The Weekly Review

MannMan, Merlin stole my thunder. Not that there’s a lot of thunder emanating from here, but I feel like somebody tapped into my brain and wrote out a lot of my thoughts. Except better.

I spent a lot of time thinking things through this past weekend, focusing once again on simplicity and how to improve my life, while also improving the lives of others. For several weeks I’ve had a half written post based on the negativity I’ve seen lately towards GTD, just sitting on my laptop, waiting for the ideas to become fully fleshed. Last week, the idea got kick-started by Merlin’s post on his personal blog.

And today he moved his thoughts to 43 folders, and laid down the gauntlet. I hate to seem like I’m responding to anything one particular blogger posts, but this is an area I care a lot about and he’s leading the way. Rightfully so—43 folders really helped make this whole sub culture thrive, partly because people were hungry for this sort of thing, but also because Merlin Mann is a dynamic individual. So it only makes sense that he’s recognized the problems that have arisen.

If this type of content interests you and you haven’t read the links provided above, please do so now. It’ll be worth it.

The Problem

Part me says, “Preach it brother!” Another part of me says, “Dude, you’re responsible for my problem. You made it cool and way too easy to fiddle.” But we have to own up—we are accountable for ourselves, and if I waste way too much time mucking around with new tools, I’ve no one to blame but myself.

We live in a dangerous time. The last ten years brought a lot of change as to how folks get their news. How many of us still have a subscription to the local paper? Magazines? The Internet offers us all the things older forms of media did, except in an exceedingly higher volume and speed. This change is intertwined with changes in how a lot of people work today.

You can disagree—this is merely my opinion. But look closely—while the Internet was rapidly growing and evolving, giving us more and more ways to communicate and ingest stimuli, so to was this focus on productivity. But in both arenas, it seems like too much emphasis was on what could be done, rather that what should be done.

But isn’t that the backdrop of the 20th century? It’s time to move on.

The Backlash

In the past few months, I’ve been struck with the sense that a lot of folks are tired of this cult. There seems to be a growing trend of people against GTD and all it represents. Are people getting sick of the whole idea? Poke around the Internets these days and you will certainly find those that are starting to think that way.

But is GTD the problem? No way. Mr. Allen’s succinct methodology is simply a grouping of concepts meant to reduce stress while being productive. No, the problem lies in the cottage industry that has grown up around GTD, hoping to wring profit from the legions of us infected cultists. Merlin went into this idea in depth today. Unfortunately, I think there are genuine people out there who want to help others and better themselves at the same time, even if that includes earning an income. I’d hope to include myself in that group.

So, while I agree with Merlin, this is only part of the problem. We also have to take ownership here—there would be no cottage industry if we didn’t pay attention. We feed the monster. And that’s why the backlash has begun. And in essence, that’s seems to be why he’s changing his focus.

I’ve felt it here as well. Maybe no one has noticed, but when I’m writing, I don’t even like to use the terms GTD or system anymore. What I—and a lot of other [self]proclaimed gurus out there—try to focus on is productivity.

GTD, or whatever your ‘system’ of choice, are merely tools to accomplish that which you want to achieve. When the tool becomes the focus—the only focus—then we’ve missed the mark of what GTD was intended to improve. Namely, completing work and our ability to do so. Not to give us another distraction.

And that is part of the issue here. Your system can be such a cleverly disguised distraction, a wolf dressed up in the attire of fruitfulness, beguiling us into believing that surely we’d be better suited to Tool X rather than Tool Y. Even though we spent two hours just last week moving to Tool Y. After all, if we’re working on our productivity system, surely we are in essence, being productive.

Nope. If you find yourself working on your system, rather than in your system (or better yet, your system working for you), then you probably know what I’m talking about.

How Do We Actually Get Better

We have to stop worrying about how we work and focus on the intended, desired results. And what’s really important to us.

Our tendency is to cut down on RSS feeds, social networks and applications. To simplify and reduce. “If I could just improve my discipline, I’d get so much more done.” Those things are a good start, but that only works for so long. Soon, the feed count creeps up again. Suddenly, you’ve signed up for another ten new web apps that you’ll never use after the first week.

You know what? Forget about discipline. We need to change two things: our priorities and our habits. And if our focus is as much as possible on our priorities, the habits will change all by themselves.

Priorities

There are perfectly sane folks out there who kick arse and get stuff done—and they’ve never even heard of GTD. Why is this? Because they are programmed in such a way that doing a great job is their number one priority. They take on a task, problem or project, and single-mindedly hack at it until the job is done. And done well. Sure, maybe those kinds of people could be helped by some tools or techniques that would make them more efficient. But either way, they’ll get the job done.

What are the priorities for your life? Do your goals encompass everything that is important to you? What’s more important—keeping up with the latest news or creating amazing websites? Making muxtapes or writing that book? Or better yet, ensuring you have a great, lasting relationship with your kids, your spouse, your friend(s). Whoever.

If you often struggle with the choice to catch up with what’s happening on Twitter or to catch up with what’s happening with the important people in your life—your real life—than perhaps it’s time for some reflection. If you spend more time reading about the works of other writers/developers/designers than writing/developing/designing, perhaps it’s time for some reflection.

And please don’t feel that I’m preaching. I count myself unfortunately in this camp.

Habits

Back to habits. This isn’t really something to try and change. Why don’t diets work? Because they are temporary. Change your lifestyle and the weight stays off. And you can only change your lifestyle when feeling healthy has become a higher priority than the momentary pleasure that Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger will give you.

Maybe I’m spitting in the wind here, but I feel it’s the same for our goals. The byproduct of changed priorities will be changed habits.

This recent focus on BETTER has been positive, judging by the reaction of a lot of other people. And if we can focus the blame on ourselves instead of the tools, I think we’ll be in good shape. Getting Things Done can still be an aid, rather than a distraction.

I’ll still stick with my beliefs—a focused weekly review is a powerful thing. More to follow.

Now that it’s been almost two months since the opening of the iTunes app store and all the related chaos, I’ve been thinking about the apps that I’ve purchased. I’ve most likely purchased less apps than the average iPhone user—ten to date. Interestingly, out of those ten apps, only three get any regular usage. Those three apps are Twitterific, Scrabble and Things Touch.

The app that I was most excited about when the app store was prepping for launch was Things Touch from Cultured Code. I purchased it as soon as I could access the store, even though the original release did not have the ability to sync to the desktop version. A big reason I bought the app anyways is simply because I have faith in the developers—they have proven themselves in the way they keep their customers (and potential customers) informed of what’s happening. I knew syncing was coming soon.

And true to their word, Things Touch 1.1 was released on the app store on August 19th and syncing was the main addition. Although tagging and areas of responsibility are still missing, the application is functional enough for regular usage.

Nailed It

What is good about Things Touch? One word—syncing. Long time users of .Mac can attest to how hard it can be for a company to provide bullet-proof syncing. After a week and half of usage, I have not encountered one error with a sync. It appears that this has been implemented well.

Other positives for this app include the clever methods for moving tasks from one source list to another (or from one project to another). For example, to take an existing task and have it display in the Today source list, you do the following.

Tap the star at the bottom of the screen and watch the checkbox icons change to a star shape. Then press the star icon to turn it yellow:

Press the star icon at the bottom of the screen to turn off the ‘today edit mode’ (not sure how else to describe the state of the application at this point and the Cultured Code website doesn’t give it a name). The icons return to the checkbox state, but this time shaded yellow:

This may seem like a lot of steps, but on a small form factor without a lot of space for drag-and-drop type functionality, this strikes me as good design.

Interface

The other overwhelming positive with this app is the attractive interface. This comes as no surprise—the designers at Cultured Code did such a good job with Things that I fully expected Things Touch to be aesthetically pleasing as well. And it doesn’t disappoint.

As with the desktop version, you can see that the developers put a lot of thought into the user interface. Things Touch shows the same … touch … as its predecessor.

Room for Improvement

It’s not all peaches and cream though. As good as syncing is between the desktop and your handheld device, it could be improved. I don’t actually refer to the syncing itself, but rather the initiation thereof. To initiate a sync, you must have Things open on your computer, be on the same wifi network and then open Things on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Having to be on the same network doesn’t bother me, but there are times when I head out without opening Things on the touch and it is always a few tasks off from the desktop.

The sync process is basically manual—it would be much better if it was handled automatically.

My one other complaint has nothing to do with the application itself, but more with the device. It’s too small. A lot of tasks cannot be read in their entirety because they are longer than the screen is wide. This isn’t a killer issue, but more of an annoyance.

And if you add this inconvenience to the fact that it’s easier to write something down on paper than it is to add a new task to Things using the iPhone keyboard and one thing becomes clear—the usefulness of having a copy of your task management data with you at all times may be fairly minimal. At least in this form factor.

So far, my preference has been to use whatever pocket notebook I have with me rather than my Touch.

Overall, this is one of the best apps I have tried from the app store. From a design perspective, it’s of higher quality than a lot of the other task management applications available. If you are a gadget person and prefer to capture everything on a digital device, this app is for you (and you don’t even need to have the desktop version; this app works well all on it’s own).

But from a GTD/productivity perspective, paper might fit your need just as well. Or better.

A while back, Patrick Rhone posted on Work.Life.Creativity about the idea of keeping a text file to track miscellaneous bits of information. I was intrigued by the idea, read the linked pages he had included and got thoroughly engrossed in a web induced bunny trail.

The idea is simple—keep a text file that includes any piece of information that may be useful to you in the future. Exactly what information that includes might be different from one person to the next. But most likely we’ve all had those moments when we realize we need something from the past—a phone number, a web address, a snippet of code, the date on which we emailed so-and-so, what was the change I made in that code … you get the idea.

This text file is not intended to replace more robust tools. It is not a code repository. Nor is it a CRM tool. Not even a replacement for a bookmark organizer. It’s simply a file that is easily updated, giving you a brief history of what you’ve done and includes information that you may want to have in the future.

Wouldn’t it be productivity bliss to have that information stored in an easily searchable solution? I wanted to find out, so I decided to set up my own ‘logging system’ and give it a trial.

Criteria and Intended Usage

First thing needed here is some definition. What do you want to save and how are you going to save it? Exactly what kinds of data/information are you going to stick in this file. Like any productivity tool, this will have three requirements to be successful: consistency, perseverance and ease of use.

First off, just like any application that supports tagging, you need to be consistent in your usage. If you end up putting in vastly different types of information everyday or format the text inconsistently, it becomes harder to find that one piece of info you need. Being consistent will enable you to know what expect in your file and make finding things much easier. And consistency also leads to the next requirement: perseverance.

In order to make this tool useful, it’s going to take some work. I’ve heard it said that it takes 21 days to form a habit. It will take some perseverance to make updating this log file a habit.

There will be days where hours pass and you’ve completed many tasks, but have not updated the file. To make this work, you will have to go back and add those updates and work on forcing yourself to develop the habit of updating as you go. And that leads to the third requirement: ease of use.

The easier and more simple a new tool is to use, the easier it is to add it to your existing workflow. Updating this file needs to be quick and intuitive and must not take you away from the flow, from the zone of creativity you may have entered into.

Like tools that allow quick entry of items (Things or Yojimbo for example), your setup should allow you the ability to update the file without navigating through multiple folders, opening the file and then switching back and forth between multiple applications to copy and paste various bits of text.

A simpler workflow will help this habit to form more quickly. And there are a lot of possible options to give you this simplicity.

Some Options

I can hear some people saying, “Why not just keep the file open on your desktop? Aren’t you making this more complicated than it needs to be?” Possibly. But one of the reasons I use a Mac is for the cool tools that are available. Just keeping the file open is a possible solution. But I wanted the chance to automate this a little.

When I first got into this idea there were three options that came to mind for OS X: Automator, Applescript and Quicksilver. Between those three tools, there should be a simple solution that makes this text file idea work.

And make it cool to use.

So I started with Automator … and quickly moved on. It simply doesn’t have enough options for working with different types of files (I had played with the idea of using OmniOutliner to save this file, but later decided to stick with plain text). The included work flows are limiting and at times maddening. When you expect an action to pass it’s data to the next action, and it doesn’t for no apparent reason … well, you can fiddle forever trying to guess how to sequence the actions together.

I moved on to Quicksilver. It is a proven tool for appending information to an existing text file. Very early on in my experimentation, I had tried using Quicksilver (QS) to update text items in Yojimbo. This proved to be a failure, and I was frustrated by the lack of documentation available for the application (adding new items to Yojimbo is possible with QS, but not updating existing ones).

But once I decided on a plain text file, QS was the choice for the quick entry of items into the file. Adding an update is as easy as follows:

Invoke QS | Type “.” to invoke text entry | Type your update | Tab to next pane | Type append to | Tab to next pane | Type in name of your log file.

Here is a screen shot of this action:

So after some experimenting, I decided on the combination of plain text and Quicksilver.

My Solution

All the bits of information I talked about at the beginning were to be included in my file. I think of this almost as a journal—tracking the highlights of what I’ve done each day.

As for formatting, here is an example of how the files looks:

There was one last piece of configuration I wanted to tack on. I felt like this was a good opportunity to learn some more Applescript. And, as seen above, I wanted to format the file in a way that each day was separated differently than each entry. This was a good item to automate.

So I wrote an script to do that. Here is the content of the Applescript:

It simply adds a string to my aptly named file, log.txt. And in order to have this script run automatically each day, I created an event in iCal. This event has an alarm that is set to run this script. Here are the details of the calendar event:

Each day, this task runs at 2:00 AM. If the macbook is asleep, this runs upon awakening. It appends the date to the log file, and when I’m ready to add some entries, the file is already formatted for my purposes.

With this setup, I can add to the file for days without having to open the file itself.

There are so many ways to implement this idea, but it’s the idea itself that’s important. The fellow who wrote the original article that Patrick linked to had been using his text file consistently for five years at the time of writing. When reading his post, it’s clear that this is an important tool in his arsenal.

It will be interesting to see if productivity gurus like the folks at Work.Life.Creativity will adopt this practice as well. In a time when productivity applications are in such abundance, can a simple text file compete?

Like anything GTD related, it depends on the individual.

Since the focus this week has been on reviews, there’s one more concept I’d like to mention—reviewing your system itself. Now, for a lot of us, this often isn’t necessary due to our propensity to fiddle and tweak.

But if you’re the kind of person who spends more time actually being productive than playing with your setup—or you’re a tweaker who has somehow managed to maintain discipline for some time—you will benefit from a review of your tools/buckets/lists from time to time.

That doesn’t mean you need to compare tools once again. I’m referring more to taking an inventory of you’re tools and buckets and how you’re using them.

Example: I noticed this week that I had a handful of bookmarks in Delicious that were tagged to-read. I also have a list of bookmarks and pdfs tagged to-read in Yojimbo. Do I need a list of this sort in two places? No way.

Too Many Buckets

This discovery prompted my review this week—I had started to use too many buckets to collect. The system had become less useful, because now I have to take a few moments to look in multiple locations for the same type of item. Less than efficient.

By taking an inventory of your system, you can whittle away those inefficiencies and consolidate your lists and buckets. This does not need to be time consuming or overly complicated—think of it as a tune-up or a tightening of the bolts of your system. A quick scan through all your tools to ensure everything is in it’s place and there is no duplication.

Then get back to knocking off tasks.

The Danger

Of course, if you don’t fit into the two categories of people I mentioned above, this could be too much of a temptation. If just looking at your system causes you to break out in a sweat of indecisiveness, forget everything you’ve just read.

You’re better off being slightly inefficient than agonizing once again whether or not you’ve chosen the best tools.

Simplicity is an important aspect to being productive. The purpose of this review is to make sure you haven’t complicated things over the days and months of using your system. And any good GTDer knows the benefits of regular review.

Make it a habit.

From yesterday’s rant on keeping an eye on the long term goals comes today’s nugget of wisdom: don’t be too focused on goals.

Yes, I can hear the content sighs of admiration as you let that soak in …

In all seriousness now, although that thought may appear to contradict the gist of my post yesterday, the reality is that the two can coexist. I maintain that it is indeed important to have your system (methods or work habits for those who tire of the terms GTD or system) configured so that you are able to (re)assess your “High Level” objectives.

But at the same time, balance is needed. I’ve mentioned this idea before; we can get so caught up in our productivity kung-fu that we neglect to give proper attention to those things that deserve it the most—our loved ones, friends and family.

As a Christian, I know that I’m called to a life a sacrifice, putting the needs of others before my own. That’s hard to do if I’ve constantly got my nose buried in my pig-pog or hipster PDA. And no matter who you are or what you believe, it’s pretty rare to find people who live out joyful, fulfilling lives while completely ignoring the needs of those around them.

And really, if you’ve done a good job of planning at 40,000 and 50,000 feet, a lot of your goals will be much more relationship focused than the lower levels anyways—the lower level projects and tasks should be items that push you towards achieving those higher level objectives.

Back to what I said at the top about focusing too much on goals—it’s actually the tasks that tend to keep our attention. But goals and relationships go hand in hand.

So keep one eye on the task list and the other on the the good folks you’ve surrounded yourself with. The rest is just bacon.

It was eye opening for me to see another person’s take on productivity where the long term goals are consistently in focus. And the fact that he has his system configured to ensure those goals are reviewed frequently is intriguing.

Why do this? Rands nailed it here:

After a solid decade of rampant task management, I realized I needed to augment tasks with a system that would strategically guide and remind me that my job was not to do things, but to remember the interesting words in my title: manager, engineering, and products. That’s what I do.

Now he’s going from his perspective as a development manager—but the concept he touches on can be applied to us all. A productivity system is should be more than a list of tasks. GTD is supposed to be about creating an environment that allows you, no, ensures that you are progressing towards meeting your goals. And does so in a manner that is as stress free as possible.

“But Chris”, I hear you say, “this is all common sense. Do we need ‘a system’ to remind us of our goals?” Apparently so. I know I do, and from what I see from a whole lot of other people, I’m not alone in this.

Now I’m not saying we all need to make trickle lists and wander the hallways looking for random conversations. To me, that sounds like what I do when I’m running from the tasks I don’t like. But maybe for you, this is exactly what you need. In the end, the tool doesn’t matter, so long as you put into place a method to ensure you are taking a regular review of your long term goals.

Why are you in your current job? Why do you spend 4 hours every weekend weeding your garden? Why read one word from the Oxford English dictionary every night before bed? If any of those tasks are helping you meet a goal you have for your life, than good. But if not, perhaps you need to stop doing these things and take back that time.

Get Up Over 20,000 Feet

Readers of this site know I believe that a consistent weekly review is a powerful thing. But in GTD terms, the weekly review only takes you to 20,000 feet. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, here’s how David Allen breaks it down:

• 50,000 feet: Life
• 40,000 feet: Three to five year visions
• 30,000 feet: One to two year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: Current projects
• Runway: Current actions (tasks)

It’s so easy to get immersed in the first 20,000 feet. Updating task lists, reviewing your areas of responsibility, completing tasks—these are all good things.

But it’s vital that we take the time to get our heads out of the sand and remember why we added certain projects to our system in the first place. If you don’t, you can work away completing tasks and feeling productive and suddenly two years have passed and the goals you had set out to accomplish are no longer important to you.

With my impending six month experiment coming closer, I know I need to review what I want to do when I grow up—what are my goals, not just for my career, but what are my goals for my life for the next five years.

And moving forward, this type of review needs to be more regular. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll implement this, but be sure I’ve added it as a task on my list …

I’ve long had a love for crisp, new office supplies and a good notebook was king amongst the common rabble of sticky pads and pen holders. The notebook has been an essential piece of my office setup ever since I got into the IT business.

But once my journeys through the far flung Internets brought me to the world of graphic and web design, as well as GTD, one notebook has dominated them all—Moleskine. Touted by pundits everywhere, they seem to be the paper tool of choice for people in the know.

And as I’ve been swept up in the current trend amongst productivity gurus to go back to paper, I’ve wanted to get first hand experience with some of the more popular brands of notebooks. Moleskine, Levenger, Rhodia—they will all be getting a trial here at the TWR head offices.

So I purchased my first batch of Moleskines recently: 1 squared notebook, 1 Squared pocket notebook and 1 squared soft cover pocket notebook. The intention was to use the pocket notebooks in the same manner as I’ve used my Field Notes—mostly to be used when out running errands or away from the desk. My current Field Notes in usage still has a lot of room left, so the pocket notebooks are still waiting for testing.

But the squared notebook was put to use immediately. It would get a run as my main notebook, always present when in front of a computer, at work and at home.

My first impression was … meh. The Moleskine is pricier than a lot of the notebooks I’ve used in the past, so in my mind it should be noticeably better in many ways. At first glance it was not.

But after two weeks of use, I’ve come around. The notebook is proving to be of better than average quality and one can understand why this brand is so popular. Here are a few of the things I really like:

• Paper—similar to Field Notes, the paper is good quality and stands up to rugged use. It’s thread-bound and doesn’t feel like it’s about to tear off.
• Rounded corners—Not sure exactly why I like this, but it looks good. It also most likely keeps the corners of the pages from getting bent.
• Cover—I like the harder cover. It gives the notebook a good feel and keeps it in better shape when lugged around with all the other junk in my backpack.
• Elastic Closure—used to keep the book closed when not in use, this gives a feel of security as well. Plus it looks cool (look at me, I’m wicked smart).

Here’s a shot of my daily usage, implementing Bill Westerman’s notebook technique with a few moderations.

I’m pleased with this purchase. It has been a joy to use, especially with the right writing tool (my favorite so far has been a uniball Signo RT 0.38). During the day, I look forward to opportunities to write something down—the same feeling I have for my favorite software. It’s worth the higher price when compared with the more common products that vendors such as Blueline or Mead have to offer.

I can see why the Moleskine brand has gotten such a sterling reputation.

If there is a weakness in my practice of GTD, a chink in the armor if you will, it’s in the collect workflow, or capture.

Most often, I’m great with email, paper, and thoughts in my head. I’ve always got something on hand to write things down—my Field Notes, Moleskine or iPod Touch. When small tasks or random notes achieve recognition in the tangled mess that is my caffeine dependent consciousness, I write it down.

But those few times when I don’t have something to write on or what’s going on in my head is too big to write down, I need another tool to capture that perceived ‘brilliance’. For example, I went for a run on Monday. My runs are usually around 10-15 Kms, so I have a good bit of time to think. And of course, there are times when I’ve written a fairly good blog post by the time I’m done. It would be great to have a tool where I could capture all the key points that are formed during this time.

My first thought here is to use Jott. But support for Jott in Canada is still a bit weak. And because I live in a rural setting (read: middle of nowhere), from what I understand, it could be costly to use anyways.

So I’m looking for help. Do any of you know of a good web app that might fit this need? Something I can access from my cell phone at any time. Or how about recording devices. Are there really good personal voice recorders TWR readers might recommend?

If you’ve got any tips, drop me a line. Thanks in advance.

I recently purchased a new application for my iPod Touch—Pennies by Austin Sarner.

I’ve been waiting patiently for Cultured Code to update Things for the iPhone/Touch to include syncing with the desktop version. And although I’ve been enjoying working with pen and paper for day to day tasks, I’m excited to have a copy of my full master task list with me at all times on my Touch.

But I’ve also been keeping an eye out for other ways to make my Touch more useful. And I think Pennies may be a good option. It’s a small budgeting app for the Touch platform that focuses on the interface and ease of use.

As with anything Mr. Sarner produces, Pennies looks very sharp. Here are a few screens:

However, this does not appear to be a full fledged budgeting application. There are some restricting limitations. For example, in the small amount of time I’ve played with the app, I could not find a way to add new categories of expenses.

What makes more sense to me is to use this app as a tool to capture all the little expenses that I incur when out and about. These ‘little’ expenses surely add up, and I think summarizing with this application will be revealing. It should be a handy tool to add to my current budgeting setup.

Although my initial use of this application was limited to three or four files, Google Docs has grown on me over the past couple of months. I’ve moved more and more documents online now and use it for everything from budgeting to tracking the trades in my fantasy football league.

Of course, being a web application, accessibility is part of the usefulness—I can get to my documents from any computer. But there is more to this app. For an online offering, it has been designed in a way that is reminiscent of a desktop application, offering a familiar feel to the user.

I’ve been mulling over whether or not Google Docs could be used as part of a GTD setup. After some thought, I think it can fit the needs of two GTD tools.

Research/Information Management

Whether you use paper or an electronic tool, there is always a need to hold on to pieces of information. Sometimes that information is used for active projects and sometimes it’s kept for some potential future purpose. With GTD, the idea is to have a trusted filing system where that information can be easily accessed at any time.

I currently use Yojimbo in my setup, but I think Google Docs would be another solid option.

The prime reason for this is the use of tagging. Now, on a first look, it doesn’t look like Google Docs uses tags. Rather, it employs the more traditional file folder structure. And this is true—Google Docs uses folders and for folks who prefer this hierarchical structure, they can file away to their content.

But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that Google Docs uses folders the way GMail uses labels. Which is to say that they both make use of the concept of tagging. Documents can be added to multiple folders at once, the same as applying tags in applications like Yojimbo, Together or Evernote.

Here is the dialogue where you have two options: 1) you can move the document(s) to a different folder, essentially removing one label/tag and adding another, or 2) Add the document(s) to another folder, in essence adding a second label/tag.

And here is how the document is shown to belong to two ‘folders‘.

For whatever reason, the interface has been designed in such a way that it’s not immediately obvious that your docs are taggable. But once you get used to working with the menus, you can start to organize your files in a structure that fits your system.

Folders can be created for each project you have. And documents can be added to those folders and even shared across multiple folders.

Task Management

This is another need where you could possibly use Google Docs. By using the tagging folders in conjunction with saved searches, you could manage all your tasks in similar fashion to other applications of this type.

It’s not the easiest setup for creating tasks, but if you want an online that’s free, try the following:

Creating Tasks

Create a new document and write the name of your task. This will be the name of your document as well. Then, add some kind of special character combo that you would rarely use in an actual document—I use °T. Next, save and close your new document.

Creating a Task List

Once you’ve created several tasks, enter your special character combo into the search field and hit return. You should now see a list of the documents that contain your special ‘code‘. That’s it—you’ve created a task list.

Now, any good GTD setup gives you the ability to quickly look at all your tasks—even on pen and paper. So you would not want to enter a search every time you needed to see your list. That’s where the saved searches in Google Docs is helpful.

These saved searches are the same as a smart folder in Finder in OS X or Mail.app. Click on the link titled, “Show Search Options” and enter in your criteria. Save the search and give it a descriptive name.

Now when you look at your source list (sidebar), there is an expendable Saved Searches option. I gave my saved search the name Tasks. See below:

Deleting Tasks

When you start knocking off tasks, simply return to your list, check them off and hit the delete button.

It would be simple from here to create folders (again, tags) for each project. You could create all the task documents you needed and assign various characters to them. °T for tasks, °NA for next actions, °C for @computer if you use contexts etc. Tasks could be added to these various project folders and then you could create saved searches to pull your different types of tasks together.

It wouldn’t take much to set up Google Docs to be almost as robust as a lot of full blown task management applications. Creating tasks is not as simple as some other tools, since you are essentially creating new documents. But aside from that, the benefits of a free, searchable and taggable application are tempting.

You could use Google Docs to meet both these needs listed above—it could easily handle your reference information as well as your tasks.

Throw in Fluid or Prism for SSB and Google Gears for offline access and you’ve got a quality tool to help you be productive.