[[2026 Cafe Posts]] Oh God [[Mint|Mint’s]] talking about productivity [[Why I’m Always Talking About Productivity|again]]. I think I get a pass given it’s the start of a new year, though, right? Anyways, I like to check in and see how I’m doing when it comes to what I’m trying to get done now and then, and re-tune as needed. I used to take changing strategies as a sign of weakness, but now I know my [[ADHD]] ass needs to do it every now and then if I catch myself slipping. And I have as of late. Specifically I think I’ve found the root of my struggles, which is that I have a ton of trouble getting tasks *started*. Once I get rolling it’s not too bad, but it’s that starting that continues to be the death of me. I’ve come to realize that this happens because my task list is so nebulous that it becomes daunting. What does “Get Syncthing” even mean? Where do I begin with something like that. Even if it made sense in the moment, it’s completely unactionable. So I look at it briefly, feel my brain overheat and go “I’ll do this next week,” over and over again until I eventually die. To fix that, over the past week I’ve been hacking together my own little system that’s “Getting Things Done (GTD)” adjacent, but not the whole system, because I think productivity systems are bad if you try to use them as they are. I don’t like being sold to, and I don’t think it’s effective to assume what works for the person who wrote it will work for you (especially if they’re trying to sell it to you). Here’s how I do it all, using [[Todoist]] as the base. # Sections I have six buckets and about eight labels that I keep track of. ![[Breaking Things Down and Getting Things Done-1768770304567.png]] ## Projects ### Inbox The minute I think of something I need to do, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I quick add it to my inbox. On my computer I have a [[Raycast]] shortcut to do this as quickly as possible, and on my [[Thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy Fold 6|phone]] I have the **Todoist** widget, letting me do the same thing. This part is key because my brain immediately starts to overheat with all the things I need to do and will randomly remember. It’s not just “work” either. Anything from cutting my own nails to a movie I want to watch goes here. The inbox is where things will get processed later. This is likely the part closest to the traditional GTD method. ### Areas of Life Pretty self-explanatory. I have My Personal box of tasks, Work, and my Creative endeavors. Each of these areas of life has three sections in **Todoist**: - **One-Offs**: Things that are quick and don’t have multiple steps attached - **Projects**: long-term work that has multiple steps to complete. More on that later - **Repeats**: anything that happens on a cadence. Examples would be medicine I need to take, bills that need to get paid on specific days, processing I need to do, etc. ### Weekly Review This is probably overkill for some people, but I have a 22 step weekly review that helps me make sure I’m progressing in all the areas of life I mentioned above, and one more I’m about to mention below. The summary of it is: - Processing my digital inboxes, like my email, raindrop, unread messages, uncreated links in Obsidian, etc. - Cleaning my desk - Reviewing next actions, which I’ll get back to, my projects, upcoming calendar items, my waiting list, etc. - Reviewing how my week went Again, probably overkill for the average person. But I’m not average. I’m a genetic freak, and I’m not normal. ### Someday / Maybe This last list is for when I think of something I want to do, but might not fit into my life at this particular moment. New projects I’ve come up with, skills I want to learn, places I want to go, etc. These get reviewed in the weekly review I do, to see if they can fit into my life in this moment of time. If they’re on this list for longer than three months, I reexamine whether I’m actually interested in doing whatever I’ve listed, and remove them if the answer is no. ## Labels Every task I add has labels attached to it. These are especially useful because of filtering in **Todoist**. ![[Breaking Things Down and Getting Things Done-1768770459603.png]] ### Next The most important label. It’s added to whatever the next step is in a particular project. It almost operates like a bookmark to help me ramp back up into a project if I’m getting back to it, or start up a new one. ### Size I have “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large” labels for each task as well. These are a quick way to see how long it’ll take me to do a specific task. Small tasks are an hour or less, Medium is 1-2 hours, and Large tasks 2 hours or longer. ### Waiting This tag is where I keep my “follow up with X person” tasks. The artist that hasn’t updated me on a commission, the coworker that needs to give me their review, stuff like that. ### Location Lastly, I have location labels. Things like “Computer,” “Phone,” “Home,” and “Outside” tell me where I can / need to do a specific task. Coupled with the Size labels, I’m able to quickly figure out what I can do based on where I am and my energy levels. Now let me go over how I put this all together in an average day. # Process In the morning I go through my daily task review. First I go through my Inbox. Anything in it that would take less than five minutes, I do then and there. Things that don’t have a heavy cognitive load are easy for my brain to handle, so this is a good rule of thumb for me. ![[Breaking Things Down and Getting Things Done-1768770717088.png]] Anything in the inbox that doesn’t fit that bill gets expanded into a project. I take two minutes to open the task up and add as much context as I can into the description. Then I create a bunch of very hyper-specific subtasks going over every single thing I need to do to get the project done. I add a “Next” label to the first action that needs to be performed once I start that project. Then I move it into the Project section of whatever Area of Life it belongs to. ![[Breaking Things Down and Getting Things Done-1768770593648.png]] Finally, I go to my Filtered Lists. The main one is the “Next” filter, which collects any tasks that have a Next label attached to it. But I can filter even further to all my Next tasks at Work, or at my computer, or for my blog, and so on. All depending on where I’m at or what day it is or if I’m too tired to even get out of bed. I pick a task from this filtered list, and get started. Again, these tasks now all have very hyper-specific instructions, meaning my brain doesn’t have to spend any time thinking about *what* I might need to do, so I can focus on the *act* of doing it. At that point I can usually rip through a project from start to end. But if I need to stop, I just make sure to label the next highly-detailed subtask in the project with “Next,” to bookmark my progress for when I get back to it. ## Time This system has less of an emphasis on time, but that’s purposeful. If something’s time sensitive I’ll add a reminder or a priority tag to it, but it’s not worth it for me to try and time block like I used to. For starters, most of what I have to do on any given day, doesn’t have to be done at a specific time. So saying I’ll do XYZ from 10-11AM is a worthless, arbitrary limit that just serves to give me anxiety. If I miss a block of time because I’m doing something else, my brain decides I’m a failure, or that I can just push it off to another day. But if I had just listed it as a task to be done, I’d get to it once I was done with whatever I was doing. Plus, the daily and weekly reviews keep me on top of stuff anyways. But that sums the whole thing up. I find this system works quite well for me because I wear so many hats. At my job that’s true, because you know, I keep taking on the work of people who get laid off…but even outside of that, it’s true too. I write, make music, take care of a household, run two online communities, want to start a YouTube channel, [[Just a Guy Online|etc. etc.]] This system makes my brain not fray and overheat when I have to context switch. I can stay grounded because I can look at my detailed lists within their frameworks, and do something, instead of shut down, panic, and rewatch a YouTube video I’ve already seen 100 times. I don’t write all this to imply that my system is the end-all be all, obviously. But I hope it’s helpful to someone with a brain like mine. Feel free to pick out the parts you like and skip over or change the stuff you don’t.