 Hello and welcome to the live stream today. We are talking about productivity and productivity systems or specifically the getting things done Productivity system developed by David Allen and it's the productivity system that I've been using for around about 15 years now And it certainly served me well and a lot of people ask me about the system that I use for task management and getting things done and sort of being productive on on the Mac and on the channel and on everything else and I've never really Gone into productivity systems on this channel as such because it can be a bit of a rabbit hole And it's something that I certainly went down the rabbit hole of as I say about 15 years ago And I probably spent more time actually researching how to be productive than I did actually being productive And it can be one of these things where you you're endlessly looking for The ideal system that little sort of secret process that you can use To be you know that that ultimate productivity expert Well, the fact is the actual system that you use is not really the the key It's all about like how you apply it And so I didn't want to be just somebody else in the productivity space Although I did consider a channel about productivity I didn't want to be someone else in the productivity space that was just sort of preaching these particular methodologies That doesn't really get to the root of what you actually need to do to get stuff done because as I say the system itself Is just a part of the process However, just this last week. I've read another book which was The one thing by Gary Keller, which was recommended by doc if you are in doc rocks community The drops squad we talked about this last week at the the office hours session And so I went away and read it and it actually did have a very positive impact on me because Although the the one thing is I would say it's kind of like a slice through the getting things done methodology And I'll explain how that is in a little while I've had a lot of stuff going on in my sort of professional and private life in the past sort of six months that have really just sort of Have the effect of derailing me from a number of different things And so I needed to get back onto onto track with this and actually the one thing was something that has helped me to just sort of step back a little bit and take stock and Get back into the the process really so today I'm going to go through what exactly gtd is because I know that there's a lot of Advocates of it. There's a lot of people who swear by it me included So I just wanted to explain what it is as a process But I'm not by any means suggesting that if you are have already got some other system that is working for you Or something else that you're using Don't necessarily get totally derailed by this and think that oh, this is the ideal system I'm going to go with that because you need to have the as I say the the mindset to actually apply it as well But with that said, I'll just say a quick hello. First of all, hello to the lovely folks in discord. Hello Say hello to you first, of course And then we've also got chris in the chat. I know you should pop into discord by the way chris You can still feel free to pop back in there, but great to see you in the uk I should be putting these comments up really shouldn't there we go And also valerie. Hello valerie. Great to see you here as well Um, the links chris are posted They should be just pinned actually to the top of the the chat and also they're in the description But I have actually pinned the the post with the link to the books right at the very top of the of the chat here Um, okay. Okay. So let's have a little look shall we and have a look at what exactly gtd is and look at this I've even made some slides So getting things done as I say it was developed by david allen There is a whole ecosystem all around this. Um, I'm just noticing something's just popped in I can't actually see that on the screen. There we go a subscriber. Oh, thank you very much Derailed from the outset on the first slide So, uh, yeah, it was developed by david allen and as I say there is a whole sort of there's almost a whole community built around it And there's lots of apps that have been built around it as well and the app that I'm using to sort of manage my process management system or task management system is the Application called omni focus for the mac and it was built from the ground up basically around the gtd system So one way that people use getting things done is actually to use Sort of like an outlining app And so the omni group had an application called omni outliner And then they had a lot of people were using that for The gtd system and basically omni just developed omni focus which was purely for the task management side of things But I'll get on to omni focus a little bit later. So first of all, what is the getting things done system? Well, basically it consists of five steps. Just bear with me one second. I know what's going on here I was wondering why I was confusing myself. I'm still watching myself in reverse in the discord as opposed to watching my My little preview window There we go. So there is basically five steps to the system. The first one is capture. So this is basically capturing any Any ideas any things that you need to do as and when they arise? so it's about basically Trying to regain your time and attention and attention is the thing that will often send you off down rabbit holes So an idea will pop into your head You'll not want to forget it and then you'll start maybe even working on whatever it is and you'll get completely derailed by What you're supposed to be doing? So the first step is capturing and capturing Anything as it happens and there's lots of ways to do that. So first of all, I've mentioned omni focus So if I'm on the computer, I've got a hotkey that I press that basically just pulls up a little window That I can just type down whatever it is So if I've got an idea about something that I need to do A project that I want to work on an idea for something You know for the channel or you know bringing it back to content creation Something like a video idea or maybe like that then I can just capture that with a Little hotkey and then type it into omni focus if I've got my mobile with me Then I've got seri linked to omni focus on the mobile as well So if there's something that I need to remember I'll just say into seri and then it will capture it into the the omni focus database, which is obviously synced Other methods of capturing so I have do have my own Patented it's not really but patented index card system So I have daily task management cards that I use I also have ones for just capturing random tasks So I've always got one of these in my bag or pocket to just write down whatever it is So it's a case of as I say just whenever something comes into your mind that you think you need to do Or think you need to work on or something you want to remember is just capturing it at that point But crucially not then running with it and getting derailed from what you're supposed to be doing As well as the index cards. I mean with the phone the The desktop and then the index cards. I'm pretty much covered for capturing these things as they arise wherever wherever I am The one other place where these don't work is in the shower. So I do actually have whiteboard markers in the shower Because I'll always think of something there. And so I just write it on the wall And then when I finish the shower, I take a picture of it and then capture it that way I know it's a little bit extreme, isn't it? But the point is by doing this whenever these thoughts come into your head you can capture them And as I say do not do anything with them immediately It's the the next key step But then when you do come to actually look at them So at the end of the day what I'll do is I'll go and clear out all of these inboxes So I'll check my inbox in omnifocus where I've captured the things on the phone or on the desktop I'll also check my index cards anything that I've written down in the day in my notebook And add that into omnifocus And then also anything that I've got you know if I've taken a picture of something Then I'll check that and add that in as well So you need to once you've captured it is consolidate everything like at the end of the day Ideally sometimes if I don't do it at the end of the day I'll do it first thing the following morning before I start the day But then you really need to sort of clarify Exactly what the thing is that you've you've captured is it Something that is actionable So if so then you need to decide on the next steps and I'll go through a sort of process flow for this a little bit later, but You're basically trying to understand like is it just a single action something that you need to do and if so you need to Store this in your task management system, which will all start making a lot more sense when we look at omnifocus in a little bit Or is it actually an idea for a project and if it's an idea for an overall project or something that needs to get done Then what is the next actionable step that you can take? So making sure that with all of these things that you've got you always know what the next Step you can take is and some people often Don't do the things that they've got to do because they are thinking of something as a single task When actually it is in fact a sort of mini project And so what happens is let's say for example Hang a picture on the wall So you might have a thing saying you know, I've got this thing that I want to hang on the wall And so I've put it down as a task hang picture on the wall And then every time you come to it it's like oh, I can't do it at the moment because I haven't got the the tax or the Nails or whatever it is that I need to put into the wall to actually attach it to So what happens is you've got this action item Which is hang picture on the wall and every time you come to look at it you just think oh no not now I'll do it another time. I'll do it another time because you haven't actually Clearly identified what is the next step and the next step might be Bring the nails from the garage into the office or the studio wherever you are Or it might be you've got to actually buy those things And so by understanding what is the next step and thinking about things in terms of projects Rather than tasks if they are indeed like more than just literally more than one step It will really help So that is the the key thing is clarifying whether it is a single action or actually a large project or a small project And then deciding what to do with it thereafter, but we'll come on to this a little bit a little bit later And also is it just reference material? So you might have captured something that is just something that you want to remember or Something that you want to add a list so I have lots of running lists of things So, you know Stuff that I want to get for the studio Perhaps but not is not something that I need to rush out and get right now But it's just things that I hear about like oh that would be an interesting thing to To use or to review or whatever it happens to be so is it something that is Is just something for reference or something like that So making sure that you've captured and clarified exactly what all of these different things are So the next step is to organize so once you have sort of understood what all these things are It's then a case of going and making sure that you've got them all in the right place And they are all organized in terms of you know, what projects they're a part of or Where you need to be doing them and we'll come on to this thing about contexts So there are certain actions that you can do in certain places And so for example, if I've got an action to Buy those nails to hang up the picture on the wall There's no point me being shown that task If I happen to be in the grocery store as opposed to the hardware store Or if I happen to be you know in my house as opposed to out where I can get it The same thing would be, you know, if I've got a task to You know fix something in the house Maybe there's some some home maintenance that needs to be done And I've got a task to go and I don't know fix a leaky tap or something like that There's no point me being shown that task when I happen to be, you know Out at the coffee shop or something like that. So there is this idea of contexts Which I'll come to a little bit later Which means that when you've got this all into a system You're only actually ever been shown the tasks that are relevant that you can actually action Based on where you are and that are you know the sort of next ones in line So it's about taking you know an overall database of tasks that you might have That could be potentially hundreds or thousands of different little things that you've got to do But actually in the moment when you are looking at what you need to be doing right then You are only shown the things that are relevant and we'll see how that works in a little while as well The next part is you're building this massive database potentially Over time of all of these different tasks and things like that And so it's important that you're not just sort of throwing stuff into this massive big catchall Bin and then and then not actually reflecting on whether these things are even still relevant So there's lots of things that I'll put in there as I've had an idea for a project or something that I want to do something I want to create and then It's only in the sort of review process where I come back To reflect on it and see well, is this actually still relevant? Is it still in line with my goals? Is it still something that I want to even be considering to work upon? Is it even you know still valid at the moment? You know, maybe things have completely changed and this task is just no longer an issue you know, so it's It's a case of constantly having this sort of reflection on whether something is still relevant and reviewing it And then the final step is engage and these are the basically the five steps that they define in the gtd system All extremely high level and the engage part is obviously to actually get things done So how this actually looks in terms of a workflow though, because this is like I say very high level So what does this actually look like? Well, let's look at it in terms of emojis, shall we? So you've got all of these different inboxes and you have got all these different things that you are you're working on And as tasks come in you're dropping them in these different Inboxes and you're collecting them all together and you're going to be asking the question First of all when you actually go to review at the end of the day when you've collected all these things up The question you want to ask is is it actionable? So either yes or no if it's not actionable Do you actually just delete it? So there's lots of things that you might just write down and think like oh I must look into that or must think of that or something like that But then when it actually comes to you think actually that isn't even relevant anymore So it might be that you're throughout throughout the day something else has happened that has just completely dismissed that So do you actually even need to have that in your system? So do you delete it or not the other option is if it isn't something that is actionable So it isn't a task as such then that would mean that if you're not deleting it and it's not actionable So it's not a task or a project then it must be some sort of reference material So then you're going to add it into your reference material system whatever that happens to be however you want to Have this this sort of database of material so whether it's lists of links I personally use a text-based system that is all based on just text files So I've got tens of thousands of text files that are all these different reference things Then if it is something that is actionable though the question is What is the next action that you can take coming back to that thing of is it a case of there is only one action So it's just a single action item or is it actually something where it is going to be multiple different steps So you want to ask like what is the next action that you can take on it? if it requires more than one step Then the the Question is is this actually a priority right now? So I might have written down, you know something write a book about productivity for creators Which I did by the way So is that something that I want to actually work on right now? Is it a priority right now? It definitely is not right now So therefore you don't need to go and spend lots of time going through the process of planning out Okay, then well, I've got this idea to write a book productivity for creators So shall I start outlining the book now? And then you know planning out the all the different things I need to make creating the the book cover and all this sort of stuff So many people get an idea and it's something that they've got no intention of doing right now And it's certainly not relevant to what they're doing right now, but they're excited I want to say for some people i'm talking about me here. I have to try and exercise themself control Is you get excited about something and you go down the rabbit hole of this this other project and end up Spending time on something that just isn't relevant to you right now So if it is something that's still a good idea and you still want to do and it requires You know multiple different steps and it's potentially going to build into a Into a full project Then it's a case of just sort of parking it and putting it in, you know A sort of someday maybe list or in a in a flow so that you can come back to it and pick it up as part of your review So you will have I'll come on to reviews in a little while, but you'll have reviews monthly reviews weekly reviews And so on And so then you'll get to Have this thing pop up and you'll say well, is this something actually that is still relevant to me Is it something that I want to cover this month? Excuse me while I get some water But if it is actually something that is a priority and you think you want to you need to prioritize because it's relevant to what you're doing Um, then it's a case of because we already know that it's not a single action It's a case of creating a new project or at least fitting it in maybe as a sub project within another project And so we're going to create a project that is And again, this will probably uh make um make more sense when we start looking at omni focus But you're going to make a project that is you know, in this case the example of just given would be You know write the book and so that would be the project name And then what we want to do is we want to add The next step that you're going to take so again, it doesn't necessarily have to be planning out the whole thing Um at this stage if it is something that is really, you know, critically important that is, you know Your your one thing almost just to conflate the two systems if it is something that is very important to you Then you you may want to just sort of map out multiple steps But don't necessarily get bogged down in spending the time doing all of the mapping out of absolutely everything To the exclusion of actually getting that next thing done And so it's a case of just coming up with What is the immediate next action? So what is the next step step that you can actually take for that? When you do that, then you might feed that back in to say Is this actually one step or just question yourself and say actually have I just given myself another little sub project here? And then if so just go back through the loop and decide is that something that is the priority right now for that project? Or not But ultimately what we're trying to get down to for this is with all of these things What is that one next step that you can take and that's either from these actions that have come through from your You know your inbox Or it is from these projects where you've decided what the next step you can take is From there. We then come through to saying How long does this action take? Is this literally like a one minute task? Some people might spend a lot more time actually writing down Adding notes to a task that they could probably do within a couple of minutes So if the task is like, you know, going to take you a minute or so Rather than spending a minute or so defining it, uh, then basically Just do the task Now that can be obviously A little bit misleading because you might end up having you know 60 tasks that you've got and so then you suddenly into an hours worth of work Isn't it? But as you're going through the process, you'll know the ones that you think You know what I could just actually do that a lot of people spend Time sort of defining everything in absolute terms When there's something that they could just literally just literally just go and do it So that is the next sort of question From here though, you want to then ask for these tasks Is this something actually that can be done by somebody else? Do I have to be the one to do it? Or is it something that could be done by someone else or indeed should be done by someone else? There might be a Point in the process where you've done all of your parts But you're waiting on somebody else to do their part before You can actually take the the thing any further So if you're waiting on somebody else or it can be done by somebody else Then obviously you need to hand that off and delegate and make sure you've got an agreement in place As to any time scales or you know that they are aware of their Obligations if indeed they've agreed to be Obligated to do anything But making sure that yeah, if it's something that can be done or needs to be done by someone else That you've you've handed that off basically The next possibility though is that if you're waiting on something to be completed So again, it could be waiting on something by somebody else It could be waiting on something, you know as part of the the project by Let's say the book it might be waiting on receiving a quote from a printer or whatever it happens to be So there's all sorts of different things where you might be waiting on something And something's just crashed and my computer there we go. That's a bit weird So if that is the case then you need to make sure that you are still tracking that because it's no good Just sort of handing something off and thinking all right. It's over to them now You've got to make sure that it is in a list of a sort of like waiting list Waiting list Process that you can actually track that So the the next step though is if everything is going to be if there's anything else that's left that is going to be deferred That you're not going to take action on Or that you need to sort of take action on then it's going to be one of two things It's either going to be something that has a due date Where you've got to make sure that it gets done by a certain time Or and or I should say it might be something that has a tag where it's got a specific context So this comes back to that thing that I was talking about earlier where it it might be Something that you can only do in a certain place So that is basically an overview of of the getting things done system in emojis I'll just quickly check in with with everybody Hello, Michael. Great to see you here As always, I do appreciate all of the UK contingent getting up And or rather staying up late. So Yeah, really appreciate you being here and Chris. So also to do is yeah, that is the other big app that uses that is based around GTD So certainly. Oh, hey, Dina. Great to see you here Been loving your reels recently Let's have a little look I thought you might like the illustrations with emojis Hey Orbs, great to see you here too Hey Jay, great to see you here. I haven't seen you in the chat before but great to see you here I'd love to know your full name so I can address you personally Yeah, 20 minute intro. Sorry about that It's just that there's people who aren't aware of GTD. So I just wanted to give an overview of exactly what GTD is And then look at how that applies to applies to OmniFocus. So sorry if it's something you had already heard before So that is the the sort of process of of Of GTD in terms of the sort of workflow So I want to come over to OmniFocus and just give an overview of sort of how this works So let's have a little look at that. In fact, first of all, what I will do just quickly is I'll mention I did put the links at the top. I know Chris had asked about it But basically this is the book that we're talking about. It is David Allen's Getting Things Done The Art of Stress-Free Productivity And I mentioned also the another book called The One Thing Which is the book that I read just this week that takes a sort of slice through GTD And I'll talk about that in a little bit and there is also A whole sort of GTD website with all sorts of things going on there resources training and things like that But actually just read the book and you should be good to go because it's pretty simple in terms of the methodology that it talks about So OmniFocus, let's have a little look at what OmniFocus looks like and this is something that I've intended to make some videos about it to a point I like I said, I didn't want to get bogged down in doing too much of the productivity stuff on the channel as such But one of the issues that I've always faced is actually having just a completely clean Install of OmniFocus to show you and I haven't got that at the moment But what I have done is I've kind of like broken things down a little bit So that I'm not basically just putting all of my entire task list up there But what I have done is I've taken out some of the modifications that I've made to it So it is basically in its sort of simplest form now what we've got here is a number of things First of all, we have got the inbox. So this is where we're going to capture different items And I mentioned I'd got this sort of quick capture tool on my Mac So that is basically if I just press my what is it now control alt space? You can program this to be whatever you want. It pops up this little window So I can just do that at any time from anywhere. I don't have to have the main OmniFocus window open But this just pops up on my screen. So if I need to capture an item an item And just do like that click that then it basically just adds it into my inbox So that is what I mean by having something that is pretty much a sort of frictionless Capturing system throughout the day So if I do something in OmniFocus, it will capture it in here on the desktop But if I went to my my mobile and I've got a little Action in there that I can either add one in by text or I can speak into Siri and it will capture it as well Um, so this is where you're going to capture all of these items Now it can just be literally a small note like that one little thing that is recommended When actually writing down tasks Is to actually try and be as descriptive as possible in them So, uh, rather than um, you know, let's go to the example of hanging a picture on the wall Rather than just writing picture I used to be really terrible for writing down a note And it could be like a task But it could be a note in in you know taking notes related to a topic or something like that And I'd write a little one word note that would be something that I was sure I was going to remember later And then when it actually came to it, I would forget entirely what it was So that's one reason to be descriptive But also it helps when you're actually figuring out what you've got to do that you have given it a full sort of description So this is basically the inbox where you're capturing all of these things and this should be cleared out Like every day at least or every, you know, at the end of the day or every morning or something like that So then you've got projects and I mentioned about the idea of having different Different tasks and they're split down into into sub projects So this is an example of some that I've got for Take one tech. So I've got my overall work. I've got take one tech I've got single tasks. So these are just little things that need to be done And if I come into here like this, so this tells me these different tasks that I need to do But then also within here, I've got sub lists and sub projects So let me just go into something that is just a completely blank thing So this little folder, so I have my things split down into Work into different work roles that I have into home finance Into my computer maintenance personal goals and things like that Travel wish lists home and all these sort of different things So I've got all these different areas of my life that things have been broken down into So I can just collapse all these to make it a little bit simpler for you To see what's going on. So if I just take all of these things down So we're just now in this demo folder So think of this as an area of my life It could be a particular point of, you know, the Let's take take one tech as an example I've got a folder that is just for all of that stuff And within these different sort of sections of Areas of focus if you want You can create either task lists So if I come down here and create a new Now that's just disappeared off the bottom of the screen typical I had not allowed for that Let me move that up there I can create a new project or a folder or an action list And with the single action list, let's do one of those first That's basically if you've got something Let me just call this demo So I'll just use take one tech as an example So let's just call this tasks So this would be just like single tasks that I need to do Related to take one tech And they are just going to be literally If I come in here and put some tasks in there Let me say, I don't know Update Let's say update icon Let's say I needed to update my Profile picture or something like that Just to use that as an example I could put that in there And so you could actually go through and physically add in All of these different lists down actions in here But also if I go into my inbox Then I can actually add this particular thing to that project Just by dragging it and dropping it onto there So now if I come into my tasks Then I've got this other one from my inbox So you can actually add things When you go through and sort your inboxes out You can actually add those by dragging them Dropping onto a particular project Or you can actually just add the project name in So you do have these different fields in here So we've got the different tags And that is the same as context Which I'll come into in a little while But you can also do that as well Actually at the time of capturing So if there is something that I need to do for take one tech So another task For take one tech You can actually just add it straight to The particular project that you want here as well So in that case It's got a really good sort of abbreviation system So it will just kind of figure out what you are trying to type So if I was to type This is says take one tech tasks So if I just type TT for example It will actually bring up that first So I can just put that in there and click on save And so sometimes as you're going through Capturing these ideas You might actually just know where this fits in your overall system So as well as just quickly tagging it With the project It means that it just completely bypassing your inbox And it's going straight to the area where you know it has to be So often I will know the context And the project that it needs to go in And so as I'm capturing them It will just be going straight into those lists So that is just basically a simple task list So that is as simple as things get In terms of pretty much just like having a to-do list Well this is just a single to-do list Related to a specific area of work Or area of things that you need to focus on The next option though that you have is these projects And there are two kinds of projects There is either a sequential project Which means that one thing has to follow another So let's say the book example One of the tasks that I might have to do is Is create an outline Like that, I don't know why I'm in all caps I'm shouting at myself Create an outline And that might be the first step you want to do And then the next step might be to write chapter one Now what it does with sequential projects Is if you have a sequential project It means that step one Step two won't be even shown to you Until you've done step two Because you can't do the second one without the first one This is probably a bad example Because you might actually start before that But using the example of hanging the picture on the wall That I talked about earlier Step one might be get the nails or the tacks Or whatever you're going to use That would be the first step The second step would be then actually hanging it on the wall And so there's no point being shown All of these other steps That you could have lots of different steps down here And you wouldn't ever be even shown them Until the point of you had completed the first step Then the second step shows up And then the third one and so on So sequential projects are again This is coming back to this idea of just defining What is that sort of next step that you have to take So thinking about the next step That you can take in the process And what that means is You don't actually have to define the whole project necessarily But it's just a case of making sure that for every project You do at least have the next step As I say, you may actually want to go a bit deeper than that But it means that if you've always got that one extra next step to take Then you always know kind of the one thing that you need to do Along that process with that project There may be other projects though That rather than being sequential are parallel Which means that you are basically having Multiple different actions So we've got an action here and an action here But you could do them actually in parallel with each other That they don't have to be one after the other You may also have projects where you've got something that is a parallel project But within that there are some things Which are sort of nested with some other actions And those are actually sequential So if I add a few little things down here Then with this particular action within this project I could say that that actually is a sequential set of tasks So you may have a project where if you think of it You've got a timeline You've got a particular set of things that needs to be done Some of them you can just do whenever And it doesn't matter which one comes first But then like to complete this next little sub project You do actually have to have a certain sequence of tasks happening So in this case you would do the first task Then you do the second task and then that would be then completed So this is just a sort of basic way that you arrange The projects you've got and the tasks that you've got within OmniFocus And that is the three different ways that you can organise all of these things And then obviously as I say you can group these into Just sort of folders for different areas of your life that you're focused on So the other thing then that you've got Because I mentioned about having contexts And that is basically, you know, it could be the location But it could also be the frame of mind that you're in as well And what I have is in my sort of tag list here I do actually have different mindframes So like there is one for example iPad So this is like when I'm on the iPad What are some tasks that I could do on the iPad Or it might be, you know, things that I can do on Kajabi So if I'm in Kajabi and I'm just in the mindset of doing stuff in there I could have a look and say, right, well what are some other little tasks that I could do So whilst you have sort of shifted into a particular working mode What are other things that you could do in there I have other ones that are tagged for, you know, phones So there's certain things that I could do on my phone or my Mac So I have a grouping for that So that when I'm on my mobile and I check Omnifocus to see, you know Things that I could potentially be doing at that time It will only show me the ones that I need to be on my phone for Or could be on my phone for as opposed to ones that need to be done on the Mac So for example, if I've got a design a thumbnail in Photoshop It might have the tag of Photoshop or design So here you've got, let's have a little look I've got one there that is designed which is for When I am in the mind frame of actually creative design What could I be doing now? I'm feeling full of creative energy What is something that I could be doing? And so I have the design tag there So you can have multiple tags Actually in the original GTD system There was only usually one specific context for each And that is why they actually changed the name Previously in Omnifocus Tags were just called contexts Because it was the context that you're working in But it was always only ever one specific context per task Whereas now you can actually have multiple tags But do you think of them still like contexts? So the tag would be And the reason to think about them as context Not tags is because a lot of people think about tags As a way to group different projects and things like that That is all done in the projects tab The tags are really the context that you want to be doing the task in So I've got one here that is Think, believe it or not So if I'm having a coffee And I've got some stuff that I need to just think about Then I could do that on a walk or something like that So quite often if I'm out on a walk or on a bike I might just pull up the think thing The think context And have a look at all these things that I need to think about Because we do need to give some thought to things Not just run straight into them But the example I mentioned earlier about If I've got a designer thumbnail I might be in a sort of designing mood But if I happen to be on my phone Then there's no point in me being shown all the things that I need to do on my Mac But if I'm sitting, having a coffee in a coffee shop With a notebook in front of me And I've got things to design or think about Then that is something that I could be used to do that Now all of this at the moment is just a massive collection of projects And a massive collection of all of these different contexts So you do then have to figure out How to get a little bit of perspective on things And I use that word specifically Because Omnifocus does have something called perspectives And I'll come on to that in a little while But if you're thinking that all this seems like Or you're just going to end up with loads of projects Loads of contexts Yeah, what do you do with that? How do you actually filter all of this down? Because it's the filtering down to Just, you know, basically What do you need to do next? And what can you physically do right now To take that next step towards things Is where the key comes with this So as well as these different mind frames that I've got I've also got locations So either, you know, arriving either at home Or in the UK, if I go to the UK There's lots of things that I need to do in that broad area So I've put things down to remember when I go there The other place that I tend to go would be Bangkok So there's lots of things in terms of people Or places that I need to go to visit down there Or, you know, certain things that you can get down there That you can't get to where I am in the northeast So it would be, you know, when I go to the city What do I need to get basically for that? But I also have ones for I also have context for arriving home And this is a little bit of a strange one, maybe But hopefully not There's often times when I'm like I'm out and I think I've got to do this When I get home But I'm not at home at the moment But I definitely want to remember to do it When I get home Not when I happen to review my action list At the weekend And then I realise, oh, yeah, there was that thing That I wanted to do when I get home Now, because you've got obviously Geolocation and stuff like that in your phone You can actually set up certain areas And geofences basically So I have my mobile If I'm out and I say to Siri, hey, remind me to Do this when I get home Or add this to my action list for when I get home Or whatever Then when I arrive home It will actually just pop up an alert to say Do this So that is the reason for that I also have ones for Arriving at a certain town or a place Or things like that So that if I'm going to some other town Where there is something that needs to be done there Then as I'm actually coming into the town It'll say pop up a thing Don't forget to also go there I might have been going to that town To go to a specific shop or a place But then it reminds me that Hey, while you're here, 50 miles from home You might want to also just take a little bit of a detour And go and get that other thing And it could be something that I put on the list Months ago or weeks ago And I haven't been there since And it's just a case of when you get there Then just check this out So using these geo fences is really, really useful I also have people So there's things that like Oh, I must remember to ask this person that thing When I next see them So it's not something that's urgent I've got a writing email But there might be a load of things that like Oh, yeah, when I meet them next time I'm going to talk about this that or the other with them So I do also have tags for people And these you can see that these are working Kind of like folders So I'll split these up Or, you know, things that you want to bring up When you're in your next meeting with a client And so on So I do have people as well That when I'm seeing a certain person I can bring up everything that I need to Need to talk to them about Same with errands So things that I need to take Either take from home Or go to get from various different shops And again, if it's something that I need to get And it is from a specific place Then I have a specific Geofence around that shop So that it will tell me, you know, when I get there To the supermarket, the mall or whatever it is You need to go and get this thing Or need to go and do that thing So that is what contexts are And as I say in here, they are called tags So how do you actually though Then distill those down to To what you actually need to be doing right now Well, you do also have As well as having the project name And the task name You also do have a due date as well So they do have this thing in here called forecast And that brings up a view Which basically combines your calendar But then also, you know What you've got coming up in the next week That you need to be aware of Just so that you don't let any of these tasks Slip off your radar You actually do get to catch those If you've got something that's coming up in the next week By the way, with these due dates You can also set a defer date So it's basically meaning It's not actually due for maybe six months or something And I actually don't even need to be bothered About seeing it again for another four or five months So you might want to defer the action for five months But have a due date of six months If you see what I mean So it's basically just saying Let me just defer this I'm not even going to need to worry about it Or think about it Just coming back to that flow diagram This is the one where we've got the little The little sign there showing the zeds at the bottom So it's just like is it parked basically So that's what I'm talking about When I talk about deferring items But what you've also then got Is you can have repeating items So if I put in something here Then I've got this one deferred at the moment Or a due date for this But you've got a lot of And again, I don't want to go into this too much Because it can just look really complex But it's actually very simple They're just giving you lots of different options for it But you can set a due date But then you can also say Do you want it to repeat, for example So is it something where once you repeat it And I'll give you an example of that would be If I come into my Where is it? Let me have a little look Which one? If I come into it I've got this view called to date So let me come into that This is one that I created So this is basically I've got a task in here It's cutting it off Because I don't normally have it squished down So small But I've got this one Which is my Omnifocus Weekly Review And it's a task that pops up And it's got a date And this one as you can see is due tomorrow It's Saturday here So I always do this on a Sunday And basically when I complete it It will mark it as complete But it actually repeats it again for the following week So you might have repeating tasks that come up And indeed if I come back over to my projects I have got some things that are like Routine maintenance, for example And routine maintenance Doesn't necessarily mean fixing stuff It could be sort of system maintenance In terms of my overall productivity system So I have this routine maintenance section there And that is all of these kind of repeating tasks So when you are creating these things here You can add in lots of different ways to repeat things Or deferring things And various different stuff like that You can also obviously add in notes associated with everyone There's a little notes field here So you can add in different things like that As I say, this might just seem like Now you've just got this massive collection of tasks And whilst the context may make a little bit of sense And the idea of projects may make sense to you How do you actually though distill down Well, what is it actually that we're doing now? I've got all of this stuff about contexts and tags But if you just click on one of these It will show you everything Well, this is where perspectives come in And perspectives, if I can find the window for it And just bring this one to the screen These are different perspectives that I've created In fact, let me pop this over here This one might be a little bit better No, never mind, I've lost my streamnet button For that particular scene, never mind So this is a list of different contexts that I've got And I've created one here called demo And this is basically where you can define What you want to see at any given time So I've got contexts in here for like Videos that I need to make So it would just show me just the video lists And it might be that I've got to make a video for the channel For the YouTube channel It may be that I've got to make a video for a course It may be a video that I've got to make For a landing page or something like that But because I've got those all tagged They're in a specific project But they're all tagged also with this sort of recording tag And so in there, if you look at this Basically, this is just showing me Any available, so availability is remaining So you don't want to see anything that's been completed But anything that is remaining has been tagged with record So anytime I need to, I'm sitting down and feeling like Right, let me just get some videos done Then I can just click on that And it will show me a list of all of the ones That I could potentially make And incidentally, I do have a sort of a parked list Let me just come back to that just for one second If I come back to the project One thing that you do have is You cannot always put a project on hold as well So if I come into any one of these projects It might be that I've defined the next action But I might say, do you know what? This particular project is just not something I want to work on at the moment Or it's just not relevant It's not sort of top of mind So what you can also do is You can change the status So either active, complete or dropped But you can use this on hold one And you'll notice it has a little pause button And then it's grayed out And what that means is You're also then You're automatically filtering out all of those things You don't want to be shown those tasks If the project is on hold So here is where we can define these in perspectives We could be shown everything that's available You can filter by As you can see, all these different things Something that's due soon So if you want to create a particular perspective That is just literally everything that you've got Coming up within the next week or month Or whatever it happens to be To get those urgent things Or you might want to just show Only the first available action So rather than seeing You know, you've got a project that is Has got lots of different things But you only want to see the first available one You can select that You could select things by due date You can also select by duration as well So that's one of the things that you can also add in For every task As well as being able to add in the project The tag, the due date, the defer date You can also add in a duration as well So this comes a little bit back to that thing That I mentioned about How long is the task going to take? Is it just a minute? Or is it, you know, 15 minutes or an hour or whatever And so often If there is something that I know for sure Like this is just a two-minute task But I don't want to get derailed from what I'm doing right now I'm going to capture it in my, you know In the little pop-up that I have for OmniFocus And I could add in a duration here of, you know, one minute And then what that means is that I can find a, I've got a perspective Which is basically all of my short tasks So it's all of these little one-minute tasks that I can do The reason why that's good Is because if these are all just one-off tasks That, you know, take a minute or two First of all, when you come to sort these out later If you haven't put them into a project or something like that You can just filter for all the short tasks And just go through and get them done But also if at the end of the day You've like, you've finished some major thing That you just wanted to finish off You're not really wanting to actually go and start Some new big, big task off But you're saying, you know what? I've got a few minutes to spare Let me just go through and clear out Some of these different things So that's where you might want to have a perspective That is just showing you all of these sort of quick tasks That you can do to, you can do And so that would just be a case of going through And selecting, you know, estimated duration Is less than five minutes, for example And then you'd be able to just find all of those little tasks You can also search for things that are on hold Or various other different things So there's lots of different ways that you can actually filter And you can actually combine multiple ones of these as well So if I go through and look at, I don't know Which is a good example of this So this is take one tech development So I'm looking for something that's contained In my take one tech R&D folder My grouping of projects It needs to be remaining, needs to have an action But then it also needs to be something Which is either untagged or is active or on hold as well And then when you look at the way that these are output You can also choose how you want to group things So do you want just a list of actions? Do you want them grouped by the particular project They happen to be in? And then what columns do you want to show up? So that perspective that I showed you here This today view This basically is just a list of actions that I've got And then when it's due And this basically pulls in anything that is due Within the next week But then what I do as part of my sort of daily review And when I get up in the morning And figure out what I'm going to do for the day I've got a few perspectives that narrow this down Into what are the main projects I'm working on And what are the next tasks And then what I'll do is I'll come into the projects And I'll flag the ones that I think That is something that I definitely need to do today Out of all of these different things So I can add this little flag to it basically Like that And then when I come over to my today view It actually includes any items Oh in fact this is not going to work Because I've excluded that particular folder from it Let me just come into here And flag something random in here So if I go into my website development And I flag this one Then when I come into my today view You'll see that any sort of flagged items appear in there And any ones that are due And by the way if I had like lots of different things in here It would actually show me all of the All of the different projects that would be split down into project So let me have a little look where we're up to So that is basically in a nutshell Omnifocus You've got projects You've got tags And then you've got these perspectives And the perspectives by the way You can completely customize all of this So down this left hand side We've got inbox projects tags forecast and flagged And then this review I'll come onto that in a little while But these are just kind of like predefined things that Omnifocus has in But as you go through and create all of these perspectives And all of these ones that I've created down here Are basically Oh thank you very much Chris Much appreciated Much appreciated the super chat there That'll go straight into the coffee pot Thank you very much Chris So that is Yeah these perspectives then You can create multiple different Perspectives as many as you want And then you can also choose which ones go into your sidebar for example So if I wanted to add my recording list You'll see that as I click it in here And my home list It has just popped it into here So you can just basically customize this to be however you want You can also have things along the top So I actually just went and reset everything on here Just before we started But you could say for example You might want to have your inbox Inbox and things like that Over here So we've got your quick actions You've got inbox You can just customize that to have all of those things So however you want to lay it out Is completely up to you Same on the mobile You can choose which things you have where What I've then done as well is of course Because I'm a bit of a stream deck fan What I've got on stream deck is Where's my little stream deck window It's hiding behind all these other things somewhere There it is So if I just come back out of here And then I go into Omnifocus on stream deck So basically this is my Omnifocus stream deck View basically or profile I should say So here I've just got ways to easily navigate all of these things So usually Omnifocus is something that is just kind of running in the background It's not a case of you don't necessarily have it open As the big app is open all of the time But when I'm doing my sort of Omnifocus system maintenance If you like sort of going through And making sure that everything is all as it should be And doing my reviews and things like that Then I will use this profile on stream deck And so I use that to Basically go and jump around between these different perspectives Different projects and things like that To make sure that everything is where it should be And I mentioned before about the review So there is a review section as well And I'll come into that Although it will be empty because I do my review weekly And then there is a monthly review as well With the weekly review It's basically just going through and looking at You know what I've still got on my plate What needs to be planned out for the week ahead And things like that And this basically you're just literally looking through everything Now it's not going to show you absolutely everything That you've got in your projects list Because some projects might be Let's come back to this one as an example You can actually change the review frequency So generally it's going to be for a weekly review So that's what they default to But you can also say I actually, you know what This is like a quarterly review thing This is long term goals That someday maybe list things like that And so what you can do is say Right well I actually want to review this every three months And what I'm going to do is put a date You know defer it to just before my next sort of quarterly review And so then when you're going through this review process You've got the review tab there It's not actually going to show you absolutely everything It's only going to be showing you the things that you need to review So you don't have to think that like Oh every week I'm going to have to go through all of my tasks It's not like that It just shows you the things that are relevant that you need to review Or you might have things that are reviewed on a monthly basis And this works on either desktop or the iPad as well I actually find the reviews are much better done on an iPad for some reason But yeah you just go through it Or show you all the different things You're just looking at what all the next actions are Looking if things are still relevant And then there would be like a list of them in here And you just click on mark reviewed for the tasks For the projects you reviewed And then you'll know that you're completely up to date with everything So that is kind of like the the overview of Of OmniFocus And I mentioned about this being This thing that happened just this week was Reading the the one thing by Gary Keller So I want to just sort of cover off exactly what the one thing is And how this is you know relates to getting things done And why I mentioned in I wrote a sort of piece about it actually In Docs Discord Server In the Let's Get Live Discord Server About you know my thoughts having read the book And basically what the one thing is about Is talking about in fact what is the full title of the book I'll just get the full title because it sort of says What the point about it is If I just pull the book up So this is called the one thing The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results And the thing about it is It's all about getting down to like What is that one action that you can take next So they talk about in there And by the way this isn't a case of Only doing one thing Only one thing to the exclusion of Absolutely everything else that you've got to do And thinking like right well let me just only do Only focus on completely on one thing like Full stop It's about defining different areas of your life It's about defining what the sort of The main goals are that are actually going to sort of Move the needle to use that to cliche I suppose For you in terms of actually making the most progress And what is the one thing That if you could do that would make everything else Simpler as well I guess is the thing So if you've got lots of different Sub projects that you're working on Which is actually the one that is going to drive The biggest results and get you towards your Longer term goals So getting you to think about those You know really distant goals But then also the five year goal The one year goal The one month goal and so on And just sort of bringing it all back down to From the one week to then What is the thing the action you need to take In the day to get to that one week goal And then what is the action you can take right now To take a step towards that daily goal To the weekly goal to the monthly goal and so on And so that is kind of the idea behind the one thing It is thinking about different areas of your life And distilling them all down into What is the next step you can take And that's why I kind of said that it is very much like A sort of slice through getting things done Because that is ultimately what GTD is about It's about figuring out what's the next step I can take And not getting bogged down in absolutely everything else Around it necessarily If that's going to actually prevent you from taking the next step But sometimes it can be that As I say, you've got these systems in place But then if you haven't got the right mindset Or you're not applying them Then it's still not going to It's still not going to do anything for you If you decide that Oh, this getting things done system I like emoji based systems Like this And I can follow along with that It looks great So let me just think about applying this And let me get omnifocus and I'll start to do that And then if I just follow this system Then everything will be fine And I'll be super productive And that is true If you do follow the system Then it can really enhance your productivity But the problem is you do have to be To some extent disciplined about it You've got to be disciplined About capturing the ideas when they come up You've got to be disciplined about Consolidating all of your different inboxes So if at the end of the day You've got your little notepad here With some ideas on You've got your ideas that you've captured in omnifocus But if you let that run away with you And you know, you end up with a stack of index cards Thinking, oh, yeah, at some point I'm going to get those all into my system Or if you get them all into your system But then you start thinking about them Let me go through and plan out this whole project Because there is something Especially if you are a little bit sort of OCD about things There is something quite nice About going into these projects And thinking, right, this is a sort of combination Of a sequential project and a parallel project So I want to plan out all these different sequences of tasks But then this is going to be a little sub-project That I need to do And you could really get carried away In just absolutely planning everything out In absolute infinite detail And again, sort of that recovering perfectionist thing Not actually getting out and sort of taking action on it So whatever system that you are using You still do need to have this mindset And this sort of commitment to it And what had happened with me was This system has been working for me for 15 years It has helped me to keep on top of stuff And get the stuff done that needed to get done But in the last, as I said, four to six months There's just been a number of different things That have come completely out of left field And have just had a dramatic impact on On my time and attention, I should say And so it's caused me to get out of some of the habits That I had built for 15 years, basically So I got out of the habit of actually staying Completely on top of all this stuff And so I did find that I'd got some notes in other places That needed to get captured that I hadn't captured I did find that I'd got stuff that hadn't been organised And put into the right place And I'll say it as well That whilst this can tell you what the next task to do Might well be if you've gone through and done this process It doesn't stop you from taking on too much as well So it's not a case of, oh, you can just have a system like this And then you're totally invincible You can just take on anything As long as I capture it, it'll get done and you'll be fine So there is that side of things as well What all of these things are only a way of coping With what you actually have on And assuming that that stuff is all manageable as well So what I'd found is I kind of, I'd got out of my routine I was always had a really sort of fixed routine But then one of the, I would say my main sort of driving focus That I've had for a number of years Basically I had to really sort of step back and take stock on it About it and decide whether it was something That I wanted to still commit to fully And ultimately I decided that it wasn't I actually did want to just actually park it And take a break from this thing that I was doing And what that meant is it kind of like Opened up this entire void in my sort of daily routine And whereas I'm someone who works really well With a very fixed regimented routine and a system to work to When I found that, when I decided that I was going to make these changes It kind of left me feeling that I wasn't really sure about Well what is my top priority now? What should I be prioritizing? And I'd been really going round in circles I had a couple of things in my personal life as well Which just completely knocked me sideways as well Which have also impacted my ability to maintain focus And things like that as well So having read The One Thing The One Thing was the book that really just gave me the Kick up the backside that I needed really to Sort of step back and take stock and think Well, do you know what? I actually know this Because this is just, this is just as I say a slice of GTD But it did help me to sort of step back and look at What is the one thing that I need to be doing? What is that thing that is going to help to Sort of move the needle as it were? And just really focus down on that and make sure that My time wasn't getting sucked into other things I will just say a little thing about that though In terms of sort of time and attention And if you can be disciplined to actually Capture these things when they occur Then that is the key to it But the other thing is having the discipline Not to get derailed by things And but sometimes the things that you allow yourself To get to get derailed by are an indicator Of your sort of overall underlying design if you like And what I had noticed is More and more frequently I was getting derailed By certain things But they have actually served to be a kind of Like a guide to me as to Well, if I'm working on one thing But I'm getting derailed by this other thing And whereas I know that I've got to just capture it And move on If there's something that is really pulling me It does actually kind of This was part of the reason as well that it It woke me up to the fact that maybe there was Something else that underlying everything Was more important to me than some of the other things So that is something to I think just be aware of Is try not to let yourself get distracted But be very conscious about what it is You're getting distracted about If you are getting distracted by something that Moves the needle If you're getting distracted by Xbox Or something like that That is maybe not as productive than that I would question that But I was getting distracted by stuff that was It was a productive act So I would think to myself Well, this is actually something that is helping me It is moving me in a particular direction So it was still It was still all work really So I think yeah Just to point that out once again Is always worth noting what it is that we are getting distracted about So that was really just a very brief intro to Of OmniFocus I mean an hour and 10 minutes But and GTD And like I say, I could make a whole A whole series of videos all about GTD And how to use it And now to specifically set up these things as For content creators And I did capture it by the way When I was starting to create this video It came into my head You know like a whole course on GTD for content creators OmniFocus for Omni content creators I've captured those ideas I just didn't go down in the rabbit hole Of actually planning everything out for them Let me just have a little check in with the chat here While you are at the gym On the exercise machine Checking my emails and editing a video I was listening to the one thing And you may have missed the point The context Yeah, they are they are the key to it really Keely in terms of that thing of knowing Like what you can do at any particular time Thanks again Chris I really appreciate the the super chat there It's uh yeah much much appreciated Hey Chris Sorry Todd Great to see you Do you know what? I've got a confession to make Todd I still have not been back And watch the replay of that live stream Funnily enough after it is on my task list But I just had other things came up this week But I will get around to it I promise Critical Ordinary Care now Hello, great to see you here And let's get this thing done That is the point of it The irony of today was having uh You know doing a presentation as it were About productivity and task management And getting everything ready When it needs to be ready This was all a little bit last minute I didn't actually have everything ready In fact there was supposed to be A different live stream today And I had got it scheduled And then I had to change the schedule At the last minute You'll find out why that is next week When the actual live stream goes ahead But that's about it then For getting things done And I don't know if anybody's got Any specific questions about that Either in the chat or in the discord But if not then what I'll do is I normally would say I'll leave a link To all of my other productivity videos But I don't really have any But what I will do is I'll leave a link Over on the right hand side To anyone watching on the replay To some of my uh Automation videos for the Mac And thanks to all of these great Channel members who have signed up Much appreciated