While org truly is a swiss army knife meant to allow you to to organize your life in any way you see fit, one very popular scheme is GTD. The GTD Methodology is quite multifaceted but requires some key tools that org can facilitate. These are:
- The Agenda or Calendar
- The Inbox
- The Projects list
- The Next actions list
- The Waiting for list (tickler)
- The Someday Maybe list
Org also has the concepts of:
- Quick capture - get it out of your head
- Morning and weekly review - refiling and organizing your information.
- Reference vs projects - save important things but keep reference off your lists.
- Holistic view yet context aware selection of next actions. (categorization)
I thought it might be useful to discuss some of the ways that I have tried to use Org to implement my journey towards GTD. This journey is always evolving and changing. Unlike the rest of this manual, this is about how I use Org vs about the features of this attempted implementation of org.
My knowledge base, notes and lists need to be available everywhere I go. I have an Android phone and while there are a ton of cool task list programs, I really need something that integrates with my notes sytems. In an ideal world I want to:
- Store everything in a git repo, history is a great thing.
- Automatically sync on all my boxes without having to remember to do it.
I have tried quite a few different approaches.
- I use a cron job in termux with git to pull to my orgzly app. This works but requires I keep termux open on my phone, which I forget periodically.
- Use Organice and sync with gitlab directly. This is my current approach. I like orgzly’s interface a little better but organice is growing on me.
One of the first principles of GTD is to get it out of your head into a trusted place. I am lazy, if I have to spend time fiddling to get it down I will delay and then I will lose the idea. Org mode supports the concept of capturing. GTD talks about getting the idea into your inbox quickly, your inbox is a place you review regularly when you are ready to go from idea to actions.
With capturing all I do is press a hotkey, write the idea down and close the window, done, it’s in my inbox. With autosync (see later) It’s on all my devices.
My inbox is a single file and a set of capture templates:
** Context Todos
An important part of capturing is context. A work todo is a dated todo with a tag indicating the item is a work context. This lets me see work related next actions when I am at work vs next actions when I am at home.
* TODO $1 :Work:
:PROPERTIES:
:CREATED: {DATE}
:END:
$0
This is part of the power of the org mode meta data systems. They allow for properties and tags, which can be used to give your tasks context.
Does this require a phone? Is this a short operation? Is this something that requires I be at home?
Capturing was the first thing I implemented in org. But capturing becomes useless pretty quick if you do not build a discipline of daily and weekly review. GTD encourages you to set this up. Every morning I have a devotional time where I journal and prepare for my day. This is my daily review. Part of that is sweeping the inbox clean. This starts with refiling and archiving.
A project is a task that is actionable, no matter how small. There are different ways you can express that.
This is where the concept of a context aware NEXT actions lists comes in. Presumably I do the following:
- Check your agenda for the sacred things that HAVE to be done today.
- If those are taken care of you pull up your next actions list.
On my mac I use the following script to automatically push any changes I make automatically to git. This gets changes I make to my phone or home machines quickly without effort.
# Here is my crontab:
crontab -l
*/10 * * * * /Users/me/gtdsync.sh And gtdsync looks as follows:
#!/bin/bash
# First jump into my notes
pushd ~/git/gtd
# Check if there are any modifications
git diff --exit-code
mods=$?
# Check if there are any new files?
localchanges=$(git ls-files --other --exclude-standard --directory | wc -l)
# If we have changes then add them and commit them!
if [[ $localchanges -gt 0 || $mods -gt 0 ]]; then
git add --all
git commit -m "Update from mac"
fi
# Pull anything new
git pull --no-edit
# Push any changes we may have added?
if [[ $localchanges -gt 0 || $mods -gt 0 ]]; then
git push
fi