do is set labels
Now there's loads of different context points you could add
We'll start with a couple of them that may inspire you
And you don't have to use them all you can cherry pick which ones you like, but let's get started
So the first one could be energy levels energy levels could be anything from inactive to active to proactive
And that could describe the energy levels that you have
So for example the other day, I felt super inactive which means I didn't really have much energy to complete the tasks at hand
I don't really want much brain power in an active state
So for example, I may associate
administration an email task to an inactive label
or for example proactive could be something where you're going quite deep so that could be a deep step work state piece of uh,
Work for example that could be editing in my case or for you. It could be something quite intense like designing
Could be producing something that takes longer than an hour and that could be a proactive energy state
So energy state is a great way to start and you can label things with inactive
Active and proactive or you can actually just give your energy levels a low medium or high
The next one is time to complete the task some applications do actually provide you with the ability to add duration
but in this case, uh
For example website ticktick and todoist don't so you may want to add everything from 5 minutes to 10 minutes to 15 minutes
To 30 minutes to 60 minutes and some people add just 60 minutes plus
Next up is what you actually need to use to complete that task and some tasks can be done on mobile
Some class could be need to be done on desktop. Some tasks need to be done with a phone and other tasks can be done
Just using a certain computer or a certain software
So you can include devices and tools to the completion of that task and this will come in later
But those context points can be useful
Um, for example when you're setting up these filters because you can be very specific about what tools you have at that current time
The next is location
You may want to say whether it's in
The house or out of the house and you may just want to keep it like that or you may actually want to have home
Office different rooms that you do work in so that you can associate a certain task to each room
Especially if you're working from home, that's a really effective technique. So location can be an important one
the next one could be people if you don't necessarily want to add somebody to inside of your tasks or
Within your task management application, then people can be a great way
So adding a label for the people you work with or your friends and family
Could actually help you to add some depth to a task about who you need to specifically talk to to get those tasks done
and finally
If you're looking to add an extra layer of importance to a task
Over the top of something like the p1 p2 p3 in todoist
Which are used to help define the priority of a task
You can add an urgency context point label
Which for example in this case might be low medium or high or if you don't want them to clash with your energy levels?
It could be
You know
very important
Burning or you could create a little sort of urgency system, uh from yourself
Um, and that could be a good way to layer a cell level of urgency over the top of your labels
so now you've got to go ahead and create those labels and that's a good starting point and you can
And whatever you find suitable and you can always add more later on
Just before we move on to actually building the filters a little bit more about sanebox
Sanebox is a powerful way to triage your email inbox and you can find out more about it below
Here's a little bit more about them these days we get inundated with the emails
So it seems it's no longer about responding to them all
But the ones that truly matter and that's why you need to check out sanebox
I've personally been using sanebox for the last two years and have loved the way that the ai monitors my inbox
Moving any unwanted emails right into a folder called sane later leaving me
More time to focus on processing emails that are important and not every single one that comes in
Apparently sanebox users save roughly three to four hours a week on email. What's really cool is you can train the system as well
So if you find an email in the wrong folder just move it and it will train over time
There's no installs. No learning and it works with all email providers and services out there
I personally use it with missive
It also has some nifty features like sane black hole where you can drag messages from annoying senders
You never want to hear from again and saying reminders to ping you if someone hasn't replied
To your email by a certain date now, you can get a two-week free trial and 25
credit by visiting sanebox.com
Key productive. Anyway, folks a big. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy
So the second step is to set these filters up to scenario map
And of course you may have different scenarios different situations that are going on and these labels should help you to build those
little situations
so of course, um
I always recommend grabbing a piece of paper for this or something like this because you
You just want to be able to sketch out a few ideas
But think of different situations you are in throughout your work day. You may actually want to draw a 9 a.m. To 5 p.m
Sort of bit of an outline of what you typically do
For example, a lot of people do administration in the mornings when they get to their desk
Can there be a filter built around that?
And also situations like travel like on the way to work, do you typically do work tasks or do you leave that to yourself?
And when you get home, do you have certain tasks you do when you come into the house?
so being able to find scenarios that are typically
Routinely happen throughout your day. Then that's something that can
Really help you
And for example, it's also looking at the low and high points of the day
if you want, you can draw a little sort of line graph of how
Much energy you see going across your day
a lot of people dip before lunchtime because their energy levels
You know after a bit of food, they tend to get a bit more
Um energy after that and then sort of die down or their productivity dies down later in the day
So you could potentially build some scenarios off of that or use some labels based on that
So think about a few scenarios i've got three that we can demonstrate here that may be helpful
To be able to pinpoint some tasks and build some scenarios
So the first scenario could have is the commute now if you wanted to get some tasks done on the way to work
If you have a commute, then this could be a useful filter to set you up with that
for example
The energy levels could be inactive or low
in order to set a sort of low precedent what you're doing because you may want to just be
Sort of getting to work not necessarily doing a very intense task
You may not have the the tools and you also want to add the devices
as
a for example a mobile phone
Or if it's something you need to do the laptop there
you may also want to add the time to complete only tasks that are
Five minutes or ten minutes to complete because your commute may be just 30 minutes with some partial walking
And also you can add the location as out as well
so those energy levels will help you to fine-tune some tasks to actually populate your
Main filter and that's quite helpful because you can click on that and every single morning
You can see those tasks that you could actually get done on the way to work
The second scenario could be uh ones that when you start your deep work state can can be really just set off for example
These could be ones that um have that high level of urgency and require a higher level of energy to complete
And the ones that are also time to complete longer than 60 minutes
And that may actually require you to have a macbook or be inside of the office
So you can actually use that filter to help produce a deep work state
And finally one more that can help if you're using this as a way to manage every aspect of your life, for example
If you get home, and your partner's not home for another hour
Or you have a little bit of free time 30 minutes or you want to get settled into the home lifestyle?
Of course, it's different coming from work
You can definitely do maybe 20 minutes of clearing the house. So you could for example add energy levels as medium
Things that can be done in in five minutes and also location is home
and
That's all you need for that and they can always bring in those items. But if you want to be very specific
You could label those ones as house chores
In the tags area or the labels area to really be efficient, um on getting them done
So you have the really useful scenarios there and it's definitely worth thinking up some of the scenarios
That you have to do and you can nest these all inside of the lists areas the projects
and tuck them underneath so that for example if you want to
You know produce
More results in those periods of time that they can be done like that
So definitely have a think about your scenarios
Hopefully this was useful and um, we may be doing more of some more these sort of tutorials and demonstrations
So if you have any comments about what else you'd like to learn in terms of gtd and things like that
Maybe we'll do some short lessons that can be applied to your own situation. So folks a big
Thank you, and hopefully you find it useful. Please do make sure you subscribe and check out all the links in the description
All right folks cheerio
You