GTD by TXT
Merlin Mann of 43 Folders uses this format for his todo items:
## Title of List
* _file_: NAME.txt * _purpose_: what this does
### Guts
### Done
### Dumps (incoming via Quicksilver)
As I have taken recently to enclosing posted comments and emails in HTML-like tags, this format to reminds me of the simple nature of the process. And again how connected some of us are to the programmatic side of the process, the tools and the thinking.
A moment last night in winding down I made a conscious, not easy, choice to go with bits instead of bites. I walked past my shiny new computer several times and admired the flat black screen. And as a result a small universe of bits, two magazines and one newspaper clipping, found their way the the recycle bin by the bed. And the pace of the evening never entered the hyper gotta-do-more-gotta-be-more feeling that I get on the web.
So a focus for the next few weeks.
Gotta do less online, gotta do more in the physical world. (That includes playing an open mic on Sunday at BB Rovers, in answer to a challenge by my good friend Tracy. Thanks T!)
So Merlin's formatting above is an inflection point for me on this subject. The have an effective GTD process you certainly don't need a computer. (But a lot of us use computers to keep our lists.) And I find that my thoughts are often more fluid when writing by hand. It is easier for me to jump into whiteboard/visualization mode and start drawing and putting things in shapes and grids and arrows and triangles. It's more how my brain works with visual and lingual processing.
To blend the online and the offline so tightly is a common issue in my family. It is often hard to get off the computer to attend to simple things like yoga, dinner, kids off to camp in the morning. I am glad we have the summer to slow things down a bit. When school starts again, in a few weeks, it's gonna be back to the 5:45 rize, 7:30 out the door routine. So the moment of pause it quite nice.
For my next notes, written in my journal [that's the handwritten kind], I'm gonna do some hand coding on the page. <'s and #'s. And I'll be certain to leave the space inside the brackets to keep the XHTML bots happy. < /end post>
[the original article from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders]
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/gtd-43folders
