[Orgmode] GTD methodology

[Joshua Gilliland]

Hi, everyone.  After my email a couple of weeks ago asking about  
Windows binaries with org-mode pre-configured, one of the members of  
the list asked me to describe how I use org-mode to do GTD. It's been  
a while since the request, but I haven't been able to get around to  
writing this until now.  I hope that the GTD-ers on the list will  
find it useful, although I should mention that despite the fact that  
I have been practicing GTD off-and-on for almost a year and a half, I  
am still very bad at it.  As such, some of my methods might not be  
very "pure" GTD, so to speak.

I am more or less an adherent of the one-big-file method of GTD,  
although I do keep separate someday/maybe and inbox files.   
Basically, I use a combination of TODO status and tags to organize my  
GTD in org-mode.  For level one I have either projects or broad  
categories (which are not projects in and of themselves but rather  
umbrella categories under which many projects fit).  Projects get  
a :PROJECT: tag, while categories get no tag.  I have my most  
important categories and projects at the top of my document, with  
everything else organized alphabetically.

Within each project, I keep tasks listed in the order in which they  
must be completed.  I tend to be a fairly disorganized thinker, so  
this order (and the tasks themselves) change a lot.  Each task is  
given a tag, which identifies its context.  For tasks that I can  
complete in more than one context, I assign multiple tags.  I used to  
use an @anywhere task, but I have more or less abandoned it in favor  
of this method.

I usually avoid tagging the later tasks in a particular project so as  
to not clog up my context lists with tasks that I can't accomplish  
yet.  My general rule of thumb is that I do not tag a task with a  
context until it is actionable.

I tend to be pretty weak at the concept of the first action; many of  
my projects have more than one action that can feasibly be  
accomplished right now.  Because of this, I tend to have contexts  
(i.e. tags) assigned to more than one task in most of my projects.

I use TODO status mainly for the nice feeling of being able to check  
something off when I have finished, in addition to being able to  
archive my completed tasks along with their contexts.  I mainly use  
TODO and DONE (I also have turned on logging so I know when I  
completed a certain task).  I also have WAIT, LATER, MAYBE, SOMEDAY,  
and CANCELED statuses, although I don't really use them and I think  
I'm going to get rid of some if not all of them (I might just keep  
MAYBE).  I used to have a NEXT status as well, but since I couldn't  
figure out a way to filter by both context and NEXT status, I got rid  
of NEXT altogether.

To get context lists, I usually use C-c \, since I know what most of  
my contexts are.  I also use the agenda command, and have assigned  
agenda commands to all of my contexts, so that way I can occasionally  
look at a list of my contexts to see if I'm forgetting about one (as  
I said, I'm not very good at GTD).

During my weekly review, one of the things I do is move all someday/ 
maybe's to my someday/maybe file so as to keep things as clean as  
possible in my GTD file.  My someday/maybe file is an org file so  
that I can keep it organized and yank things directly from my gtd.org  
into it.  My inbox is a plain text file so that I can add to it  
through the magic of Quicksilver's "append" action (I'm sure many of  
the other Mac users on the list know and love "append text..." as  
much as I do).

That is basically my GTD methodology in a (very large) nutshell.   
Hope it was useful.  I have put a small sample org tree below to make  
up for my poor abilities of description.  Again, I apologize for the  
length of this email.  Brevity has never been a strength of mine.

Josh

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#+TYP_TODO: TODO WAIT LATER MAYBE SOMEDAY CANCELED DONE
#+TAGS: OFFICE(o) HOME(h) COMPUTER(c) PROJECT(p) ERRANDS(e)
#+STARTUP: logging

* Email org-mode mailing list                   :PROJECT:
** DONE Write email to org-mode mailing list    :COMPUTER:
   CLOSED: [2007-05-23 Wed 12:27]

* Home
** Clean apartment                              :PROJECT:
*** TODO Buy broom                              :ERRANDS:
*** TODO Clean windows                          :HOME:
*** TODO Sweep floor
** Do laundry                                   :PROJECT:
*** TODO Buy washing machine                    :ERRANDS:
*** TODO Throw out clothes that are beyond hope :HOME:
*** TODO Wash clothes
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
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