so in today's video we're going to be exploring the best ways to implement getting things done
or GTD for short in 2022 do not worry if you have not yet read the book or heard about the
book we're going to look at why these Concepts work and how to help apply them to your own
productivity systems so in today's video we'll be using ample notes as our way to create a GTD
system from scratch ample note is completely free and today they're sponsoring the feature and you
can check them out in the link in the description now David Allen's book was originally published
in 2001 and it's become quite the hit over the years still being pretty relevant today
as a productivity system that has stood the test of time now GTD focuses a lot on a lot
of shortcomings that are in task management and here are a few of those number one everything
goes in inside of an inbox chores projects ideas thoughts reminders the more tasks you
enter into an inbox the less you have to remember number two it should always be clear what to work
on next as time goes on and you accumulate more and more tasks longer longer lists it
can become pretty overwhelming so organizing your tasks into projects and context can give
you that Clarity of what you need to work on next without much more effort number three your to-do
list needs a periodic review reviews help you to stay with an application longer and also help you
to build a trusted productivity system so that it is relevant to whatever you're doing in your life
so amplenote is the sponsor of today's feature but it is an all-in-one application for Tasks
and notes ample notes hold design and feel is centered around a concept called the
idea execution funnel you can see this on ample note's website but the idea
execution funnel describes the lifetime of an idea all the way to the point where you
schedule it inside of your calendar and sort of activate it ready to get done
so if you're using GTD in your life you'll know that the Inbox and the point of an inbox
is to help you to remember things that come into your system across a day now if you're
anything like me you've probably been stressed or had some anxiety build up around whether
you've remembered something in your routine at some point I even get my wife to text me things
that I'm gonna forget which is awful foreign but desperate time is cool for Desperate Measures
this book David Allen proposes five distinct sections or categories of the getting things
done process and what we're going to do is start with the first phase of that which is collect the
de facto inbox and ample notes is the daily note which you can visit by navigating to the jots mode
your jots are automatically created entitled after today's date it's like getting a new empty sheet
of paper every day you can start using it right away to write down what's on your mind now inside
of amponote this page is also tagged automatically which means your daily notes can be separate from
your other notes now all you need to do is start adding tasks the nice thing about the inbox is
that the structure is not important at this point in fact the harder it is to capture the task the
less likely that you will do it consistently so keep it simple for now and leave the organizing
for later now for when you are on the go it's very easy to capture on the Apple note mobile
application any tasks added this way end up in your jots for you to review later and it's really
important when it comes to capturing stuff on the go because a lot of the time that's
where we are out and about and in the field and that's when our ideas tend to spring on us most
next we're going to look at the next phase of GTD clarify and organize and we're going
to look at how that applies to the tasks that you've captured already in your inbox so inside
of ample no tasks mode is one of the best places for organizing your tasks and that's because it
brings the tasks from the daily jot into a single location this is very handy and it means I don't
have to visit each daily jot individually now in this phase of GTD our goal is to move tasks
out of the inbox so let's look at over an example the first thing I noticed about this task is that
it's actually a recurring task so I will make it repeat every three days after completion also I
can only complete this task while I'm at home so I shouldn't have to see it for example when
I'm in the office therefore I will go ahead and tag it with my at home context adding a
context to a task is useful to describing how where and with whom that task needs to get done
finally another way to organize your tasks is by projects they are part of inside of ample note
you can delimit a project by creating a new note for it so I'll move this task to my chores note
at the end of the clarify and organize your inbox should be empty
so now we've gone through the collect phase of GTD and we've looked at the clarify and organized
to help us clear that inbox and process them now let's talk about ways that we can actually start
taking our tasks out of the system so inside of ample note navigating to tasks mode will show
you a list of tasks you've created across your notes this is useful sometimes but most times
it's just pretty overwhelming the more realistic way to look at your responsibilities is based on
the location you are in so for example if I'm in the office I can filter my to do to show
me tasks that I've tagged at office the list is still pretty long so we can do better than that
I can now filter out the tasks that are marked with at waiting since these items are waiting
for input from other colleagues now I'm less with a list of things I can actually do something about
while task mode is pretty great you'll spend most of your engage time in calendar mode now
the view is very simple your list of task is on the right and your schedules on the left
whenever I want to make a plan I can apply a list of filters to my tasks for example
I'll zoom in on my at next tasks and simply drag and drop some of them onto the calendar
so let's recap everything you've done a great job we've built a very minimal structure of the
GTD system we've seen how daily dots can be used inside an inbox how to clarify and organize your
contacts and how to engage your tasks inside of tasks mode and calendar mode next we're
actually going to stop and look at the more Advanced Techniques of GTD but first I want
to pass over to my friend RJ Nestor to explore the advantages about getting things done in a
tool for thought I'm RJ Nestor productivity coach I ran GTD in todoist from 2014 to 2020
and enjoyed it a lot but then I discovered the power of GTD in tools for thought when I started
using Rome research in March of 2020 and since then I've created courses to help others build
their productivity systems in tools for thought and I've also written a newsletter that goes out
every couple of weeks about product activity in tools for thought so why do I think that getting
things done runs better in tools for thought well first of all GTD is an iterative process
which is much easier in a tool for Thought than it is in a task app you capture in your inbox
you revisit that again when you process that from there into your project and you tag it
appropriately you revisit it again when you surface those tasks and you choose the ones
that you want to work on WE gradually refine our tasks and our work and tools for Thought
lend themselves to that in a way that task apps simply don't second reason tasks context can live
with them alongside the task itself naturally and easily sure in a task app you can add a comment
but in a tool for thought that task can stay among the ideas that generated it and still be
organized into a system that level of context is far beyond anything that you could add to a task
comment but most importantly you can go from the seed of an idea to the full project implementation
in the same environment context switching costs are eliminated when you're not bouncing from one
environment to another as you move through the various stages of a project and do that work so
why ample notes specifically in Rome obsidian log seek others you can build a structure that does
this in ample note that task iteration process is already built in the phases of GTD are beautifully
echoed in ample notes idea execution funnel for example jots that's the place in ample note that
you can collect all of your ideas your tasks and projects and that capture is essential for a
usable GTD system and then on your notes Pages you can clarify and organize helps you make sense of
your ideas as you revisit them you can structure them so you know what needs to happen and what
relies on what and in what order things need to occur and then your tasks and calendar views allow
you to engage people who get frustrated with GTD usually do so because they get hung up here they
can generate lists but they can't get stuff off the list the lists just get bigger and bigger
and eventually they give up by not only helping to refine your notes into tasks but also then nudging
you to time block those tasks with a calendar mode ample node helps overcome this common GTD problem
so in short Tools For Thought supercharge getting things done and ample note is specifically aligned
with those tenets of GTD so that you can focus on the work that is truly important to you all
right super job RJ let's look at now those more advanced GTD techniques and start applying them
so you can all of your tasks now you've also learned how to organize and process them
effectively and you've also got a strategy for adding context to them so that you know what to
work on next the Final Phase of GTD is called reflect and it's a great way for you to view
your list of tasks and make sure they align with your actual interests and priorities at this given
time and in the future you can instruct ample note to remind you to review your projects by
creating a recurring task I will call this one review the list of projects monthly and
I'll make it repeat every 30 days but we can go a little bit further with this and I can create
a brand new note that will act as a dashboard for all of my projects then I can make a list
of all of my projects in this note and in fact I will make a list of links for my project notes
now once a month ample note will remind you to review my to-do list when that happens all I have
to do is copy my project dashboard to my daily jot and then I can start working through my projects
writing down some observations under the same name of each project due to how bi-directional linking
Works in ample note visiting the note of a project shows me a chronological record of past mentions
of the project and this makes it very easy to keep track and review the progress I've been making
so you can think of reviews as an opportunity to bring amplenet up to date with what's going
on in your life the most common operations you might do when reviewing your projects
are cross-off tasks that you have completed in the meantime delete tasks that are no
longer relevant clarify the tasks that you didn't progress on update the next action
that needs to be done to move the project forward and that's the GTD review step
now in previous section we covered how to actually implement the collect phase of GTD system using
daily jots now here are a few more ways in which you can capture tasks inside of amplenome
by forwarding emails into your direct ample note address
by using the Chrome and Firefox extensions for web
clipping and by using the quick task menu from calendar mode or from your mobile app
create and organize projects and contacts by looking over some examples now projects are
born when one of your tasks is too large and can be broken down into multiple steps now for
example I should probably convert my purchase a Kindle task into a project now in terms of what is
the possible next action I should first research 2021 Kindle models and then search for used models
in GTD marking the next action can be done by using the at next tag you should apply
this tag to the task that needs to be done next in order for the project to advance
now if you have a tasks that Advance the project but can't yet be done for example
because they depend on other tasks you shouldn't tag them with app next
marking next actions usually happens in the reflect phase now this removes the planning
and decision making from the engage step which makes it easier to start actually doing the work
finally I like to tag my projects notes with GTD projects to keep them organized
finally we're going to talk about the calendar mode calendars can help you visualize your to-do
list in a totally different dimension so this can really help us by giving a visual sense of
where our time is spent and it can really take you from prioritizing your time because it gives
you that sense of okay I have this limited time it's more finite focused calendars can be really
helpful in a healthy approach to your productivity reducing burnout because essentially what you're
doing is you're time blocking versus aiming to complete the task as a whole which is something
that a lot of people tend to do more aggressively and you can incorporate breaks and you can also
really help yourself plan better in advance with the calendar element of this experience
so in this section of the video let's look at some of the unique strengths that calendar most
has in relation to GTD number one calendar mode as a GTD inbox now we've already seen
how to use calendar mode to capture tasks to the Inbox and process that inbox itself
the other inbox feature of calendar mode is the list of overdue tasks at the top
of the sidebar now these are items that were scheduled in the past but were not completed
number two calendar mode for organizing tasks the sidebar also shows me a list of unscheduled
tasks while normally these tasks could live in many different Notes Calendar mode centralizes
them in this to-do list thus reducing a lot of friction to clear my inbox all I have to do is
to process them like I would normally do such as adding contacts projects and due dates and number
three calendar mode for engaging whenever you have a list of to-do's David Allen's GTD proposes that
you choose what to work on next by using a set of criteria such as task contacts the time you have
available and the energy level required inside of ample note you can use something called task score
by sorting my to-do list by score I can get a summary of the most actionable items based on
previous judgments I made about these tasks some of the most predominant factors that influence
task or whether I've marked the task as important or urgent and finally in ample note you can import
events from external calendars such as Google or Outlook and this makes calendar mode the most
reliable source of Truth when it comes to your obligations and when you see your events and your
tasks on your calendar you can make plans without having to worry about conflicts in your schedule
so we've covered the entire gdd system it's time for you to go away and apply this knowledge so
first of all I want to say a huge thank you for stopping by in today's video but I wanted you to
share something you've learned in today's video in the comments below so a huge huge thank you
to ample note for sponsoring today's feature um a big big thank you for them to come on and to dive
into this complex experience so thank you very much if you are new here please do subscribe to
keep productive it'd be amazing to have you here in this community and if you enjoyed the video
like comment and share it with a friend who is maybe using GTD and wants to take it to that
next level anyway folks I want to say a big big thank you and I'll see you all very soon cheerio
Advanced projects and contacts now two of the most practical GTD concepts are projects and Co
two of the most sorry it's my wife I ate when she texts
me when I film it I should just turn my volume off done productivity hack