u/mekuismi

I have for some months now done my weekly review, and also some higher horizon monthly/quarterly checks, and it really is what is keeping me sane. The thing I still struggle with is the daily maintenance.

I’m wondering what kind of daily reviews/checklists/habits have you created to keep everything fresh? I still find myself e-mail snacking quite often, and I’m trying to figure out a good order to do things. More experienced GTD’ers tend warn not to check email in the morning, so maybe cross off some items first? Or maybe some inbox emptying after lunch? And a final passthrough of inboxes and clarifying in the afternoon before heading home?

Looking for inspiration and insight. It is clear I need some better habits, I just need figure out what they are.

I am having a problem with fitting some of my work projects into my GTD system. My responsibilities are are quite clear ”take care of all construction projects during construction” and “make sure all warranty repairs get carried out like they should” and so on. These are quite clear. But the issue is that when a construction project starts, it lasts for 1,5 years, and in reality consists of dozens of smaller actual projects that I work with. So the project is a something like “Construction Project X is built in schedule and in budget” this is maybe slightly suboptimal but it works, since I do work with each project if not weekly, but at least monthly.

But then comes the warranty period. It lasts for two years after the project is done, and best case is that absolutely nothing happens during this time. But in my work context this is considered an open project that we track. But in GTD terms this isn’t really a project, as it’s not really something I do. So it could maybe be considered an area of focus, or maybe a goal even but it seems weird since it is already an area of focus on the broader scale.

How do you handle longer lasting “projects” like these at work? Or are they just clearly areas of focus?

How do you manage this combination? I feel like it seems a little repetitive, since when I go through the mail in the e-mail app, it’s quite quickly clear to me if it is something that I need to track (Waiting for), super fast answer (under 2 minutes) or a more in depth task (next action, or project even). Is it just that I need to learn the process of forwarding it into my system and then going the inbox through there?

I fell like maybe I should try to make it faster when going through email and then really go through it in the GTD-inbox?

Edit: It seems my first attempt was somewhat ambiguous, so I’ll try to say it more clearly: My struggle is with the connections between parts of my system. And I feel like this could be a friction point for others as well. How do you literally go through emails and get the actionable & trackable into the system, without feeling like doing the clarification twice? Or am I mixing clarify with organize?

I feel like I have a pretty decent system in MS ToDo and despite getting all sorts of interesting ideas I’m sticking with it for now. I feel like I’m getting into a bit of a groove, I get my inboxes dealt with frequently, my weekly review is actually getting done in a reasonable time, and I’m looking forward to my first monthly this Friday after a bit of a clarification of things about a month ago.

But I’ve realized that I actually struggle a lot with capture still. Meeting notes don’t get processed consistently, and more to the point I feel like I haven’t found the tools for me. I get a lot of my inputs from email and Teams, and those get tracked well, but I feel like I am lacking in my ability to get more or less anything into my inboxes. I currently have an inbox folder in my OneDrive + the Downloads folder, and email inboxes naturally. And a physical one at home. But I feel like I need a more robust way of getting everything jotted down. I have a paper notebook that I sometimes use and notes from there get figured into the system, but I have a new nagging feeling that I am not properly getting everything into in.

I am also quite high associative, so I get sidetracked super easily. I feel like a crazy person since people often speak of capture as the easy part 😓

I just recently swapped from an analog system to the ToDo and it has been super helpful. I can churn through my email inbox fast, and with a shortcut almost instantly move the email to project support folder, create a task, and more precisely describe the doing.

But.

I cannot in a smart way combine the ToDo of my personal account, with the ToDo of my work account. I can change between the two somewhat fast, but it’s clearly not really working, and I end up neglecting my personal side of things.

Previously I tried out FacileThings, and I really really liked the way they had it neatly separated, but in the same place. The issue I was having there was with the capture part. When going through emails I’d basically start doing the clarify process but then stop dead in the tracks after deciding already it was something I needed to do something about, only to get back to it later. Basically almost doing the work twice. Also the clarification process was somewhat more tedious since everything needs to be connected. To be fair, it was super nice, but felt like more work.

Does anyone else struggle with something like this, or am I missing something obvious in my process? I don’t even mind paying some money for the solution, just so long it actually works for me.