GTD on Android

    On Habré there is a lot of information about GTD as a whole, and about the real use of this technique in life, but practically (almost completely) there is no information about tools that help “to Get Things Done”. I decided to fix the situation a bit.
    As a basis, I took the GTD for Vasily Kisloma, as the least boring in my opinion presentation of the methodology. This is just a description of how I use the system. You can consider this nonsense, you can adopt something useful for yourself, but for someone it will just be new.

    Tool


    Astrid

    To work, we need only one program - Astrid Tasks. It is free, it can be freely downloaded both from the site and in the Android Market.
    So, Astrid is installed. We start, accept the terms of the license agreement and ... see the "Active Tasks" screen, which says "No Tasks!" It would be great if everything was really so.

    Input buffer


    According to Kislom, any task, information, thought - everything should be written to a buffer called *** IN . I think it can be called both INBOX and stars here solely for sorting in lists, but I decided not to back down from what is written.
    So, we thought that we should read the article by Vasily Sour. Let's create the “Read Sour article on GTD” task. To do this, in Astrid in the field below write "Read the article Sour about GTD." Then we press the button “Notebook with pen” to the right of the field. A task editing window appeared with the tabs "Basic", "Advanced" and "Extensions". The last two are of little interest to us so far, we will concentrate on the first. Here we can set the importance of the task, the end date, labels and notes. Now we are interested in labels. In the field “Label name” write “*** IN” and press the save floppy button below.
    Now we have in the list of active tasks our task with the label *** IN.
    image

    But every time you write a category name or select it from the list - laziness. Therefore, we click on the green arrow to the left of the inscription “Active Tasks” and get to the main screen of Astrid, where we find our label at the very bottom. Click on it and hold until the menu appears. Select the item "Create a shortcut on the desktop ...", set the name of the shortcut and click OK. Now on the desktop we have a shortcut to our “buffer”.
    image

    It's time to check how it works. Before we read the Sour article, we need to download it. Let's create a task for ourselves, only now through the desktop shortcut. Click on our shortcut and immediately get into the list “Tagged '*** IN'”. In the field below we write “Download the Acid article” and click the plus sign on the left. Oh miracle! The task was added quickly, easily and was "marked" with the mark we needed. Magically.

    The control


    And here we sit, all of them are sober, satisfied, and remember that the Internet is not paid for with us. Open our *** IN buffer and write “Pay for Internet” there. But laziness by ourselves. We recall that next to the location of our wife / girlfriend / mom / sister / dog there is a payment terminal through which she can pay for the Internet. This is called an assignment and should be reflected in the * CONTROL category . We click on our task “Pay for the Internet” and on the “Edit” button that appears. Scroll the page down to the labels and enter another label - “* CONTROL”. Save, look: there is another shortcut to the task.
    At first glance, it would be great to see to whom we assigned what task. To do this, we go into our task again and write the word "Wife" in the "Notes" field. Whoever instructed the dog, he can write the word "Dog" (but not vice versa, I warned). Now, when choosing our task in the list, we will immediately see a note and understand that the wife (or dog) should pay for the Internet.
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    If you want to see a note without having to select a task, go to the settings and check the box “Show notes in task”. Personally, this is not entirely convenient for me.
    Now this task can be removed from the input buffer *** IN. It is easy to guess that you need to go into the task and remove the *** IN mark from the task by clicking on the cross to the right of it.
    It will also be convenient to have a shortcut to tasks “under control” on the desktop. It is created in the same way as for the *** IN category.

    Today


    When we called our wife and asked her to pay for access to the network, she said that she wanted to cook a turkey for dinner, and it would be nice if I stopped by the way home and bought this turkey. Laziness, of course, but I want to eat. We write in *** IN "Buy a turkey." According to Sour, this task should be placed in the ** DAY category . We go into the task, delete the label *** IN, append the label ** DAY and save. We also make a shortcut to the desktop.

    Then not now


    When I came to the store for a turkey, I walked past a shop window with laptops and decided that mine was already old and I want to replace it. I am writing in *** IN - “Pick up a laptop”.
    In the evening I decided to make out *** IN. I look - it would be necessary to pick up a laptop, but somehow there isn’t much time for that. I'll cram it into * LATER - a category for tasks that I will perform as soon as possible. And just bring the shortcut to the desktop.

    For now


    image

    As a result, I have access to all procedural categories directly from the desktop of my HTC Hero. Tasks are recorded very quickly. Astrid also tells me about the rules - you just need to create the appropriate puzzles with reminders.
    I still have enough of these categories. I do not use contextual categories yet, because basically all tasks are performed in the office. But these categories start up just like everyone else and they mark tasks in addition to our procedural categories.
    All comments / additions are welcome in the comments.

    UPD: By assigning dates and setting Agenda Widget, you can have all the tasks before your eyes, including those that are distributed by deadlines.
    UPD2:The current version of Astrid can synchronize with the Producteev.com service, where you can register for a free account and receive bonuses in the form of task establishment via ICQ / GTalk and reminders there. Also in beta stage is the synchronization of Astrid with Google Task.

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