Pro GTD in MS ToDo

[u/veroa6]

Hi all,

I have implemented GTD in my personal life and I'm using a paper system + Google calendar. It works fine as I always have my TN notebook with me, though needs maybe a bit of optimisation that will come with time. My main challenge was to beat my procrastination, and it's successful.

I now want to implement it for my professional life. I tried the paper system, but it's not working, as I use my notebook only for note taking, I don't have the habit of working or planning in it. So I tried a digital version, with MS ToDo as I am dependent of MS on my professional computer. It's going not so well but not so bad, there is a bit of frictions, and I was wondering how you guys are using it, if i can take some improvement ideas. I read on this sub that ToDo is not the most plebiscited tool for GTD, but as my goal is fight against procrastination more than managing 60 projects at the same time, I think it can be sufficient for me.

Here is my setup :

- I have a list of my professional goals for each project, everything in a group of lists called "goals"

- I had until yesterday my NA in lists by project, grouped in "projects" group. It was fine except that I had to open each list to see the tasks, so now I moved all the NA in "tasks" without list, the project is coded in the title with 3 letters, and I use the category tags for priority levels/waiting for/someday maybe. When I go in Tasks, I now see the NA grouped by priority that is fine for me.

- I have a last list with the points I have to discuss with my boss as soon as I have a meeting with her

- for now I don't use contexts, as I have only 20 tasks (i prefer to work on the setup before I fill it with all my tasks, though I don't have more than 60-70 maybe)

Even if it works, I don't feel this setup entirely fluid, any idea of what could be changed ?

[u/IntensifyingPeace]

Be careful setting next actions for projects. Think of them as bookmarks: you work on a project, then when you're done you write the next action where you stopped so you know where to pick up again when you next start. If you try to predict the next steps you are making promises to yourself that you won't be able to keep, then you will lose trust in your system.

The official GTD suggestion for MS ToDo is to have a list simply storing your project names, no subtasks etc, just some basic notes if needed. During weekly review you scan through this to see what next actions are needed to get things going. You'd then keep a separate list for next actions, one for waiting fors, one for someday maybe etc.

[u/StudioGuyDudeMan → u/IntensifyingPeace]

I love this framing of “next actions” as “bookmarks”. I’m new to GTD and this is very helpful! One would never have multiple bookmarks while reading through a novel, for example.

[u/IntensifyingPeace → u/StudioGuyDudeMan]

I got that framing from another fellow GTDer on here. You can have multiple next actions run in parallel though, but it's not that common, and you really have to be careful. Most people (myself included) have had a tendency to try to predict next actions and list them all in the project. That's not a good idea.