Friday, December 11, 2009

Are you using todo's ?

I think I am finally managed how to use todo's in the most optimal way.  At least, for myself.

First of all, after trying out many different things, I've found myself using Remember The Milk all the time.  I think I just understood that there is no silver bullet and no product that I'd give all my love to, until I'll build it myself.  But it might not be worth it, as I can live with existing ones.

So here they are, my major points.

  1. I don't put todo's if I don't put a due date for them.  No due date - nothing to do.  (This point really helped!)
  2. If I have more than 2 things for the specific day, I prioritize it with RTM's three levels of priority.  It works the best, although, I'm not really excited with the way how I see this in RTM, but... whatever.
  3. Every night I do review the todo's for tomorrow (or the next soonest date).  If you missed something, change the due date.  Someone might find this addictive, but probably because of my psychotype, I find that the need to reschedule something gives me more pressure than missed due date.
  4. Don't plan strategy, plan actions.  If you can't do this in one or two steps, it's not one todo, but two or more.  I think the GTD principle shares the same approach.
  5. I didn't manage to handle dependencies very effectively, but I keep myself pretty much organized with due date & priority combo.
  6. Probably todo's are not the right thing for repetitive actions, but I'd probably play more with that.
  7. Todo's are not your day schedule.  And I found myself unable to keep a decent schedule (although sometimes it's pretty tempting to).

Have fun!

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