GTD with Gmail Whitepaper
For everyone who asked, the whitepaper is here. Special thanks to Greg and Jonathan for looking it over for me and making suggestions. It’s still far from a perfectly complete guide to GTD with Gmail, so I guess any additions or ideas from this point can go into version 2 of the whitepaper or into the book (heh). Please distribute as you wish (just tell your friends to peep space-age wasteland). That’s all for now.
May 3rd, 2005 at 10:09 am
Excellent - thanks for putting this together. I have a few days coming up where I can implement GTD and trying it out with Gmail should be interesting.
May 3rd, 2005 at 8:11 pm
GTD with Gmail
UPDATE: Bryan has compiled all his tips into a whitepaper…good stuff. Bryan is whipping up a multi-post series on integrating gmail with his GTD implementation. Should be good reading. Part one is here. Also, he turned me on to classicshaving.com,
May 4th, 2005 at 11:00 am
This sounds great. But how does one goes about getting a Gmail account ?
May 4th, 2005 at 11:37 am
[…]
GTD with Gmail Whitepaper
Getting things done with Gmail is here: GTD with Gmail Whitepaper
This entry was posted
[…]
May 4th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
People with G-Mail accounts can send you an invite to join. This is how I got mine.
May 4th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
GTD in GMail umsetzen
“Bryan Murdaugh”:http://saw.themurdaughs.com/gtd-with-gmail-whitepaper/ hat ein Whitepaper verfasst, das zeigt, wie sich die Methode des “Getting Things Done” von “David Allen”:http://www.davidco.com in “GMail”:http://www.gmail.com umsetzen las…
May 4th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
GTD with Gmail whitepaper
Space-Age Wasteland has amalgamated their series of posts on Getting Things Done using Gmail, into a whitepaper, which can be downloaded as a PDF….
May 4th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
iSnoop has a million invitations for the taking.
May 4th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
Like it very much. Would have used it if not Backpack had been released the other day.
Check out a bunch of examples of how you can use Backpack to organize your information at http://backpackit.com/examples/
May 5th, 2005 at 12:55 am
[…] ilar.com/wordpress/2005/05/04/2319/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link: “> Using Gmail with the Getting Things Done techniques. This is the end of the semester, but we st […]
May 5th, 2005 at 6:30 am
[…] A PDF whitepaper on gtd/gmail can be found at space-age wasteland This entry was post […]
May 5th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
I found that typing “me” when composing a message didn’t bring up the dropdown list, so I found a way of making this process even more simple and useful. Go into your Contacts list and find the contact that is your “me” contact. If you change the name for your own email address to something like “_me_” or “!me” it will be even easier to send messages to yourself.
May 5th, 2005 at 11:26 pm
There is a comment in the white paper:
“One small hack that I’d recommend even if you aren’t using Gmail for GTD is to stay away from frequent interruptive new email noti-
fications. If someone emailed you, they don’t need a response right away. I have Gmail check every 60 minutes for new mail….”
I can’t seem to find this ‘hack’ - despite ‘googling’ it :>)
May 6th, 2005 at 6:05 am
Brian,
I think what you’re saying is that the Google-issue Gmail notifier doesn’t let you change the ‘interruption frequency.’ This is true. I’d recommend using another notification tool. I happen to be a Mac user and use gCount and when I *have* to use windows I run the Firefox Gmail notifier which has a configurable timer.
May 6th, 2005 at 6:06 am
It seems there’s some confusion over the ‘Me’ contact that I mentioned in my step by step here and in the whitepaper. ‘Me’ is a contact that I added in myself, it just happens to be my email address. It’s not a default Gmail contact.
May 6th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
I went a step further and called my “me” contact “C”. That way, when writing a task to myself, I just hit “c” twice — once for compose and once to bring up the “me” contact. Hit tab and type the subject. Tab to the send field and hit enter. Done.
May 6th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
[…] be interested in the whitepaper that space-age wasteland has done on setting up gmail as a gtd process manager. Permalink Leave […]
May 7th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
GtD with Gmail whitepaper
If you’re a fan of GtD and Gmail, then you may be interested in this whitepaper.
Personally, I don’t use Gmail. My work email is stored in Maildirs on my FreeBSD box and is accessed through Courier IMAP using Thunderbird. My GtD methodology for pr…
May 7th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
You can get a gmail account with an invite, or try, isnoop.net/gmail … I have some gmail invites if anyone wants one. Email me at addisontodd@gmail.com
May 9th, 2005 at 8:22 am
[…] oing along with the GTD (getting things done) theme, here is a good article to read… space-age wasteland » Blog Archive » GTD with Gmail Whitepaper
[…]
May 9th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
[…] all the navel-gazing. Let’s do some traffic-whoring, and talk Getting Things Done. GTDMail works great for 90 percent of my time management needs. One thing it lacks, though […]
May 10th, 2005 at 7:04 am
Getting Things Done with Gmail
GTD with Gmail Whitepaper - Bryan Murdaugh has published a PDF whitepaper on how to use Gmail to implement GTD, capturing thoughts and managing projects and next action lists with labels and emails to yourself. (via Lifehacker)…
May 10th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
[…] talks about how to use Gmail for GTD (Getting Things Done). Head to there and get the free GTD with Gmail whitepaper. For everyone who asked, the whitepaper is here. Special thanks […]
May 10th, 2005 at 10:16 pm
Dude, thanks for Getting This Done. Good Work!
May 11th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
[…] ion system. These two options have the benefit of being completely free: GTD TiddlyWiki GTD with Gmail Conclusion That’s it! I’d love to hear how others are usin […]
May 21st, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Get and give FREE gmail accounts, without the catches:
http://isnoop.net/gmail/
May 23rd, 2005 at 1:18 am
A better way of using Gmail for GTD
I have been trying GTD for some time including outlook plugins, tadalist and some wiki-based ones, such as the recent Backpack and GTDTiddlyWiki. I was mainly using my Wikka wiki (leveraging its dynamic category feature) for work-related complex thin…
May 27th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Stupid question, In the White Paper you place after your notes to yourself … what does that suppose to represent?
You also reference *’ing your projects, but the white paper does not show this in the examples. So do contexts replace projects?
Thanks and I appreciate your time putting this together!!
May 27th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
eom = end of message.
I use this as a quick tag to let me know that there’s no extended information in the body.
Many of my actions are project-less. So they only have a context for organization. Since the actions in a context are unrelated, there can be many “next actions” (indicated by the star).
June 4th, 2005 at 9:46 am
[…] il in Outlook. Gmail Mouse Hack - A demo of how to map gmail shortcuts to mouse buttons. GTD with Gmail Whitepaper - Intergating GTD system into Gmail. Tickling with FutureMail - […]
June 9th, 2005 at 9:51 am
[…] re la mettre en oeuvre (histoire de pouvoir finir ce que je commence), quelques liens : Un PDF pour la mettre en palce dans GMail Un petit guide en français Et (incroyable !) […]
June 24th, 2005 at 7:42 am
Thanks for the great ideas, Bryan! I think GTD with GMail is going to be a keeper for me, after trying GTDTiddlyWiki, Tasktoy and WebNote.
(I also use my Hipster PDA for collection.)
Question 1:
but if GMail could display the messages alphabetically by subject, for example, it would be possible to number the actions - a), b), c), etc. Is this possible?
One thing I find slightly disconcerting for processing is GMail’s display of messages inreverse time order, with the latest message on the top of the list. That makes sense for e-mail, but when brainstorming a list of actions, it would be nice to be able to juggle the order somehow. I know, GTD with GMail isn’t a project management utility
Question 2:
I use a different GMail address for GTD than for “normal” email. I TRY to keep 2 sessions open at once in 2 different FireFox tabbed windows. Often, I am composing a note to “me”, and when I push the “Send” button, GMail tells me I have been logged out for security reasons! Bummer. Is there any way of keeping two GMail account sessions open simultaneously without getting logged out?
- Jeff
June 24th, 2005 at 7:55 am
Jeff,
Thanks for visiting.
1) Since you’re a Firefox user, there are some Greasemonkey scripts that will allow you to flip the order of gmail messages, and one could probably be written to change the order otherwise. One thing I live by is that since priorities are decided for the moment (during a review, in theory) I want to get through my entire list no matter what the order is. If my most important things were up top, I’d be likely to stop reading my action list. I do, however, use another Greasemonkey script for persistent searches that allow me to find actions available in a given context, etc..
2) Not that I’m aware of. For that exact reason, in fact, I use one Gmail account to rule them all. It forces me to handle every email as an item coming in. If it’s an action, create an action out of it (this often involves editing the subject). If it’s not, handle it accordingly. There may be ways to keep sessions open - if you find one, do tell.
July 24th, 2005 at 7:35 am
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August 24th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
[…] t me apply multiple labels or tags to messages like gmail, I’d be all set. Check out GTD with Gmail for some ideas. 24 August 2005 Local Tags: gtd, gmail, producti […]
September 13th, 2005 at 8:38 am
[…] under software, headware, tips One of the things I found useful after setting up GTD with Gmail was the Greasemonkey script that adds a delete button to the Gmail interfac […]
September 15th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
[…] #8220;Getting Things Done” in Gmail implementieren kann, findet sich als PDF im Blog “space-age wasteland”. […]
October 6th, 2005 at 5:52 am
2 hacks for GTD with Gmail:
1) Everyproject is an email. I write single steps of the project as items in the email message. I can always “edit” the message replying or forwarding it to me. So I usually delete completed steps and refilled the message as @Internet or @Phone depending on the next step.
2) I also set up 4 categories for my project, based on what I read in Goalsetting :
*Contrib
*Pro/biz/econ
*SelfDev
*Toys/rec
The last hack help me to give meaning to the projects. Why I want to do it. They can be contribution goals (*Contrib), career/business/economic goals (*Pro/biz/econ), personal development goals (*SelfDev) or toys/adventure goals (*Toys/rec).
So every project in my system has a meaning label and a context label (those beginning with @, like @Home, also !Someday/Maybe and !WaitingFor, and also my tickler file labels). And they have one and only one context label, and one and only one meaning label. It helps a lot with the weekly review, because you don’t see projects more than twice.
October 6th, 2005 at 5:53 am
The Goalsetting URL wasn’t posted. Sorry.
http://www.mindspires.co.uk/pr06.htm
October 13th, 2005 at 10:49 am
[…] This is for people following the GTD method: using GMail for GTD. Thanks to the labels, stars and powerful search of GMail. I’ve created a separate GMail account for this, but I am planning to use my everyday account when I get more proficient at doing it. gtd, gmail […]
October 14th, 2005 at 3:08 am
[…] http://saw.themurdaughs.com/ […]
October 17th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
[…] Cómo organizarse un poco las tareas con la ayuda de Gmail: “Getting Things Done” with Gmail Technorati Tags: gmail gtd […]
November 16th, 2005 at 10:28 am
[…] Unify your inboxes. Since I use gmail for GTD, I never fall down on keeping my gmail inbox squeaky clean. In addition, the constant reminder that I need to process all items with David Allen’s method keeps me going. […]
November 22nd, 2005 at 10:18 pm
[…] Update … I just discovered this awesome program last night called EverNote. Really cool piece of software. It’s taggable note feature is something I’ve been looking for everywhere for several months now. Don’t know how I missed this one. I’ve already purchased it and not only impulsively dumped all my TreePad, Backpack and Wikka notes into it, I’ve also made it my central Getting Things Done implementation, replacing my previous GTDMail workflow which I came to find lacking in some important ways. […]
November 27th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
GTD with Outlook Categories
Since I started a new job, I’ve had to use Outlook connected to an Exchange server for email and calendaring (distressing, I know), and it turns out that my inbox is one of my main collection buckets. So I’ve worked out a GTD system that …
December 6th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
[…] This is a pretty simple thing to do, but it is really much more convenient for me than manually applying labels and stars to all my actions. Note that I don’t email myself all actions associated with a project; if you do that–as in the original GTD with gmail whitepaper–this trick may not be for you as you wouldn’t be able to easily identify the next action. […]
December 7th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
[…] I put these into GTDMail as projects, and will track my daily activities in terms of whether they move me toward these goals. Any task that brings a goal closer will get labeled with that goal. […]
January 11th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
hi bryan,
Thanks for the awesome whitepaper, I’m implementing GTD using gmail but had a question about complete tasks - what do you do with theM?????
January 11th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
JT, it depends:
If I need information that was in the task, I mark it with an appropriate reference label, remove the action label and leave it in my archive.
If it’s something like “take the trash out” then i just delete it.
Your mileage may vary, but be consistent, and don’t throw anything away that you may need. Also, don’t worry about things getting lost; you have the power of google’s search technology behind you.
January 13th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
[…] First, there is the “Get Things Done” line I followed. Starting from the book by David Allen I quickly came to Sylvia’s GTD Homepage and then to the GTD with Gmail Whitepaper. I was previously looking for a tool to manage my to-do lists online. This seems to be a good way. […]
January 24th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Thanks for the white paper. Hopefully this will help me out in the long run.
I’m a little confused, however. On page two, you say you create two labels for each open project - ‘Next’ and ‘Reference’. But, on page three, all of the tasks related to the bathroom project have ‘Bathroom:Actions’ as labels. Shouldn’t it be ‘*Bathroom:Next’?
Confusing me even more is that on page four, you mention a search - “is:starred label:*BecomeBillionaire:Next”.
Are you using ‘Next’ and ‘Actions’ interchangeably?
Other than that, I think I get it. I’m a bit worried about ending up with 10,000 labels, though. I think I remember reading that you delete the old ones or something like that.
January 24th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Wow, Jay. It’s amazing that my little slip-up went unannounced for over 7 months. Yeah, I use Actions in my label names, because I denote next actions by placing a star on the items. I’m sending myself an action right now to fix the whitepaper and re-upload it.
Thanks!
And yes, old project lables get deleted, even if the items remain as reference material. I’ve found that the power of Google’s search in my archives compensates for not having old project labels lying around for access to the references.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:47 pm
[…] gmail, google maps, google anything - if you’re not using gmail to make your life easier you’re wasting your time. My favorite hack is the GTD with gmail option. […]
February 12th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Hi, interesting concept you’ve got here… how do you manage the rest of your email inside the same account? Doesn’t that get cluttered? Or do you just ’star’ messages that need replying to, and assume that the “next action” is “reply to this”? Do you apply any labels? Thanks….
February 12th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Also, how do you handle time-sensitive actions (i.e. things with deadlines) using this system? Thanks….
February 12th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Nick,
Thanks for stopping by. Every email needs to be processed, and could potentially be an action. If a reply takes less than 2 minutes, I do it as soon as my processing stage. If a reply takes research or other action, I might forward it to myself with notes, or reply to the sender with some information explaining the situation and star it for my next action review. I use labels for contexts (preceded by a !) and labels for Projects (preceded by a *).
Time sensitive actions get added to my Calendar and may (exceptionally) have an action tied to them as well on my action list. Since a review of all actions happens many times a day, all loops get closed.
March 5th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Bryan,
Thanks for this, you inspired me to find a way to get GTD working with Gmail for myself. I found that using Greasemonkey within Firefox gave me a lot of extra functionality that brought GTD closer to reality for me.
In case you (or anyone else) is interested, I’ve explained what I did on my blog:
http://falkayn.blogspot.com/2006/03/gtd-with-gmail-and-greasemonkey.html
Cheers,
Angus
March 12th, 2006 at 2:41 am
That’s a cool implementation, thanks for sharing a little bit of GTD your-way.
Cheers,
Brandon
April 19th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
1. Compliment
2. Insight I had
3. Suggestion
____________________________________________________
1. COMPLIMENT
Hey, my friend - thanks for the system! It works AWESOMELY! Being a bit A.D.D I find it hard to get organised, but this system, with its:
- ability to attach any info to the various to-do items
- ability to file under multiple categories eg. the particular project AND the context to do it in
- the powerful search
- and the fact that you can actually get ENJOYMENT from emptying your inbox and (in my case) your context folder for each particular context as you go through it (eg. “9-5 calls”)
has really helped me start getting things done.
______________________________________________________
2. INSIGHT
For awhile I actually stopped using the GTD, because I felt that just organising things by context didn’t really take enough account of PRIORITY. I was getting alot done, but not necessarily the IMPORTANT things. So I returned to an attempted priority-based system. But with YOUR particular system, you really can combine the best of both worlds.
You can see things in their CONTEXT baskets (ie. labels), but they also have their little green PROJECT label next to them. This means that when I go to particular context (eg. “online” or “6-9 calls” or “errands”) I can quickly see which items are also part of a project - and for me, these are usually the most important ones.
So I realised that if you do it right, you CAN get the priority things done using the context-based system, and in fact, its better than priority-only systems, because as David Allen points out, in those systems you can get overwhelmed with items that ARE top priority, but CAN’T be done at that time anyway. At the very LEAST, the context system minimises the number of things you have to consider at any one time.
Also, I’ve found that being able to instantly access
- contact details
- other relevant info
- and various thoughts and ideas
associated with any to-do item
is a real help for starting work on a particular thing.
(How often are we slowed or even stopped/distracted (esp. ADDers!) by having to root around trying to find relevant materials!?)
__________________________________________________________
3. SUGGESTION: forward your other emails to your GTD account
This might already be obvious to some, but I’ve found you can use GMAIL’s free FORWARDING feature to automatically forward your emails from your other gmail accounts to you “to-do” account. You can set it so it will forward them, and either delete them or archive them from the original account.
I have several accounts for friends, trusted people and companies, and unknown people companies. I now get all the email from the first two accounts forwarded to my “to do” account. This makes it easier to instantly know what’s going on, plus, quite frankly, makes it more stimulating to actually GO to my “to do” account to get some stuff done! I haven’t decided yet whether I will respond to emails by:
- responding straight from my “to do” account (a bit of a worry cos I don’t want any chance of spam”
- logging out and going to the original account
- or the current front-runner, writing the reply and forwarding it to my personal account to be sent en masse at the end of the day
We’ll have to see how we go on this one but it makes it much more interesting and seems to make it more efficient!
Thanks again for the EXCELLENT system!
[Another thing marked off the list!]
April 20th, 2006 at 7:09 am
Zenji, thanks!
I actually only have one main gmail account. Which is my main email address. Every incoming email is INDEED an action. Great point though, thanks for reading. Come back soon!
April 25th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Bryan,
Allow me to add myself to the chorus of praise. Nice work.
A couple questions:
1) How do you handle using your context lists offline? For example, if you have an “errands” context with a bunch of messages (actions) in it, how do you keep this list in sync with an offline list so you can use it to run errands? GMail doesn’t seem to have a good way to print a list of messages.
2) What do you do with projects that have ended? I have quite a few projects that have a life of only a couple months, and I don’t want the left nav to fill up with tons of “Action” and “Reference” items that I don’t care about anymore. I just want my list of active projects. I thought of prefixing the labels with “DEAD:” or something. Just curious about what you might suggest.
Best,
Michael
April 25th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Michael,
Thanks - and a couple good questions.
1) I find that one of the best things you can do in a review is to manually sync your offline actions with something physical. For instance, my errand actions get placed onto green index cards that I keep in the back of my Hipster PDA.
2) I delete labels for projects that haven’t ended. Even if I’ve orphaned messages that related to a project, gmail makes it easy to go find them again. The point of the labels is quick access to projects you’re working on currently, or to the context you’re currently in. When the project is complete, you can always go find that content again with full-text search.
Thanks again.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:33 am
Michael,
To still keep labels for older projects you might consider using zzzProjectName. So, just add “zzz”. It will make sure you can still search within the label at later times. It also puts these labels at the end of the list out of your view (alpabetically sorted).
Best,
Michael
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:55 am
[…] I had to do a Google search, then read a whitepaper on using Gmail for GTD (Getting Things Done), then test it out in Gmail myself, before I actually discovered this. But, the good news is - it’s true. So now I have a few thousand emails to label and archive and a stress free, productivity enhancing inbox will once again be mine. Hoorah. […]
June 5th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
[…] fnChangeFloat(’left’,’oImg’) Adelaider 和 Spaceagewasteland 分别发表了 Google 服务大全和 Gmail 使用白页，在Google日新月异的发展面前，它们可能已经显得陈旧。 […]
June 25th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
I just found this post today, which I realize is pretty late. But I just had to say that the GTD Gmail whitepaper was extremely helpful! I downloaded the PDF and will be trying to implement the system sometime this week. Thanks!
July 4th, 2006 at 10:45 am
I’m a GTD newbie whose just started reading DA’s GTD. Gmail is also my main email and this whitepaper has been immensely helpful in implementing GTD.
This might be me not reading carefully, but where is the “tickler” in your Gmail? Or have you just opted to go with “Someday/Maybe”?
July 4th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Nevermind, I found the FutureMail post. Thanks for GTDMail again
July 4th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
In addition, Chris, Google Calendar will send reminders which I have found to meld with GTD quite well. I can send an email to myself that includes date/time and the ‘add to calendar’ button will extract that information and drop it in my calendar. I’ve got reminders set up by default, so I get a ping at an appropriate time.
Thanks for visiting!
July 6th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
I’ve also incorporated Google Calendar as my tickler now. I like having the quick accessibility and ease-of-use of both Gmail and Google Calendar.
October 1st, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Bryan,
Thanks for the article!
However, I have not been able to figure out why you use two project labels
per project (”*MyProject:Actions” and “*MyProject:Reference”) instead of just
one project label (”*MyProject”), which you combine with either a context label
(”!Home”) or a reference label (”R:Reference”). Can you please explain that?
Regards,
Mikko
Stockholm, Sweden
December 25th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
I am a proud Gmail user. Never worrying about email size, incredibly fast reply (powered by AJAX, a technology often used by Google), Web Clips,
automatic forwarding, one button - click search, advanced filters, labels and not folders, message preview, automatic refresh, auto-save messages,as-good-as-yahoomail spam filters, not one executable to be sent or received, feeling of having a different technology? A definite recommendation for
anyone that reads more than one email per day.
Have you tried Gmail? If yes, what's your taste on it? Why do you love it/hate it?
February 8th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Thank u,Bryan.
I’m using gmail and plam treo 650. I’m GTD with trep650, but never thinks gmail. U give a wonderful idea! Thank u!
August 30th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
[…] blogger Bryan Murdaugh shares how he uses tagging and filters in Gmail to create the ultimate GTD system in a free ebook [PDF […]
August 30th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
[…] blogger Bryan Murdaugh shares how he uses tagging and filters in Gmail to create the ultimate GTD system in a free ebook [PDF […]
August 30th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
On the use of . Another method is to use a symbol that represents that there is something in the message. I leave a lot of messages to myself for action items and find that the majority have no text inside of them. This is true with Calendar appointments, tiddlers, etc etc. So, anytime there is further information, I end the subject line with “…”
Ex: “Meet the boss…” implies I’ve got some notes about the meeting inside the message.
Good work on the white paper!
Doug
August 30th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
[…] blogger Bryan Murdaugh shares how he uses tagging and filters in Gmail to create the ultimate GTD system in a free ebook [PDF […]
August 30th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
[…] blogcusu Bryan Murdaugh, taglama ve filtreler ile Gmaili GTD sistemi olarak nasıl kullandığını bir ebook [PDF] ile […]
August 30th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Bryan, thanks a million for figuring this out and publishing it. I’m switching my GTD system over to GMail now. One “beginner’s question”, maybe I am missing something obvious:
In your white paper, you show an empty inbox and tantalize us that this is something we’ll see frequently. But when I set me GMail GTD system up as you describe, I’m finding that when I apply labels to items, they still appear in the Inbox. So, as long as I have any open (incomplete) projects they, and any associated actions, will still be in the inbox. Is there a setting I’m missing, or a filter of some sort, that will make them disappear from the inbox once I’ve applied a label (processed them)? Or, am I missing something else altogether.
Thanks again for a brilliant GTD solution using GMail!
-steve
August 31st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Bryan, thanks for the explanation by email, that “Archiving” an item just removes it from the Inbox - the stays in assigned folders unless you un-Label it. Duh! I am sure I had read that. But “getting it” helps me to proceed with myimplementation.
I am still not clear as to how you are getting the NA(’s) to cluster together
in a conversation along with the Project entry (which starts with a *, to
differentiate it). At first I thought they clustered together because the
Subject line was the same, but it isn’t (by definition). I just want to
understand, and I think others reading the white paper may reach the same point of confusion.
I’m moving forward with it myself, for the time being using a twist on
the method - I’m just creating a custom label for each project - so
the name of the project is a label. The I attach that label to all NA’s
queued for that project. I can click on any project’s label on the left
of Gmail, to see all the associated NA’s (from one to many). Next NA
can still be marked with a star; but I prefer to use the Star to denote
today’s “Punch list” (most urgent and/or important ToDo’s) across
projects. So I use the Star’s to plan and queue up tomorrow’s work.
Once I fully figure out how you’re doing it, I will probably revert to
your undoubtably, more elegant solution, which then in turn are entered
into your Inbox.
Thanks for getting me down this path - I’ve had 4 or 5 different GTD
solutions since starting it in Feb 2002, including programing my own
custom Excel VBA worksheet (distributed via freeware for a while);
attending David Allen’s seminars, going through their coaching; implementing with MS-Outlook, Treo apps, Blackberry apps, Mac+Entourage, Merlin Mann’s (personally autographed:) Hipster PDA, Yellow pad and pencil, etc. And Gmail-based GTD is the best so far, the best way to do gtd for me. I love the fact that it integrates your email and data from all other collection points (new brain input, ideas, paper, etc) right into one electronic inbox.
BTW, you say you’re using two inboxes… a Hipster and GMail’s inbox.
Actually, using a Hipster (or a Moleskin, pen and paper, etc) isn’t really
an Inbox, as in a place where you do your processing. It’s just (one of many possible) collection devices.
I have two Inbox’s now - a physical inbox for paper,
the GMail inbox, and my Blackberry. I’m running GMail/Mobile for BB
so I can input directly into the Gmail input box from my 8800 BB.
-steve
September 10th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
[…] geht es zum Link in dem man sich das PDF File anschauen/saugen […]
September 18th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
[…] Bryan Murdaugh, en space-age wasteland, había escrito algunos consejos de cómo usar Gmail como sistema GTD. Ahora ha reunido sus consejos en una guía descargable en PDF. […]
September 20th, 2007 at 5:13 am
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January 9th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Super, wonderful setup…congrats. However I’m stuck on the projects vs. actions thing. Traditional GTD one or two project titles with individual projects running underneathe the title “project”. This reduces huge lists. With your system, every project is provided with it’s own label i.e. FixCar:Actions, PlanBirthday:Actions, GetRaise:Actions. And so, because one can have hundreads of projects at any given time, do you have 100’s of lables as well?
Or am I missing something?
Thanks.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
My answer is that projects labels are few in my system. I only use project labels for very large projects that will last a long time. Every item doesn’t belong to a project. I generally have fewer than 10 projects at a time.
Thanks for reading!
January 9th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
So Bryan…
For those 10 projects, do you call them “xxxxxx:Actions” or are called “xxxxxxx:Project”? Also, how many “xxxxxx:Actions” labels are floating around your system? I’d imagine they are in the 100’s, no?
January 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I’ve actually stopped using two separate labels for the project and the actions. Actions just have the Star now.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:39 am
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Nobody seems to have mentioned http://www.gtdinbox.com !?!
March 20th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
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May 23rd, 2008 at 7:06 am
There’s a lightweight approach to GTD with Gmail described here http://dub3tips.blogspot.com/2008/05/using-gmail-as-getting-things-done-gtd.html
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I’ve actually stopped using two separate labels for the project and the actions. Actions just have the Star now. See you
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I’ve actually stopped using two separate labels for the project and the actions. See you repeat
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September 23rd, 2009 at 8:31 am
I’m a little confused, however. On page two, you say you create two labels for each open project - ‘Next’ and ‘Reference’. But, on page three, all of the tasks related to the bathroom project have ‘Bathroom:Actions’ as labels. Shouldn’t it be ‘*Bathroom:Next’?
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Thanks for stopping by. Every email needs to be processed, and could potentially be an action. If a reply takes less than 2 minutes, I do it as soon as my processing stage. If a reply takes research or other action, I might forward it to myself with notes, or reply to the sender with some information explaining the situation and star it for my next action review. I use labels for contexts (preceded by a !) and labels for Projects
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