With GTDInboxV2, I’ve been focusing a lot more on moving beyond crudely offering GTD labels (as in v1).
I’ve been trying to work out the most elegant solution for turning Gmail into an efficient task manager and knowledge store.
But, it’s becoming apparent to do this I need some more use-cases. I’d love to know how people interact with Gmail (using GTD) right now.
For instance, one of my primary uses for it is GTDInbox development & support.
So, I have P/GTDInbox, P/GTDInboxIdeas, P/GTDInboxSupport, P/GTDInboxBugs.
As emails come in, I label them appropriately with a project and S/Action (actually a filter does this automatically).
A lot of the ideas get marked with S/Someday, unless they are about to be implemented.
At the end of each day, I will pick out a handle of items to label S/Next Action (so I have a plan for tomorrow).
I’ve adopted the habit of using contexts based on the class of activity. So, C/FirefoxDev, C/Freelance (normally combined with a P/<Client>), C/Domestic (house, shopping, chores), C/Leisure.
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So far, so easy. I guess where it gets more difficult - and where your opinion is really useful - is when you’re reviewing old items.
Common reviews,
* Next actions (which I generally use as “today’s actions”) that I must do; in the given context
* If I’m nearing a deadline a particular project, I’ll find all actions for that, make some Next Actions, and then process Next Actions for that Project
* Things that have lost momentum. If Projects are still active, but have had no activity in a while, then they should be investigated.
* People that should be doing things for me, and the status of that (it should be easy to ‘ping’ them)
* Choosing to make Projects ‘complete’, or at least temporarily dropping them.
Creating New Clusters
* Suppose I have a task, P/GTDInbox - ‘Write Version 2′, there are probably lots of other tasks that are related.
In this case, I’ll probably dedicate a new project to it, P/GTDInboxV2Development, and start reviewing all P/GTDInbox items, since a certain date, marked S/Someday, S/Action and maybe P/GTDInboxIdeas
Anything that’s possibly a part of V2 gets the new project label, and S/Action.
Spontaneous reviews,
* If a mail comes in requesting information, I’ll try to find old resources for it - files/references/finished-actions within a project (or worst case, context).
Or, I might be more person focused, and try finding what projects the mail-sender is associated with (and searching in all of those).
Another important restriction is time. If the thread is old (or even if I just know when something happened); any searches I conduct may yield better answers within X months of a certain date (e.g. the date of the thread).
* Sometimes I’ll be IM-ing someone, and they’ll remind me of something that either we’ve discussed before, or belongs to a project. So I’ll begin a search over that user/project.
Common things to look for are files, links (which might be marked with a reference).
* When an email comes in, I often just want to get a quick reminder of who that contact is, and their history. So, it’s useful to see associated projects/labels, and previous conversations.
Self improvement,
* Often as I review, I find myself making quick ammendments to the labelling of threads
A final issue is items of a transient nature. The classic example being to prepare for a meeting.
There are often tasks that need to be done, and old resources to be gathered.
Crucially, a meeting is normally associated with some project; so that is a good starting point to find resources (old discussions, files, tasks, events & ideas).
The meeting most probably needs to be given a new project name (associated with some other project) to collate the resources.
As it’s upcoming, that project probably needs to remain ‘in focus’ in your environment (like some way to peg a project); so you can quickly return to it.
Once it’s finished, the project should be removed forever, contained in some ‘Old’ section, and all associated threads also need to be marked as finished.
This is as opposed to projects which go On Hold; perhaps they need another bucket? It may only be a tag, but it can be quite disconcerting to call a Project ‘old’ (or ‘finished’), when in fact it’s only inactive.
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Okay, I’ve laid out more than I meant to here. But, I’d love to see what I’ve overlooked, or got wrong; and simply how you work (or would like to work) in Gmail!
Jason Says:
November 29th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
One thing I’d like to see is merging two projects.
When a project is active it’s useful to have a label for it. But once it winds down it’s wasting space to see all the time. Usually it can be meaningfully lumping into another category so it’s not just released into the un-tagged mass of email that was never meaningful to me.
For example, we advertise in lots of magazines. When negotiating a new contract, it’s useful to have a specific project. But after negotiation I don’t care anymore for at least a year. So I’d like to just reassign to “Ads” or something.
No, I don’t need to recover labels after reassignment.
Or, maybe I could configure a project as “inactive,” in which case it’s available when I search but not always visible in the link toolbar and sidebar. So it’s not taking up screen space but it’s still there as an org tool.
Gil Says:
November 29th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
@Jason:You can kind of do the inactive thing right now. Rename the label to “Old:”. It was kind of a hidden feature of GTDInbox v1.
Myself, here’s how I use the add-on currently:
- I retain STAR for important or urgent things. Much like you have “next actions” set up.
- I create various actions: “E-mail back”, “phonecall” and do away with contexts.
- I have a lot of “old” projects that come from renaming P: labels.
- My references come down to two labels: “vault” which is where any general important never-lose-this information goes, and “temp keep” which is where things go that will eventually disappear (tickets to a hockey game, tracking information for a package that’s on its way). I recently did away with “temp keep” and threw it into “waiting on”.
Don’t really have many suggestions; my needs are kind of simple. I basically like the program for being a way of having labels exclusive of each other. If an e-mail goes under the “S:Call this person” label, I don’t want it to be able to accidentally also fall under the “S:Actions” label. or the “S:Someday” label. It gives me back some use of the anti-GMail idea of folders while still giving me the ability to label.
Martin Says:
November 30th, 2007 at 4:35 am
Whew, You have really loads of ideas for GTDInbox.
What really makes GTDInbox to work for me is the simplicity.
I quickly assign a few attributes and then use it as a distributed TODO-list.
I’d hate to loose that if You manage to put all Your ideas into code….
Good luck // Martin
PS.
To merge two projects, rename the label “Proj X” to “Ads” (with GMails ordinary tools) and all the items will follow
DS
Andy Says:
November 30th, 2007 at 4:47 am
@Martin/@Gil - Thanks for the timely reminder… and don’t worry! I’m really concerned with the elegance of everything at the minute; i.e. how to do the most useful stuff with the minimum of UI interference.
There’s a whole chunk of text above; but I didn’t think of them as ideas, just trying to figure out what people actually do.
Even at the simplest level - quick labelling & quick reviewing - I think there are lots of improvements you’ll like
Tiago Silveira Says:
November 30th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I am also for simplicity: what makes GTDInbox so powerful is that you have a very limited number of choices.
It’s the classic case when constraints help you get creative. Everybody tweaks it a little, so what you have is a huge number of different applications, not just one GTDInbox.
If you start giving them a standard way of doing things, maybe people won’t try to come up with a solution that works best for them — and they will think, rather correctly, that it’s the application’s fault.
I don’t mean to play the Kathy Sierra here. Actually, I can’t wait for the next release to come. I don’t need any new features, I just want it to run really fast.
Andy Murdoch Says:
November 30th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Hi Andy, we’ve emailed before but I’ll throw a quick precis into the mix for other readers and commenters.
I use del.icio.us to gather resources for projects and manage my del.icio.us tags in a similar way to my GTDInbox tags - a Wednesday review, next actions, etc.
I guess I do something similar to your tag clustering for sub-projects, although instead of creating new project tags for them, I just add a plain GMail tag (no P: at the front). When the sub-project is finished the associated items are marked S:Finished and the tag gets deleted.
I’d like to say that GTDInbox v1 works really well for me and thank you for your hard work.
Teppo Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:06 am
I have to say that I’ve been extremely happy with the feature set of GTDInbox v1. It has definitely turned me into an Inbox Zero man.
So the new feature that I most look forward to is to have GTDInbox working again without reverting to the old Gmail. Please publish a new GTDInbox compatible with the revamped Gmail as soon as possible!
Corey Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:15 am
I’d be happy to describe how I use this great tool. I use the “Empty Inbox” method.
When I prepare to enter my actions into Gmail/GTDinbox, I first open the oldest message that I always keep in my Inbox, which is a (no subject) e-mail that I sent to myself as an action. I then open it in a new window. In this way, I reply to my own message in its own window rather than click “Compose Action” and disrupt the main window. I then click “Edit Subject” to compose the text of my action. It is the quickest way I found with v1 to crank through creating multiple actions. I either enter actions based upon my incoming e-mails or I am cranking through a list of actions that I’ve collected on 3×5 cards. It would be great in v2 to have a batch creation process rather than entering one at a time. I also always get a Gmail-generated warning that the body contains no text - a bit annoying.
When going through my e-mails, I start at the bottom and use the “k” shortcut key to move up through each message (or “j” to move down). After around 10-20 messages, I’ll go back to the Inbox view and either delete mass mailing type messages or archive personal messages. When I’ve cleared my inbox of messages, I now have a list of unlabeled Actions. Most of the time I don’t actually get “In to Empty” and stop in the middle. I have a saved seach “Actions In Inbox” to show me any actions in my Inbox (all of which are uncategorized).
So I pull up all of my actions in my Inbox and for each one I apply a Status, Context, and Project. I use the standard GTD statuses. Contexts are Home, Computer, Office, Phone, Paper, Car (for errands, shopping), Commute (because I can do things on the train), and Agendas. I use Agendas for when I need to talk to someone and it doesn’t matter if it is on the phone or in person. Also, for each regular recurring meeting, I have a context defined for that meeting.
Most actions are Actions or Next-Actions. For Next-Actions, I have to star it and label it with “Next-Action”. I can’t remember why I do both but it was in response to some GTDInbox behavior. Ideally I’d use the next Next-Action label for Next Actions and use the star as a “really have to do it today” indicator. Currently I have a project P:DO_TODAY for that purpose. I am a bit liberal with my Next-Actions because I keep one or two next actions for each project and, among non-project actions, I keep a handful of Next-Actions per context. Often I’ll have too many Next-Actions and have to downgrade some to Actions when I perform a review.
I don’t really use Reference labels as the project labels are sufficient. One exception is that I have an R:ProjectHome label, which contains one action describing each project.
I’d love to combine these steps by labeling the message before sending. That would streamline the whole process.
For review, I depend very much on the way GTDinbox displays the labels in the green left-hand box. I can easily click through by Contex-Action, Context-NextAction, or by Project. When I complete an action, I delete it 95% of the time rather than mark it as finished. Most of my actions are subject-line only e-mails to myself so they are not useful to retain. When I label a regular e-mail with an action because the action is self-evident from the message, I usually just remove all GTD labels when finished.
Thanks for such a great tool! I’m looking forward to version 2!
Shang Lee Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Hey, i really thought that GTDinbox v1 works great! but now that the “new” gmail is here, i have two minds. it’s tough to get an overview of things to be done, or things outstanding at a glimpse. i use to crank the “to do” list through the “label settings” view. But that view keep closing and i have to get back to it. now that each mail has its own website, i am actually considering bookmarking my emails instead and treat it as a to do on a traditional folder named @read (say). that way i can crank through my actions going through my bookmark folders. it won’t be as neat as labels as folders do not work like tags, but it’s much faster. your thoughts on this would be much appreciated.
Luke Rumley Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Aw crap…
Andy Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 4:54 am
@Teppo - I hear you; believe me, I’ll be releasing GTDInbox 2.0 with the bare minimum of useable functionality!
@Corey - I know I’ve already spoken to you by email; but this really is an awesome insight, so thanks.
@Shang - It’s interesting you should mention overviews… I’m planning dashboard-type functionality to give you an overview to the most important ‘views’ for the day.
@Luke - Why “Aw crap…”? Surely that’s a good thing! Functionality that’s very cool but I don’t have to code
So long as it understands the concept of prefixes…
Guy Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 5:36 am
I love your extension and I’m showing to many of my friends and the word is spreading.
I add my vote to the “Keep Simple” and “Support GMail 2.0″ comments.
My two cents: I was using GMail as GTD before I saw your great extension, and your quick buttons only made more effective. The main thing that is bothering me is that I’m using 3 different GTD tools (which is very bad), Google Notebook for things that I find while surfing, RTM for family and mobile stuff and GMail for tasks of work. This is on top of my project management tools with their own tasks.
The problem of integrating them (via RSS, forward mail, mashup or other) is something that I’m looking forward to discover.
caffeine Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Thank you so much for all the work you put into this! I’ve been eagerly checking my FFox every few days for updates.
I use Shadow Plan for my primary GTD planning, since it works on both my computer and Palm. I don’t need Gmail to be my full GTD solution, so I use GTDInbox exclusively for labels. I have labels for Next Actions, Waiting For, and various contexts such as Home and Work. That way if I’m at work and have a few minutes, I can pull up Next Actions I can do at work. I also have reference folders, and that’s about it. I love the simplicity of it.
The only suggestion I’d have for another version is the ability to see labels across the top, or above the chat box. Right now it’s a bit annoying to have to scroll down the page every time I want to check my Next Actions.
Luke Rumley Says:
December 5th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
@Andy: I just assumed it would destroy v2 for another few weeks, looks like the impact to you was less than I thought it would be though…
Evan Says:
December 6th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Interesting (@Tiago) At first I had trouble figuring out how to use GTDInbox best for my needs, as I struggled though, I figured out a lot.
I create actions, both automatically (auto-label new emails with action, for later review/relabeling) and with the Create Action button. This is essentially used for Collection, as in, I create A large list of ‘Actions’ that need to be further defined, a better label for them Might be ‘Stuff’, in spirit with GTD.
I then start to define them, When I have a clear action defined, I reply to myself (Me+Action@Gmail) with the action spelled out, and apply the Next Action Label to the conversation, along with appropriate context and project. I (ab)use the Next Action Label, compared to how others use it I think, and I might try to tone it down so that it actually has meaning.
I have also used actions as places to hold ideas, or notes, this has had mixed success, as its sometimes pretty hard to figure out exactly what action needs to be taken, if any, on a random idea, or thought.
A feature I desire, is the ability to remove labels from a conversation without being inside it, as in, if the pop-up GTD box at the far right of the inbox also had the ability to remove (not just add) labels. (Actually, writing this comment takes something off of my to-do list, I was going to email you about this.)
-E
nessa Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Hi, here are my thoughts so far:
- Ability to put (plan) actions to do in gcal
- Ability to create recurring tasks (will e-mail me+action at due times)
-N
Andy Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
@Evan,
“A feature I desire, is the ability to remove labels from a conversation without being inside it”
That’s coming for definite!
Alex Kotchnev Says:
December 18th, 2007 at 12:02 am
I’m not sure if this is the right place to mention it, but I was really using the Hipster PDA cards that is dropped from the new release. It was a REALLY useful feature : I would go into my GTD Inbox every night before leaving from work, and print out my Hipster PDA cards for when I’m at home (which is useful, cause when I’m at home, I’m not at a computer 100%) and when I’m in the car (e.g. the C:Phone comes in really handy then).