I wanted to share an email I sent today to someone who was asking how to use Get It Done for their particular case. Many of you might find it useful:
Mike,
I need help in determining how to best use the app. I have numerous tasks and projects. From the Allen book, I was thinking about the follow categories: Two broad categories for Professional and Personal. Within these two domains, structure the following areas…Computer work; Telephone Calls; Errands; Office; Someday; Reference; Delegated; Waiting For
I have numerous complex projects for which I am responsible, including dissertations, research projects, manuscripts, and other administrative responsibilities. I am trying to organize my emails in the same fashion that I will set up my system in Getitdone. Help!
In your case I would do the following, I will start with the most broad category and then move down from there:
Create 2 ‘Areas of Responsibility’. Areas are the broadest category and when you are in a particular Area you will only see tasks and projects pertaining to the particular Area.
http://getitdoneapp.com/blog/areas-of-responsibility/
- Professional (or Work)
- Personal (or Home)
Within each Area you can further separate your tasks into projects. Projects are a group of tasks that need to get done to accomplish a particular goal:
http://getitdoneapp.com/blog/how-to-manage-projects/
Some projects in ‘Work’ Area might be:
- Telephone Calls
- Office
- Computer Work
- A particular research project or manuscript or dissertation (each individual one will be it’s own project)
Some projects in ‘Home’ Area might be:
Projects are set up so that each individual Project will have its own Inbox, Today, Next, and Someday folders. This is done automatically. To learn about these focuses:
http://getitdoneapp.com/blog/how-to-use-get-it-done-to-get-organized/
If you are ‘Waiting for’ or ‘Delegating’ tasks to someone else you should set up different People. I set up People with the following names:
http://getitdoneapp.com/blog/sharing-tasks-with-people/
- Waiting For (a general waiting for bucket)
- Reference
- John
- Bob
- Ania
If that particular person has a Get It Done account they will see the task in their Inbox, if they do not have an account it is a general bucket for your own records. If you enter an email address they will be sent a message asking to join Get It Done.
Tags are an even finer way you can organize your tasks. A few ways you might use tags:
- In any project you might have tags such as ‘Urgent’ to filter tasks that need to get done soon
- In Shopping list you might tag task as ‘Supermarket’ or ‘Clothes Store’ so you can quickly filter the list
- In a particular ‘Manuscript’ project you might tag tasks as ‘Chapter 1′ or ‘Introduction’ to see what tasks need to get done for a particular section
- Some people simply use tags such as ‘High’, ‘Low’ to set a priority.
Tags are very flexible and might be different for each project.
I think this is a good starting point for you. The system is very easy to use once you dive into it. You should probably start setting up the app in a fashion similar to this and if you have any questions let me know.
Filed under: Getting Things Done by Mike
