My workflow in Things

I have previously mentioned Things, my preferred application for managing tasks and basic project planning. This post is about my workflow in Things and why it makes me more productive.

There are two tasks I do every day and every week. The daily task is to look through the projects and areas to see if there is something that I want or need to do today. The Next view is very helpful here too, since it provides a great overview of all projects and areas.

The second recurring task is done every Monday. It consists of project planning, and this is where I look through all projects and areas and plan what I will be doing that week. All projects that are on hold are moved to the Someday area, and all projects that are planned for the coming week or at any specific time in the future is moved to the Scheduled area.

Using Things this way makes it very easy to see which projects I should currently focus on, as well as keeping the inactive projects hidden to clear them from the point of distraction. One thing I rarely use is the Inbox area. I most often try to tag and place the task in the correct project right away when I add it using the quick entry dialog. This eliminates the process of interpreting randomly entered tasks and try to work out where to file them.