Thoughts on My Evernote - GTD Fusion?

[Nicholas Drillman 0]

I've been applying the GTD system pretty religiously for a couple of years now, and like most people who stick with it, I have seen great increases in productivity. So naturally, I've also been trying to convince friends and family to give it a try, but they seem really reluctant. Whenever I ask them why that is so, they basically tell me they cannot get themselves to even finish reading the book, because it's a rather dry read... I'm sure some of you know what I mean.

 

In order to maybe convert some of my friends yet, I wrote a blog post in which I try to give a bare-bones summary of the Getting Things Done system, based on Evernote. The idea is to give them 95% of the benefits without them having to torture themselves reading the book - hopefully, they will still do that later ;-)

 

I would be really interested in some feedback on my article by some people who have a good grasp of Evernote and the GTD system themselves! Did I forget anything essential? Could I shorten / simplify the post even further? What do you think about the style - too distracting / too wannabe funny? Please be really critical, I'm German, I can take it ;-)

 

http://www.nicholasdrillman.com/the-ultimate-gtd-summary/

 

Looking forward to reading and discussing your thoughts and ideas! Thank you!

[Aliasjake 0]

Hi, an alternative to make your family or friends get in touch with GTD instead of reading the book is make then watch the Video Tutorial of David Allen in Lynda.com.
 

Here is the link:

http://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Getting-Things-Done/170776-2.html

 

It could be a trigger for them to start using GTD.

 

See ya

[ursula 46]

Any reason why you're not using the Reminders function in Evernote? Why create a tickler file when you can just attach reminders to both scheduled items and those you want to take another look at in a month or two? 

 

There's nothing wrong with using dates in file titles - I do this a lot. But it's an additional step that some people might find tedious.

[Jeff Pinkham 2]

Thanks for your summary of GTD.

I think that specially with family members the issue is to introduce Everrnote first as a tool for using GTD but implementing GTD only after some familiarity with Evernote.

Biting the 2 at the same time is a bit of a mouthfull.

[Nicholas Drillman 0]

Any reason why you're not using the Reminders function in Evernote? Why create a tickler file when you can just attach reminders to both scheduled items and those you want to take another look at in a month or two? 

 

There's nothing wrong with using dates in file titles - I do this a lot. But it's an additional step that some people might find tedious.

Good point! I played around with reminders for a while but eventually decided against using them. The reason being: I find it crucially important to keep my different lists as clear cut as possible, so when I review my action pending items for example, I'm really only looking at items that I should be doing as soon as I have time. Likewise, I like to keep my tickler items in a separate list, sorted by date, so I can easily review them as well. If I don't stick to that clear cut way of differentiating between different types of items, I eventually end up looking at a pretty amorphous list of "stuff" again, which makes reviewing it a pain... Hope that makes sense, English is not my first language ;-)

[Nicholas Drillman 0]

Thanks for your summary of GTD.

I think that specially with family members the issue is to introduce Everrnote first as a tool for using GTD but implementing GTD only after some familiarity with Evernote.

Biting the 2 at the same time is a bit of a mouthfull.

Ha, makes sense! I didn't even think about that, as I find Evernote such a useful tool, I can't even imagine why anybody is not yet using it ;-) But you are right. It would probably be better to turn in into a 2-part process, either introducing Evernote or the GTD methodoly first, and then the other... Will think about that!