I have been implementing Getting Things Done in Things for a long time. Occasionally, I like to try out other apps just to see what’s available and if there would be a big benefit to switching to something else. This time, I have been looking at Reminders, the built-in tool that Apple provides on its devices.

The first step is to set up the basic GTD lists, and for this, I am going back to basics with Contexts being normal lists and not implemented using tags. Everything to reduce drag and create an efficient and simple system.

Pros and cons

Compared to Things, there are several benefits and downsides to Reminders.

No dependency on an external cloud

Being already heavily invested in iCloud, having one more thing there is not a problem. Syncing has been rock solid for all devices, including iPhone, iPad Pro, Mac and even the Apple Watch. Not having to rely on a third-party cloud without end-to-end encryption is a big benefit for me.

The Apple Watch app

The app on the Apple Watch is surprisingly useful. It allows full access to all lists in Reminders, with the possibility to add or change any field. This is a stark difference from Things, where only the Inbox and Today view are easily available on the watch. The downside seems to be that there is no built-in widget to quickly add a task to the inbox; however, that could be easily handled with a Shortcut.

Sortable lists

The lists in Reminders can be automatically sorted based on a few criteria. The best use of this feature for me has been the possibility to sort the context lists by due date. This means that if the list contains an action with a due date, it will be floated to the top. It makes it easy to quickly get an idea of which action to tackle first in a specific context.

Geofenced errand lists

Actions can have a geofence attached to them, which means getting reminders of errands to pick up at certain stores is a breeze. In this example, I will get a notification when arriving at Westfield, and clicking it will show everything I need to pick up.

List sharing

Sharing lists is simple and powerful, and Reminders makes that super easy. My use case is to share home tasks and errands with my spouse so that we both have access to the same information.

The lists outlined in green in the screenshots are the ones shared. This provides shared contexts, project lists and someday/maybe for those areas of focus.

No start dates

This one is a tougher pill to swallow, at least initially. Coming from the world of Things and OmniFocus, I am used to being able to set start dates for actions and projects. Without this ability in Reminders, as it only has due dates, I have to implement a tickler system. Fortunately, my implementation is simple to set up and works quite well.

First, create a list called Tickler, and pin it to the top for easy access. Sort it by due date and start adding the things you want to be reminded of and set the due date to the specific date.

When a tickler is due, it will be displayed in the Today view, where you can evaluate it. If it is day-specific information, you can keep it for as long as needed and then just check it off. If, however, it is an action that you want to defer for another day, you can just remove the due date and drag it to the appropriate context list. If this is a repeating tickler, however, you will have to create a new next action and add it to a next-actions list, and finally tick the Ticker off as done.

No single view of the hard landscape

There is no way of seeing action deadlines together with calendar events. This means that I have to look at two different places to get the full view of the hard landscape.

Selecting and moving actions

Selecting and moving actions and projects in Things is a breeze. It supports multi-select, but in Reminders, you have to first click the three dot menu — Select Reminders to be able to select more than one. This feels very clunky and not thought through properly.

Once you have selected actions to move, dropping them in the right place in a list is another nuisance. It’s easy to get it wrong, and then the actions seemingly just disappear (they go back to the source list, but it is very unclear.

Another gripe I have with moving actions is if there is something in my Inbox that I want to save to a Reference list, there is no way of moving it to the list by searching for it. I, instead, have to manually click and find the right list.

Finicky notes filed

I use the notes field of an action to add information all the time, and it works great in Things. In Reminders, however, the notes field will always be visible, but truncated if the note is long. This can make one single action take up a lot of space.

If there are URLs in the notes field, it looks like they are clickable, but clicking them does nothing. To open a URL, you have to right-click and then select Open.

Setting up the GTD lists

Most of the lists are self-explanatory if you have an understanding of how GTD works. What I tweaked is the sorting in the context lists. Normally, the lists are sorted manually, e.g., the newest items appear at the bottom. The context lists are better sorted by due date, which provides the benefit of showing all actions that have a due date at the top.

Another special list I have created is the Today view. While there is a built-in today view, this smart list, includes flagged items as well.

Conclusion

The big question is, will this replace the setup I have in Things? For now, probably not. It comes with numerous benefits over Things, but most things are just a bit more difficult to do in Reminders compared to Things, like moving actions, no start dates and inflexible note fields.

If you are starting from scratch, however, Reminders is a great alternative, especially if you are already in the Apple echo system. Having full access to the lists on the Apple Watch, for instance, is surprisingly useful.

Getting Things Done is a methodology for managing life’s many inputs and to provide clear mental space to focus. To get started, there is no better way than reading the actual book. I have been using this framework close to 15 years, and many of them were spent in OmniFocus, and in later years, Things  has been my companion. To be completely fair, I was using Things before OmniFocus, and scrolling all the way back in the archive reveals that the first completed action was on August 30, 2008.

Fast-forward into 2023, and I have been looking into using Obsidian for meeting notes among other things. Being able to move my GTD system into the same app could provide some great benefits, such as automatically populating agendas in the meeting notes for a specific meeting. I am currently on parental leave, which means having less active projects, makes for a great time to experiment with something like this.

The system itself is essentially a bunch of notes, bound together using Dataview, an excellent plugin that provides a query language for notes and tasks within Obisidian. The GTD pages have a common menu for easy navigation and look something like this.

The way this is set up is very close to how I have been managing my lists in Things, and the views we are about to create will reflect that. The sections below describe each view in more detail and the queries used.

Creating a project

What makes a project a project is the metadata contained within the frontmatter of the note, as well as the location. These fields are what is later queried for in the different views.

state: active, someday, done, dropped (the different project states)
org: different organization of life, eg. personal, work, side business etc.
area: general areas of responsibility for the project, like personal, family, health
start: an optional field if the project has a specific start date
due: an optional field if the project has a specific deadline
reviewed: set to the current date when the project is created. Currently unused, but I have been experimenting with having a view for seeing what to review like in OmniFocus.
period: If the review period is something other than 7 days, this can be set here.
category: Project (this is the field that I have configured the metadata menu plugin to use for different types.)
prio: set to 1 by default and currently unused. This may be used to sort the project list if necessary.

Metadata menu plugin

The metadata menu plugin is used to create structure to metadata, eg. frontmatter fields. You can install and configure a project template using the frontmatter fields above. Another benefit this brings is autocomplete for the various fields, such as the org and area.

Templater plugin

The templater plugin is a great helper in automating project creation. Install it, and configure a template to look like this:

---
state: active
org: personal
area: personal
start: 
due: 
reviewed: <% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") %>
period: 
category: Project
prio: 1
---
![[Filters#Menu]]
<% await tp.file.move("GTD/Projects/" + tp.file.title) %>

When this template is applied to a note, it will automatically add all metadata, set the reviewed date, as well as move the project to the correct folder, which in my case is GTD/Projects.

The way I usually create new projects is by clicking the new note button in Obsidian and give it a name. Then I press cmd + p (or drag down from the top on the iPhone) and type “Tem”, at which point the “Templater: Open insert template modal” should be at the top. Choosing it should reveal the template above, and selecting it will make it a project by assigning the metadata and move the note to the right folder. You can then adjust the metadata as needed and add actions below.

I haven’t mentioned the ![[Filters#Menu]] line yet, but that is how I navigate between the different views. More on that in the Navigation section below.

Project overview

Once you have a few projects in the project folder, the next step is to create a view that automatically shows the projects you have, in order to get a nice overview. The view relies on the dataview plugin, so the first step is to get that installed.

Next, create a file called Projects In your GTD/ folder and add a section for showing active projects:

dataview
TABLE
    length(filter(file.tasks, (t) => !t.completed)) AS ☑️,
    area
FROM "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "active"
AND start <= date(today)
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
SORT org, area, file.name

Next, do the same thing for scheduled projects, e.g. projects with a start date that is in the future:

dataview
TABLE
    length(filter(file.tasks, (t) => !t.completed)) AS ☑️,
    start
FROM "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "active"
AND start > date(today)
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
SORT org, area, file.name

Finally, do a section for Someday projects. This can of course be moved into its own page if needed:

dataview
TABLE
    area
FROM "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "someday"
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
SORT org, file.name

Now you should have a page similar to the screenshot below. It shows you all projects that you have created, together with the number of next actions and area.

Recurring projects

A limitation to this setup compared to Things and other “real” task managers, is that it doesn’t support recurring actions. The way I have been handling this so far is to create a special single action project for this, one for each org, called  + Personal recurring.

I have put actions under a heading for each cadence, and if I see a completed action during the weekly review, I copy/paste it and change the start date to what the heading states. The finished action can be moved into a separate section at the bottom.

This works as long as you do your Weekly Review weekly, and also don’t have anything that needs to repeat more than once a week. A workaround could be to use the calendar for keeping track of this, if you have recurring deadlines.

Single actions

As mentioned in the introduction, the foundational element is a project, meaning there can be no standalone actions. To solve this, similar to the recurring tasks, I have a single actions project for each org called + Personal SAL. The reason for choosing “SAL” over “actions” or similar is just because I want to quickly be able to search for it when adding an action.

Contexts

Now we are getting to a place where the rubber hits the road — contexts. This is where the project lists and actions created previously actually come into practice. A context shows all available actions which mentions that specific context.

The query for a @mac context looks like this, and is added to GTD/Contexts/@mac:

dataview
TASK from "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "active"
AND start <= date(today)
AND contains(text, "[["+this.file.name+"]]")
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
AND !completed
SORT due desc, text asc
GROUP BY file.link

This means that if I have an action in one of my projects that looks like this, it will show up in the list.

- [ ] An action that needs to be completed on the [[@mac]]

A pro-tip is to use the shortcut ribbon at the bottom to quickly have the link created, as you can just click the button and start typing the name of the context you want to apply. You can also assign multiple contexts if there is something that can be done both on the Mac and on an iPad for instance.

The most used contexts are linked directly in the menu, but for the rest, I have a simple page that links all notes within the context folder. The query looks like this:

dataview
list
from "GTD/Contexts"
sort file.name

Today

The Today view shows any action that has a [[Today]] link assigned, as well as any actions that are due or overdue. It behaves similar to the Today view of Things, but I have chosen not to include tasks that have just become available for now.

We have reviewed how to set a due date for projects, but to set a due date for an action, just include [due:: 2023-02-14] in the text. Similarity for start dates, just add [start:: 2023-02-10]. If you have future actions that you don’t want showing up anywhere, you can add [start:: someday] and they will only be visible in the project list.

This view can be achieved using this query:

dataview
TASK from "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "active"
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
AND !completed
AND start <= date(today)
AND (
  (due != null and due <= date(today))
  OR contains(text, "[[Today]]")
  )
GROUP BY file.link
SORT name

Upcoming

The upcoming view shows future deadlines for actions and projects, currently grouped per day, looks like this:

dataview
TASK from "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "active"
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
AND !completed
AND due != null
GROUP BY due
SORT file.link

Under this, I have a project deadlines section that lists all project deadlines. Normally, actions for due projects are visible in the query above, however, this provides a good high-level view. It’s also valuable if the project doesn’t have any actions, but is still due.

dataview
list due
FROM "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND state = "active"
AND start <= date(today)
AND due != null
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
SORT due

The page will look something like this:

Inbox

I have set a default folder for all new notes in the Obsidian settings, which is +Inbox in the root folder. I don’t want random files in the root, so this makes it a lot tidier. I also have an inbox view to show everything listed there, as well as any unprocessed stuff from my daily and meeting notes. It also includes a link to the inbox in the Drafts app, that I’m currently evaluating.

The inbox section query looks like this:

dataview
list
from "+Inbox"
sort file.mtime desc

The daily notes and meeting notes section looks like this:

dataview
TASK from "Notes/Meetings" OR "Notes/Dailies"
WHERE !completed
GROUP BY file.link

Archive

The Archive view shows all completed tasks. There are two sections in this view, where the first shows the past four days grouped by day, and the second shows everything after, grouped by month. This makes it easy to go back a day or two to see what has been completed, while still seeing the bigger picture. It can of course be expanded to show finished projects only or other things.

dataview
TASK from "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
AND done > (date(now) - dur(4 days))
AND completed
SORT done desc
GROUP BY dateformat(date(done), "yyyy-MM-dd") AS fulldate
SORT fulldate desc

dataview
TASK from "GTD/Projects"
WHERE category = "Project"
AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)
AND done <= (date(now) - dur(4 days))
AND completed
SORT done desc
GROUP BY dateformat(date(done), "yyyy-MM")

Filtering on organization

One thing I like about Things is the way tagging and tag inheritance works. It allows me to filter on, for example, only personal areas and projects, which can be great on the weekend and in the evening. In order to do something similar in Obsidian, I have created a Filters file, which contains this:

## Filters
%% personal work %%
filter-org:: 

If I set filter-org to personal for instance, all GTD views will be updated to only show projects and actions from the personal org. If left empty, it will show everything.

If you want to add another org, or change the name of the ones I have defined, you need to update this line in the view queries above:

AND contains(default([[Filters]].filter-org, ["personal", "work"]), org)

Navigation

In order to easily navigate between views, projects, and everything else, I have created a menu. It’s part of the Filters note, but could of course have been created somewhere else. All views contain the following line just after the frontmatter:

![[Filters#Menu]]

This allows me to update the menu as needed, and easily add it to new places, such as new projects. It currently looks like this:

###### Menu
[[Inbox]] • [[Today]] • [[Upcoming]] • [[Archive]] • [[Filters]]
[[Contexts]] • [[Projects]] • [[Horizons]] • `="[[" + dateformat(date(today), "yyyy-MM-dd") + "|Daily note]]"`
[[@mac]] | [[@iPad]] | [[@tablet]] | [[@iPhone]] | [[@home]]

---

Improvements

While implementing this, the first goal is to have something that works up to horizon 1 level, e.g., projects. There are plenty of improvements I have noticed as I’m setting this up, and I have been keeping track of them. Some of them are:

• Add a place for checklists
• Add a place for templates – Use Templater for this, since you can automate setting dates and other things.
• Consider handling single actions like projects, e.g., in separate files
• Automatically show relevant contexts in the menu depending on external factors, such as time, day, or location
• Find some way of automating recurring actions
• Move finished items in single action lists to another file or sub-heading automatically
• Move Someday out of the project overview
• Worried about database size. May move archived projects per year outside the system. In Things, I have tasks dating back from 2008. Can this setup handle that?

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think I’m starting to get to a point where I have a workable system. There is still some minutia that needs to be sorted around quickly adding something to a list. I’m currently testing text transporter, which can be used to move a task from the inbox to a project list, and it is working quite well so far.

My main worry about this setup, is the potential for friction and drag in the system. It’s easy to manage a GTD setup with plenty of bells and whistles when you are on top of your game, but it needs to be as workable on a Thursday afternoon after a three-hour workshop when your mind has checked out as well. Time will tell if I continue on this path or revert to Things.

Kudos

A big thank you to mostlymaths.net  | Project and task management with Obsidian and Dataview for the inspiration to set this up, and of course to the plugin developers for dataview, templater and the others mentioned.

Join the conversation on Twitter and Mastodon/Fediverse.

This post a stab at implementing meeting notes in Obsidian. The purpose is to be able to see all notes taken during the day in once place, while also being able to review previous notes for recurring meetings. Also, being able to mark notes as processed to make handling meeting notes quicker, as there is no need to process a note twice.

Background

Ever since Things added support for Markdown, I have been using it for meeting notes. I have a Shortcut that creates a meeting note in the inbox for every meeting in the calendar for the day. It has been working above all expectations, and with the tags, I can easily pull up agendas and meeting notes for a specific meeting.

I am a big user of outlines, which means that I use bullet lists a lot. Indenting bullets in Things is very finicky, as it doesn’t use the standard tab and shift-tab for changing the indentation, and changing the order to bullets require copy/pasting. When taking quick notes in meetings, this becomes a cognitive burden, as I have to fidget with the notes instead of paying attention in the meeting.

I have been wanting to dip my toes in Obsidian for a while now, so this use-case could be a great first workflow to solve.

Periodic notes plugin

The first step is to use the Periodic Notes plugin to handle daily notes. Together with the Calendar plugin, navigating between different days is very fast.

The folder structure for my periodic notes are separated by type and for the daily notes, they have yearly sub folders to limit the number of notes in the same folder.

Daily note

The base for the meeting notes is the daily note. It contains all notes taken for a specific day. This simply means that going back to a specific day in time reveals everything that was handled during that day. The following sections describe what the different sections of the note structure mean.

Open actions

The first section contains all open actions, which in this context is mainly used to determine which meeting notes have been processed and not. The search covers all daily notes, which means that if there are unprocessed notes from a previous day, they will show up in the current note as well.

The search uses the tasks plugin and looks like this:

(path includes Notes/Meetings) OR (path includes Notes/Dailies)
not done

Daily retrospective

The retrospective section is mostly an experiment for now, and include a few sections on achievements and learnings for the day, what has gone well and what could have been done better.

Log

The purpose is to have a specific place for thoughts, decisions and small notes during the day. The inspiration comes from:

Along with her ever expanding to-do list, Maxine has kept a daily work diary on her personal laptop for the last decade. In it, she tracks everything she’s worked on, how much time she spent on it, any interesting lessons she learned from it, and a list of things to never do again (most recently, “Don’t waste time trying to escape spaces in file names in Makefiles—it’s too difficult. Use anything else instead.”).

— The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim*

To simplify and remove any barrier to adding a log, I’m using the Obsidian Memos plugin. It provides a UI that makes it easy to add a log, and also has the ability to list logs across daily notes and create saved searches.

Notes

The notes section is used for non-meeting notes for the day. Adding a todo will make it appear at the top in open actions, so you don’t forget to process the note. Since I like using outlines, each section In this category starts as a top-level node, and sub-nodes are the notes for the topic itself.

Meetings

The meetings section is the meat of the daily note, and contains a list of all meetings with links to specific date based heading in separate notes. The benefit of this is that it’s possible to both see all notes for a specific day in the daily note, but also seeing all previous notes for a specific meeting when clicking on a specific meeting. For recurring meetings, this is a great way of seeing everything that has been discussed in the past.

Meeting notes

The structure of the note for a specific meeting looks like this:

Things agenda: [Firstname](things:///show?id=anytime&filter=Firstname%20Lastname)
- Goals doc: [Firstname’s Goals](https://docs.google.com/document/d/xxxx)

# [[2023-01-25]]
- [ ] Process notes

- Meeting notes here
- And here

---

Having a heading for each date is the magic key to automatically linking these notes to the daily note. I am using Things as a task manager, so for recurring meetings, I keep a link to open the agendas for that specific meeting automatically.

The top of the document also contain links to related document or pages, as well as any relevant reference material.

Meeting note template

The main template used in this setup is to create a section in the meeting note for the entry for the day. To use this, activate the Templates core plugin, and add a template with the following content.

# [[{{date}}]]
- [ ] Process notes

- tba

---

When you navigate to the note for a specific meeting, just press cmd+p and type “Templates: Insert template” and it will be inserted by the cursor. If you have multiple templates, then you will be asked to choose which template to insert.

The task in the template will be picked up by the daily note task search and added to the list of unprocessed notes. Once the meeting notes have been processed, just check it off to have it hidden.

Tracking unprocessed notes

Any todos in the meeting note docs will appear in the open actions list in the daily note. This makes it simple to keep track of meeting notes that need to be processed or handled in any way.

Automation

Next, I want to get my meetings into the daily note automatically, so I can focus on the meetings instead of managing Obsidian. While there are calendar plugins for Obsidian that integrate with Google Calendar and others, I need something that can connect with the local calendar database of my iPhone or iPad Pro.

My solution is to create an Apple Shortcut that pulls the calendar data and generates a daily note out of that. Since I am using iCloud to synchronize my vault, Shortcuts has direct access to its folders for creating files.

Copy and customize the Shortcut: Meeting Notes (Obsidian)

The magical part of this is the personal automation section of Shortcuts, as it lets me schedule running this automation, so I always have a fresh note ready to go in the morning. To set this up, in Shortcuts, go to Personal Automation and create a new one that triggers this Shortcut in the morning. I set mine to 07:00, so the note is ready to go as I wake up.

Example daily note

To make this setup easier to visualize, here is an example of a daily note, complete with sections filled in, linked meetings and incomplete processed notes. Some things have been redacted, as this is an actual note that I used for the day.

The daily note:

One of the meeting notes:

Outliner plugin

A great way of taking notes is by using outlines. While Obisidan renders bullet lists well enough, the Outliner plugin adds keyboard shortcuts that make editing the outline a breeze. There are shortcuts for moving a bullet up or down for instance, which makes note-taking a lot quicker, which is crucial in meetings.

Conclusion

This has been a great first dip into the power of what Obsidian can do. From what I set out to do: being able to see all notes for the day, and at the same time being able to easily refer to previous notes for recurring meetings, this has worked quite well. There are certainly things that can be improved, but this has been a decent start.

I have always looked for ways of working more efficiently, and being able to get the most out of every day by spending time on what is important and not necessary just the loud and urgent. What now seems like ages ago, I read a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen, and was intrigued by his approach to handling commitments, projects, deadlines — essentially anything that life hits you with.

Most people are accustomed to the idea of a calendar, a trusted place for keeping time based commitments. GTD is about having that for all your commitments and not just the hard landscape of a calendar. It provides a way of getting things out of your head into concrete actions, which means that you don't have to lay awake at night with thoughts swirling around. It also means that you can capture anything that is on your mind and be sure that it will be taken care of effectively, and in a timely manner. This provides the foundation for being able to engage with what you are currently doing with full confidence knowing that everything else is taken care of in an appropriate way.

Your head is for having ideas, not for holding them
— David Allen

There are essentially five steps to the basic GTD process:

1. Capture: Use an in-basket or app to capture everything that has your attention. Little, big, personal and professional.
2. Clarify: Take everything that you captured and ask: Is it actionable? If not, trash it, incubate it, or file it as reference. If yes, decide on the very next action required. If it takes less than 2 minutes, do it right away, if not, delegate where appropriate, or put it on a list to do when you can.
3. Organize: Put action reminders on the right lists. For example, create lists for the appropriate context — calls to make, errands, computer related etc.
4. Reflect: Look over your lists as often as necessary to determine what to do next. Do a weekly review to clean up, update your lists and clean your mind.
5. Engage: Use your system to take appropriate actions with confidence.

For a deep dive into actually implementing GTD, make sure to read the book, since it will guide you through the entire process. There is also a GTD workbook being released later in 2019, which aims to act as a simple and practical guide for getting started with your own system.

OmniFocus

For the past decade, I have been using OmniFocus to implement my GTD system. I have seen it as a trusted companion, an external brain, that handles anything I throw at it. I have even written a setup guide, which guides you through the process of creating the views and workflows needed.

While it has been a battle tested companion for many years, I feel like I constantly have to fight the system, trying to mend it into doing what I want it to do. That coupled with the endless tweaking of perspectives made it hard to consider when asked to recommend a GTD tool to a colleague.

I did a quick review of current tools, trying out what seemed to be the most common ones. Part of this, I also ended up revisiting Things, which I used prior to moving to OmniFocus a long time ago. It has for the past 10 years become something of a powerhouse bundled into a beautiful and innocent looking package. This made the choice clear on what to recommend, but also got me thinking of trying it out for the duration of the trial period.

Things 3

The initial reaction when starting Things 3 is how clean and minimalistic the user interface is. Even though it has plenty of white space, it still manages to provide everything needed for a professional task manager, such as start and due dates for projects and actions, flagging (or starring in this case), tags and a hierarchical way of sorting projects.

While Cultured Code has written an introduction on how to become productive using Things, this is a walkthrough of my interpretation and implementation.

On the top level of the hierarchy are areas, which translate directly to areas of responsibility in GTD. This is where you define the areas of your life where you are responsible for the outcomes, and can include things like Family, Finance, Home, Client Projects, Company Strategy, but there's no one-size-fits-all here so defining these areas is an important step of setting up the GTD system.

In Things, areas can have tags, and I use that to group the areas into different categories, like Personal and Work. This lets me, for instance, easily filter out work related actions when I know I just want to focus on the personal areas, such as on the weekend.

Areas can contain projects as well as actions, which means that even though an action is not tied to a project, it can still fall underneath an area. This is one of the places where Things really shines, as it provides a holistic view of an entire area, independent of the technical details of a specific action.

Projects and actions in an area can have different statuses, where the normal is that they are active and can be worked on. Another status is Upcoming, which means that the project or action has a future start date, and this means that they won't be visible in the tags view so they can not actively be worked on until the start date and translates well to the tickler part of GTD. They can also be set to Someday, meaning that they will be inactive until a decision has been made to move them into active. This maps well to the Someday/Maybe lists in GTD.

The main “take action” view is Anytime, where all actions that don't have a start date in the future or set to Someday are listed. There's a tag filter part of this view, where you can choose which actions should be displayed based on the tags they have. This also maps well to the GTD mindset where tags can represent contexts, energy levels and time available. The tags can be applied on the fly, so there's no need to create predefined views for the filtering you are currently looking for. It also means that it’s currently not possible to create a predefined view, but that hasn't bothered me so far.

The coolest feature of this view is the ability to directly go to the project of an action in the list. This lets you easily access project level notes, see all next actions and other types of project related information. On iOS, there's a back button that returns you to the previous view once you're done in the project as well.

Actions can contain different types of information, such as a title and a note, as well as a start and due date, a project and any tags that you want. What differentiates an action in Things is the ability to create checklists within an action. This enables you to not only break down an action into smaller chunks of work, it also allows you to easily keep a log when working on an action that requires more than one session.

Being able to quickly jump to projects, or any type of list, makes working with Things very efficient. While most task managers allow searching for projects, actions and other information, no one does it as seamlessly as Things 3. The only thing you need is to just start typing. A search window will automatically pop up, providing you with relevant suggestions and allows you to refine your search and choose between potential matches.

Another very powerful feature is the way Things handles repeating actions. In OmniFocus, the next iteration of the action will be created from the one that was just completed. This means that if you need to, for instance, push the start date for a repeating action, all future versions of the action will have the pushed start date instead of the original. The same goes for other changes, such as flagging or modifying the due date. Things is different in that you create a repeating action, and every time a new version of that action becomes available, a separate instance of the action is spawned, which can be modified freely without affecting the repeating action itself. For me, this makes a lot more sense and provides the flexibility required when working with repeating actions.

Finally, Things 3 is visually pretty amazing. So much so, that I had to tweet about it.

https://twitter.com/johnnychadda/status/1102683954019270657

Organization

What makes Things so simple yet powerful comes from its simplicity and structure in how it allows you to organize all information. Areas and projects provides a distinctive structure, which at first may seem limiting, but that is also what sets it free from being something to tinker with.

I have a number of areas of responsibility for work and personal projects. Each area is tagged with an area group tag, meaning that all areas related to work are tagged work. Similarly, all areas belonging to my personal life are tagged accordingly. This allows me to later filter out actions and projects that I'm currently not interested to look at.

There's no way of visually distinguishing areas in the sidebar, which is why I have created two fake areas which are just dividers. This is just to visually separate the areas into groups, and serve no real purpose other than that.

Projects are contained within the area they belong to, meaning I have no “loose” projects outside of an area. The only time that happens is if I have created a project on the fly from the Inbox and haven't filed it properly yet.

Areas can, in addition to projects, also contain actions. This is a change from OmniFocus where I needed to have single action lists for all actions not belonging to a project. Now I can just stick them in the relevant area, which makes getting an overview over everything in an area so easy, because everything from projects, single actions, future projects and someday lists are in the same place.

When first moving over to Things 3, I retained the tags from OmniFocus verbatim. The @computer context was for instance split up into three categories:

• dashes: short time, high focus
• focus: long time, high focus
• lounging: long time, low focus

That setup has been working great, and was necessary because of the way OmniFocus didn't allow one to easily choose which tags to show on the fly without creating a custom perspective. When moving to Things however, choosing a combination of tags is easy, which means that I don't have to limit myself to the three categories above. What I instead did was to separate the time and energy available tags from the actual context, which is the way it is recommended in the GTD book¹. That also means that those constraints can be applied to which ever context I'm working from, be it @computer², @home or @office.

I structure the time available tags hierarchically. Using the effect of inheritance, it allows me to for instance choose the “30m” tag, and have Things show me everything that takes 30 minutes or less. If the tags were ordered next to each other, I would only see the actions tagged specifically with “30m”.

The Today and Upcoming views are built into Things, and I use those as part of my Daily Review to get a quick glance of the day ahead. It neatly highlights the starred actions which I have marked as something I need to keep a special lookout for.

The Someday view is mostly used when doing the Weekly Review, and provides easy access to all the projects marked Someday. The inactive projects are spred out in their respective areas, and this view allows me to quickly see if any projects need to be activated.

Part of the Someday view is also the Guidance area, which contain lists for the higher horizons in GTD³. Another section is Reference, which contain lists that are not necessarily actionable, such as “Next time in…”, which is a place to keep recommendations for different parts of the world and is a great place to look when going to a new destination.

Finally, there are areas that contain Checklists and Templates. The checklists are what they sound like, a list of checklists for recurring procedures and is a great way to learn from past experience when dealing with certain things, such as packing for a trip or performing an interview. The templates are for recurring projects, such as when doing a new release or hiring a new person. The difference compared to Checklists is that Templates are copied for every instance they are used, and there can be multiple copies running at the same time (such as when hiring two people at the same time).

The Logbook is the last builtin view, and contains everything that has been checked off, either as completed but also dropped actions and projects. Reviewing the Logbook as part of the Weekly Review is something that I’m trying out now that I have moved to Things

Daily Workflow

The first thing I usually do when starting up for the day is to perform a daily review. This is not mandated by GTD, but I find it useful to know that my inboxes will be emptied at least once a day. This adds assurance in that I can add anything to my Things inbox and I know I will get to it the morning after at the latest.

When engaging with the lists to actually get some things done, the main view I use is Anytime. The sidebar is usually hidden, which limit distractions and serves as a visual distinction in that I’m in “engage mode” and not something else. In that view, I use the standard GTD criteria to figure out what to do given my current constrains. The first thing I filter on is context, and depending on the amount of actions in that list, I continue filtering on time available and energy. Finally, I may filter on showing only work or personal related actions depending on the situation.

Integrations

I have integrated Things as much as possible with the tools I use on a daily basis. First, email integration is done using the Things Cloud service, where one can send email which then pop up in the Things Inbox, together with a link to the original email. This means that I can click that link and the corresponding email will be opened in Mail. I use this mainly for emails that I want to keep track of replies for. When sending the email, I just BCC my personal Things Cloud email address.

When processing the email inbox however, I mostly rely on drag-and-drop on the Mac and the iPad, or use the clipping shortcut. This workflow allows me to quickly handle the less-than-two-minute emails, and defer the rest to a list in Things with the appropriate tags attached, which are usually “do” and “high focus”, together with “5m” or “15m” depending on the estimated time needed. Once the email is added as an action in Things, I archive the email since I can simply get back to it using the link in the notes section of the action.

Slack is a big thing at work, and I have created an automation in Zapier where if I star a message in Slack, it will end up in my Things inbox for me to process at a later time. This makes handling Slack a lot easier, since I don’t have to rely on marking conversations as unread just to remember to handle them at a later time.

Weekly Review

The weekly review is one of the core parts of GTD, since it keeps everything up to date and relevant. It is essential for making sure that the trusted system remains trusted going forward. I found that the best way to get the weekly review done is to have it scheduled in the calendar, at the same time every week⁴.

OmniFocus has a built-in review perspective, but I found that not to be all that useful. The idea is great, in that you can have different review periods for different projects, but in practice there are shortcoming with that approach, since if you were to do the review on another day for some reason, the schedule quickly gets out of sync. I also found it easier and more approachable to just review the projects in the normal projects view.

In Things, there is no built in support for doing reviews. What you instead have to do is to just go through each active project and make sure that it's up to date — it's just as simple as that. As I go through area by area and reviewing the projects, I also take a look at all the projects and actions that are scheduled for the near future, so I know what's ahead and if I have missed anything.

Someday projects may not need the same review period as active projects however, but they can be displayed in a separate view, which makes it easy to get an overview and focus on the projects that make sense at the time.

iOS

The first thing I noticed when using Things for iOS, and the iPad Pro in particular, is that the app and how you use it is almost the same as on the the desktop. This is huge, since it has been a major pain point in the past with OmniFocus, where I have refrained from doing certain things on iOS and deferring them to when I'm on the Mac. Things removes the entire discussion of a discrepancy, since the iOS app is fully featured and can do everything that the Mac app can do.

Since I use the third gen iPad Pro 12.9” as my main “computer”, it has been absolutely amazing to be able to use it without limitations, meaning that I can use keyboard shortcuts for everything in Things and now worry about being able to only do certain things on certain platforms. It just removes that discussion altogether.

There are a few things that work a bit different, and the way you choose which tags to focus on is probably the main one. On the Mac, there's a ribbon on top of every view where you can choose which tags to show. On iOS on the other hand, there is a menu option to open the tag selector where tags can be chosen. Once a tag has been activated, adding additional tags is easy, since there's a tag bar presented after choosing the first one, and tapping it will directly open the tag selector window.

When first starting out, I preferred the way choosing multiple tags on the Mac works, but have switched to preferring the way it's done on iOS. What's missing is a quicker way to get to the tag selection window though. Having to first tap the menu button and then choose the tag selector is one tap too many for something this essential.

Another thing differentiating iOS from the Mac version is the difference in how deleted tasks are handled. On the Mac, there's a Trash which shows everything that has been deleted. On iOS however, this doesn't exist, and you are limited to the built in “shake to undo” function to restore any accidentally deleted actions.

Things that bother me

While I am quite impressed by the power of Things, bundled in such a simplistic and appealing package, there are some things that bother me and would definitely make my life easier if they were addressed in some way.

First, one of the core features of OmniFocus is the ability to set projects and sub-projects as sequential, meaning that the second action will become available only after the first one has been completed. I never used sequential projects, since it's way too easy for actions to become invisible if you forget that the project is in fact sequential. What I often used though is sequential sub-projects, which makes it easy to map out a sequence of events and how to handle them. What I would like to see in Things is a way to set actions under a specific project heading as sequential. This provides the best of both worlds, in that the simplicity of Things is intact, while still allowing for power features to be exposed in a simple way. My current workaround is to use a “pending” tag and the remaining actions set as Someday, but that is not really ideal. This is also the thing that could be a dealbreaker sticking with Things for the long haul.

Speaking of project headings, I would also like to see them for areas. This would allow grouping related projects in a simple way. I would like them to also be present in the left menu bar, which would allow me to group my areas into different parts of my life. The workaround for this is to have empty areas with a line for a name to create a divider.

Like I mentioned earlier, choosing tags on iOS is pretty straight forward, however getting to the tag selector the first time is not. I have to first tap the menu button and then the tag selector. For something part of a core workflow, this should be exposed on the main view, like the current behavior when having chosen one tag already.

Another thing related to tags is that when selecting a tag, I would like to only see the remaining tags that provide a result and remove the other ones. This would help a lot when filtering the list to find the appropriate action to work on.

In the Anytime view, you can follow an action to its project, which enables you to quickly access project related information. Going back to the previous view on iOS is easy, just tap the back button and you're back to the Anytime view with all tags applied. On the Mac however, there's no back button, which makes it impossible going back to the previous view once a project link has been clicked.

Summary

I am amazed how well Things 3 works, being such a simple app at first glance. It supports the GTD workflow while still being opinionated in how it wants you to organize everything. I look forward to battle test it for a year and hope it will bring more clarity and help with focusing on the right things.

The only issue I had with the app itself was that an action didn't sync properly from one device to the other. This was fixed by their support, which was quick and friendly.

Now that you have read this entire article, it would help me a lot if you could spend a minute to fill out this feedback form, which will help me better work on similar things in the future.

1. The Getting Things Done book recommends first using context to filter the available actions, then time available and energy. Finally using a subjective priority when looking at the remaining actions. The reason priority isn't a tag is simply because it can change too often depending on outside factors. ?
2. The context normally called @computer, is called @do in my system, because I can do most things on that list both from an iPad, as well as using my Mac, and some of them even using my iPhone. ?
3. The higher horizons are split up into three different areas. Horizon 3 is about short-term (1-2 year goals), Horizon 4 is about a long-term vision on your outlook. Finally, Horizon 5 is about your purpose. ?
4. There are of course exceptions to this, since other meetings may have to take precedent. It is the exception, and if that happens, I make sure to schedule it for another time during the day. ?

One of the cornerstones of Getting Things Done is getting anything on your mind down to a trusted system. While this may sound simple in theory, how to actually handle different scenarios can be quite tricky.

Following the post on The 2016 OmniFocus Setup and Workflow, where I wrote about my GTD setup in OmniFocus as it looked roughly a year ago, I received some questions on how to take advantage of the workflow for certain scenarios. A Reddit user summed up these questions well in a comment, where the person was unsure how to handle the specific scenarios. I would like to answer a couple of them here.

I want to check out that CLI tool fzf and possibly include it in my workflow if I like it

When I stumble on things to research, the first step is usually that a link or similar would end up in my OmniFocus inbox when I first hear of it. In this case, I would use the share sheet in Safari or maybe the clippings shortcut to quickly get a link into my inbox, and then just continue going about my business.

I empty my inbox as part of my daily review, which I do in the morning when I arrive at the office, and sometimes after lunch and it’s finally emptied as my shutdown ritual before I leave the office. For this inbox item, I would name the action “Research fzf dev tool” and keep the link in the notes, and then just add it to my single-actions list¹, since I would think that researching the tool would likely mean actually installing and testing it. I would have assigned the context “Hanging Around”, since this is something I want to do when I have some time to spare and my focus isn’t at its peak, such as some time in the afternoon.

I have a new idea to build an app to do X (as in an hobby/idea/"someday", not a work assignment)

If this is something that I want to move on right now or within the current week or so, I would simply add it to my current projects and add the first² next action with the relevant context.

If this is something that I will move on in the future, it will instead end up in my Someday/Maybe list. These lists also reside in OmniFocus, but are paused projects and assigned to a context that is on hold. If the project is something I want to move on in the coming weeks or month or two, I will add it as a project under "Someday - Upcoming Projects" folder, which I review as part of my Weekly Review, so I can just activate anything there as appropriate. If the project is something for the distant future, I will add it as an action to the "Someday - Creative - Tech Projects" list. This list will usually also be reviewed weekly, but if I am short on time, I will just focus on the "Upcoming Projects" folder.

I want actually start building that app idea I had the other day (still not "work", no "due" date)

In this case, I would add the project to OmniFocus under the "Personal" folder. The next step is to add enough information to the project so you get everything out of your head. This can be next actions and support material. I usually try to keep support material in the notes field of the project, but if the project requires a lot of external information, I will instead keep it in Evernote and link back to OmniFocus.

I've been needing to backup and reinstall home media server this week (multi-step project, not truly "due" in the "work" sense, since no harm if it never gets done, breaking down into individual steps itself takes at least some effort)

I would handle this in a similar fashion as the previous question, e.g. create the project under the "Personal" folder and create at least one next action. If there's information that I have already gathered, I would add that to the project support information.

Now, if I want to work on this during the weekend, I would either just book some time in the calendar³, or maybe flag the next action so it would be on top⁴ of my "home" context. This way I know that I will be reminded of it every time I look at this list.

add a new feature/improvement/bug-fix to some application for work (a task with no defined due date, but not "someday"... project already exists)... details of "feature" yet to be worked out and I'm busy now

This is something that varies depending on how you work and if you work alone or with others, but say I would work for myself and my application needed a new feature, I would create a new project for it. The next action could be as simple as "Research / Look into how to do x for 'feature'". When working through my contexts⁵, I would just treat that action as any other and work on it as I get to it.

buy plane tickets for Christmas (when's it due? what's the context? How do I stop it from "slipping through"?)

The project in this case could be "Christmas trip prepared", and if you already know where to go, a next action could simply be "Book 4 plane tickets on thewebsite.com to visit family for Christmas" and the note field can contain related information if that helps you get it out of your head. The context if using the classic contexts would probably be "mac" or similar. In my setup, I would just set the context to "Short dashes", since this is something that's fast to do. Maybe even just skip this altogether and just go ahead and book the tickets.

Another scenario could be to find a vacation destination to take your family for Christmas and in that case, the next action could instead be "Research Christmas holiday destinations", with the context "mac" or "Hanging around" if using my setup.

I would set the due date for the project to the date you want to leave for your trip, but again, if you want to be sure to get something done at a particular time, just schedule some time in the calendar where you will look into this. I usually look at my "Hanging around" list when I'm on my iPad or iPhone⁶ and have a decent amount of time.

a bill that's due next week (so important), but there was an error in the bill, so you are "waiting" to hear back from them before you pay... how do I stop this from "slipping through", or how do I escalate to "time to stop waiting"?

In this case, I would create a project called "Xyz bill paid" with a next action of "Waiting for response from xyz re: bill". The action would have a due date well in time before the bill is due where I still can do something about it if I don't hear back, together with the "Waiting for" context. I will set the due date for the project itself to the date the bill must be paid at the latest.

As part of my daily review, which I do every weekday in the morning, is to look at my Waiting For perspective⁷ in OmniFocus, which is sorted by due date. This means that if I haven't heard back from the bill collector by the due date set, I can take action.

If they do get back to me before the waiting for is due, I will either just pay the bill directly if I can, or add a new action called "Pay xyz bill" to the project. If I remember that there is a "waiting for" action created, I check that off. Otherwise, it will surface as the due date approaches, and then I can cross it off my list.

1. I have a single-actions list for “Personal” and for “Work”, where I gather small actions which are not part of a project. ↩
2. Not necessarily only the first next action, but as many as I need to get the project out of my head. ↩
3. The calendar is a trusted system, meaning that I trust it to notify my of upcoming scheduled time. That means that it's important to keep the calendar honest and not save things there that don't belong there. ↩
4. I sort my context list by flagged and due, so they will be higher up in the list than the rest of the actions. ↩
5. When working on a context, I usually just start at the top and continue down. During my Daily Review, I flag actions that I want to get done before others, and I have sorted the context view in OmniFocus to show me flagged and due actions above everything else. This provides me with the confidence and trust that I will see and get to the most important actions first. ↩
6. My larger iPhone 6s Plus really helps here, since it lets me work almost in the same way as if I would be using an iPad. ↩
7. Read more about how my perspectives are setup in my 2016 OmniFocus Setup guide. ↩

I recently did a walkthrough of my OmniFocus setup on Learn OmniFocus. The webinar was recorded and is available right here. Be sure to check out the show notes for the apps and other links that I talked about during the webinar.