I can have a lot on my plate sometimes. Work, university, content creation, home organisation, a social life (who’da thunk?) and personal projects all vie for my attention. Amidst all this chaos, I need a way to stay organised while staying flexible enough to enable spontaneity in life, as the best things can come unexpectedly. I would like to share my considerations and results in this (p)article.
In my younger years, when I was still trying to find out what worked best for me, I was enamored by the world of productivity books and videos. These people would talk about second brains, task automations and productivity apps, all with the promise of making you a productivity beast that would never forget anything ever again. Although I didn’t buy it entirely, it started me down a rabbit hole of increasingly complex workflows, that eventually made me realise that you’d need a full-time job to even so much as sustain such a system; No thank you!
But that is not to say that these kinds of content weren’t at all meaningful to me. One method that kinda stuck (as a minimalist myself) was the “Getting Things Done” philosophy. Although I may not copy it to a tee, I do find it to be one of the better philosophies out there, as it doesn’t bother with all the fluff and just gets to the point of why you would need such a system: To get things done.
So then came my method to making this knowledge my own. I started experimenting in my usual iterative approach to development: I start with what I have, and step by step add new systems, methods and ideas to my life in order to test the waters. Some of these developments stick, while others are discarded along the way. Every time I get the chance, I shake things up to allow myself to discover new ideas, but with time the core stays the same. Run this process for over 5 years, and gain quite some insight into what you want from a system.
There are a few criteria on which I judge a system for organising my life. I’d like them list them for you:
The system must:
Besides these points, I would like my system to be usable with a keyboard, as I have noticed that GUI’s can slow me down a ton.
Basically, I will be keeping track of only two things: Events and Tasks. There are a lot of ways to track these, and although pen and paper is distraction free and quite effective, I am a lot faster at typing than I am at writing, and the ease of adjustment software offers is a large plus in my opinion. As I work on a mac, I get to use the stellar Calendar and Reminders apps that come with the OS. These are my bread and butter.
I create a block in my calendar for every time-sensitive task or event, and I look at this calendar at the start of the day to be reminded of everything I must not forget. I have three calendars, on personal, one work related and one university related. That’s all of the differentiation I need, as I don’t really care about the origin of an event; an event happens or it doesn’t.
In my reminders app, I do differentiate my tasks into different lists. I do care wether I am doing something around the house versus something for a personal project for example, and this makes it easy for me to focus on the facets of my life that need focussing. I can keep a backlog as well, so I’ll always have something to do when I’m bored. I make things that need to be done on a regular basis into recurring tasks, and literally everthing that is important for me do do is made into a task. This way, I can be certain that everything that needs to get done gets done, and nothing slips my mind. This also makes it easier for me to estimate how full my day is going to be, as there are no shadow-tasks that I may forget to take into account when planning my day.
In terms of upkeep, I create a task or event the moment I learn of it. This way, I keep load off my brain and can rest assured that I need not worry about forgetting something. It’s a good thing I always have my phone on me, but if I didn’t, I would probably keep a notepad to write these things down first.. Besides that, I generally only plan out my next day, as this keeps my calendar and todo-list open for serendipity. This ensures that I don’t have to spend much time on my upkeep
Lastly, I supercharge this workflow with the Raycast application launcher. This (free without AI!) tool is like a stronger spotlight, and it allows me to create tasks and events on the fly using plugins. I can simply open up my spotlight with Command-Space, enter into my quick reminder plugin and create a task without my hands leaving the keyboard. I can specify recurrance, time, date, list, priority and even set a location for it. The same can be done for events, where I can use natural language to create an event I’d like to add to my calendar. This tool make it super easy for me to batch create a bunch of tasks that need to be done, and allows me to avoid the (somewhat cumbersome) GUI of these Apple apps.
So as you can see, an effective workflow does not need thousands of automations or a stack of 10 paid apps to function well. The main point is that you need to be reminded of what needs to happen or be done, so that you can act on that information. If you feel like you need a bit more structure in your life or like your workflow is eating you alive, give this simple system a try! If you are not on iOS/macOS, you can replace Calendar and Reminders with Fantastical and ToDoist for example. Want to talk about this some more? Send me a DM or mail me