The day I started working full time. This was the before and after of my life. Until then, my only concerns were personal relationships, studies… and little else. I could keep all my to-dos in my head, or at best only the rarest ones on my Mac calendar. I did not manage my pending tasks in any way. I mentally recorded them.

When I started trading 40 hours a day and became independent, it was getting harder and harder to keep spinning all the turntables at once without hitting the ground, although it could still work. However, omissions, delays and late deliveries were the first signs of this. A solution was urgently needed. My wife’s sensible warning Caesar Muela (“You’re complicating mine with these omissions in your work”) was the definitive signal: having a job as a tightrope walker doesn’t mean spending your life on the wires is ideal.

application at least

My first choice at the time was Wunderlist, a great German app that was about to be acquired by Microsoft and was about to launch To Do instead; As time went on I went through the typical alternatives to digital unrest. It’s been my choice for Omnifocus for a short time, Todoist for a few years, and Things for a few months. It serves as proof of such a simple method that it fits almost any application.

Someone who will say, “This is not even a method”. And you will not be mistaken. One method, perhaps the best known, is David Allen’s GTD. These are just some basic indications, not even a significant “version of GTD” (there is no such thing, GTD is regular and outside of its dogma is no longer GTD). The bad: they’re too simple. The good thing is: they’re so simple that they’re easy to understand and work well. Best of all: they’re so simple they fit into an article. xataka who isn’t trying to sell you a book or course. It’s useful for anyone starting from scratch with this one, or feeling it’s time to get rid of papers and notebooks, although everything can be expanded. Do it for Amazon.

First of all, you will need to decide on a task manager. Overall, I recommend Todoist as a starting point for everyone: it’s simple, versatile, and free (with the exception of some options that require subscriptions). Then we can mention Notion for those who want to incorporate much more of their tasks into the same product, Things for those who keep design at the forefront and only have Apple devices, or Omnifocus for those who are looking for something very advanced and complex.

ideal Find a task manager with which you feel comfortable, whose interface encourages you to use it, and which is available on the platforms you use.. For example, Omnifocus has a web version, but no Android app. Apple’s native Reminders are not replicated outside of your devices. And Notion is versatile, but maybe not so light if you need to use it a lot from your cell phone.

hierarchical columns

Whichever task management application you choose, they all have similar principles, although the nomenclature varies with a hierarchy like this: Fields → Projects → Tasks → Subtasks.

• fields. Great collections of projects. For example, “Personal” and “Business” are often the most used pair. If there is something in your life that is all-encompassing on its own, you might consider it such a field.
• Projects. Their own fields that fill each space. For example, in “Personal” they can be “Home”, “Health”, “Management”, “Sports”.
• Chores. Specific tasks that we must complete in each project. For example, under ‘Home’ there might be ‘Copy of master key at hardware store’, ‘Take carpet to dry cleaner’ or ‘Lower duvet box in storage room’.
• Subtasks. This is optional and can only be applied to tasks that make sense to split them into multiple subtasks. For example, within a task like “Weekly cleaning” we might detail subtasks like “Clean the hood”, “Change the bedding”, “Sweep and scrub the whole house” or “Clean shower curtains and mirrors in bathrooms”.

It is possible at this point that some readers may think this is an exaggeration. No problem. The size of the apps means everyone can use them the way they need and want, and all are true as long as they bring a benefit to those who use them..

Tools to be allies, not obsessions

Task managers, despite some differences, have more or less common features. Knowing how to use them wisely is much better than ignoring them altogether, or perhaps worse, assuming that we have to use them all at all times. Flexibility.

• expiration dates. The GTD method tells that tasks should have a due date only if something terrible happens if they don’t complete on time. Personally I’m more lax on this one, my reading is that I usually assign dates to tasks on days I really want them to be completed, not just when it’s a matter of life and death. And if I have to move them because that’s life, there’s no greater drama than this. It’s also important to have recurring expiration dates that repeat in the cycles we want.
• labels. It is perhaps the most complex to implement universally. In my case, I only use them to tag any task or project I can do in a city I go to five or six times a year. Once there, seeing tasks with that label, I know exactly what I need to do there and only there. There are also those who designate them for certain work environments, work tools or for certain people. He talked about it on his Todoist blog.
• priority indicators. Sometimes they are indicated by color codes, like traffic lights. Others, by the number of exclamation marks next to each task. This is an example of the kind of feature where being obsessed with using it for the sake of it is counterproductive: its absence can be understood as “low priority” and so we don’t have to spend much time configuring each task.
• inbox. Here come the tasks we want to add quickly and we will process as much as we can (subtasks, specific project, date, tags…). It is ideal to have this so as not to miss any ideas or memories.
• titles. Ideal for making timely distinctions within projects. For example, in the “Infinite Loop” project (podcast), which is part of the “Webedia” domain (the house we live in). xataka and company), with tasks in one topic and ideas for future chapters in the other. So they do not interfere.

some concrete ideas

If so far everything is presentation and usage general, we go with some specific ideas that I have implemented in recent years and which, although far from being specific to me, tend to surprise others when I tell them. to them.

Some of the personal areas (and already in Home, Health, Administration etc):

• Make an appointment to renew the DNI. I created this task as soon as I refreshed my DNI for the last time. Four years and eight months. Same with passport and driver’s license.
• Make an appointment for ITV. When I got my car, three years and nine months after I had to pass the MOT for the first time, I created this task.
• Make an appointment for dental cleaning. This repeats automatically every year, twelve months after completion.
• Plan a Christmas menu. I like to spend Christmas Eve in the kitchen preparing dinner for my family, on the 6th of December of each year I get to know about this assignment, just to think of a menu. A few days before Christmas Eve, another quest called “Buy the Christmas menu” pops up as a notification. Taurus also doesn’t catch me thinking about what to prepare or buy.
• to pass foam roller. Blessed myofascial release. The effects are great but something I tend to forget easily. I do not neglect this work that is repeated every day, and my muscles recover better after sports or running for a while.
• Phonebook backup. For what could happen.

And now we’re going with some that can be considered from the professional environment:

• transaction mail. It is repeated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So that the mail doesn’t wrap me up with “kick and forward” thoughts. Whenever I mark it complete, it’s because I’ve replied to or processed emails I should have and left the unread counter at zero.
• Respond to audience emails. Among the emails I can’t reply to right now are those sent by podcast listeners, I can just let it pile up in a specific folder so I can reply in blocks when I have time. It is repeated once a week.
• think of a topic for tomorrow. I also save a lot of time and feel more comfortable with podcasting because instead of searching for an attached topic every morning, I just have to prepare a script and announce it in a pre-planned topic.

Personalization 101

Of course, very few of these will serve you, but I hope they help you think about which processes of your day, week, month or year might benefit from automatic reminders.. Maybe you think some of them are so obvious that they don’t even deserve to be created.

For example, I set the bar considering that taking a shower or brushing teeth are so obvious automatisms that it doesn’t make sense to mess up the task manager with them. Instead, the sometimes forgotten or classic “did I buy this today?” taking a vitamin supplement It’s something worth including.

Maybe someone just needs it for their job and maybe someone else has a job where something like this doesn’t fit but can help them improve their daily life in the personal realm.

let me add tasks are not appointments or events. The first lives in the task manager, the second and third live in the calendar. Understanding the difference in concept is capital.

and beyond that I encourage everyone to consider how only a task manager can best help their day-to-day lives.. Maybe you only need six daily missions on average, or maybe multiply that number by five. It will depend on the context of each, the more complex (home ownership, vehicle, family with several young children, self-employed occupation…), the more useful one of these apps will be. be.

If you like it as an introductory character, you may want to round it up with more ambitious reads like ‘Getting Organizedly’, the book where David Allen explains the GTD method. If you prefer a friendlier read (Allen’s can be difficult for beginners), a great option is ‘Personal productivity: learn to de-stress yourself with GTD’ by José Miguel Bolivar.