GTD vs ZTD and OmniFocus
 

I picked up the ZTD e-book yesterday and have been reading through it. There are certainly a lot of GTD in there but also some differences (shorter reviews, less goals, Big Rocks & MITs (Most Important Things).

Is anyone using OmniFocus with ZTD or thought about it? How do you use Big Rocks or MITs?

Just a thought.

BZ

what is ZTD ? and where do you find it ? I've never heard of it .

[QUOTE=ext555;28501]what is ZTD ? and where do you find it ? I've never heard of it .[/QUOTE]

[url]http://zenhabits.net/2007/11/zen-to-done-the-simple-productivity-e-book/[/url]

It is basically the Zen Habit website taking GTD and "tweaking" it for more goals and doing.

He adds things like Big Rocks (for the week) and Most Import Tasks (MIT) that you plan and do on a day. A simplefied weekly review and less importance on keeping EVERYTHING captured.

I am almost done, but there are some interesting parts to it.

BZ

thanks! I think I read some of those original blog posts

I adopted MITs and BigRocks even though I think I was using them before I met ZTD but in slightly different form. In general i feel ZTD is interesting in a way how it handles habits and getting used to new routines. But on the other hand it seems to me little bit naive and too optimistic. The last habit of ZTD ("seek work for which you’re passionate") sounds really beautiful (love your work and everything will work out..) but I know very well it does not work for me - I love the work I do (for the most part:) but that definitely doesn't stop my lazy self from procrastination..

Anyway - I use flagging for MITs: in the morning or better still in the evening i pick few tasks that are coming due and flag them. Than I use perspective to show only flagged tasks. And try to finish these before going anywhere else. and when the list is empty... I feel good:)))

And for BigRocks - I just simply have a group/folder in my project list that is sitting in the top of the list and in my weekly review I move there the projects that are actual/crucial/have-to-be-finished in a time frame of a week.. Than of course during the week the projects live on as they get finished, lose importance and so on.

Hi BwanaZulia,

I have been using OF with ZTD. Here's how I reconcile the two. During my weekly review, I look at my ToDos in OF. I select my eight or so Big Rocks, i.e., Most Important for the Week (MIWs). I write these on a sheet of paper. From these I select my 2 - 4 MITs (Most Important Today). These I write on a sheet of paper that I keep with my Moleskine. Yes, I am a geek who believes in redundant systems. Then I flag my MITs in OF and use the Inspector to assign them a Start and Due Date of the current day. When I have a Big Rock (MIW) that I know needs to be assigned to a specific day or date range during the week I flag it and assign it to the appropriate day or days using the Inspector. Hope this helps. I know it is a bit late, but I just read this post today.

Another way!
 

I was wondering about this for a while.
You have all inspired me.

I present a possibly simpler way.

Flag projects to denote 'Big Rocks'
Flag tasks to denote 'Most Important Tasks'

Once in the context view, tasks from 'big rock' projects will appear with a transparent flag.
Tasks that are MITs will appear with an solid red flag.

They can be made to appear on their own with the flag filter setting.

Sounds like a good idea and I will test it. Anyone else?

BwanaZulia, I have been using ZTD with OF since last year. Like robrecord I use flagging for by MITs and MIWs. Then you can use the dates in the Inspector to assign MIWs to a particular day.

But if the entire truth be told, I use a paper base system for my MIWs and MITs. OF serves as my brain dump and the holder of a lot of recurring tasks. At the beginning of week I record 10 - 15 MIWs pulled from OF. Each evening I choose my 2 - 3 MITs for the next day. My current organizer is the Large Moleskine, until I can get an iPhone or iPod Touch. Since my wife wants an iPhone I will probably get that for her first and for myself an iPod Touch will probably do the trick as I am not a big mobile phone user. Then I will look at getting an older iPhone that I will use pretty much just as a phone. I am more of a PDA user, and don't want to be easily accessible to a number of people who would want to be able to get hold of me at any time.

I'm just getting started with trying the habits in ZTD as a better way of keeping focused day to day. I already had 1 and 2 pretty much down, so it's 3 that I'm working on now.

I find that I can't really use Omnifocus for that, it's more the repository of all the tasks I'm tracking. So what I've done is create a template in one of my text apps (I use VoodooPad but anything will do) that looks like this:

GOOD MORNING!
Here is what you were planning to do this morning.
And then a list of the 3 MITs for the day.

I do this the night before, and I put the text in like 48pf font and leave it on my screen so that it's the first thing I see when I sit down the next morning.

i am studying ztd. my burning question is do u guys literally limit your contexts to the 5 or so he suggests... im about to adopt ztd but im havig trouble taking the plunge.

Have as many contexts as you need and as few contexts as you need. It depends on your current situation. In my weekly review, I'll decide whether to increase or decrease my contexts.

I usually have a single @errands context. But sometimes, when it gets too long and cumbersome to view on my iPod touch, I'll break down my @errands context into sub-contexts:

@errands-grocery
@errands-Home Depot
@errands-Office Depot
@errands-Apple Store

So, if I'm grocery shopping, I'll be checking @errands-grocery. I don't need to see my Home Depot items or my Apple store items if I'm at the grocery mart.

When I was doing some major house renovations, I broke my contexts into:

@errands-Home Depot
@errands-Ace Hardware
@errands-Carpet Masters
@errands-Sunshine Glass & Screens

....and so forth....

I would use these sub-contexts constantly until I finished my home renovations. Then I eliminated the contexts and returned back to a single @errands list.

I think one the things that Leo Babauta didn't like about GTD was that you had so many lists for a paper-based GTD setup.

You had a projects list where you kept a list of all the projects and their tasks. Then you had a context list. You would scan your projects and create a new list for each of your contexts. This would be overwhelming for a paper-based GTD setup. So Leo promoted keeping your context simple so that you wouldn't have to keep so many pages or lists.

But now that you have GTD, you go to project (planning) mode to enter your tasks and associate a context. Then you go into context (doing) mode and OmniFocus will be allow you to focus on a particular context and see all the relevant Next Actions for your context (@work, @home, @errands, etc.).

So, Leo's suggestion of keeping fewer contexts as meant to help you if you have a paper-based GTD setup.

Hey guys

go to heydave.org/post/26770221775/my-productivity-system

This link also is similiar to ZTD kinda has the same concepts. Omnifocus is awesome but im thinking of going back to it but just using with a minimal project like ZTD and Dave Lee.

Also I am coming from Evernote which is awesome for notes but just okay for tasks. Ive used it for awhile but I will go back to omnifocus after several years...