From GTD to priorities pt. 3 of 3

This is the third and final installment of my blog series on finding a successor to Nozbe as my next todo manager. Clik here for the first part , and here for the second part.

What requirements would I be willing to let go, and which not?

Here are my original requirements again:
1. inbox and quick-fire task entry
2. true priority support
3. support for repeating tasks
4. easy email-to-action conversion
5. action status indication and filtering
6. syncing with a web app, but offline use should be supported

Requirement 1 was the reason that I have left Life Balance, and it still is very valid. So requirement 1 will stay.
Requirement 2 is the reason I want to leave Nozbe and move on to another to-do application, so that stays as well.
Requirement 3 is non-negotiable for me. It is one of those features that makes it worthwhile to not use a piece of paper.
Requirement 4 could be circumvented with the old copy paste trick (‘crude but effective’), so I can let this one go. Also because any conversion of an email into a task needs some editing anyway.
Requirement 5 is a bit vague. It is rather GTD, I think I can ease up a bit here. And besides, in most applications some useful form of filtering is almost always available.
Requirement 6 is a sine qua non. Anything else will simply not do for me.

Having reached this level of relaxation, my conclusion is that requirements 1, 2, 3 and 6 really need to be met.

Here goes, the following contenders remain:

• RememberTheMilk
• Appigo’s ToDo

If you compare these with some other great new apps I have described in part two of this blog, you will find that they are both contenders that have been around for some time now. So is that what I need? Apparently!

Appigo’s ToDo is great in itself, but the awful web interface of Toodledo that it syncs with, is really unacceptable for me. So, surprise!, it appears I have to go for RememberTheMilk.

RTM also supports forwarding (or sending) emails to it. The process is plain enough to allow for easy post hoc editing once the email has reached RTM’s inbox. There is no super smart parsing that in practice does a botched job.

In the past I already had played around with RTM a bit. What deterred me was that I had to set up a load of smart lists. I felt I could just as well use another app. I know better now. Time to get involved in the ins and outs of RTM and really go for it.

I did have to get used to the fact that check boxes are not used to indicate that an action has been completed. If you click an action, it is automatically the sole selected action. But if you click the check boxes you can select multiple actions, for batch processing! Once this penny had dropped, things really started working for me.

Here are some keys I often use to enter or edit an action in RTM on the web. For many entries it suffices to enter the first few characters, as long as they are distinctive enough.

t enter a Task; the cursor is activated in the task entry box
c to indicate the selected task has been Completed
dtom d is for Date; tom is enough to fill in TOMorrow, which is automatically transformed into the correct date
dtu d is for Date; tu is to enter the next TUesday after today, which is automatically transformed into the correct date
ler l is for Location; er is for my location ‘Ermelo’
1 set priority to high
2 set priority to medium
3 set priority to low
4 set priority to none

What is even nicer, since I use RTM in Dutch, I can also enter the first characters for the translated Dutch day names. E.g. I can enter ddi instead of dtu. TUesday is called DInsdag in Dutch. Both the Dutch and the English names appear to work equally well.

All in all, this makes for a very rapid input and editing of my tasks.

What follows now is a set of additional wishes on which I have based the implementation of my action management system. RTM has moved along with the increasing functionality of iOS. From the outset however, RTM has allowed for some really nifty selection commands which you can save as so-called smart lists. I have formulated some additional wishes for my ultimate action management system, which have resulted in a number of smart lists. So there you are: a more or less custom made action management system, which honours all my wishes.

Here goes.

Additional wishes

1. I would like to have limited action lists that only display actions which are relevant for the location I am at. For my work I visit two locations. I want to have a list for each. In addition to this I want actions that relate to my home to appear in another list.
2. I want to further limit the visible size of my action lists. I do not want to see any actions that cannot or need not be started on before a certain date. This a slightly different approach than using actual deadlines. Whenever I feel a particular task takes more than a day (say two days), I arrange for it to appear on my action list two days preceding to the due date. (Cf. my explanation of urgency in the first part of this series.)
3. RTM has 4 priority levels, the lowest being no priority. Let’s be clear here, I use the priority level as an indicator of importance. The prioritised actions should appear in a next actions list. Priority ‘none’ would mean: maybe/someday.
4. Sometimes it does not really matter which work location I am at, so I need to have a list of all current tasks over all work locations.
5. All next actions that are not part of a particular project should be collected into a general next actions list in order to be able to empty my inbox.
6. For the weekly overview I want to have a list of all actions with priority ‘none’ to see if I can escalate one or more of them into actions that need to be done after all. Or weed out some of them that I know I will never do!

[Are you with me so far?]

And here is how I have implemented these additions. For this to mean anything to you, I suggest you open an/your RTM account and start experimenting.

Addition 1
Both my iPod touch and the RTM app for it are location aware. Therefore, if I define a location based on the Wi-Fi network in each location that is important to me, I can use that awareness to great effect. Defining locations is a breeze because of the Google maps integration. Just pinpoint the location you want on the map and that is all.

Here is an example of the kind of selection that I have made to show a list of actions only relevant for my work location in ‘Ermelo’.

location:Ermelo

Actually, I use Additions 3 and 1 and 2 together (although their order does not matter). In plain English it reads: show all prioritised actions to be done in Ermelo but hide those after today.

NOT priority:N AND (location:Ermelo) AND (dueBefore:tomorrow OR due:never)

Addition 2
For a list of all current next actions I use the following search string, which filters out all actions planned after today. But it includes actions without a date, since they need to be visible at all times. Actually, this is the first smart list I made when I had a first look at RTM a couple of years ago.

dueBefore:tomorrow OR due:never

Addition 3
For all next actions you can use this:

NOT priority:N

or even better:

NOT priority:N AND (dueBefore:tomorrow OR due:never)

Addition 4
This search string displays all next actions for my job, for both my work locations.

NOT priority:N AND (location:Deventer OR location:Ermelo) AND (dueBefore:tomorrow OR due:never)

Addition 5
The non-project list. This is an easy one. I simply have defined a list called _Actions. Because of the underscore sign its name starts with, it is automatically sorted to the beginning of all the lists. This helps to quickly move actions to it. All actions that do not belong to a particular project, I move to this list. Result: inbox empty!

Addition 6
Finally a search string that displays all actions with priority none; obviously (in GTD terms), this list should be called Maybe/someday.

priority:N

Reading back it all seems rather straightforward, but I must confess setting up these smart lists, i.e. devising these search strings, took me quite a while. But, I liked the puzzle and more importantly the end result really works for me!

Winding down

I hope you like what I have written up about the quest for my optimum todo list. If you feel it is time to leave GTD and go for more control of your working and private life, these blog entries might help you with that.