48-Hour Days

I’m really getting into using Remember the Milk for my tasks. I’ve even gotten my boss, Tom, into it. I love that I can share my work-related list of tasks with him so he can adjust priorities or add information as needed. Also, he has a real-time look at what I’m working on without me having to update something else or put extra effort into it.

But, organizational freak that I am, I’m always looking for ways to use the service better. Enter the Remember the Milk Tips & Tricks Forum. There is a lot of really good stuff in there. Below I’ve detailed some of the posts that I’ve found useful and how I’ve adapted those techniques to my workflow. I have a caveat, though. Like all good organizational processes, this is a work in progress. I expect it will be for quite some time. However, I really think I have the basic flow nailed down and it seems to be working well. As with any advice, your milage may vary.

Projects

I keep all of my work-related tasks on one list and personal tasks on another. I have shared my work list with Tom and kept the personal list private. However, the tasks on these lists beg to be broken out into projects. RTM doesn’t support hierarchies, though (well, not yet). What to do?

I found this post in the forum and decided to use it as the start of my system.

For each project, I create a task tagged “project”. At first, I followed the poster’s advice and prefixed the task name with two hyphens. This allows the project tasks to be sorted before the actual action tasks, since the hyphens get put first alphabetically. However, I found that I don’t like seeing the overall project task in the same list as the associated action tasks. It was a distraction for me. So, I removed the hyphens from the project tasks and now I just create them without any sort of prefix.

For each project, I create a tag that is in the format “p-code” where “code” is just a one-word short code I use to identify that project. For example, my tag for all of the things I have to do for Riemer Week is p-riemerweek. These tags are applied to the action tasks for the specific projects.

You’ll notice that in my system the action tasks are not directly related to the project tasks. They are in my mind, but not in the actual task lists. I like it this way. I only use the project tasks to prioritize the projects as a whole and keep a high-level view of what I’m currently working on. The action tasks are for my “what’s next” moments. Thus, I’ve created two Smart Lists: one for projects and one for next actions.

A Dash of GTD

One of the ideas I took away from David Allen’s Getting Things Done is putting tasks in lists according to context. So, all the phone calls you have to make are in a list by the phone, all of the errands you have to run are in a list in your purse/wallet/diaper bag, that kind of thing. It makes perfect sense. I haven’t been able to do it yet.

I’m trying, though. To this end, I have context tags in RTM. These tags are prefixed with a “@”. So, I have @office and @errand so far. Since I work from home, there are tasks that I pile up and do the next time I’m in the office. This makes it easy to pick those out. If I decide to go run errands with the kids, I can get a quick list of all of them. Extra bonus: using the Location field to map out the store for that particular errand. Now, if I can find a mash-up site that will spit out a complete driving directions itinerary with each errand’s location included and everything put in a logical order so that I’m not doing any backtracking.

Keep ’em Separated

Now that I have formats for specific tags, I wanted to organize my tags (is there no end to my mania??). That’s where another post in the RTM Tips & Tricks forum comes in. The poster came up with a way to create “separator” tags that span the entire width of the tag cloud. The trick is to use the same prefix as the tags, then add a bunch of underscores and an optional label.

I’ve created a special task in my Inbox that only holds the separator tags (tags must be assigned to a task in order to exist).

Next Actions

So, on these monolithic lists of tasks now sorted nicely into easy-to-find projects, how do I determine what my next actions are? Priorities, baby!

Just about everything I have to do needs to be done ASAP. This makes adding due dates pretty useless as everything is due now. This is where priorities come in. For each project, I pick out the very next thing I have to do. That gets assigned priority 1. Then I pick out the next task. That gets assigned priority 2. Finally, I pick the next task after that and give it priority 3. This gives me the next three actions for each project.

I then have a Smart List that only displays tasks that are not tagged with project and that have a priority set. Bam! My list of things to do today.

I mentioned that I like to keep the projects separate. I have another Smart List that has all tasks tagged project. This allows me to assign priorities to the projects themselves. When I view all of the priority 1 tasks on my Next Actions list, I can do the next action for the highest priority project.

Conclusion

This probably all seems overly complex, and perhaps it is. But it works for me because it allows me to break really big projects into small tasks, then figure out which task needs to be done next. Keeping track of this in a concrete way is a must because I only get to focus on work in short bursts during the day. I can track where I am on a specific task using the notes field, so it is always easy to figure out where I am. I’ve also begun echoing the same tag structure in my EagleFiler libraries. Consistency is key to making an organizational process work.

Like I said, this is all a work in progress. However, since I set it up a few weeks ago, it has been a lifesaver. It really seems to be working and I’ve only changed a few minor things along the way.

Posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Tagged: organization, rtm, tagging | RSS 2.0 | comment | trackback