Sam’s Sandpit

GTD with Gmail and RememberTheMilk March 20, 2006

I need to improve my effectiveness if my project is to succeed. So I spent the weekend revisiting GTD. For the record, I have tried before to implement GTD using Outlook. It can do much of what I want, but clearly it didn’t (1000+ messages in Inbox!). So what are my requirements?

1. I am going to be working on a Linux development platform much of the time, so the tools need to be Microsoft-independent.
2. I need to grab time to work on this in several different locations, so the tools need to be web-based.
3. I need to scan as few inputs as possible.
4. I need to keep it as simple as possible, or I won’t use it.

I spent some time reviewing how other people have implemented GTD. It is clearly possible to waste a lot of time trying every toolset in existence.

Recently I acquired a Googlemail (Gmail) account. I used it first to access my mail from remote locations, by routing mail both to my Outlook account and to my Gmail account. Useful, but twice as much work to tidy up the inbox. So I decided to switch to Gmail as my single email tool.

I found here a useful description of implementing GTD with Gmail, and modified it to meet my needs.

1. I created a set of Gmail labels. Gmail conversations will pull together small projects, so I created labels for the larger Project Areas I work in. (Some people might call them Program(me)s.) There are six of them: here I will call them Project1, Project2 …
2. I created labels for 3 states: @action implies that this message requires an action; @wait means this is waiting for an external event; @read is a catch-all bucket for emails with no immediate classification which look too interesting to delete or archive.
3. Now I tackled my bulging inbox. I moved to Deleted Items anything I knew i never wanted to see again. I archived anything I couldn’t bear to delete, but which seemed to have no relevance to my Projects, and no need for an action.
4. Now I scanned by project. I attached the label Project1 to every relevant item, and then additionally attached the @action label to the subset of those items which needed action. I didn’t spend tiem worrying if two items needed the same action – I’ll just check them both off when the action is complete. Then I archived all the Project1 items, and repeated the process for Project2 through Project6.
5. There were still quite a lot of messages in the inbox. I went through and deleted some more, archived some more, and finally labelled the remainder as @read. I suspect this is a bucket which I will end up archiving when I judge my time more realistically!
6. At last! Empty inbox! But when I switched to @action view, there were 64 items in the bucket. So I scanned those and starred the nine items which need immediate attention. As I actioned each one, I removed the star and the @action label, so it was then archived as part of Projectn (where n= 1.. 6).

There remain two problems to be solved: recording new actions, and setting up a tickler file.

Recording new actions is done by sending a message to myself. I set up a Contact called #Me to make that quick. The purpose of the # is to make the contact name show up quickly in the dropdown list Gmail offers when you compose a new email. (I found an earlier suggestion to use !Me, but this needs the shift key and is abit more clumsy.)

When the message arrives in the inbox, I attach a Project label and an @action label, and archive it. Then it shows up in the @action view, which is the master task list. But what about ticklers? Do I have to keep all the dates in my head?

This is where RememberTheMilk (RTM) comes in. This is an excellent web-based todo list which I have been using in standalone mode to track my actions from several different locations. In this context it has two invaluable features:

• it will accept a task from an email – you send a message to an email address unique to your task list;
• it will email a reminder when a task is due (or if you prefer, use IM or a mobile phone message).

So I set up another contact called #RTM, with my unique RTM email address, and I stored a draft message in the format RTM likes. Here is an example:

Priority: 1
Due: Monday at 10 am
Repeat: Every Week
List: @Home
Tags: Project1
---
This is a heading for the first note.

This is the first note's content.

---
This is a heading for the second note.

This is the second note's content.

Now when I create a new action, I paste this format into the message before setting the date (and time). Then I send the message to #Me and to #RTM. When the tickler is due, RTM emails me a reminder, so I don’t miss an action.

Quick and simple. The downside is that duplicates of the actions build up in RTM, and will have to be deleted as part of the weekly review. Perhaps the rumoured Google Calendar will eventually provide a more integrated system, but this will do for now.
Now all I need is the self-discipline to keep the system going. But that empty inbox is a rewarding sight.