International Mac Podcast

There are four basic steps to GTD: Collect, Process/Organize, Do, and Review. I’ve taken you through the first two, and the third doesn’t need much explaining. The fourth, the Review, I haven’t. And that’s because I’ve been a very bad GTDer. I haven’t been doing my review.

All right, I’d better tell you what it is. The thinking behind it is that you don’t see all your tasks every day, so it’s easy to have them fall out of your mind. After all, that’s a principle of GTD, to not have your tasks cluttering up your brain. The Review is where you go and look at either (a) the tasks you don’t see on a regular basis, such as a Someday/Maybe list you keep, or (b) everything. Yes, everything.

In principle, you give everything metadata-type information. A due date and a do date (for the difference between these, see here), tags, contexts, priority, the whole shebang. However, the good thing about GTD is that you can adapt it to your purposes. In my review, I (am planning to) set a do date for everything, and due dates where applicable. I haven’t actually gotten around to the review yet, my Today list is full.

The next stage I am planning to take is to add a context for everything. This involves showing the Information pane, and using the pop-up menu to remind myself to do it.

I recommend starting your review in stages. First do something that you’re already sort of doing, which in my case is the dates. Then gradually work your way to something you’re totally not using, assuming you want to be. And this is the kicker: if you won’t use an aspect of the review, don’t waste time doing it. I know that I work best when I have stuff in my Today list to do, so setting do dates for it to automatically appear there will keep me working. Similarly, when I run out of things to do I’m often annoyed that I can’t click something and see everything I can do at my Mac. However, I’ve not once needed to use priority, so there would be no point in me wasting time setting it. Therefore, I won’t. It’s as simple as that.

Now, how do you remember to review your tasks? Why, with a task of course! Set up a weekly, monthly, biweekly, etc. task at whatever interval you want it to be set to. Then do it, like a normal task. Viola. If you want, you can set gradual goals when you progress to the next stage, so you don’t have to suddenly go in and add contexts to every single task all at once—unless that’s the way you work, in which case go ahead and do it.

Now, why review? I already talked about this a bit beforehand, but it’s time for some examples. Say you have a task waiting, and it’s a real biggie. Something like “Learn Xcode,” I’d call that a biggie. Now, you go on summer vacation, and you don’t have homework for months. This seems like a perfect time to learn Xcode, no? Well, if you don’t review, you may not remember until you have only a few weeks left, so you’ve wasted that opportunity.

The second advantage I’ve already explained. The empty Today list, how do dates help prevent that, and how contexts help you find what you can do when that happens. They can find what to do within Today, too, if you need that.

Two reasons for reviewing, serving totally different purposes. So why do you need one review? Well, really, you don’t. That’s why I just made up the idea of the Short review and the deep review. Literally, as I was writing this I thought of it. Just goes to show how blogging is good for the brain. Now, I know deep and short aren’t exact opposites, but neither are the two kinds of review I’m about to explain. A short review is a review of all your actionable tasks, and it happens more often. In my case, every two weeks, or fortnightly. Whichever comes first. This is the review where you make sure your do and due dates are reasonable and double-check to make sure every task has a context or two. The deep review serves the jogging your memory purpose. This doesn’t need to happen as often, mine is once every two months. (Is there a word for that? The opposite of bimonthly?)

But here’s the thing: GTD is all about you. You decide what to do, when, for how long, with whom, where, and why. Oh, and add a bit of how in there too. Adapt it to your own purposes, and use it however it helps you.

In other semiconnected news about me, I just got enough money to buy the MacHeist Bundle. I had to spend 2½ hours fixing a PC to get the cash, but I did it and would prefer not to talk about it. As part of the bundle I finally got a license to The Hit List, which as you know is my task management app of choice. I’ve been posting screenshots of it this whole post, using LittleSnapper, which may become the second-most used application from MacHeist. The point of all this babbling is that over 70,500 others got it too, and many don’t know how to use it to its fullest extent. I can’t say I blame them, it’s fullest extent is very wide and I haven’t reached it yet. Because of these people, my next post will be along the lines of “One Hit List User’s Scheme” or something like that. If you caught the quote I was trying to paraphrase, good on you. If not, I won’t embarrass myself further. Good bye, everybody!