56. Tools Check-In 2021

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from GTD Nordic. I am, as always, Morten Røvik. I haven't changed name and I'm still here with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Jan Dobry, Lars.

Lars: Hi Morten, glad to hear that this is still your name and great to be here. And as always, looking forward to recording another episode. With you. If you have not listened to this podcast before, we record them to support you in learning GTD or becoming even better GTDers, so you can experience the benefits of GTD. And we, as always, hope that you find these episodes really valuable regardless of how experienced you are with GTD. And if you'd like a refresher or learn more about the basics of GTD, we recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 of this podcast.

Morten: We do. Today's episode we've dubbed the Tools Check-in 2021, where we will be discussing if we change some tools we are using, maybe, you know, elaborate a little on how we use our tools. So for those of you who are curious about what Lars and I do, we will be having some insights in that. But before we get there, we decided we will do a little insights in stats for the podcast. Because when we started out a little more than 2 years ago, isn't it? We decided, we thought it would be, this would be a Nordic podcast first and foremost. But our stats show us differently.

Lars: Indeed.

Morten: Indeed. So last episode we told you we passed 150,000 downloads on SoundCloud alone, and we do not have any idea what it is everywhere else because we don't think that's counted towards SoundCloud.

Lars: Some of it comes from SoundCloud as well, so they pull from there as well. So there will be some combination of those numbers, but yeah, it crossed 150,000.

Morten: So yeah, which is— and, uh, but Lars, can you take us through the, the top 10 countries that we are popular and give us an idea?

Lars: Yeah, so we just pulled from the, from the last 30 days and, and US is, the United States is certainly on top of that list. Second is Denmark. So yay, all the Danish listeners out there.

Morten: And Norway, you need to get a grip.

Lars: Norway came in fourth in this, in these last 30 days. I think Norway is second or third when we go look at the all-time stats. But for the last 30 days, the UK actually came in third, then Norway fourth. Germany 5th, Canada 6th, Spain number 7, Australia number 8, Sweden number 9, and Isle of Man number 10. So I'm guessing that there might be some kind of ISP location thing going on here with Isle of Man.

Morten: Isle of Man, go, go, go.

Lars: I just checked and they have the last population count was at 83,000 people. So Considering that number of people, I think that's a— we have a lot of GTDers in the Isle of Man.

Morten: Or just a few very enthusiastic ones who are downloading our backlog, which is, by the way, something you should consider if you're subscribing to this podcast and haven't heard through our backlog. Maybe you will go and cherry-pick what you think is interesting there, because there is some— what we hear from people who are looking at, you know, listening to our podcast is that the backlog has a lot of valuable stuff in it.

Lars: So, and I do actually see that on the stats as well. So when we do check, there is actually a significant number of different downloads going on at any given time. It's obviously the new ones are more popular, and obviously the first ones, as we always recommend them to, to go back and listen to them for people who want a refresher or an introduction. But, but we still do see that, you know, people download all different kinds of episodes depending on the season. We have the half-year route, we have vacation-related ones, we have different ones that will be probably helpful to go back and listen to at different points in time. So yeah, for sure, if you haven't listened since the beginning, then go back and have a look and see what you might find of value in there.

Morten: Indeed. And today's episode, Tools Checking 2021, I'm going to cover, I'm going to, you know, as it might be that we will diverge and I will tell something else in addition to this, but I've been I'm thinking I will talk about my journey from Evernote towards Devonthink, from OmniFocus towards Pipedrive, from Braintoss to Reminders. Do you have any— what is your tools change that's happened?

Lars: My highlights are really more of sort of an overall what do I actually use. So when I drafted the notes for.

Morten: This— So you haven't changed your tools.

Lars: In— When I look through the list, you know, very little has changed. I have changed my email client recently. I think it's more of a case where I have started to use some tools more than I did previously. So I think that's more the change that has happened in the last year for me. So that's what you can expect from my end.

Morten: Okay, so if I said you will go first, what will you choose to talk about? And we can go wherever it's Yeah, sure.

Lars: So where I would start is probably with capturing. So what do I actually use for capturing? And I think this is really interesting when we look at this also in the Level 1 seminars. For those of you who have participated or were considering doing this in your country, we walk through this exercise just to run through. So what tools exist in your life where stuff shows up that you might need to deal with? And we have a long list of things where you can check off. So what where those things show up in your life. And it's often a significant list, as we've mentioned before on this, on this episode. I think the key tools for me right now is, well, a good place to start would be the notepad on my table. When I'm at the office, I really still do like writing things down. When stuff shows up before we started here, yep, Morten just showed his. I will show the same one here as well. Same, same one that I use here in in Denmark with my notes on here as well. So really still do like that. I have my inbox next to me. And obviously, that's a key tool as well. I have my inbox at home. I have my Read In folder, which is just an inbox on the go. And I still use the Capture Wallet as well for stuff that shows up in a context where it makes sense for me to use that. So quick plug, capturewallet.com. Go in there if you don't know what I'm talking about. That's where you can find and buy that. So I certainly still use that in the context where it makes sense, where I don't want to bring out my phone. Let's say we are at a— I have some business network meetings, for example, where stuff shows up. It's frowned upon, let's put it that way, to bring out your phone in that kind of context. It looks like you're doing something completely different. So to have the ability to capture things there, because cool stuff often shows up in that context. So I need to have a capture tool that is not invasive in any way to the context that I'm in. And in some cases, the capture Wallet is the perfect tool for that. So that's the physical version, physical side of things. If I should just quickly run through the digital ones as well. Primarily, I use Todoist as my list manager. So that means obviously my inbox in Todoist is a key one for me. Then I use Memos a lot. So the Memos app on your phone, on your watch, on your desktop, whatever it might be, just a standard one from, from Apple.

Morten: What are the memos? The Notes app?

Lars: No, memos. So recording, voice recording. So actually, just this morning before we were recording this, we're recording this at 9:00, as part of my morning procedure, I will open my different inboxes to just clean them out if I feel that's the right thing to do at that time. And there were 8, 9 things, I think, that I had captured. So these days I'm driving a lot and a lot of stuff shows up on the road. So I often use the the Memos app to record those kinds of things. And really like that, actually. I'm right now reading through as part of the preparation, the pre-work that we are both doing right now for the Level 3 certification, for the Level 3 seminars that we'll be delivering. Part of the activities there is to reread Making It All Work. And I was just listening this morning to David where he mentioned— so I'm listening to it as an audiobook— and he mentioned that if he is situated at any place for more than 15 minutes where there's a flat surface nearby, he will bring out pen and paper. So, he has that ready just, you know, that there's no friction. And for me, the Memos app really demonstrates that. It's not that I have to, you know, find some paper, start to write in my ugly handwriting, and it's more complex than I can really express in writing. It's so nice that I can just, you know, speak my mind and capture it in that way. So, big fan of the Memos app.

Morten: Then, I would like to ask you, because we have an alternative that I've been using for a long time called Braintoss. I think you've never got along to use that, but why would you use the memos or the recording app versus—.

Lars: For me, I had— Yes, go ahead.

Morten: No, I just— versus the Braintoss. What's the pros, what's the cons?

Lars: And people would, GTDers that use Braintoss would often ask that question. For me, I just had some unlucky experiences with it where it did not capture it or it did not go through correctly. So I'm guessing it's probably something that happened at some point where there was a bug in there. But I just, I cannot lose things because then if I lose things, I lose trust in this and then you.

Morten: Don'T trust your system. Yeah, exactly.

Lars: So that's where that happened. The other one was, and I don't know if that's changed since then, but there was a time limit on it. So we had this one and you had, there was one other one that you recommended back in the day.

Morten: Same goal.

Lars: That's the one which also had this, I think, 7-second limit or 15-second limit, something like that. And sometimes I just have more, more on my mind. So I'll have ones that are, you know, past the minute of some kind of cool idea for a blog post or something that we're working with the company on. So I want to be able to capture all of that. So I don't want to have the stress of that limitation. It's kind of like if you only wrote on small Post-its as opposed to this, this larger pad that we have, it's kind of the same thinking. So, so that's why I like the Memos app. And I try to stay also as, you know, uncomplicated as possible in the sense that I try to use the standard tools as much as I can without the simplicity of the tools becoming more complex in the end, actually. So, so certainly the Memos app as well. And then, yeah, we have, you know, different feeds. I think these are, these are, you know, shared for both of us with different stuff on social media from the feeds, from the messages, from group activities. We use Google Google Rooms as well. So stuff will show up there as well. But the last one I want to mention for mine is, is the email side of things, because that is one place where I, I do play around a bit and see if I can find a better tool for me. So I was— we use the Google Suite. So I've been using the web-based version for a long time, use it with Todoist, has a nice plugin to get things from the inbox into Todoist. Then I started playing around with Apple Mail again, and part of the reason why that came up is that I needed to buy a new laptop about 6 months ago and was working, you know, working to figure out what would work best for me when it comes to email. And I ended up buying the iPad Pro, and the integrations there were, you know, something changed on the Todoist, and I think there was some integration that didn't work really well. So, right now I'm actually playing around with Outlook as my key email manager. So, if I'm opening my emails right now, Outlook is actually the standard, the default one on both my Mac and my iPad and my iPhone right now. So, I'm playing around with that also to really get a, you know, get a hang of it and understand it more. So, when clients come to us and ask for about our opinions on it, I have firsthand knowledge of how this works. So, it's a bit, you know, I can see especially on the Mac, it's a bit heavy. I think on iPadOS and iOS, it works well. But on the Mac side, it is, you can, it's a bit heavy.

Morten: Yeah, but it is, it has this, I'm sorry, but Outlook has the same problem everywhere when it's a desktop application, whether it's on a Mac or a PC, is that it takes a long time to load often. And, and I believe firmly that as for, you know, heavy applications, they run smoother in the cloud. So outlook.com is a good alternative for those of you who are in the, you know, Office 365 suite. So if you find that you're, you know, but And, and just want to throw in, so I don't use Outlook and To Do as my system, but I know people who do, and we teach people how to do this. And the integration of the, the 365 web version of Outlook and To Do is beautiful, brilliant, I would say. And that, that if you use also, if you take an email, drag and drop it into You know, the today view, you can then put it into your— it's called My Day, but then you can take it from My Day into To Do and then create a next action of it very easily. And the integration between, the connection between the email and the To Do is existing also and works also on your phone if you have Outlook and To Do installed, or your tablet, or your, you know, any kind of phone you have that it will open both. I tried it on my Android phone as well as my iPhone. It works beautifully, and that makes a big point. I'm rooting for Microsoft now. Do more of this, please.

Lars: And I really think they are. So right now, when I open Outlook, it opens in the new Outlook, and then you can switch that off and go back to the old version. So they're clearly working on simplifying and making things better. And I also know I can't speak about it, but I also know that Microsoft are working on better integrations across everything. So it's some cool stuff coming up, and that's It's also part of the reason why I want to play around with and really get a feel for what it's like to work with.

Morten: Because the seamless integration is what we're looking for. Fast and easy. Get a thought out of your head, get it in somewhere where it needs to be so you can find it and don't have to think where you put stuff. I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Continue, please.

Lars: No, that was actually it. So that was sort of the key tools. Capture.

Morten: Capture.

Lars: When it comes to capturing. So that was really the key ones for me that I use on a basically daily basis.

Morten: Yeah, I'm doing the, you know, more or less the same like what you are doing. I capture on paper when we are, you know, I'm at my desk and I have my physical inbox and I have also the Capture Wallet from capturewallet.com. Little plug there. And but when I am in meeting with people, because it's, It is, as you said, frowned upon in some circles that if you pull out your phone, you're not there, or your computer or something. I see more and more, by the way, that we have seen after Corona when I meet people, there is no laptops, just notepads. I have not seen a laptop opened since that happened, which is kind of, hmm, okay, something happened here, which I like. So when it comes to the digital part of capturing, I'm using I used to use Braintoss a lot, but I'm, you know, slowly moving into changing that to Reminders. And I have the same, what, you know, the same problem that you had. Sometimes it didn't work well. So when it failed me, or it forgot to— Braintoss promises you that when you do an audio recording, depending on you know, not depending on the country you're in, but if it understands your language, it will convert your, your, your speech into text and put it in the header of the email. Which was, if you are brief and just want to give yourself a, you know, don't forget message, that is, that is, you know, if it doesn't work, it's every time. If it fails 1 out of 20 times, it still fails. And yeah, so I've been using reminders, asking Siri to remind me about things. So it will be, hey girl, I don't want to trigger your Siri here, so hey girl, remind me to call Laris when I come to the office. And that will pop up on my phone, and then I will then capture that maybe further or put it just in, you know, Clarify and Organize in my system when I get back, but especially time-based, I've been using that. So that's my capture, and I will also capture into, when I'm at my computer, into OmniFocus and more and more into Pipedrive, but more on that later. So that's my capture. Where would you like to go next?

Lars: Well, I guess it would make sense to maybe start to dive into the organizing step and looking into the tools there, and maybe you want to kick us off when it comes to organizing?

Morten: Yeah, I'm a long-time OmniFocus user since before version 1. I was on the beta program back in the day, and I was also, by the way, interviewed by the Omni— what's it called— OmniShow by Omni Group. If you're interested in hearing about how I use OmniFocus for my, you know, GTD stuff, you can go and listen to that. But lately I've been slowly using another system that has proven to be really good, especially when it comes to sales and, you know, customer/client follow-up. And since we now are in the— under the same umbrella, we are using the same system. So it's called Pipedrive, pipedrive.com. It's a CRM system for customer relationship management. I think the CRM is the short for. And, um, and that has proven with the calendar integration and the email integration that it has to, you know, email be— you are using the G Suite, it integrates with Gmail. And that has proven to be really, you know, a solid system. It had a few bugs through the time I've used it, but they've been very quick fixing them when I'm pointing them out to them. And they are very, you know, the Pipedrive support people are good, they are moving fast. So, but the Pipedrive takes care of everything that has to do with customer, potential customer clients, and existing clients follow-up and emails and tasks related to that. So when I have something for, for my, you know, that has to— that's not customer-related, for example coaching clients, everything with my coaching clients is in my in OmniFocus. And my project overview is in OmniFocus. Just everything that with clients are in Pipedrive. And that has proven to be, especially the calendar integration I like, where you.

Lars: When you, you can, when you, you.

Morten: Put a client as a lead, you can then convert it into a deal if you're thinking this might be person or a company who want to buy from you or from us. And then, then in the calendar integration, there is— I can say, I, I, you know, I have a waiting for client X. Did they come back to me with my— after my proposal? And did I— when I have had a meeting with a client, is there a follow-up on this? Because you will tick them off as finished. This is where it differs, is that all your all your appointments that you put on your calendar from Pipedrive gets a, you know, tick box where you have to tick it off as finished. And that little tick box has saved me. I would see it on my weekly review, but because I then I walk through my calendar, you know, 1, 2 weeks back in time and 2, 3, 4 weeks into the future. But so, but it's helped me on a daily basis when I go through and then clean up Did I— what did I do? Who did I contact? Who am I waiting for? And then suddenly I see a meeting. Well, ah, I forgot to send that PDF. Hey Morten, get a grip. But it is a, it is a, you know, a way to reflect extra on what you do calendar-wise. And it will also put you, if you make it as a deadline, as a whole day, a waiting for. I have a lot of waiting fors for people. Just want to make sure I don't, you know, dropped the ball and follow them up so that we are, you know, following clients up. So I'm using that, and I guess you are doing some of that too.

Lars: I think we appreciate what you mentioned. I really, I mean, especially the email side, I'm still not fully dived into that part yet, but the calendar integration is just, you know, so good. And it's just, you know, for me, basically just the idea of having the calendar but with checkboxes. So, for all the appointments that you have on your calendar that you could put a check mark next to it. That simple functionality is just so valuable to, like you said, remind you of things but also just the feeling of saying, yeah, that's done. I'm ready for that. So, later today I have a coaching client. I looked at the Pipedrive. I went through my notes and prepared for the meeting. I'm ready for that meeting. I can, you know, trust that. And once we've had that meeting, I can check that off and capture any next actions associated with that. So it's just a very nice way to sort of an additional layer on top of your calendar just to check these things off. So it might exist in other tools as well, but it's just, you know, that type of integration is just really, really helpful.

Morten: Yeah. And one more thing that occurred to me is that what I like about Pipedrive is that when I'm having a, let's say I get an email from, you know, a response from a client, it's so easy from that email to jump into, jump into that deal. So if we have a, you know, potential client who want to buy from us, it's, it's called a deal. It's not a deal yet, maybe it will be, but, and I will record my desired outcome, company name, buys seminar, something like this. I don't, I'm a little more creative though, but just to give you an idea, but I can then jump back into that deal. I can see the whole email thread of all the emails, all my notes in place. So it also has, you know, project support material there for me. So if I put a note there, I have a note field, I can make a note about that client, what we talked about in that meeting. Everything is in one place and it's easily accessible, easily accessible from wherever you are in Pipedrive. I can just easily find which, which clients are active now, who am I working with, and I can jump in and I can easily see where we are at. So because, you know, when you do as we do, we talk with clients, we are maybe have, I don't know how many you have on the same, but I'm maybe 10, 15 at most the same time. You really have to, you know, keep your, you know, your head straight. You have to have your ducks in a row so that you understand who's doing, you're doing what with because it's a fast-paced world.

Lars: So, yes, certainly agree.

Morten: Yeah. But I still use, as I said, OmniFocus for my project overview. And it's crucial for my weekly review to, you know, maintain that overview of everything I'm committed to do something about.

Lars: Yeah.

Morten: So, and as I've been mentioning before, I'm using more and more my calendar for planning what I need to do because it's to set aside. But I share my calendar in Pipedrive, so if you are going to— I have a, a link that I will send you if you want to book a meeting with me, or I want a meeting with you, where you can click and you will see my available time, which makes it so much more important for me to block out time so that you can't steal my time when I need to do something that's important, you know, in the next day or three. Yeah, so And sometimes I make even just blank placeholder in my calendar just to, for people don't steal that time. But the booking functionality in Pipedrive is also really good and I like that. It's really beneficial. So that's list system in Organize. Where would do we go from here?

Lars: Well, I could add, you know, yeah, so Pipedrive is certainly a key part of the way we work and how that supports us. And, you know, yeah, maintaining control and perspective. You mentioned the Reminders app. I use that as well, to some extent, to not so much as a capture tool, but more of the location-based and stuff where I need to be reminded. So to clarify that a bit, I'm very strict on the notifications that I allow into my phone. And when it comes to reminders, this is sort of the way for me to set something up that I know I will get a reminder about. And I have set it up in a way that it does not just capture them in that— what the new thing they call planned summary in iOS. So it'll just remind me at 6 o'clock in the evening. No, actually, this is allowed through. So I know if it's something that I need to be reminded about,, then I will make sure that, that I put it in there because then that'll, that'll come through. And especially the location-based ones. I could use the ones in Todoist, for example, but I've just always used the Reminders app. And like I said earlier, I try to stay as vanilla as possible to not necessarily add tools to, to anyone new to GTD who want to try some things out. So I try to keep it as simple as possible and, and the Reminders app does that. That really well. So I'm playing around with that more and more as part of a key part of my system.

Morten: As well. One of— can I just inject something? Because OmniFocus has a real cool thing that I'm using, is that it has the possibility to make a search for context. Hmm, how can I use this, you think? For instance, we have a change of What do I call it? Like everything shops there, the Swedish chain Klaas Olsen. And I made a, I made it.

Lars: You made me laugh. No, Morten, we have to, okay, so now we have two companies on the list that we need to make a deal with. Pipedrive, because we really highlighted them now, and Klaas Olsen, you have to talk to them now in Norway. I think every second.

Morten: Or third episode. Yeah, but what I like with that, but it is OmniFocus functionality, but just to give it, it could be anything, could be El Gigante in Sweden, or I don't know what it is. Yeah. So, so any, um, but my, my, um, the reason I'm mentioning this is because you can make a search in OmniFocus for, uh, that you call, for instance, I have an errands, um, list, and I have then one called Klaas Olsson, which means that I can then open up my app when I am in Oslo, and I can look 'What can I do close to me here?' And it will show me, 'Well, you have a Claus Olsen 200 meters from you. Maybe you want to buy that thing you decided to buy.' Now that is useful.

Lars: So you associate a location with the context?

Morten: No, no, it's a search. It searches for the maps functionality. It finds the closest Claus Olsen and tells you you are very close to it.

Lars: What's nearby? Based on the name of the contact list, just so I understand. No, no, you're making— Okay, same question, I should say.

Morten: Yeah, I'm going to open just to make sure I'm not— I just want to make sure I'm doing this correctly. I will show you exactly how it works. But it has a functionality in— where can I show this? It's called Nearby. You see this? Nearby. So if I touch Nearby, I will, for instance, I have a package I have to pick up at the SIAM.. It knows where Jasmyn is. This is our local area, so I've actually done that. And if I have a Klaas Ulsund something, I can then put it close to Klaas Ulsund. It will show me how far am I from. For instance, I have an errand at the gas station. I want to wash my car and maybe vacuum it. It's a repeating task I do every month for just to remind me, don't forget to wash the car. I don't know if you ever thought that a little too late. I have, so bear with me. But it says now it's an errand for 1 kilometer, less than 1 kilometer away from me. There's a gas station. I can do that.

Lars: Okay. And how does it know that there's a location associated with that task is.

Morten: What I was thinking. Because it makes a search for gas stations.

Lars: Okay, so it knows that activity takes.

Morten: Place at a gas station. Exactly. So, and I like that thinking because it does a Google search for, you know, if you can do a generic Google search for company type, like pizza restaurants. I don't know if you want to have that on your list, but I.

Lars: Eat pizza, but hey, what do I know? Please remind me.

Morten: To eat pizza. Or sushi or whatever. But for company names that you are, change that. For instance, we live outside Oslo. When I'm in Oslo, I don't know where all shops are, and they move and then you get new locations. But some shops are chains that I used to buy from, and then it is it's beneficial for me to know that there is this chain outlet somewhere close to me. And so many times I walk through Oslo and because I'm going from one part of Oslo, walking through the center of Oslo, trying to get to the train, and I will look at what's nearby me that I can do now. On the route, because I have, you know, 30 minutes lag before my train, do I have some errands I can run that I.

Lars: Can do here? Yeah. So you have the nearby functionality in the Reminders app as well, but it sounds like this is a step more advanced.

Morten: Because then you have to decide which, because it hasn't searched, you have to decide where, but in the OmniFocus, you will be, it will do a Google search for you and tell you what's close to you. It will take a little, a few seconds for it to understand where you are, but as long as you give it access to your location, it can fairly easily and fast get you to that place. So that was a rat hole, or what would you call it?

Lars: A rabbit hole? That's what we mentioned in the beginning. This was going to happen. So you correctly predicted the future.

Morten: Okay. You are correct. So, yes, but where you— I was interrupting you.

Lars: So let's continue. I think when I made my list of sort of key organizing tools. Obviously, there are sort of 4 key programs or apps that came to me, one being Todoist, being my list manager, one being OneNote, and then Pipedrive and Reminders, which we've already spoken about. So obviously, Todoist being a key part of my system, I have all my projects in there. I use them as they also call projects. In my case, they're grouped by areas of focus. I'm playing around right now with with some sub-areas of focus that I, that I need to pay extra attention to. So I actually have that in there as well and put in some emojis as well to sort of signal to myself that these are sort of different than the other ones, just so I don't mix them in with projects. But there are some, you know, aspects of the business that I want to pay extra attention to. So I want to have that in there. And it also serves as a way to capture next actions associated to that specific area of focus. I have my next actions in there labeled, placed in the project someday, maybes. They're in there as projects if I have been working on them, I have a lot of material on them. Otherwise, they are in there as unlabeled tasks under a someday, maybe project. So I have all of that captured in there. And also some checklists, some checklists in there, and you have them as projects. So previously, you had to, if you wanted to reuse something from Todoist, you were, you had to export them as a CSV file, and you can upload them, and then it would just just populate whatever you had exported. And now you can just go in there and hit the duplicate project. So I have a checklist for some of the key things that we work on, which has a lot of dates associated with it. So I have seminar checklists, speech checklists, coaching checklists. We do an introductory webinar in Denmark for free. That's also a checklist in there. So whenever one of these show up, I can just go in there and duplicate this and have all the checklists set And just last week, I finalized the planning for next year. So, I have all the dates confirmed with the locations and all the stuff that's going to happen. So, I put all that in there. And so, I did a lot of duplication of projects and checklists. And, you know, in a similar way to all of the different deals going on, and you don't, you know, remember where you're at in the different phases of a deal. The same is obviously the case for seminars, planning seminars. And delivering them. So many things need to be, you know, agreed upon, planned, checked off. I need to just buy, you know, my packing list and do I have all the stuff that we need? Do we have all the course materials? All that kind of stuff. So it's a pretty solid checklist by now after working with this for so many years. So having the ability to duplicate that and set that up in my system is just critical. And that's where the checklists come.

Morten: In in Todoist. Yeah, checklists are crucial also for me. I have a few of them in Notes, my private, especially the packing list before we go somewhere. But, and the checklist for, you know, how do we make the house ready for when we go somewhere? Close doors, check nothing is on, turn off, you know, turn down the heat a little. And, you know, empty the pages if that's necessary, etc. But my, when I have recurring projects or projects that are similar to each other, I use my OmniFocus checklist as you would do in Todoist. The only difference is that there is possible to automate this process. So I have, I create templates with template placeholders for client name, is there. So when I, when I run the template, it will ask me all the questions I need to ask and, you know, to, to answer to, for it to populate automatically the dates and the names of the client, the company name, you know, the, the date for the seminar, etc., if that's ready, or for coaching, etc. So it's, that's the only difference between you and me there. It's, um, it automatically populates that with an AppleScript So should we move on to reference systems maybe?

Lars: Sure, go ahead. You mentioned that you've made a transition.

Morten: I am, I am, I am still transitioning and I must admit that the jury is still out a little because it's two non-perfect systems. I don't know if you ever— All.

Lars: My systems are perfect, so I don't.

Morten: Know what you're talking about. No, but I've been using Evernote since very early, and one thing that I really like, one of my epiphanies about this is that I've realized that everything— sorry, Evernote is not an everything bucket. If you use it as an everything bucket, because I remember the first years they were on, they they call themselves the everything bucket. But that is like making a big mix of everything, things I might want to read, things I'm going to read, something, a reference here, and some ideas here. And you know that it becomes a cluttered cabinet where you don't want to go inside. So when I realized that, I started cleaning up.. And I threw a lot of stuff out. And, you know, as you mature as a GTDer, you are more and more aware of what has value for you and what has not. And you are activating what I called your bullshit filter or your seriously filter, where you say, seriously, will I ever read this? Seriously, will I ever do something about this? And that is an important thing. For making sure that your system is as clean as possible. But it needs to be functional, so you need to easily find them, you need to have an easily built structure. And I built that in Evernote, but at some point I started thinking— it was a long time ago— I started thinking, how is it for me if I decide not to use Evernote anymore to get stuff out of it. And it's not. It's very difficult to get stuff out of it. So I started looking at alternatives and a little inspired by our friends from Denmark and Sweden, Jens, Mikael, and Martin, who has a, you know, Swedish-Danish podcast called Smarter. This podcast, they discussed DevonThink as, you know, as, you know, an Evernote replacement, or for the same, it's a database system. And for those of you listening to this, ah, DevonThink, I want to try that. Yes, please do. But know it's a little nerdy.

Lars: It's a lot of knobs and just.

Morten: Going to say it's a lot of knobs and buttons, and it's like they never cleaned up. They never Steve Jobbed it. And with that, I mean, you know, Steve Jobs says, what can we take away and make sure that it still stands, you know, to make it an easy tool? But they never did that. It's like the Outlook, the old Outlook version for a reference system where you add stuff instead of, you know, remove stuff. And of course, because you've been on for a while, there's a lot of stuff there. So it's a learning curve. And, um, but I'm, I'm using it more and more, and I moved some critical parts in there for my, you know, my coaching clients. It's very important for me not to lose track of, and I have a system for that. And I use my— I used my— before I used, um, you know, I, I'm using a reMarkable now. And when I finish a coaching, um, you know, a session or another session when I'm coaching client is finished with his, his or her coaching, I would then make export to PDF so I can then pull that into Devonthink and put it on the right database and then the right folder of that database. And that works very good. It's a very easy way of doing that, and it is easier to get things out of that database. It is still structured a little Because I would love it just to be a plain file folder system, and it will refer to that, but it's not. But it syncs over Dropbox at this point. At some point in the future, maybe I will use another system for that, because I'm not super happy how it synchronizes. And my other pet peeve about this is— not pet peeve, but my, you know, Peeve is the— because I don't pet that peeve, but it is a peeve— is the fact that it's a little clunky to get the— because it has clients, client program on your phone and on your, you know, tablet. So you can synchronize it so you can get access to it because I want to have it on my phone.. And that is a little clunky, just set up. I just changed my— I got a new phone, and that was a little clunky to get it to work again. I have to re-download all the databases, even though it should be there, because I just cloned my old phone. I get all the stuff back, but not so. So, it's— jury is still out, but I am using Devonthink as my my main reference library at the moment. And mainly for active things, but it is easy to, you know, create an archive and, you know, create things that you— so you only have what's in your face, what needs to be in your face. So I like that. Yeah. So what are you doing for reference? What do you do for notes?

Lars: How do you do notes? Yeah. So for a long time back, you know, before 2015, I used OneNote. OneNote as my GTD system. And when I did that, I liked it partly because I had everything in there, including my reference material as well. So when I transitioned away from OneNote, I did look into— so where did I want to keep reference and notes and things like that? And it sort of stuck with me that OneNote was a nice place to have this synchronized well across different platforms, fine with the way I was able to organize these different kinds of things. So I still use that. I still have my support material, the more complex support material is still in OneNote. When I take notes, I will typically still use Evernote. So actually, I use it for like the everything bucket, but only for that. So this is where I would take my notes. If I have a client meeting, I will take my notes. I will consider that to be in.

Morten: My inbox, and I will— But you take it digitally?

Lars: You don't take it— Yeah, exactly. So if it was with digital notes, I would take them in in Evernote, typically when it's more complex. And then for OneNote, I still use it as reference. And of course, we have the other reference systems as well with email archives, file systems, etc. I actually also have some, some checklists just like you mentioned in OneNote. So for packing, for example. So all the time-sensitive ones where I want to keep them in my system, that's in Todoist. But all the other ones are in.

Morten: In OneNote as well.

Lars: But do you take handwritten notes ever? Very rarely. Very rarely. Yeah. So it does not— there only are the few notes I'm making on paper here next to me. Nothing else other than that. Playing around with the thought. Like I said, I have my iPad. I'm considering buying the pen. But I suspect I'm just pretending that I will actually use that and just want to play around with it and not really would use it. So for now, it's on a someday maybe. But, but no, I'm typically okay with doing it digitally. And lastly, also for the Horizons, maybe we'd want to mention that as well, because when I look through my system right now, it's my Horizons of Focus are mainly, at least Horizons 3 and 4 were also in OneNote but are working their way out of OneNote and will likely just be Google Docs for the most case, both for the company and for myself. And in some cases for areas of focus and purpose and principles. These are mind maps in my system. So for that, I use MindNode to capture this. I don't know, where do you keep— I know you have some in Google.

Morten: Docs as well, or just for the company? For the Horizons of Focus are in Google Docs for the company because it should be easily shareable. But I have a document on my iCloud Drive for for my personal horizons of focus, and that is actually a markup text file. That's right, yes. So, so, but then, and I just played around with it at some point. Markup, it's, for those of you who don't know, this is a kind of like a fancy text file where you can then interpret some codes you write, like in double, double hash gives you before double hash space, and then your headline will come. And you can do some coding very easily to make it look good after. So if you want to, so it's fast. But I just keep it there. And I don't use that anymore. And I used to have everything in my OmniFocus, but the complexity was just too big. Then it's just like folders on folders on folders, like, oh, kill me. I want to find my next action here or my project. How, why do I need to, how, why did I create all this job just to find this project? So I just removed it there. And, but it is my areas of responsibility is in OmniFocus, but everything from there on up is in my documents. Yeah, yeah, same for me. So, and I also, not often, but I just want to mention, by the way, that before I go to a reMarkable, I have a reMarkable 2. I'm very happy with it. I didn't buy with the, for those of you who are contemplating buying one, I didn't buy a black pen, which has an eraser automatically on the other side. I need to, I think still it's faster just to tap the eraser. For those of you who don't know what a reMarkable is, it is an e-ink tablet for writing. And it's really, it has good, it feels like paper. And it's digital, so you don't have to digitize them later. It's already digitized and synchronizes to your PC or Mac, and you can make export of what we call a book to PDF, SVG, or PNG file format. And you can then put that in your reference system after So what I did before is that I used to, I used to have used Rocketbook. Rocketbook is a physical book where you have physical pages, but the pages are made of some sort of plastic. It feels like if you write with, you know, a pen, it feels like more like pen on paper. But it's— you can use the Frixion pens, and then you can— let me see if I can show you that— Frixion pens, and then you can then erase your, your writing after with an eraser, and you will scan the pages with the Rocketbook app and then decide where it goes. You can then decide to go into Evernote, to OneNote, to DevonThink, wherever you want after the fact. By the way, I don't know if Devin thinks that is possible. I have to look into that. But at least the online usual suspects, Evernote, OneNote, and all the drives that you can put it on. But so it is an alternative for those of you who want to take notes by hand and want to kind of automate the part after. What really made a difference for the reMarkable is that the syncing was better. It's now better integration for reading and annotating PDFs, highly improved for those of you looked at, you know, the reMarkable one. So that's— and I think that will, you know, end our conversation about tools for this time. This is Tools Check-in 2021. Will you take us Are we ready.

Lars: To take, take, take us out? We are ready. We are ready. No, just want to, you know, hope this was helpful and, you know, inspiring you to consider the tools that you're using, see if something could be better. And, you know, we'd love to hear from you. What do you use? We're curious to hear what you actually use. And also if you have any questions, ideas for future episodes, but also, you know, if there's something that we could pick up in a future episode about tools. We'd love to hear from you and.

Morten: Also understand what's popular with our listeners. Yeah. And just one little last word of, that I would ask anyone that's serious about GTD is that when you get your ball rolling, you are looking at your tools, then look at your tools and ask yourself, does it have any friction? Does this tool have friction points? And if so, what are they? Can I remove them in the tool by a better practice of using them, or is there a better tool? And this is important for you to both grow as a, you know, the— as a GTDer, but also improving your game. You know, the efficiency of getting things into your system easily, fast, finding them again easily, fast is important. You don't want to spend your brain capacity on that. Your brain capacity should be about deciding, clarifying, organizing, and then, you know, reflecting and then doing, not the system itself.

Lars: It should be as frictionless as possible, I think. Exactly. Okay. And with those words, we always wrap up the episodes with a quick reminder to head on over to gtdnordic.com, have a look around, because on that site you will find links to each of the country websites for each of the Nordic countries. And on each of those sites, You can find articles about GTD, links to the newsletters, groups on social media where natives from the different countries discuss GTD. And of course, you'll find all of our offerings regarding speeches, coaching, and seminars, both physical and virtual. If you're outside the Nordics, gettingthingsdone.com is the place to go to find your local partners. And also, we want to remind you that if you're not watching us now, right now, you're just listening, it's possible to actually watch these episodes as well. You'll find each of them on our YouTube channel. So if you want to watch the next episode, head on over there and subscribe to either one of them. You'll find the links to this in the show notes, where you'll also find the links to the email address. You'll find the email address where you can get in touch with us with any feedback you might have. And lastly, as always, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. And if you do, we always appreciate it when you share an episode with a colleague, or if your podcast client allows it, then rate us us in there. Good ratings really helps people discover the podcast and helps more people learn about GCD. That's really why we're here. So thank you to those of you.

Morten: Who have already done so. Yes, indeed. And just a little tidbit of information at the end that we are in this discussion, Lars and I, about we are doing something we call the GCD Coaching Cafe. And we understand that that's— it's probably we are going to sunset that concept. But, and maybe we will move it to YouTube YouTube and do it as a live episode, listener questions episode, so that you can join us live. And that will be about— what was the times we've done that before in, you know, CET time?

Lars: Is it 8? We used to do it at 8 o'clock in the evening. Yeah, so we'll play around with this also, figuring out all the technical details how we'll do it. But it'd be really cool to do.

Morten: A live listener Q&A episode. Looking forward to that. Yeah, and we will come back to you. So if you think that is a good idea, would you like us to do a live episode where you can join us in the chat and, you know, talk to us while we're live? Let us know. Yes.

Lars: Podcast@Gtdnordic.Dk.

Morten: We would love to hear from you. So until next time, people, stay safe and stay productive.

Lars: Bye-bye. Back one.