OK, so you’ve adopted some GTD best practices at the office. Maybe you have a core organizational system set up on your work computer, and it serves you well when you’re at your desk. You can capture, clarify and organize the inputs in the office, whether they’re emails, social media posts, random creative thoughts, or notes from your last meeting. Your system reminds you when you want to be reminded about the things that need doing and your supporting reference material is close at hand. All is well.
And then you leave the office.
How much of your productive world can you take with you? Can you be just as productive when you’re on the move?
Here’s a framework for evaluating your mobile GTD practice. Let’s see which belt you’ve achieved:
If you’re a Mobile White Belt, then you’re always able to capture* mental inputs as you make your way around. When those random ideas occur to you, you have physical ways to grab them. “Don’t forget to talk to the boss about holiday plans.” Maybe you carry a small paper pad around with you to capture such ideas.
Mobile Orange Belts move beyond the White Belts, and are in a position to capture and read digital inputs. When those random ideas occur to you, maybe you use your smartphone to send yourself an email. You can scan your incoming email, texts, and social posts to see what’s new, and you can respond to anything urgent.
At the next level, you’re a Mobile Blue Belt. In addition to the above, you have access to your action reminder lists when you’re out and about. Have 10 minutes free before that next meeting with the client? You can review your calls list to see how you might put that time to productive use. Getting ready for a phone call with the boss? You have access to your Agendas list that reminds you what you want to discuss with her.
If you’re a Mobile Red Belt, you can clarify and organize digital, mental and physical inputs into your system. An email arrives that you need to discuss with a colleague? You can easily create a “talk to colleague” reminder for that. You’re reviewing the notes from the last meeting and you’re reminded that the client has promised to send you the signed contract. Without breaking sweat you can create a Waiting For reminder so you can track that.
At Mobile Black Belt level, your productive world has no boundaries. All of the above is child’s play, and you have access to your complete system in mobile form. Want to review the project plan for the rollout project? You’ve got it. Want to do a brainstorm for the budget and store the results as project support material? No problem. Want to do a Weekly Review on your next flight? Piece of cake.
Can you be as productive as you want to be, no matter where you are?
*Those of you who have been around the GTD game for a while may be wondering why I’ve referred here to “clarifying” instead of “processing”, and “capturing” instead of “collecting”. With the new edition of the Getting Things Done, which was released in the Spring, the names of the five phases of the workflow model are new. Instead of Collect-Process-Organize-Review-Do, we now have Capture-Clarify-Organize-Reflect-Engage. What happens in each phase hasn’t changed, but David Allen has developed the new names to better reflect what we do in each one.
Good advice, thanks. I’m round about orange belt myself, looking to move closer to red, or even black. Are there any digital tools or services that you’d particularly recommend for integration with a desktop-based system?
Hi Darren – thanks for your note. I’m glad the post resonated with you – my goal was to give people a way to judge their mobile working practices, as that seems to be an issue with more and more people as the apps proliferate and the mobile devices before more powerful. . Re: other digital tools – what are you using currently? It’s best if I know your starting point so I don’t recommend something unhelpful.
Hi Todd – Thanks for replying. I use Evernote (mobile and desktop) for the capture phase, but it’s not so great for clarifying. A few updates ago they broke the usability of their tag and tag folders functionality – removing the option to multiple-select before drag-and-drop, for instance – which I find makes it awkward to use if you want to assign contexts, switch between Action / Waiting For and so forth, all of which has to be either tag or folder-based. (Unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible.)
I was just wondering whether you know of a tool or service that takes David Allen’s base GTD system and faithfully applies the principles as described, rather than trying to expand and be all things to all users, GTD and non-GTD alike?
Hi again Darren – every tool you use for GTD has its tradeoffs, I’m afraid. Mostly we find people can use whatever tool they use for email and calendar (Outlook, mostly, in corporate environments) as the primary place to keep lists, and for most that works very well. If you’re a Mac guy, then Omnifocus is a great tool, built for GTD from the ground up.
Cheers Todd – I’m a PC/Android man myself and tend to shun Outlook. I’ll carry on wrangling Evernote for now, hopefully they’ll re-fix their functionality in a future update.
Hi Darren,
I too am in the PC/Android ecosystem and here’s what works for me in the absence of a perfect tool:
I use the Evernote-Todoist combination to help me with getting things done.
1. I have an Evernote widget on my home screen. So every time I need to capture a thought , I just open it and type it out in a blank note.
2. Then, when I am ready to “process” or “clarify” it, I go over it, allow myself some time to come up with a set of next actions. I have a project in Todoist called “GTD”. Every thought captured in EN becomes a new sub-project under GTD and the “next actions” become project tasks. While entering tasks in Todoist, I add more details like notes, attachments, external references and so on.
So far, this has worked well for me. At times it is a little tedious in the absence of a deep linking between the two apps, but I guess that is something we android users will have to put up with until Marshmallow graces our devices.
Let me know your thoughts.
PS: I don’t use EN tags a lot. I honestly think Tags in EN are overrated.
Cheers Guarav, that’s very much appreciated. I actually have ‘check out Todoist’ on my next action list for this week, so you’ve given me added impetus there. And I might be able to suggest a method to speed up the linking between EN and Todoist. Are you familiar with IFTTT.com? It’s an online service that links and automates functionality between other online services, and they have a whole bunch of ‘recpies’ for linking EN + Td here: https://ifttt.com/recipes/search?q=evernote+todoist – or of course, you can create your own. I’ll be taking a proper look later in the week, all being well.
(Also: EN fixed their tag selection functionality at some point since my last comment, so that’s actually usable again now.)
I guess I’m a black belt. Being familiar with GTD, that’s an easy-to-reach belt with Iqtell app.