102. Choosing Your GTD Tool

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from Vital Learning. I am, as always, Morten Røvik, and as always, I'm here with my super duper, very good friend Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Privet, Lars.

Lars: Privet, good friend Morten Røvik. Good to see you as As always, and happy to be with our listeners and viewers out there. We always start off with a quick reminder of the purpose of this podcast, which is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. If you're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to the episodes 1 through 6, the audio versions that are available there, to get an introduction to the basics of GTD, the 5 steps. Today's episode number is number 102. And today's episode is about choosing your GTD tool.

Morten: Exactly. And by GTD tool, what do we mean, Lars?

Lars: Well, in this case, it is referring to the list manager. So we were discussing, so trying to walk through the different pros and cons, trying to make an episode to support people in choosing the right tool. Perhaps they are new to GTD and would like to find out what would work for them, or they have a lot of experience and perhaps they want to consider whether a new tool would would be helpful for them to look into.

Morten: Exactly. And we will at some later point come back to calendars and reference material tools for that. So stay tuned. That is called a cliffhanger, I think, or just a tease. I don't know.

Lars: Something like that. People cannot wait.

Morten: No, I know. I know. No. Today's episode is also inspired by a conversation I have had with Thomas from the US. Thomas is an author of books, and he has recently migrated from OmniFocus to Apple Reminders, and he likes that a lot. But we've been discussing different tools that might be interesting for him, and I thought this might be a good episode to talk about generally what should you look for in a tool and what could be things you might want to consider when choosing one. So I just want to show this briefly on the video for those of you— this is in Norwegian. This is a— I'm showing a sheet of paper which will be a link, a linked PDF for how you can choose a tool, and it is a tool comparison sheet where you can understand, you know, is it PC compatible, Mac, web-based, or is there a free version that you can try. And we will just try and walk through some of these options so that you can, can help you to choose the tool that's maybe correct for you. So Lars, what do you have on— I think you made a little shortlist for yourself, or didn't you?

Lars: No. Well, just, you know, to just reflect on what you just said with the different tools. I did a speech, a GTD speech for a Danish clothing company last week. And as always, the attendees were really curious. Hey, let me see a GTD system. What does it look like? What does it look like? And, you know, We could talk about that, but it really is just so different. And that is why we have this episode, right? Because there is no right tool for everyone. There is no right way to do it for everyone. So it's, I think it's one of the challenges with GTD is to figure out what works well for you. And that's, you know, hopefully this episode will help you reflect on what could work well for you. But no, I don't have a specific shorthand. Like you said, we have the nice list from the PDF. That we have with our work with Crucial Learning. So perhaps we could use that as a starting point to walk through and just, you know, where we're most familiar with them, you know, share our awareness and experiences with the different tools.

Morten: I think that might— maybe it's a good idea that we start with a kind of a little disclaimer that we normally would do when we talk about tools is that A fool with a tool is still a fool. Just a little reminder. Just because of this idea, it is of course important that you understand the Getting Things Done methodology good enough so that you can build a system anywhere, really. If you don't understand exactly what you are doing with any tool, you will get varying results. And one of the things I've seen many, many times that GTDers who start out with a clean Getting Things Done by the book system over time may migrate into something that's not Getting Things Done. And there is nothing wrong with that. But know that the Getting Things Done methodology for building up your lists is based on 30 years of research. You might vary on that, of course, make your own system within the, let me call it, the framework of Getting Things Done. But know that if you diverge from that, you can get totally different results. Have you seen this, Lars, with people that their system evolved away from Getting Things Done?

Lars: Oh, yeah. That happens all the time. So, they, you know, we can tend to overcomplicate things if the tool allows us. I think there is sort of this, this balance between the process and awareness of GTD and then the tool and what the tool allows and what it supports. And I find that that's actually one of the things that has been most, probably most interesting for me in the last 6 months is to notice that shift in how I think about GTD, how I use it, how the different tools with the functionality that is available on the different platforms, how that affects my way of working in GCD. So that can be for good or bad, I think, you know, we can really make it, make it a lot more complicated for ourselves. And we can also make it a lot, lot easier. And if, you know, I think there were some things that I was made aware of when I made the shift from Todoist to Reminders, some things that I could, could do differently. And I think adding, adding notes, the notes application to that also opened up some new, new thing, ways of thinking similar to when I started using MindNode for mind maps. And well, wow, that actually does make a difference for me when I, when I draw this out visually as opposed to just making a list in a Word document or whatever.

Morten: Yeah, sure. And one of the things that I want to stress before we get into the tools part is that don't overcomplicate the things. We've both, Lars and I, been on a long journey on simplifying our Getting Things Done system and practice. And it is less is often more. Have the, you know, a lot of GTDers, they, with all due respect, all Microsoft engineers, but I just want to tell something is that as a long-term Microsoft user of, for instance, Outlook for so many years, I found that Microsoft engineers has a tendency of just, oh, that's a feature, let's put that in. And then, oh, this is also something that could be beneficial, let's put that in. And then you have a You know, and a software has all the bells and whistles you can ever wish for, but you can't find it. It's visually cluttered and difficult to find. And I know that this is something Microsoft has worked a lot on, but I'm more in getting things done land, more of the Steve Jobs, what can we take away from this without it breaking its core, you know, ways of doing things.

Lars: So that's my— No, and I totally agree. Yeah, but it's really a challenge because I, I had that. Microsoft has been the, the best example of that with the Word functionality and the ribbons and the buttons and the— I mean, it was crazy. But I'm starting to see that elsewhere. I mean, that's part of what, what, um, why I left Todoist, because they're just so adding so many features. And it's great if you were just missing that feature, but it's just so much. Um, and I'm worried that the same will, will happen. Google is I think somewhat okay still when it comes to tasks. But if you look at Google Maps versus Apple Maps, there's so much information in Google Maps. Apple Maps is still easier for me to work with, but it's also getting worse. And I'm really concerned with the reminders as well, that they will continue to add features and it'll blow up.

Morten: They already have started that path.

Lars: Yeah, that's one I'm concerned as well.

Morten: Then back to a fool with a tool is still a fool. Know what's a good best practice of getting things done and use that as basis for your practice and practice within a tool. One of the things that Thomas, which I mentioned before, was concerned about is that there is a new version of OmniFocus coming out somewhere, I think maybe this year. I don't remember what he said. And is it going to be less complicated? I don't know. Well, let's see. Or worse. It is a, how do you sell a software to someone and making sure that they stay interested and are willing to pay for your upgrades or your subscription model if you don't add something differently? I would put that on, you know, turn it upside down, take away things to make it easy for me to use. But yeah, but not all are GTDers that use these list managers, and that some of them do, it's easy to understand that they are not. So okay, enough pre-talk, let's go, let's talk tools. So, so where would you like to start, Lars?

Lars: Well, maybe we can start at the top with the— because Microsoft Outlook is the first application on that list, and I think that is, at least in Denmark, the most commonly used list manager when it comes to in-house seminars, because in Denmark we have a really, you know, a lot of companies are using Microsoft as their sort of a base platform. So it's really a tool that we use a lot to get people set up on. It's available everywhere. It has a nice app, especially the To-Do app. So it's been— I don't know what your experience is, Morten, but it's been a very So really fragmented with regards to what version that people are on right now, and there's a pretty big shift in how Microsoft To Do is actually integrated into Outlook. So I see that in, you know, different places, different companies, how quickly they migrate to newer versions and what is available there. But taking a step back, as an overall application, Outlook is great. It's a very nice, simple list manager, the web version, and then the version that you might already have in Outlook, or Or perhaps not. It's the old version from Wunderlist for those of you who remember that from back in the day. Great software, nice and simple, very comparable to Apple Reminders and other basic list managers. Not that much flexibility with regards to folders and subfolders. And really, if you need that kind of, yeah, exactly. For good or bad, right? So I always try to push that as a positive. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, so definitely a good place to start, and then especially the integration between mail, the calendar app, the to-do app, that kind of integration where you can actually grab that mail and put it on your lists. It's actually a very nice implementation right now with the new version of Outlook, I think. What's your take?

Morten: Well, I like Microsoft To Do, and we teach people how to use this, so I have, you know, hands-on experience for a long time. And what I would like to stress is that the Microsoft development team has created a roadmap, and this is going to scare a lot of you. So grab on to someone you hold near and dear, because now there's a scaring little piece of information there. They have said very clearly that we will not continue development of Outlook as a desktop version program after— well, this was maybe 3 months ago, so 2 years, 2 years and 3 months. They said 2 and a half years when I read this the first time. So that might scare some of you because you love your Outlook. But, and what is instead? It will be the Outlook 3, you know, the— what's it? I'm confused. In Microsoft 365 is the new word. Word for this, or the, the online version, what's that called? Not sure, it has Office 365 or something. I think it's called Microsoft 365, but any, anyway, the, the web version of Outlook is going to be developed and continued, and that is still a very simple tool, but that has the 95% of what you need in your everyday life, and what's the 5% will come later if it is not there, I think.. And one of the things I would highly recommend people is that you— and this is my suggestion if you are going to go down that route— is to use— if you use Chrome as your base browser for browsing the web, and then use Edge if you have, if you have a PC, or then maybe Safari, and you know, you make a dedicated communication browser. That's a good idea. Safari and Chrome could be a combination where you are operating on the Edge as your Outlook calendar, mail, and to-do. These three could live there, and that's what I suggest that you look at. And you can also even in Edge, you can pin it to the taskbar so it looks like an app like you're normally used to. If you have your, you know, the muscle memory goes to the the Outlook icon, it can still be an Outlook icon on your taskbar in your PC. The reason I'm saying this is because it's going to be the future-proof system that's not going to fail you in the future when Microsoft starts to give Outlook desktop version and the older desktop version less love. That might be something you can consider. It has some additional functionality when it is in the browser. For instance, you can open the to-do as click on the My Day icon in the toolbar, and then you can drag and drop emails from your inbox or preferably your archive. You archive and then drag from archive to the My Day sidebar, and then you can create a task of that an extraction out of that email if that's what you want. And then you don't have to— you can get very easily become an inbox zero hero. So, and it creates a link back to that email inside the task, which is you can't do as far as I know directly in the desktop version. Have you— that's not changed, has it?

Lars: You've seen this? No, I think that still works fine. That was always the challenge with this transition phase that And, you know, the Outlook was migrating towards To Do, but not really. And then if you were in the, the app on Windows, for example, the link would work okay. If you were then in the web, it wouldn't. But then if you made it on the web, it would link to the web and then you wouldn't open in Microsoft. It was just, you know, messy in that transition phase. There's probably no better way that they could have done it. I'm sure they did the best possible way, but it's just, it was messy in that period. So for those who are now at the at the Outlook version where they see the icons on the top left as opposed to on the bottom left, so on the left-hand side of the screen, then they should be in a better place.

Morten: Yeah, so, but the integration is, you know, that we talked about Apple Reminders. I'm sure we will return to that in a moment, but the Apple Reminders are, or is, very close to To Do.. And it has some of the same functionality, like hashtags works not exactly the same, but has some of the same functionality. And it is easy to create a simple list system in there that's on your phone, it's on your tablets, on your wherever you are, PC, Mac, anywhere. So, so that's Microsoft To Do, and we can go and have a quick look, I think, if you feel we've exhausted To-Do now, have a look at Outlook Tasks, which is the precursor or the old cousin or something of To-Do. So, if I understand correctly, this is, it's a long time since I worked with the Tasks version, and there are setup guides out there for Getting Things Done. If you're in the US, you can look at gettingthingsdone.com and find the store, and you can download a Tasks setup guide that will help you set up Tasks. If you are on an older Exchange server, that's probably your only solution to have integration with your Tasks and your— what's that called— your email. So you can create, you can copy a task into an email to have access to it after the fact. And, but to-do is a little, you know, sorry, tasks is a little old-ish, but it is an alternative. And there are ways of structuring that with the setup guide. What is your recommendation about tasks? Do you have any ideas how to use that?

Lars: Have you used for a number of times. You know, back in my consulting days, we would always, you know, go out to a client and we would get client laptops, and that would be a Windows PC with Outlook pre-installed. So used Outlook Tasks as my list manager for a number of times, and it's certainly good. I think, you know, almost anyone that I come across today are now on the To-Do version, but certainly if you are on Tasks, it works fine. You can create your lists. I think really, if you're not— yeah, what I'm trying to say is that visually, the old Tasks version, I mean, the UI didn't change for 15 years. I think it was really the same as in 2007. It was really that, you know, I remember it from, you know, working with it back then. So, but Tasks work fine. And you can create your quick steps in Outlook to integrate easily emails over into your Tasks list. And, you know, all that stuff worked. Really well. So, so tasks can certainly work fine in Outlook.

Morten: Absolutely. Do you know if, have you looked through the setup guide from David Allen Company for tasks lately to see if any of the things that you mentioned now, like the quick steps, are there?

Lars: I don't know off the top of my head. But I wouldn't, you know, the big change that I remember from back in the day, and you probably do too, whether when we went from using categories as lists to using the actual folders as lists, because that also lines up with how To Do handles it. Yeah, I think that was sort of the biggest change.

Morten: Yeah, and the idea is also that if your company has an older Exchange server where you only have Outlook and Outlook Tasks, you don't have To Do yet, when they at some point in the future migrate to Office 365 version of Exchange, then you will have that. In your system already, it will be part of your, you know, tasks will then become to-do automatically. They migrate. So when you're ready, you can then just go there. So, yeah. So on the list that we have is Apple Reminders, which is there and near to our heart. Are you ready to move there, Lars? Happy to. Yeah. One of the things that I really love about Apple Reminders is the tight integration to the Apple ecosystem of apps. And also the integration with Siri, which makes it a lot easier to create tasks for your inbox fast and easy. But I am now remembering that I showed my system to some poor new GTDer who saw my system. I was kind of like blown away with the complexity that I built it up. It is simple as a GTD system, but it has a lot of folders and a lot of, you know, the way a GTD system can work if you're a seasoned GTDer and used it for a long time. But start simple. Just really start simple. That's what I want to give you. And try and figure out how to use Siri. That would be my second suggestion for capturing things, but also for location-based reminders or time-based reminders, which is gold. And you can also have Bluetooth-connected reminders, which is if I get in the car, I need to— I want to be notified about this. So if I know that there is gasoline prices down today, and I want to know that if I get into my car, I want to buy gasoline today, then that's a way of getting that reminder when I start the car and my phone connects to the Bluetooth, I will get that notification. So, and I also like the simplicity, sorry, the simplicity of the ecosystem, which is that you can use, if you're on a Mac, you can use hashtags on almost anything. And if you do a Spotlight search, which is the Command+Space command that you can use— touch Command+Space and you will have a little search field— and if you search then for your hashtag, which is then your— preferably your desired outcome name has a hashtag in it, then everything related to that will be in one search, no matter where it is on your computer. So if you, for instance, have hashtag refurb cottage, then refurb cottage hashtag will return every search result that has that in it. So that might be an idea for.

Lars: You to look into. Yeah. So I've set it up. But, you know, overall, if we take a step back, it's which platform should you choose? I mean, that's also part of the starting question, right? And for us, since we are both on on Macs. We did our tools walkthrough episode not too long ago, so won't reiterate that. But it's really, you know, it makes sense for us because we are, at least it's a good option for us because we are Mac-based, both of us. Absolutely use the location-based stuff for getting into the car, getting out of the car. I know there will be a location-based trigger when I approach my home today because there is a package waiting for me that I need to go and pick up. I don't know what time I will leave the office, but I know that as I'm driving there, there will be a notification. And I most likely won't need to actually see the notification. I will just be reminded that, yep, that buzzing in my pocket, that means that I have to go get that package. But otherwise, yeah, I'm happy with the reminders now, happy with the simple structure. Again, if I were on Windows, I would definitely use Microsoft To Do because so much of the functionality is identical with regards to the structures you can make. The fields that are available, parameters, attributes that are available for anything that you, that you add there. I still manage without the hashtags and the searching across everything. Again, part of my transition here was to really simplify and going from Todoist where I had a pretty complex setup to now a much more, more simple structure, which works fine for me now. Again, I think we spoke about this in the year tools episode as well, that it might be different in 6 months. Who knows, right?. But for now, I really, I have the system that fits the complexity that I, of how I want to experience these things. So I have my nice simple list now, really made it my own. I have my own groups. I have my own lists. I have none of the standard ones at the top with today and completed and all of those are gone. And I only have the ones that I have created myself with custom filters. And, you know, so I did nerd a bit, but I think coming back to what what we related to what we spoke about earlier, we are, you know, very sensitive to what we see and what we don't see. So with regards to the complexity of the tools and how they keep adding features, so making these simple little tweaks, stupid little example, I was really annoyed with the today view because I have that, I use that, I have 6 things on my list today that I need to get done. If I add a time to it, it's because I want to be reminded at specific times. So I don't want to see it on that list. By default Apple adds that to the list. So I had to create my own smart list and add that to pin that to the top. So now I only see the ones that I hold there and not time specific because I'll, I'll be reminded about them separately. So little things like that. So that's why Apple Reminders still works, works well for me now that I can go in and, and make it my, my own. But yeah, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, especially like you said, the integration across Mail, across Notes, across Yeah, everything basically. It really is helpful. I noticed this yesterday. I had a coaching client who had done the same transition as I did. So he was on Todoist, overwhelmed, a lot to do, switched to Outlook. I'm still— sorry, switched to Reminders. Still a lot to do, but much easier to work with. Just more natural to work with. I think that would be the best way for me to describe it, that even though this was a new tool for him, It was just natural for him to, oh, I'll drag that email, I'll put it here, I'll add that tag, I will create this list. All of that just came, came more natural to him than I remember seeing in using Todoist. So certainly people using Todoist and familiar with it from, you know, for a long time, they'll be, you know, very used to the way of working, but it just, it was easy to see that it was just, yeah, natural to, to work with the, the list and.

Morten: The system that way. Yeah. And as with all this system, the list that you create, make sure that they are compliant to the Getting Things Done thinking that is going to be, or the framework. I highly recommend that. And don't be Microsoft, be Apple. Take away whatever you can take away without the system crumbling, because it's the system in itself is not, it's the results the system yields for you. What you need to focus on. And a lot of people go into the productivity pornography trap, which is create a system that's so complex that you use more time to fiddle with your system than doing the real work. So don't do that.

Lars: Okay. Okay.

Morten: Ready to move on? I know I've, I've not, I've used Evernote before as my Getting Things Done system, but Evernote and OneNote are you know, two flavors of the same thing. It's like an everything bucket, as there used to be the Evernote slogan, I think, at some point. And therein lies also the problem, at least for me, because you are, you have the OneNote is very good for note-taking and, you know, creating structures and books and within books. And the same is with Evernote. And I remember one of the things that like hit me, kissed me on the forehead and said, duh, Morten, you are mixing up actionable items with non-actionable items. And that's my biggest fear with OneNote and Evernote is that that's a possibility because then you see things you need to do something about together with things you don't have to do something about. And that in itself is problematic. But you've used OneNote for your GTD system for a long time, haven't you?

Lars: Or before? Yeah.

Morten: So, yeah.

Lars: So, take on OneNote. I would guess that, let's say, 2012 to 2017, I think for like 5 years, it was actually my list manager.

Morten: Wow.

Lars: Sounds crazy to just say that because it really, it, It was, you know, again, great because, yeah, it's like the everything system. You can do everything in there. You can make your list. You can even integrate with Outlook tasks, at least back then. You could, you know, set up your list. You could draw on the side of it. I had my Surface and a pen in there. I don't know if it was back then actually, but there was so much flexibility, add PDFs, add images. Links and everything. But it also required so much more maintaining. So again, I had a pretty nice system, I think, with regards to having an inbox set up. That's also, I think, one of the challenges that I see with both Evernote and OneNote is that there will be a tendency to mix capturing with your lists. So really having a clear separation between those two is critical. So having a good inbox, that worked fine for me. Having a section for my next actions list, also worked fine. It's nice and easy to, to add to it, nice and easy to have the links also between different notebooks. So if I had, you know, different checklists, for example, I have my weekly review checklist. I still, still have that actually in OneNote today. That works very fine with— I have a yearly checklist as well that every month I want to check in on. So I have a link in my weekly review checklist to that yearly checklist. So I still use that frequently, that would be then on a monthly basis. So happy with that. I was happy with my projects list. I had my, actually all of my horizons of focus in there as well as lists back at that time. So the key, it worked well for me, nice and easy to make lists, but the maintenance of it and the complexity that it sneaks out of you because you just start to make things more complex, or at least I did. So having those lists and checking things off, and I, at some point, at least there was a phase I remember where it was really nice to, I would check things off as I made them, you know, completed different actions and would write new ones. And then as part of my weekly review, I would go in and clean out. So I would say that all the done ones, I would move them down. And that was sort of a nice reflection on, hey, I got some stuff done this week. But for the most part, it was more of a, it was more work than the satisfaction it gave me to actually So overall, I think for some people, for the right people, it can actually be a good system because it also, you know, can help you slow down a bit. So I think overall OneNote, yeah, I still use it, like I said, for my weekly review checklist. We use it for reference, which we will talk about in another episode.

Morten: I'm quite happy with it. And just make sure that you don't mix reference and actionable items. Together in one. Yeah, because I remember that was one of my, you know, one of the things that really helped me when I understood what I was doing and kind of like the moment and cleaned that up. So, um, should we move on to Google Tasks maybe?

Lars: Yeah, unless there are any differences from your perspective when it comes to Evernote, uh, because we, yeah, they will be like you said, close, closely related. I don't know if there was a different experience there.

Morten: Well, I've stopped using Evernote a long time ago, but what I remember from that experience is that you can create tasks, you can create lists, you can create books where you can nest them and create a GTD structure, but it has then where you can, you know, take things off. But it isn't as fluent for getting things done. Things, sorry, Getting Things Done methodology as it is, for instance, with Microsoft To Do or OmniFocus or any of the other tools. When you mark something off, it disappears. It just, it will then stay there on that list as I remember it. So it is, have a look. If you like it, use it. Just don't mix actionable, non-actionable.

Lars: Okay. All right. Well, the next one on the list.

Morten: I know you're familiar with the good old OmniFocus? Yeah, well, okay, so OmniFocus is a tool created by the Omni Group, which was my go-to tool for so many years since version 0.9, I think, something like this. And it is a really good GTD tool. The only negative side that it has the potential of creating a system that becomes a monster. There's a lot of functionality there where you can create perspectives, it's called, where you can have specific views of what you need to see when you need to see it. And for me, I spent so much time trying to understand how that worked. And I used, you know, looked at a lot of YouTube videos, it becomes a bit of productivity pornography for me personally. And, you know, it's taking time to understand your system. I have a personal interest in that, also as a professional one, because we teach these tools to people. So we have to know them. And it became a bloated animal that I decided to just slaughter at some point. I'm not the the system in itself, but the content got bloated and my system got too complex. Now I have to just have to restart everything. And it is a really good getting things done system. It has location-based reminders. One of the things I really like is that you can have lists that will activate when you are in a specific location. We only have location-based tasks in Apple Reminders. That is, if I make a reminder for I have to buy this when I get to this shop, it will not remind me of all the other that has the same. You can make, for instance, a context called at the mall and make that when I get to the mall, I want that to show up on my phone with all the lists that OmniFocus can do for you. So I really like that feature. Yeah. And it is a really good tool. So have a look at it. But beware, don't make it more complex than you need to. And, you know, keep it simple. That's my best. So, so have you, have you looked.

Lars: At it before, Lars? Yeah, very little. But the user interface is something that I really struggle with. I won't necessarily describe it how I've previously described it, but let's just say that the user interface never, never clicked. It clicked for me. But I've always been, you know, the structure I could pretty much, you know, recreate into Todoist. But especially the deferred dates, the deferred dates was always the thing for me. That's like, ah, wow, that looks good. Because exactly, I'm just the type of person where the someday maybes, for me, many of them I will want as a date-specific reminder in the future. Instead, I don't need to see them there. I just need to put them on a separate list But then that's where the deferred dates were really, really cool. So it would hide it from you until a specific date that you would have then entered, if I understood the functionality correctly. And that was always sort of, wow, that looks good, because basically I think almost all other tools will have a due date. They all have that, but that deferred date, hide it from me until X date. That did sound that did sound interesting. So I was always very drawn to that. And, you know, I know so many GTDers that are really, really happy with Todoist. They really like it. Worth noticing that, you know, this is noted as not having a PC app, only a Mac app. I don't know if that might then change with the future version or if it's still there or they will switch.

Morten: To web as well. If I understand correctly, this is going to be It is, well, I don't know what the future will bring, but they have had a simplified web app before that doesn't have all the bells and whistles. And it's more like a way to get, the way it came across to me, it's a simplified way of, if you're on a PC, you can, for instance, say that I need to do something about this link here, or I have a link to an email here. I need to do something about that email later. So let me just capture that so I can get back to it when I can. So, and it doesn't have all the bells and whistles. So yeah, exactly. Okay. Moving on to Google Tasks, maybe.

Lars: Yeah. Have you played around with that? Very little. We've done it a couple of times where we have had in-house seminars for companies on the Google Suite. So we have, I've been working with that over time. No apps for Windows or for Mac. But has, you know, as you are probably expecting from Google, a very excellent version available on the web side of things. So again, very simple list manager, very simple structures that you can create easily to very nicely integrated with email. That was one of the things that I actually considered switching to because we are on the Google Suite in Vital Learning and might actually make sense to use Google Tasks to manage all of this. And from what I worked with, where you can go in and create your simple lists, add the things. Again, very comparable back to Reminders and To Do. I think a bit less functionality compared to the two, but that may have changed since I last tried. But worked very well. And again, I think the email integration and the simplicity was key for me. I think, again, coming back to your— I think we're back to personal preference here with regards to— so if I had— if I were on— I could choose a Windows PC or a or I could have the web version. So I could in theory use both Todoist and Reminders and Google Tasks. I think I would miss that standalone app to have them separately. I did try out and there were some different things available last time I tried again. These things update really quickly, so that may have changed since last time. But it seemed to be sort of you would live in email and then you would have the tasks, or you could have a separate view, but it would always be sort of a a part of another view. And I like to, you know, to keep the simplest of lists. So I missed that part of the functionality. But certainly if you're in the Google environment, if you have an Android phone, I think there are apps available for that, right? So it might work well for you, similar to how you and I use it when it comes to reminders.

Morten: Well, I have taught people how to use Google Tasks before, or Google Reminders that is called somewhere. And it has an app for all the places that you need to be, but the PC and the Mac, they don't have standalone apps, at least last time I checked. And one of the things that you might want to consider using using your PC. If you're on PC, you would use it inside Chrome, for instance, and then you will just have this little sidebar that comes up. That is your whole system. But there are available some plugins that will create a full-screen version of your Google Tasks, so it looks a little bit more like a, you know, regular task manager or a list manager. And so that is a possibility you might want to look into. My biggest gripe is that it doesn't have that full-screen, or not full-screen, but, you know, full-scale app. It's just a sidebar where you can't see the structure at the same time as you see the tasks. You should be able to see your list of next actions at the same time you look at your, your desired outcomes, or at.

Lars: Least I think so. So that might actually be a feature for me that you would only see that. I've actually started to play around with, with that more and more also with when it comes, for example, the mail app on the iPad, right? If you resize the window now, you can make it that small that it only shows one email. So I only look at that one thing and then I can swipe and respond and all that, then the next one. Shows up. So I might actually consider that a feature. But no, and also perhaps worth mentioning, like we spoke about in the pre-show, that the macOS Sonoma feature where you can have these web apps, and I know you've, I think you've been able to do that for a while on Windows, so you could actually consider that if you combine the two to have actually a standalone app on your Mac or PC.

Morten: Yeah, so for those of you who got, what did he say now? Well, there's a new feature of Safari under Sonoma, which means that you can create an app of a website. So it's a standalone app that you can call as an app, and it looks like, like if you use— we— I use Google Calendar. I think you do too, Loris, for this, and some other apps that we use, or some often frequently used websites that we use. You can use that, so you have a standalone for this, and it it makes sense. You can then open it as an app.

Lars: And again, coming back to what you said about Outlook development, this is, this.

Morten: Is where we're heading. Yeah, it is, it is. The future is on the web, and the, the, our internet is faster and faster, and the, the servers are faster and faster, which means that they can serve a lot of information in a short span of time, span of time, and it makes it a lot easier to use your your browser as a full-scale app because it's actually faster than working— and the idea here is that if you access a server on Outlook inside your Outlook app, desktop app on your PC, you will access the server from that. It will go and pick the email and put it in your Outlook, and then if you send one, it will send from your Outlook via the server, which means that there is one— if you take away that, that's to shorten the distance between the server who served the information and the user, then it's faster. It's just the way it is. So like, if you ever try to delete a lot of emails or archive a lot of emails from Outlook desktop version, you know that it takes a lot of time because your server has to say, yes, I take that email, I put it there, yes, yes, yes, acknowledging I've done this and now give me the rest. And that acknowledgement and say yes, give me the next, this is taking a lot of time. So working directly on the server is a lot better. So okay, the next on the list is Google Keep, and I don't have a lot of things to say to that, but it is kind of like a notes app. It's not a GTD system. You can build something that looks like a GTD system, but it's for the people who are in G Suite or someone somewhere else. Do you have anything to say about Google Keep, Lars?

Lars: Well, I think, you know, looking down the list here, I think Espen, I think, used to be, so in Norway, used to be on Evernote I seem to remember Martin as well had some experience with it in Sweden, but perhaps not as a full system. Google Keep, I seem to remember Jukka in Finland demonstrating a GTD system there. But like you said, it's more comparable to the Notes app on the Mac as well. It seems to be more related to actually making notes. But you could create a pretty cool system. I seem to remember that from what Jukka demonstrated back then, creating these different notes And as you would expect from Google, the search functionality is extremely good. So you could do your links between your projects and next actions, have related support material with that same tag, have reference material with that same tag. So that seemed to work very well. One thing that I also remember from Jukka's demonstration on Google Keep back then was the ability to assign notes to people. So he would have a checklist. We are going skiing. This is the checklist that we all have. And his kids were old enough that he would then assign it to them, right? So instead of packing everything, as I might be doing, or my wife might be doing, uh, when we were going skiing, um, he would just assign it in Google Keep. So, um, it was pretty cool. I did play around with it again as part of working with a client on this, and it has some fun features in there. Again, The UI for me with the Post-it notes just doesn't appeal to me as a GTD system. It was challenging for me to see. I know there were different views out there that you could then change to make it look like a list. But for me, it's sort of more lend itself to be a really cool reference system. So perhaps that's probably more where I would use it. That being said, I think this episode must be the one where we will get the most comments. Comments. I can imagine every time we talk about a tool and there's someone out there using that tool, no, you can use it for this and this. So happy to— I'll look forward to all the comments and all the things that we might have gotten wrong in this episode.

Morten: Morten and Lars are getting things wrong. Yes, that happens. So if we made some mistakes or said something that you said, oh no, this is correct, go to either Lars or my YouTube page and make comments there so that we can rectify it a little bit of time and give us— give our— you are absolutely correct. We stand corrected. So if you make some— and you will find the links to the YouTube channels in the, what do you call it, the podcast show notes. Thank you.

Lars: Okay, should we move on to something that you use? Let's switch to To-Do-It. Yes, which I will do in Australian. No, To-Do-It was my app of choice for a long time. So I think there was a time originally when I would be switching between— so for like 10 years, I think I would have parts of my system on Outlook as part of consulting assignments. My first system was on Remember the Milk, then I was on OneNote, and then I was on Todoist, and now I'm on Reminders. That's sort of the overall journey that.

Morten: I've been on with regards to systems.

Lars: Like a tools gypsy. Well, it's 15 years now, so I think it's, I've made some switches over the years and yeah, Todoist was really great for the longest time. It was cross-platform, so that's nice that it has a PC app, has a Mac app, and nice on the website as well. Really well made. And you could also almost argue that the website for the most part would be sufficient for most people. There were some integrations with drag and drop and hotkeys and things like that that would only be available in the app, but otherwise the web version was really fantastic and really well built, very solid. Has a lot of the functionality that you would expect from a list manager, and a lot of the terminology in there aligns with GTD as well. So you would have the inbox at the top, you would have the projects below. There were some date-specific things that will automatically show up. You could organize a lot, perhaps too much, with regards to creating projects and sub-projects and sub-sub-projects. And within those projects, you could create next actions or tasks and subtasks and sub-subtasks and sub-sub— there were really, you know, a lot of layers, 9 layers at some point. I think if we— now my blood pressure rises. Yeah, exactly. So, um, so, so it's, um, again, when you need that kind of complexity and the organizational capabilities, so, you know, if you need that in your GCD system list manager, then something like Todoist is a great option. And it's, you know, they continue development, continue adding features for good or bad, as we've spoken about. I, you know, it's pretty impressive what the tool is able to do now with the different Kanban boards, how you can work with teams, how you can assign tasks. There's so much you can do in there that I'm, you know, sometimes I miss. There is, you know, and the user interface is nice still. I still think it's nice. There's just so much that I don't need. So that is, I think, the sort of overall reason why I would make the switch to.

Morten: A more simple system. I've been, you know, dabbling around with Todoist, playing around with it. I'm not using it as a GTD system, but I have a couple of clients that have been using Todoist on the PC and use the Outlook plugin. And that was a bit flaky at some point. Is it still flaky? Do you know?

Lars: Do you have any news? They recognized that themselves and they made a completely new one from scratch, but I never saw it working well. It was also limited in functionality. So the integration, for example, with Gmail was part of the reason why I was so happy with it as well, because when you have Gmail, you have the Chrome plugin. There are two different ones, one for one for capturing, one for integration with email. The one with email was really, really good. You know, so it would take your email, it would— you could convert it into next actions with the right shortcuts, you could put it on the right list with the right tags. Very, very good. And it used to have a good functional free version, and it says that in the tools matrix as well. For those of you who will look at the PDF, it— I would perhaps argue that is not so much the case anymore. They made a switch with regards to what is available in the free version. And I think unless they've changed it since I looked, you're going to create 5 projects. So for most GTDers out there, that you will have more than 5 projects. Right. So, so, so it, but again, it's, I think for the functionality that you get, it's very cheap. So, so Todoist would, would certainly still be high on my list with regards.

Morten: To recommendations on GCD systems. Yeah. I just want to pause there for a second and talk about cost. Is that what is the cost of your peace of mind? You know, is it worth a beer or two a month? I said yes, probably for most of you, you can have more calm with a good list manager than two beers a month. So, Don't be, don't be, what you call it, what is the word? Sorry, cheap or, yeah, yeah, don't be cheap. If you find a tool that you like, it will help you. It might be that you can get away with the free version, but if it costs money, pay for that and feel the calm and zen-like feeling comes when you have your getting things system up and running well and without too many problems. So, okay, should we move on to— we are running a little out of time. We're going to have a record-long episode here.

Lars: So maybe— well, I think we will be quicker on the remaining ones. I think it made sense to spend a bit more time on the, on the top one because those are more common. And again, keep those comments coming because I know there are a lot of specialized GTD tools out there that I'm sure many of the listeners that we normally have listening will recognize. No, I think the next one on the list is Remember the Milk, and I already mentioned that I used to use that. I love that it's still out there, that it's on the list. It was the first thing that I came across back then. Again, very simple list manager, very solid, nice clean interface. Was very happy with that. Still exists with regards to both having apps on Windows, on Mac. There's a web version as well. Yeah. So it's been a while since I looked at it, but back then used to work with it all the time. Used to print it when I did my weekly review. That's how short the lists were. Yeah. No, Remember the Milk worked really well.

Morten: For me back then. And I have no idea how it works because I never put my hands on it. So moving on. Something I have had my hands on, but that's a long time ago, is Things. Things used to be very GTD-like, and now they're, they're widening their, like OmniFocus did call contexts, context for the longest time. Now they call it, I think, tags, if I'm not wrong. And I think they've done the same with Things. Do you have any hands-on on that lately?

Lars: I don't remember, no, but I do have, I have seen it a couple of times with coaching clients who have worked with Things. Seems to be really nice. And that would have been, you know, I probably would have chosen that if Reminders was not an option. And the reason I would probably go for Reminders was to keep it as simple as possible, be very familiar with the tool that is available. For anyone who has an iPhone. So if that was not my sort of primary goal, if I were not using, you know, teaching GCD, I might have gone for Things because that UI looks really, really nice, looks very appealing also from a functionality perspective. So perhaps that would have been a good option for me, again, also because.

Morten: This is a Mac-specific product. It is, and I'm looking at the web page now. Let me just change the view so I can see me and you can see me. No, it has some functionality that I like. One of the things that I'm not sure I would like to have is that it looks like you, when you do projects, you have a little icon that shows you the progress of the project. That would probably just stress me. When I mean that, like, they have a little ring that's, you know, like a clock that's more or less filled. And I would prefer not to see that because then they, well, then it takes a step away from getting things done because it's, you are going to do Getting Things Done and the desired outcomes, you should have one task per project, which means that you will be, when you finish that last, you will fill that ring and it kind of defeats the purpose of that, you know, ring. So, okay. But check it out. It looks, it looks, it's visually appealing. It's nice. It's a nice looking list manager. Moving on to Nirvana for GTD.

Lars: Do you have anything to say about that? Well, no, I think that we talked about things— Nirvana, next one on the list is Workflowy. I think they sort of come in the same category for me. Nirvana stands out for me as well. I know, know some chain GTDers that use this as well and are very happy with it because that would also be one of the things that I would be considering things in Nirvana. Would probably be the two main candidates if Reminders was not on the table. The key thing I remember Nirvana from was that I went back when we had the GTD Summit in Amsterdam. I was on a, on a boat the day before it started with a number of different people, really fun group of people, and one of them was, was the founder of Nirvana. So don't have much to add about the tool itself, but the guy behind it was just the nicest person that I ever met. So that is how much.

Morten: I know about it. I've not looked at it at all in depth, neither with Workflowy.

Lars: Do you have something to say about it? I have, because we at the summer.

Morten: Camp this year, we looked at Workflowy. Yeah, we looked at it, but we didn't go in depth. So our coaching, official coaching client on stage showed us his workflow system. And yeah, but Lars, are you ready.

Lars: To look at Any.do? Yeah, I think Any.do also, I've been a while since I've worked with that. So, so not too familiar with that. I think I would would be next on my list would be Trello.

Morten: I don't know how much you've worked with Any.do. Not at all. Any.do, I haven't touched it. So, so sorry, guys. But Trello, I have touched Trello. We did some workshop for a big client of ours where we did, you know, we did do the seminar and then we do a half day of setting up and using your tool workshop where you take everything you captured and get it into your system and then learning how to use the system with the teaching and coaching one-on-one. And Trello has a really good, you know, it's a board type of list manager. You can look it up if you want to have a free version, if I'm not mistaken. And so you can look at it and It is possible to build a GTD system there. It's not very difficult, but what is difficult is that it has a lot of functionality outside of Getting Things Done that might make things a bit problematic for you, like due dates and other such things. But it is a functional Getting Things Done system. Possible to, you know, to build a good GTD system in there. And I've also looked at, I don't know if you, you anything to add, Lars, on Trello?

Lars: Yeah, I think no, the Trello, you know, we, we, um, again, Jukka, I remember from Finland using it. I know some Danish is using it as well. I'm also integration with other applications, um, that, that work well with Trello. For myself, I haven't used it as a GTD system. I've used it a number of times when working with, you know, people in my network to help them get an overview of things because it seems to have just an appealing, you know, that you can drag and drop things and you have the different board. It's sort of more touchy that you did. It seems, at least for the people that I've worked with, they have really appreciated that kind of user interface and you can— well, this is not done, this is done, this is in progress, that kind of simple overview. And you can share them, you can work with people. That has seemed to work well for some people. So again, I know some Danish GCDers that really like it as a GCD system.

Morten: So yeah, that can certainly work. And it is really beautiful, especially if it could be— it could work really well for you if you're part of a lean/Scrum Scrum-based, you know, team, the company, department way of looking at things because it has those boards that you can drag and drop things and it's very visual. And, you know, not doing, doing, and done is possible to do. So you can show people where you are at. You can share the different boards there with others so they can follow your your progress. So, Asana is the next on our list, and I've looked at that many years ago, and I looked at it and I think, wow, they did a good job. And then they went the Microsoft route and I go, okay, this is getting too complicated for me. And I'm, I'm now a man of a certain age, but I've been into IT for the longest time. I love technology, and I learned fairly fast technology. So when I looked at Asana, it was like my mind started fuming because it wasn't intuitive for me. So I gave it up.

Lars: Where are you at Asana? No, I was very excited when, when it came out, also their, their mission. And I thought it was really, you know, it could look like this was the GTD tool way of working with others. Yeah, so that's what I thought, and I tend to put it in the same category with monday.com, that it is sort of a more of a collaboration tool than a personal productivity tool. So that's, again, I was really happy with that. I actually played around and set up my own GTD system in there for a very short while because, like you, it seemed to be more leaning towards collaborating with others, and for purpose, I think it would be probably great, a great option. But for a GTD system, that's— yeah, I think there's someone comes to mind, I don't remember who, but someone does use Asana that I know at least for GTD.

Morten: So it can certainly be done. Okay, moving on to Nozbe. And I remember Nozbe from the early days, one of the first Task Managers that I've looked at. And it's, I think it's a small team driven by a guy called Michael. I think he's Polish. And he is, if I'm, he was dedicated to getting things done at some point, but then he decided he will not be constrained like a lot of others do, constrained by the GTD framework and went, you know, a little wider, which is good and bad at the same time. But I have not used it in many years. I know some people who used it a lot of years ago and was very happy with it. I don't know, do you have anything.

Lars: To say about Nozbe? No, I also just remember it from discussing it at the GCD Summit, but also not much more than that. I know that the people that use it as a GCD system are very happy with it. But that's, that's about the extent of my experience with it. And the same goes for the, for the last application on our list, the To Do, the number 2 and the letters D-O.

Morten: Also not something that I've worked a lot with. No, I've worked with To Do with a client before coaching a client. So I had to learn the tool and that is a tool that is not created to be a GTD tool and it's It is fairly finicky to get it to work as a Getting Things Done tool. Unfortunately, it has some base functionality, but if you want to create like context lists and connect them with your projects, that is a little finicky. I remember working with that for a long time and it didn't work very well. And if it gets too finicky, you're, at least my client forgot how to use it. And then I came back and said, hey, it doesn't work like We thought it should be. Oh yeah, because I don't remember how I'm going to do that. So I created a little video for him that he can see over and over again until he gets it inside his, you know, into habits and becoming routine. So it is possible, but it is a little finicky. There is a way to do it, especially the connection between the desired outcomes and the next actions, if you want to separate them and which GTD methodology asks you to do because it thinks it is the best way of doing things. Yeah. Anything to add on the number 2.

Lars: The, the, the O, to do? No, I think that's, that's about it. Yeah. I, you know, it's, it's fun to, to walk through the list and again, really invite people to comment on your YouTube channel or on mine, wherever they prefer. Because I can only imagine that there will be some listeners that Any.do is the best application. And right, we'll head on over to the comments, go in there and sell it, outline why people should try that or how you would recommend that to people. Absolutely share the different comments and reflections that you have.

Morten: We're looking forward to reading them. Yeah, we will read them and we will reference your comments in a future episode if you write something that's not, oh, you guys suck. Then we will not refer. But if you give us an explanation why you think we are wrong, please do, and, uh, and we will reference that in a future episode. Yeah, good. Um, I think we have done the list. We are going to have this list in the, in the show notes, uh, so you can download the list and have it, um, if you'd like, and as a companion to when we walk through all the You know, this is probably the longest episode ever. We are closing 1 hour and 10 minutes. So hey guys, sorry, it was a long episode, a lot of software to cover.

Lars: Um, will you take us out, Lars? Happy to. Um, as always with the last part of the show, just a quick reminder of the GTD Summer Camp. Um, we just 2 days ago had the first sign-up from Asia as well, from Hong Kong. So we will now have attendees from 4 continents. So it's, it, yeah, it's just so cool. And, uh, I shared it with the organizing group and they were all, you know, so happy to and excited to see that. So, um, GCD Summer Camp 2024, June 15th to 16th in Denmark. Um, gcdsummercamp.com, click on over there, redirects you to the Danish Vital Learning website, read more about the program. That's also where you sign up and.

Morten: Yeah, we hope to see you there. We do. And it is Denmark at that time of year is beautiful. And if you ever want to go to Denmark, this is a good excuse and it's very affordable. Just 2,400 Danish.

Lars: Kroner and should cover you. It makes sense for 25% of our audience. This number will make sense and for.

Morten: The rest they have to go. Yeah. Then 2,400. DANISH KRONE. Go into your, your currency app or just type it into Google and ask how much is 2,400 DANISH KRONE in your currency.

Lars: You will have that. Yeah, they will.

Morten: The other thing, but it is affordable and it is without profit, with non-profit.

Lars: So, okay, Norris, the other thing. So that was gttsummercamp.com. Yep, click that already. You went there, you have looked through, perhaps signed up. Thank you. Next website to go to: vitallearning.eu, because that is where you'll find all of the different information about our different offerings, links to the country websites. Head on over there, learn more about GTD, Crucial Conversations, etc. If you're outside the Nordics, plus then cruciallearning.com is the place to go to.

Morten: Find your local partners. Indeed. And if you'd like to rate us somewhere in YouTube or your podcast listener, please do. It helps the discoverability of the podcast, and at the same time, um, you tell people that you appreciate what we do, and, um, we appreciate that. So thank you. So, uh, normally I would end like I normally will end, which is thank you for listening, and until next time, stay safe and stay productive. Bye-bye. Favorito.