Lifestyle & Time out

How to remember everything you need to do with Remember The Milk

In my first post I introduced you to the web application remember the milk (RTM) and to David Allen’s GTD methodology.

In this post I will explain the most basic principle of GTD – write everything down so you don’t forget stuff – and how to do that efficiently using Remember the Milk.

I will also explain how to organise your lists using due dates and priorities. Its high level stuff, and if you know it already don’t worry, I’ll be going into more advanced stuff later in the series.

The problem – you can’t remember what you should be doing

You know there’s lots of stuff you need to do, but your not sure exactly what
You think of things you have to do, then forget about them soon after
You constantly worry you’ve forgotten do do something

David Allen of GTD fame describes how one of the biggest problems people have is that in the back of their minds there’s always stuff they need to do, but they aren’t sure what. This causes stress, and slows down their productivity.

The solution – write everything down

David suggests a simple solution – record everything you need to do. When you think of something that needs doing, record it somewhere. That’s the very least you should be doing. Once its written down, you can forget about it, and that frees up your mind to focus on other stuff. This isn’t the same as a traditional to do list, as its a massive ongoing list of tasks, rather than something you do every now and again.

Don’t forget, this isn’t just about work related stuff, if you need to buy a pizza – write it down, if you need to flea the cat – write it down.

Alternative ways of recording your tasks

Taking David’s principle, I experimented for a year with different methods of recording my tasks, you could try any of these:

Firstly I got a notebook and wrote everything down in there, crossing it off when it was done. Then, I lost my notebook.
I then started listing everything in a desktop application – iGTD, and carried around a very small notebook to write stuff down in when I was out and about. Problem was, I couldn’t access iGTD at work, and it kept crashing leaving my data at risk. Also, I kept forgetting my notebook.
Finally I started using RTM, which lets you access your lists from any internet point. You won’t lose your data, even if the desktop crashes, and with my iPhone I can add notes from anywhere. Thats worked out best for me.

There’s one problem with my preffered RTM and the iPhone method – what if you don’t have an iPhone (pretty likely I guess). Actually, I didn’t have one either when I first used RTM, their iPhone app was the reason I purchased my iPhone. If you don’t want to take things to that level, you can try to combine the notebook with RTM, transferring stuff in and out of the notebook when you get home.

By the way, some alternatives to RTM are Sandy, iGTD (Mac only), ta-da list – and plenty more! Find the one you like best, or if that seems like too much work, just go for RTM. It works fine for me!

Take action – how you can start recording stuff right now

This is my method, by all means find your own – but if your not sure where to start, try this one and then find out whats best for you. Don’t forget the aim – everything you need to do must be recorded. Thats all that counts.

Get started:

Sign up to RTM, or another system. Its totally free, unless you want to use the iPhone app which is $25 a year
Buy a small notebook – or an iPhone :-)
Ensure you start doing the following…

When you get a task:

Whenever you think of or are given something to do – write it down, either in your notebook or on your phone or whatever – just write it down.

When you get online, open up RTM, and add the stuff you wrote down last as tasks. Don’t worry too much about locations, tags and categorys at this stage, just use the inbox for now.

If AND ONLY IF there is a due date for this task, enter it in.

If there is not a due date, don’t put one – don’t make due dates up. Some things, such as a library book due back, have a very real due date – if you skip it, you pay! Other things, such as calling your sister, don’t. You should do it quite soon, but nothing too bad will happen if you don’t (apart from a frosty xmas meal perhaps). Instead mark them with a priority of either 1 (urgent), 2 (medium) or 3 (less urgent). To do that in RTM, select the task by checking the checkbox next to the task, and press the key 1, 2, or 3 as appropriate.

Each morning

Go into RTM and write down the tasks that MUST be completed today – i.e. their due dates are today or tommorow. Then select some of the tasks from the priorities that you think you should do today.

During the day

Do the tasks you MUST do. Do them first. Then work through the things you should do.

At the end of the day

Mark the tasks you have finished as completed.

What’s next?

Next month you should be comfortable with your chosen system, and we shall move on to more advanced stuff. I’ll explain how to group tasks, and use RTM to manage your projects. Then I’ll explain how to ‘programme yourself’ to do repetitive tasks each week, allowing you to increase your productivity and get more done than you ever thought possible!