praxistheologia.com

So I’ve recently become a big fan of GTD, or “Getting Things Done.” Even the title seems radically practical compared to typical titles from Covey and crew.

Basically the idea, as implemented by me, is to develop an habit of dumping all that I need to get done into a central repository. For me this consists of a folder in DevonThink, but others have reported success with SohoNotes and Life-Balance. Once everything is listed, categorize the tasks into “contexts,” which for me include such things as: email, errands, bills, online, library, research, chapel, and duke. Furthermore these items are treated as “the next logical action” and stated in strong, active language. simply a Verb, and a subject. ie: Errands/Buy Milk. By making a master, categorized list of next actions I can clearly differentiate what I can or cannot work on at any given time. For instance, I cannot email my boss while driving and doing errands, but I can accomplish the next-action of calling my mother while stuck in traffic. At the end of each day, I simply check off the next actions i’ve completed and regenerate the master list.

sure it sounds like there’s alot of upkeep involved, and no, no perfect solution exists for osX users, but devonThink does a good amount of the grunt work and life-balance can help maintain the master list.

I highly commend this method to my fellow computer geeks / religion nerds.