Doit the Folke Way? | Groups

Folke (积分：2425)01/14/2014 23:00

1 floor

I use the Priority feature for "reviewing priority", not "doing priority": http://help.doit.im/group/topic/55

I use a workaround for "hiding" subsequent tasks in projects: http://help.doit.im/group/topic/43 and http://help.doit.im/group/topic/80

I use very few Contexts: http://help.doit.im/group/topic/23#comment-25

I am using the Waiting list as per GTD without any workarounds (no special contexts or tags). But I do avoid to star them because of the way the star works - it "schedules" things into Today".

Folke (积分：2425)01/15/2014 00:06

2 floor

I might add:

I use Scheduled only for Ticklers ("impossible/premature until"), never for calendar actions. I never use Doit's calendar or calendar sync at all. I use my regular calendars only. From GCal I auto-send email reminders 15 hours ahead of the appointment to Doit to keep it all in one Today list. (Yes, Doit has its "reverse sync" of regular GCal calendars, but if I trash or complete one of those events in Doit it gets deleted or checkmarked in GCal. Unacceptable. I use my calendars as appointment logs, and most of them are shared. I cannot allow myself to delete other people's meetings or log just because I'm not going.to them or have now been there. And I even keep my own private events as a log for future reference.)

i never use:
- the historical performance "review" (how many checkboxes you have checked etc)
- the daily "planning" (with hours etc)
- the collaboration features (I do not know anybody who uses Doit)

I like Doit primarily because its colored priorities and its goals feature (as underdeveloped as it is, it is still more than most apps have).

robmcmonigal (积分：505)01/15/2014 00:42

3 floor

Thanks for the pointers. Contexts is where I'm really getting hung up. Separate post on that momentarily.

robmcmonigal (积分：505)01/17/2014 06:41

4 floor

So I realize that no one is going to do things the exact same way, but I just wanted to point out that your set-up for Doit is extremely powerful--and I think hits on what I was trying to do.

I set up 5 Contexts for now, and four goals that are more general buckets of responsibility (paying work, personal stuff, the group blog, and our pending move.

Now I'm working on getting projects set up that are my main responsibilities. Most of these, I've come to see, won't ever close (Client 1, Client 2, etc.), at least if I'm lucky. Others (plan an upcoming party, identify and purge items pre-move) will end in time. And keeping all the cleaning-up stuff (run sweeper, etc.) in one project is helpful, if not strictly GTD.

I even re-thought out the reading stuff, moving things to more appropriate areas (things needed to pre-read for the group blog are in their own project, assigned to my "area" goal of the group blog) and giving myself a project--not a goal area--for putting in the stuff I'd like to read soonish. I don't think I saw your point on that, Folke, until I started implementing my system.

There are still some bugs to work out, like how best to use the priorities personally. I'm pleased with my decision on chores--High (daily), Medium (weekly), Low (monthly and None (quarterly or less), but not as sure on the rest, especially for waiting items.

I'm also using tagging sparingly until I get a good feel for how I want to tag.

Recurring items (including my scheduled reviews) are the last holdout. I hated that in Nirvana if you missed a recurring task, it sat there with a big old OVERDUE on it, especially if it was a daily one. I'm toying with a workaround, but I'll post that separately and see what people think.

Overall, I think I get a little closer to what I want every time I create a system. But I think this time, between the strength and flexibility of the options, a staff that responds--even if not always the way you want, and the power of the drag and drop and the very reasonable cost, I may.be much happier here.

Folke (积分：2425)01/17/2014 17:02

6 floor

Yeah, using priorities seems to be a very personal thing. The way I use them for Next and Waiting is:

- red means "look at this thing every single time I even briefly visit this list - this thing is running dangerously late and is important"
- blue means "look at this thing once per day to determine whether it should be starred and/or have its priority changed"
- turquoise means "look at this thing once per week to determine whether it should have its priority changed"

In addition, I check all colors whenever I am looking at a particular context or tag during the day.

For Someday I have the same philosophy, but different timescales. Red for stuff that I always check if I drop by during the week, blue for weekly review. turquoise for quarterly review.

For scheduled items I preset the priority to what I think it will be when it eventually lands on my list again. "Make appointment for a haircut" would be blue, for example.

westis (积分：55)04/01/2014 06:36

8 floor

As always I'm learning from how Folke is using a GTD software. I still have issues with Goals, since there is no way to see what tasks and projects that don't have a goal. And my greatest challenge currently is how to process the inbox.

@Folke: could you describe your inbox processing? Clicking a task, click "E" to edit, Add project, context, "review priority" all with the mouse? And after that dragging it to a goal? It's a rather cumbersome process.

Plus when doing this, sometimes the task disappears from the inbox, for example if I'd set a start date or deadline. Then it's difficult to find it again to drag it to a goal. So basically I can't trust the goals and therefore don't use them, which means that all my work and private tasks and projects are mixed and the lists are very long to review when I just want to reviee either work or private.

Folke (积分：2425)04/01/2014 14:39

9 floor

@westis - yes, Doit is cumbersome in certain ways, and goals certainly are hugely underdeveloped, but:

No need to drag tasks to goals. I do not do that. I just assign the task to a project. The projects already belong to goals, so I only need to drag every new project to a goal, but never the individual new tasks. I keep all tasks in projects, either in a "real" project or in project that I use as a "container" for single tasks in a given AoR (I have ten of those containers, one for each AoR).

Inbox/entry; I seldom use the inbox, but basically I usually open the task's edit screen and apply a project, context and priority, often with the mouse, but for projects also often with the keyboard (the list is long and the character recognition is very good; one or two correct characters even within the project name will reduce the list substantially.)

I think the task disappears from the inbox the moment you assign it to a "box" and save. For example, I believe it is automatically considered as Scheduled if you set a start date.

I manage to review my tasks by using the goals hierarchy. I step into a goal, then into each project, one by one. I sorely miss a goal overview which shows me all the tasks for all the projects in the goal, though. I do not always want to check the projects one by one - too detailed.

I would also have liked to be able to group my Next list etc by goal, but since I cannot, I have manually sorted my main projects list in goal order, and this means that when I group any other list by project, the projects are in fact listed in that same order, i.e. goal order - a bit cluttered and shattered to have a separat group for each individual project, but at least they appear in a workable order. And a bit too manual to have to keep the project list manually sorted by goal - this could have been automatic, but still ...

Hope that helps. Sorry if I have misled you into something that does not suit you.

westis (积分：55)04/10/2014 07:39

10 floor

@Folke Ok, I use the inbox for 95% of the tasks I add. Usually I simply add a task when it comes up in my mind, through the Google Chrome extension or the Gmail extension or in my phone. Most of the time I'm working with something else when it comes up, so I don't want to process it until later when I process the inbox.

And processing the inbox in Doit is not very fast or intuitive.

Also, since I can't filter the project list by area (Work or Private), I do indeed like those parts of Nirvana a lot better. Using Goals for project filtering in Doit requires me to add every project and task to a goal, which I am very likely to forget for many tasks/projects.

I spend very little time during the day for processing or reviewing tasks, which is not very good, but usually I'm busy doing things so time for reviewing is irregular. Which is why processing tasks quickly is a priority for me. Zendone has rather good inbox processing, but is forcing me to process in the order I added the tasks, which is not always what I want (in cases when the inbox fills faster than I process it).

But again, there is no 100% GTD solution out there anyway...

Folke (积分：2425)04/11/2014 11:48

11 floor

@westis

I don't quite know about inbox processing as I seldom use it, but the way it seems to me to be the normal case, in most apps that I have tried, that inbox processing is pretty much the same as any other kind of task entry. If you want to specify a project, you need to click something; if you want to add a date, you need to click something etc - or use some symbols such as # or ! and add these values to the title, but I like that a lot less. As you say, Zendone imposes a mandatory processing order, which I do not like at all.

Yes, Nirvana lets you "shut down" all areas but one throughout the app, until you change it. I know that is a very popular feature - an "on-duty/off-duty" switch. Zenone has something similar. I personally have no use for it.

But what Nirvana also had, which is immensely useful, and which Doit and many other apps do not have, is inherited tags - context tags, people tags, area tags, any tags you like can be applied to a project and then automatically apply to all tasks within. This is what then allows you to easily filter, say, the next actions list by project or area or area group (goal) or whatever you want. In Nirvana I always double-tagged my projects both with an area group tag (e.g. Private) and an area tag (e.g. "family ambassadorial" or "managing material assets" or "strictly personal"). In Doit I use the Goal for the area group.

You are wrong about one thing. You say that in Doit you need to apply both a project and a goal to each and every task. This is wrong (and I believe it is perhaps even impossible.) You only put the task in a project, just as you do in Nirvana or Zendone or any other app. That is all you do with the individual task. The project's assignation to a goal is a totally separate thing that you normally do once and for all for each new project.

Unfortunately, though, the only practical use you currently have for the goal in Doit is to keep your left menu tidy. You can collapse your whole projects list and just keep the goals list open, and can access your projects through there in a structured fashion. All other uses of the goal are entirely missing in Doit. You cannot group lists by it, filter by it, or see all tasks for that goal (like a super-project view). And you cannot apply inheritable tags or anything. It is really quite lame and undeveloped, but at least a small step in the right direction. I hope they improve this soon.

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