Todoist Review

Edit(2/5/08): Check out my latest post on using a notecard for the day along with Todoist!

So I renogiated my commitment to this thereaputic blog and called it quits after a short while to get other things done. This happend around April, but then you'll notice I posted once more in May to write a quick review of Dan Kennedy's No B.S. Time Management because I liked it. Once more, but this time after a many month break, I'm posting in order to review Todoist, the online GTD app. I wanted to be able to add my two cents in the off chance that someone was searching for reviews of Todoist or online GTD apps and searched far enough to actually find this.

Background

I've been using Todoist for a few weeks now, maybe a month -- time flies when you're having fun you know. Before that I used Gmail to manage my next action lists and before that, Outlook. I switched from Outlook to Gmail because I loved Gmail and wanted to switch to that for email completely and didn't want Outlook running just for lists. In Gmail I used labels for context and project lists and emailed myself to put items into that list. I thought it was super wonderful since I could label one email with multiple contexts and projects. That worked fine for a while, but visually and operationally it wasn't as clean as I wanted. Visually, when I clicked on a label and saw all the emails (items/actions) in it, it wasn't clear what was done, what was next, and what could wait even though I tried with the read/unread and starred/unstarred options:

The operational weaknesses in using Gmail to manage my lists were the ultimate reasons I was tempted enough to try something else. Specifically, it was a pain in the ass to create a new project. When you have a label that represents a project or context, whenever you want to create an item in that label (context/project) you have to: email yourself; label the email in the inbox; then clear the email from the inbox. Yes, it's not hard like getting to the moon is hard, but it's not as quick and easy as creating a next action should be. So in order to avoid that, every time I created a label, I also created a filter which included keywords I would type in the body that would make that email automatically skip the in inbox and be labeled. That solved one problem but created another. Creating next actions was fast, but creating projects was slow: I had to create a label and create a filter for that label, both of which required multiple screens, mousing, typing, etc. It literally took over a minute each time. It sounds like I'm complaining, but that much resistance was enough for me to avoid creating projects for smaller open loops, whic was preventing my from properly using GTD. As David Allen says, any item with more than 2 next actions is a project. With this system of mine, it became every item with more than 15 next actions or something equally absurd. The net result is that I had many small projects in my mind that were unorganized and had little next actions strewn through context lists and were frankly eating away at my mind and distracting me. This had to be fixed.

Focus on doing, not on the system

I tried to be productive and a good boy and say that Gmail was sufficient and I wasn't going to switch again. I wanted to focus on doing my tasks, not tweaking systems. This is a very good philosophy, but I realized that with Gmail, I was forced to focus on the system. So I started to casually browse. I realized that online list management was fine for me because I had a job (grad student) that had me always near a wired computer. So I searched, and stumbled upon Todoist.

Todoist

Visual Clarity

Todoist is not a GTD app in the sense that it's not centered around GTD. I like this because I find that other GTD-centric apps are way to elaborate and overstructured. David's system becomes this huge rigid pipeline that every brain fart you may have is forced to pass through. What context does this belong to? Should I do it or delegate it? Defer it? Is this a next action, or merely an action? So you have to click through tabs and stars and pages and bubbles just to create one small action. Ugghh! Please. What an over complication. Todoist is clean. It's a got a list of projects on the side and your list of items in the middle. To see items from a particular project, click on that project and they appear. All of them. Click the box next to an item and it turns grey and gets striked-out. There are no ads, no ugly colors, no obtrusive logos, just your list of items. For me, this allows for productivity.

Creating and reordering items

Creating items requires hitting the "a" key. That's right, from the keyboard. Todoist is pretty good at providing keyboard shortcuts. I say pretty good because it could be better but it also better than a lot of other programs. The caveat in using "a" to create an item is that you have to be in the project list you want to create the item under. But I find that often when I want to create items is when I'm checking off items in a current project list anyway. So for example if I'm managing a certain project and its actions, I could go through the following procedure in lightening speed: check-off, check-off, modify, hit enter, hit "a", type item, hit enter. And two items have been checked off, one modified, and one added. Literally under 30 seconds. Modifying can be done by just clicking anywhere in the item's text.

Reordering is super easy too. To reorder the items list hit "r" and drag them to whatever order you want. To reorder the projects list, hit "shift+r" and drag them. I find this important. Just because I created a certain item today it doesn't mean that should go at the top, or the bottom, or the middle, or in alphabetical order. I want to order them whichever way I please. Easily. I found the lack of this feature annoying in both Outlook and Gmail.

Subprojects

You can create hierarchies or subprojects faster than you can blink. Simply typing Ctrl+left arrow lets you indent a certain item over one tab so you can have one subproject name and a whole bunch of little actions associated with it that are tabbed over. This works for your list of items and for your list of projects as you notice in my screenshot above. Extremely handy little feature.

Notes

Typing an asterisk at the start of any line makes that line not have a checkbox, it's simply a little line of text. This is perfect for jotting down little notes, adding urls, etc. to a task or at the top for that project.

Contexts

I'll be honest, contexts are not that important to me. Being a grad student, I find that most of next actions belong to a small group of contexts, and those contexts are often physically close to each other and accessible every day. Projects, on the other hand are vital since I'm always balancing a lot and on a given day have to make significant progress on any given project due to outside pressures (my advisor). In that regard, "cranking" through a given context list and getting something done in that context for a variety of projects is not a luxury I have. But, if I want to, I can in Todoist. Contexts are created as little unobtrusive but functional Gmail-style labels. And the best part is, when I'm creating an item, I don't have to take some elaborate number of steps to create the contexts either, I just append my item text with @home. That's it, the @ sign in the text creates contexts. Beautiful. If I do feel like seeing all of my @computer contexts, for example, at one time, I just type in @computer in the search box and there they are.

Gmail Integration

There is a great firefox plugin that, once installed, puts a little "Add to Todoist" link at the bottom of every Gmail conversation, which makes turning mail into action items a one click endeavor.

Premium Perks

As with basically all online GTD apps, there is a premium subscription ($3/month) that you can purchase and it comes with perks like reminders, sms reminders, etc. I haven't found it necessary so I haven't bothered. Putting a date on a task and having it show up on that date as all the tickling I need since I use Todoist every day.

Cons/Wishes

I wish they had more keyboard shortcuts. Some things still require mousing and that seems unnecessary. Also, I wish the search bar let you search for terms, not just by date. I suppose I don't really need this since I don't have a million next actions, but sometimes it could be useful. I wish editing a project were bit easier. Why can't I double click and edit.

Overall Todoist is a very solid, highly recommended, online GTD app.

Dan Kennedy - No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs - Review

First things first, by the end of this post you should know why I haven't posted in so long.
Second things second, yes, I know no one cares when I post and no one reads this blog anyways.

The following is my (very brief) review of the book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy: I like it.

Key aspects that stood out about this book:

• Finally a time management book that doesn't try to sell you a sensational too good to be true story.
• He emphasizes two key things: 1. No interruptions 2. Discipline.
  
• When he doesn't know something he admits it. For example, when talking about working from home he admits that some say this puts work on your mind more and he admits that maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, he doesn't know.
• He walks the walk.
  

Elaboration:

1. Interruptions - Dan Kennedy is absolutely militant about his time. He is also old skool. No cell phone, no email. Yup. Landline? He answers that "live" only an hour or two a week. He works at his home office, by himself, no interruptions. So how in the world does he get in touch with anyone ever? Fax. Yup. He loves the fax and has everything faxed to him. He is a self-employed marketing expert/writer/business consultant/speaker etc. His "clients" get in touch with him almost exclusively through fax. So the question begs to be asked WHY ONLY FAX?! Let me step aside and let him answer that:
   

   "With each easier, faster means of communicating, the quantity of dumb, junk communication has multiplied. Because sending an email is so easy and doesn't even require the labor of walking over to the fax machine, people send emails any time they have a brain fart...Again, you may or may not want or need to mirror me. But if you're like many people, and you jump up every time the fax machine beeps, you can't possible be productive....If you're checking your email constantly, compulsively, or worse, if you're responding to messages as they arrive -- you're headed for an early grave...For somebody in an office, I think a good system is to take the hour after lunch to look at the morning's faxes, emails, and phone calls, deal ONLY with those that are genuinely urgent, and set the others aside."

   No B.S.
   What I like most is the fact that it applies maybe 10 fold to those of us (myself included, or I like to think not anymore) that have elaborate GTD systems to deal with incoming anything and we are so enamored with our fancy system that we do jump anytime anything beeps because we want to use the system. Get away from that, get very far away from that. Some people say, oh, that only happens at the beginning pretty soon you don't even realize you're using it. Nope. Not in my experience, and not from what I've read on the countless productivity blogs in Web 2.0 land. Feeling productive is fun. Being productive is hard. That's the simple truth and Dan Kennedy urges us to discipline ourselves to let the latter statement be true in our lives. I applaud this.
   
   
2. Discipline - Chapter 5 is devoted to discipline and titled "The Magic Power that Makes You Unstoppable". Here he tells the story of a super-disciplined jockey and his own story of discipline. When's the last time you read a time management piece that told you straight up BE DISCIPLINED. It's not the comforting too-good-to-be-true candy we want to hear. But it's reality. If we could read GTD once and actually have our productivity come "stress-free" there wouldn't be a world of people online blogging their heads off about this stuff, finding new tools, every few months saying they "finally got the right one" (again, myself included). Dan Kennedy has one assistant, in an office in another state, that takes his faxes, mail, phone, and any other input he receives, sorts through it, and gives him only the most urgent pieces of communication. He reads through this stack only when he wants, not when it arrives. We may not all have secretaries or assistants, but we should let our productivity systems be our secretaries and filter useless crap away from us, not the other way around (deal with useless inputs because we've created a system to deal with them). We should have the discipline to start the day off not checking email, and starting off on our most important and most critical tasks and projects, not the ones on our GTD next actions list that are the quickest, most fun, and easiest to check off.

I love it. The advice is real. GTD simplicity once again. So that's why I haven't posted in a while. The post was on my next-actions list, it just wasn't high priority.

GTD "Today folder or list"

I found an interesting un-GTD GTD recommendation on an IT management website (via the great ultimate gtd index). The article is titled "Getting Things Done in 60 seconds" and the author teaches a few (60 seconds worth) of GTD fundamentals and if you like them you have to promise to buy the book and delve into it; seems like a nice way to intro into GTD for those that may be more timid.

Most of the tips are pretty nice and pretty classic, but the last one caught my attention especially because it's rather un-GTD and it's related to a topic that I've been alluding to in recent posts. He mentions setting up a "Today" folder with next actions that you want to get done today:

7. Create a "today" folder or list.

This part deviates totally from GTD, but works great for me. I have a short list of things I have to complete every day (daily tasks like "review week in calendar" and "clean desk"). I add to that list the most urgent and/or important items as I'm going through my inbox and task-category folders, I grab items I really want to complete today, and add them to my list. Then I go through that list slavishly -- doing exactly what it tells me to do, in the order it tells me. You can also do this with task-files in a folder or in an Outlook Task folder labeled "Today."

Sounds sinful doesn't it. This is similar to how I put some Alan Lakein into my next actions list by adding some A1, A2 color coding capabilities. This idea works for me and I like it because it embraces the fact that there are priorities.

Are all open loops really created equal?

I'm going to put my question-GTD hat on again.

One premise of GTD is that as far as your mind goes, all open loops are created equal. That is, no matter the time, place, or importance, your mind will focus on an open loop as though it is important, and this is the time and place. Evidently, your mind can't distinguish between loops that it should think about and those that it shouldn't.

Now, is that really true? My experience and vigilant mental observation over the past month has led me to believe that it's not. Big, nasty tasks take up way more mental and emotional energy than little ones. Evidence:

• I simply do not stay up at night wondering whether I will remember to get the butter at the grocery store.
  
• I do not keep thinking about when I'm gonna get the oil changed in my car when I should be paying attention to the conversation I'm having with my friend.
  
• I do not lose focus on large, important tasks because I'm thinking about posting the birthday card on time to my cousin.

I do however, have trouble sleeping if the enormous monster of a task is looming over my head because I didn't get to it because I was too busy tweaking my system, finishing little errand tasks, and doing whatever else I do to procrastinate. This is not to say that you shouldn't keep your capture system pervasive. Little tasks do come up, and yes, they come up at inappropriate times. So a quick, easy, well-reviewed capture system is necessary so that when you've finally gotten to the big nasty task and "get-butter" gets in the way, you can quickly capture it and get back to work within a 10-30 seconds. And that's precisely the point of the capture system, to not give them more than the 30 seconds they're worth. But should you spend time tweaking your processing system for these little tasks? Browsing the internet for hours on the best way to combine lightweight moleskins with tiny pens to capture any last morsel of thought that may come through your head? No. Simply no. Don't waste your time. You know what the important tasks are and your list is overcrowded as it is. Get to doing!

As I previously discussed in Priorities and Getting Things Done, big, large priority tasks are what you should focus on because those are the tasks that get you ahead in your field and get you closer to your higher altitude goals. Here, I want to reassure you that you aren't going against all that is holy in GTD and letting your mind get clogged up with open loops because you're letting some of the little tasks slip in place of the big ones. In my experience, the little tasks barely take up as much space in your head as the big ones do, so why give them more than the 30 seconds they're worth?

Grad School and Fitness - Finding the Time to Stay Healthy

Ah grad school. A time for us to transform from immature undergrads to knowledgeable adults. Unfortunately many of us are undergoing another transformation as well. Yes, I'm talking about our bodies. The hours, days, weeks, and years of sitting in chairs and staring at screens, papers, dials and knobs can take a toll when not combined with a proactive plan to keep your body healthy, and should the mood strike you perhaps even transform its shape back or maybe for the first time forward to that which you've always desired. It is possible and it does not require immense amounts of time. Grad school and fitness are compatible.

My first year of grad school was my fitness hayday. That's the year that all I read and learned was finally put up to disciplined practice. I am a skinny boy, so my fitness goals were to gain weight (of course in the form of lean muscle) and I managed to gain over 20 pounds in that first year and consider it a huge success.

Then came my second year, which is where I am now. I got a new adviser (newbie) which came with a massive swing in workload, I studied for and took a preliminary examination, and I was also just plain overconfident as a result of my first year of success, and this has made this year, so far, a fitness failure. My appetite continued from the first year of massive eating and exercise, but the exercise part did not, and so in addition to the wonderful muscle mass I gained came a nice layer of bodyfat. Undesirable.

And so I begin my second phase of grad school fitness success keeping the following principles in mind:

• I am bold about my goals and am not merely looking to "maintain" anything, but rather to build and shape my body to a condition that I desire. If I miss those stars, I'll at least end up at the top of the mountain.
  
• I insist on staying absolutely optimistic in regards to my fitness goals (hence the reference to "grad school fitness success" above). I don't have the time and energy for self-deprecation and negativity.
  
• I insist on ensuring that this is a priority and not wasting my time by working out and eating inconsistently. In my experience and the experience of every other single person I've heard from or read about that has achieved their fitness goals, consistency is the single deciding factor between success and failure.
• I insist on staying educated about health and fitness. I have learned that more than 50% of the game is nutrition and continue to read about nutrition and healthy eating habits.

I'm more than aware that the radical "swing" in workload from my first year requires an appropriate response from my end in order to ensure that I abide by point 3 above. I'm also aware that point 3 is easily the single biggest excuse for the average person who would like to workout more and would like to be healthier but who is not doing either. The worst psychological thing you can do to yourself in regards to fitness is have the mental weight of "being on a fitness plan" but "not finding the time" to do it and breaking consistency and realizing after months or even years that you've spent countless hours in the gym or elsewhere and have little to show for it. You have to be consistent. There's no other choice. I love the analogy of working out to riding a bike uphill. If you keep pedaling, although at times it can be tiring and take a while, you will reach your goal. But if you stop pedaling you don't just stay where you are, you start rolling back down, undoing your earlier effort. Talk about a time-waster!

My Workout Schedule

So, I have the following workout schedule for this semester. I split my workouts into 4 regions: legs, chest, back, arms. Had I been trying to lose weight, my workout would be different, specifically, cardio would be added either as extra days or added on to certain other days. Try the Bodybuilding.com Forums for more discussion. My schedule is: Sunday (1 hour): Legs, Wednesday 6:30-7:30am: Chest, Friday 6:30-7:30am: Back, Saturday (1 hour): Arms. I have never tried the early morning workout schedule in fear that I would never go , but I simply think I have no other choice right now. The weeks simply get too busy. There are too many fires to put out and too many "things that come up." Quite frankly it's disgusting that I can't find the time in the afternoons or evenings to go to the gym, but that is how it has been. Instead of trying to fight with the work monster, I'm going to go behind its back and get my workout in before it rears its ugly head on Wednesdays and Fridays. Also, this has the added benefit of going when the gym is less crowded which means it's more efficient! You'll notice above that this totals only 4 hours of gym time a week. Combined with "gym prep" (i.e. showering, changing, getting there, etc.) it totals somewhere between 6 to 8 hours (working out in the morning helps with this as well since I'm not taking an extra shower or doing too much extra changing/prep as I would be with afternoon or evening workouts). I simply will not stand for not having the time in my week to workout. Even Niel Fiore mentioned that the producing grad students in the study he conducted at UC Berkeley were ones that consistently exercised. I am confident my new schedule will work and will post periodically on how it is going.

Also, soon, I will post on the nutrition aspect of fitness (the most important!). Certainly the workout time is wasted if you eat sporadically or especially do the classic grad student bit of buying 2 to 3 meals a day outside, or worse yet, eating only 2 to 3 meals a day, or even less! Preparing your own meals is essential and feeding your body more than 3 times a day is also essential (regardless of if you want to gain or lose weight). We will discuss how you can fit that in to your busy schedule as well.

Priorities and Getting Things Done

The overemphasis in the GTD world of priorities being last place in the four-fold criteria for doing is, in my opinion, not going to help you get important things done. Merlin over on 43folders wrote a bit about why priorities are last place, and as sacrilegious as this may sound in the GTD world, I gotta say I don't agree with the idea that priorities are really that unimportant. Furthermore I think it's dangerous to your productivity to keep putting priorities at the bottom of your list of criteria.

First some background for those that may be unaware of the "Four-criteria model for choosing actions in the moment", they are, in order, as follows (p. 192 of GTD):

1. Context
2. Time Available
3. Energy available
4. Priority

The crux of my argument is simply this: Your next actions, like it or not, are on a continuum of importance, making those at the top of the continuum much more important than others at the bottom. If you are constantly in the wrong context, constantly "don't have time", and constantly "don't have energy" (usually a guise for "just don't feel like it") to do next actions related the Lakein "A1" type projects, you may need to organizationally rethink your life at a higher level.

What do I mean by "higher level?" I mean higher than the runway. Yes, I'm using a DA'ism to emphasize the need for priorities. In fact, I would say that whole runway to 50,000 feet concept is precisely about priorities. Now, David of course advocates starting at the runway, which makes sense because you need to first feel like you have some control in day to day activities to clear your head for the higher altitudes. But for most of us, especially geeks, our runways are already well organized. In fact, we often have an elaborate collection, processing, and tracking system, as much as we can automated, gadgets for every step possible, and keyboard shortcuts to accompany all of it.

And that is where the danger lies. In the web GTD community (the only GTD community with which I am familiar) there is so much emphasis on "the cup", the system, the shortcuts, the runway, that when it comes time to doing, it's easy to think that quickly taking care of online bills, re-organizing your shopping list, typing up that blog post you've been meaning to write, or google-mapping the nearest oil change place and checking off any of these actions means your really getting things done. Sure, if you do any medium or low priority task you got something done. You certainly checked off an item from your list and that made you feel good. But the uncomfortable question of "is making sure I don't miss any item on my grocery list every time I got to the store really on my 20,000 ft and above list?" To each his own: If your larger life goals are to be the quickest email-processor, bill-payer, and errand-completer that your friends and family have ever known, then by all means make sure those tasks are completed with the utmost efficiency. But if those are not your main priorities, maybe you can let them slide in place of that large, nasty, 2 or more hour long, thinking-intensive, emotionally heavy, self-worth questioning task that does, whether you like it or not, have more priority than 90% of tasks on your next actions list.

But what about the four-criteria? I think you should have the discipline to make the four criteria work for you rather than being controlled by them. When there are important, high priority, next actions that are key steps in achieving your 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 ft and above goals, you simply cannot let the four criteria get in the way. You need to use the four criteria as a checklist of things that need to be in place in order to complete your high priority items. What do I mean?

• I mean get in the right context. If you are constantly talking to colleagues and coworkers and checking off those agenda items, constantly driving around and checking off errands, constantly on the phone and checking off those items, but never at your desk to tackle the big action, you simply have to rework your allocation of time. I firmly believe there is no secret to this besides discipline: stop talking to other people, stop driving around making sure you pick up the nails from the hardware store and the butter at the grocery store in one trip, turn off the phone, and get to your desk.
• I mean find the time. No matter how many books you read and how many time-management catch phrases you can spout off, you still have 24 hours in every day like the rest of us. We are all busy and all wish we had more. We don't. The people that are really getting things done are the ones that are allocating these hours to those tasks that they feel are most important and will get them to their goals faster. For grad students, these tasks should be obvious.
  
• I mean find the energy. It's easy to get to work and check off 15 medium to low priority next actions throughout the morning and afternoon only to find yourself alone with the large monster task that you really should have been doing all along at 4pm when you have no energy and maybe not enough time left. Then what happens? Well you clearly don't have the energy: "I need to be 7.0 or higher for this and I've really crept down to about 6.9 right now, so I'll have to pass." So you end up doing more low priority tasks. Know when you have the energy to tackle the high priority items and do everything possible to make sure that time is free. If you never feel like you have enough energy for the high priority items, there are larger issues you need to tackle, perhaps obligations you need to let go.
  

So what about the contexts? Why don't I just make purely Lakein-esque lists organized solely by priority? Don't be silly. Contexts have their place. When you are driving, it's useful to know where you have oustanding errands. When you are in phone call mode, it's useful to know all the calls you need to make. But for grad students in particular and anyone else whose most typical workday involves going to the same place (a desk) that has a bunch of contexts nearby (@phone @computer @lab @agenda-a-bunch-of-people) priorities have to come into the picture in order to make solid advancements on your most important goals.

Below is a screenshot of my outlook task list, organized by context, but with a "Laiken" field where I can mark a1 and have those tasks highlighted red (thanks to GTDWannabe for the privacy blurring idea).

My Papers Toolbar

Earlier I typed up a quick rant disguised as a blog post about why you should stop delaying getting EndNote until you have to type your thesis. I did mention, however, that at times it can be convenient to put some, all, or a select few papers in a folder and browse that folder for papers you want.

I do this by implementing the My Papers toolbar. What the hell is that? It's simply a cute way of getting extremely quick access to papers that you want to find "this one thing real fast" in. It's for times when you know what you're looking for, you know who wrote the paper, and you don't want to open up EndNote, find the citation, and click on the "link to pdf". Well, if your papers' location on your harddrive is buried in some folder 8 levels in from My Documents, you might as well open up EndNote evertime right? It's basically the same amount of time and work. But, if your papers are one click away on the taskbar itself, then it's a whole new ballgame. Fortunately Windows XP can do just that for you (I haven't sold my second child for Vista yet, and have no burning desire to do so soon).

You can create a "toolbar" from any folder by dragging that folder to the edge of your desktop. Really. Just find a folder (doesn't have to be on the desktop to begin with) and drag it to the left or right, release, and there's your toolbar. I used that for a while (not for papers but for a Toolbar folder that has shortcuts to places I like to get to often and fast), but it kept getting in the way; it either takes up real estate or gets very annoying if you use the autohide because my mouse seems to reach all ends of the screen often. But I noticed later that if you drag that toolbar from the side to the taskbar, it plops down as a folder with a little double arrow that you can click to see the contents. This is where my Toolbar folder sits now. After a few weeks of a having a My Papers folder in my Toolbar folder, I found myself going to it more than anything else and thought I should give it its own seat on my taskbar, and we've been in love ever since.

When you have more than a screen full of papers, there are nice little scroll arrows it provides, and although I suspected with a lot of papers it would start to slow down, it hasn't. So the possibilities are endless: if you have all or nearly all of your papers in one folder like I do, you can use that; if you are working on a particular paper, you can put all the papers on that subject there; if you just have a few quick reference papers you always want to look up, you can create a folder of those and plop it down there. Personally I like the all-papers route myself, but whatever, its' a free country (unless you're reading this from a not-free country). Regardless, here's to the My Papers toolbar!