I have two main kinds of inbox: email inboxes and reminders inboxes
My personal email, which I usually access through the gmail web client.
My email is the main way for other people to input new items into my system. My reminders inboxes are the main way that I input new items. For this I currently use the apple reminders app, and google keep.
I’ve set a hotkey on my laptop that switches to and opens the apple reminders desktop app, so that I can add new ideas at close to the speed of thought.
When I’m not at my computer, the main way that I add items is via speach to text with my phone.
I used to just use apple reminders using the “remind me” keyword, but when I switched to an android phone (entirely so that I could use a headphone jack). So now I additionally use google keep. I can trigger google assistant with “hey google” or a button press, and then say “make a note” to add the idea to google keep.
I sit down and process all of these inboxes, a few times a week. I’ll open up the relevant app, and churn through the list with an attitude of committed engagement: once a I pull up an item, I don’t let myself move on until I’ve done something with it, be that doing the task, responding to the email, postponing it with followup.then, or adding it to my open loops.
I try to make a point not to look at my email unless I’m prepared to adopt the committed engagement mindset. If I look at an email, and it’s slightly aversive or ambiguous, such that I don’t want to deal with it right then
When I’m in a good life rhythm, I’ll typically hit “total inbox 0”, meaning all of my inboxes were emptied that day, a few days a week.
I divide the GTD project list into two separate lists, both of which I keep in roam: a Core projects list, and complete list of open loops.
My core projects is the list of my 3 to 6 core priorities at any given time. What work is most important to me? What work do I want to be focusing most of my effort on? That each of those goes on the core projects list.
Currently this list is sub-divided into three sections “Highest priority impact-directed work”, “Creating things and personal development”, and “Other”.
Each of those projects has their own projects page in roam, which includes project metadata, a global workspace (where I keep track of info that is persistent, but mutable, across time-slices of working on the project), and a day-by-day log for taking notes on the project as I execute them.
- Project-page template #SmartBlock
- Meta
- Started on:: <%DATE%>
- Project status::
- tags:: #Project
- Cards:
- General notes:
-
- Global workspace
- [[next action]]s:
- .
- Completed
-
- [[log (top: most recent)]]
- .