Getting Back on the GTD Horse
For the last couple weeks I’ve been trying to get back into the “getting things done” mode (e.g. GTD). I found that I am entering actions or todo’s for myself in a few applications on my Mac. One is in my GTD software (Things for Mac). Another is the Reminders app and the other is in nvAlt.
Sometimes I find myself all over the place and then I end up not practicing GTD anymore. So, to help make it stick, I had to think about why I’m using three different pieces of software to record the tasks I have to do and how can I simplify managing these tasks.
It seems like I’m using this app more for personal items. Items I shouldn’t forget and won’t live on too long (e.g. buy something from Amazon, research a new feature in Laravel, find out about some new wine, etc.). I like the built-in Reminders app (as a repository) because I can throw things in there via Siri from my iPhone, Fantastical (on Mac or iPhone) or the Reminders app itself (which I rarely use). However I enter in the tasks into Reminders, I’m usually accessing the tasks via Fantastical.
Things is for work and/or non-personal items that I need to keep track of and help prioritize my work. It’s got a little more to offer to categorize actions by projects or areas of responsibility. I’ve been tempted to use OmniFocus, but I have a feeling it’s a bit too much for me and Things is good enough.
For work or when ever I’m researching something, I take down all my notes in nvAlt. It’s quick and easy and I can then access those notes from any text app on my Mac or on my iOS devices. It’s great! Usually, when I’m in a meeting taking notes, I’m jotting down actions items for either myself or others. So, meeting notes and actions are all in one. This is kind of a problem. Unlike Reminders and Things, there is no “ticking of the box” when something is complete with this approach. You end up losing track of the actions.
So, to quickly summarize, I basically have two buckets of actions. One for work and one for non-work stuff. That’s fine and I can deal with that. I’d like it to be just one bucket for the sake of simplifying things, but I feel as though the separation between work tasks and non-work tasks between these two buckets helps my brain process things.
However, I do have an issue I need to fix. I really should have the actions in nvAlt converted to actions in Things. This way I won’t lose any actions amongst all the notes I’m taking. Rather than rely on me to remember to parse my notes (which frequently doesn’t happen), I need to come up with a more reliable approach. I thought about this issue over the last few days and I think I’ve put together a good start to a solution that I’d like to share. Here’s an overview:
Poll the folder that all my nvAlt text files live.
Find a certain text pattern that identifies a line of text as an action.
Send that action to Things.
Write in the file that the action has been sent (so it doesn’t keep looping on the same action).
I wrote a python script that processes a file and looks for any embedded actions in my text files.
This python script then sends the actions to the Things app via AppleScript.
This script also writes back to the file that the action was sent. Sort of telling the file, “hey, I got it…there’s now action in the GTD app”.
All this starts with Hazel keeping an eye out on the folder that houses all the text files. I have a rule set up that checks to see if there any “recent” (in the last few hours) text files that have been modified. It then processes the files through the python script.
Check out the following python script and let me know if this can be improved. https://gist.github.com/shawnzizzo/10196732
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