For dates I’m sticking with Paul Allen‘s recommendation: appointments and milestones goes in your agenda, the things to do that starting at a certain date goes in your tickler file or in your electronic agenda.

For the items, in order to remember certain dates, I use this syntax:
[since>update|completed]

An example: I’m waiting a CD-ROM from Paolo since 12 October, I will stress Paolo if I have not the CD for January.

- @Wait [12/10/2007>10/01/2008] Paolo's CD-ROM.

The “since” date remember you since you wait Paolo or since the item was added.
The “update” date is only for remember you when the item have to be updated (so contact Paolo and remember him that you are waiting the CD!).
The “completed” date is only for completed items: it remember you when the item was done.

Write dates is very useful just for waiting contexts.

If there isn’t a “update” date, but only a “since” date:

- @Wait [12/10/2007] Paolo's CD-ROM.

If there is only the deadline (see the caracter “>”):

- @Wait [>10/01/2008] Paolo's CD-ROM.

The completed date is optional for all the type of items, useful only if you like to know when you complete the item. It must be used only for completed items:

x @Wait [|9/01/2008] Paolo's CD-ROM.

I prefer to use day/month/year, but you can chose your preferred order. A suggestion in order to increase the readability: use always 2 digits for days and months and 4 for years.

Put dates only when is really useful for you, because you have to spend time for your job and not for your organization system. In my GTD text file, only 2% of items have a date.

Conclusion

With this model of text file it’s easy to write some tool or some syntax file for your preferred text editor.

I use Kate for GTD (I will write about this) and I written a tool, just few lines in Python, for sync my Palm with a short selection of contexts (if there are some requests I can publish it).

Now you have a complete system for GTD fast to write, easy to read, really portable and simple to expand with few line scripts. Good job!

In the first part you saw how to write todo items and check them. In this part I talk about projects.

A short description: for GTD, a project is a work to do which require more than one physical action to achieve. I added several other things to it (thanks Anthony Robbins!).

In order to write efficient and attractive plan, the project should have a purpose, some goals and some notes. I built my system over this. See an example:

== WRITE A GTD BOOK ==# Purpose:Help people that prefer read a paper book. Earn several euros.# Principles:Slim (less than 100 pages), very simple to read, sell at minimum 1,000 copies.# Displaying the result:People write me how the book improve their lives. The book sell more than 2,000 copies.# Brainstorming:Syntax, Kate, call the publisher, set the price (10€ or 9.90€?), syntax of dates.

The title is between “== TITLE ==” and is all uppercase.

Some suggestions in order to increase the readability and waste less time:

• For the “purpose” is preferable to write only one line.
• For the “principles” is preferable to write only one line or a short realistic list.
• For the “Displaying the result” write a short good scenario, not a dream one! Write less lines as you can, one if possible.
• For the “Brainstorming” write all on a one line comma separated, if possible.

So you should to write less as you can.

Add your todo items after a blank line:

== WRITE MY GTD BOOK ==# Purpose:Help people that prefer read a paper book. Earn several euros.# Principles:Slim (less than 100 pages), very simple to read, sell at minimum 1,000 copies.# Displaying the result:People write me how the book improve their lives. The book sell more than 2,000 copies.# Brainstorming:Syntax, Kate, call the publisher, set the price (10€ or 9.90€?), syntax of dates.

- @Tel Irene for a review of the draft.- @Write the second part.- @Email a draft of the cover to the designer.

Write only the todo items that you can do in the same time. So, if you have a things to do after write the first part of the book, you should: add to the brainstorming list, or add “Next write the second part.” to the end of line. See the example:

- @Write the second part. Next write the third part.

Add your project in the same GTD.txt file after the todo items without project and separate it by two blank lines. A fast example:

@Buy @Home @Office @Tel @Web

- @Buy 1l milk, 2 lemons, chocolate.- @Buy An iPod.- @Buy 2 new Moleskine (one slim and one big) and a flicker.

- @Home Repair the chair.

- @Tel Elisa for the appointment of Monday 13 November.- @Tel Marco in order to set a meeting with Company S.p.A.

- @Web Renew the Backpack login.- @Web Make a review of www.ontiles.com

== WRITE MY GTD BOOK ==# Purpose:Help people that prefer read a paper book. Earn several euros.# Principles:Slim (less than 100 pages), very simple to read, sell at minimum 1,000 copies.# Displaying the result:People write me how the book improve their lives. The book sell more than 2,000 copies.# Brainstorming:Syntax, Kate, search a publisher, set the price (10€ or 9.90€?), syntax of dates.

- @Tel Irene for a review of the draft. Next send an email to Elena with some Irene's opinions.- @Write the second part.- @Email a draft of the cover to the designer.

== REPAIR THE CAR ==

[...]

Remove the project when you have done it, use an old_projects.txt file if you like.

With this system you can store a large number of projects and items to do in an easy to read (and very fast to write) file. If you use Vim or Emacs for this you can really be a lot faster than any program or web application can do!

In the next part I will talk about dates.

Before that I read a lot of organization books, tips and articles on internet. When I discovered GTD of David Allen I changed my mind and now I see the results, the best results.

I’m a fan of simplicity and I love text files because I can read it whit all devices, open it in an instant and build fast scripts to automate some operations.

I tried a lot of programs, both off and on line (web applications), like Remeber The Milk, Nozbe, Vitalist, pyGTD, Backpack (my preferred) and others.

The 20% of web applications are really good, like Backpack or Vitalist, but you need a connection to the internet if you want to work.
The desktop applications are slow to open, not multiplatform and needs installations on all your devices: there are not an application that run in Linux, Windows, MacOS and on my Palm or cellular phone.
All text systems that I tried are complex, too complex for the real life: I want to write a todo item in a couple of seconds, not in minutes.

So I created my text system: simplest to remember, faster to write and easiest to read.

Well, if you just know GTD take a file called GTD.txt. If you hear GTD for the first time, give it a try: you will discover how is easy to organize your life and your million of things to do!

So, create a simple text file with your preferred program. Avoid MicrosoftWord or some other heavy program, use the Notepad or Edit Plus or Vim or whatever else: you have to create a .TXT file.

Put all your contexts in your first line, see the example:

@Buy @Home @Office @Tel @Web

This line is for reference. You can use only one word for each context, I suggest you to capitalize the first letter.
The context is a tag that indicate in what place do the thing, or when do it. So, if you are in a store you have to read all the @Buy items.

Each item must have a context and only one one.

Make a blank line then write your @Tel items, then make two blank lines (this increase the readability when you have a lot of things to do) and write your @Web items, ecc…

See the example:

@Buy @Home @Office @Tel @Web

- @Buy 1l milk, 2 lemons, chocolate.- @Buy An iPod.- @Buy 2 new Moleskine (one slim and one big) and a flicker.

- @Home Repair the chair.

- @Tel Elisa for the appointment of Monday 13 November.- @Tel Marco in order to set a meeting with Company S.p.A.

- @Web Renew the Backpack login.- @Web Make a review of www.ontiles.com

Every item start with a line, a single space, only a single context and another space. Yes, only one context for item. If you have more contexts for each item you have not efficient contexts, so reorder them.

Use only one line for each item; this is very important because it is easiest to use and it obligates you to write good items: the better todos are short!

When you do an item you can simply eliminate it or put an “x” before:

- @Buy 1l milk, 2 lemons, chocolate.x @Buy an iPod.- @Buy 2 new Moleskine (one slim and one big) and a flicker.

If you like to remember old things done, copy it in another file (history.txt). In my honest opinion using an history file is not useful and distract you: the mind have to look at the present, not at the past.

In the next part I will tell you about projects.

Dopo aver tenuto il suo testo in incubazione da Ottobre, oggi ho deciso di acquistare un timer da cucina da 6 euro e di iniziare a sperimentare. Il testo è molto semplice e scorrevole, per apprendere la tecnica basta veramente poco. Intendo provare seriamente questo metodo applicando alla lettera quanto scritto e trattenendomi dal personalizzare una tecnica che ancora non ho assimilato per bene. Spesso la tentazione di adattare o di “ottimizzare” qualcosa che ancora non si padroneggia appieno è la rovina di ottime metodologie.

Ho iniziato il primo giorno di test con 3 pomodori relativi alla pianificazione della giornata, all’archiviazione dei foglietti di appunti e alla lettura della posta. Queste sono operazioni che faccio tutte le mattine e ho una checklist che mi permette di verificare se ho fatto tutto. Come prima volta ho subito notato un miglioramento della concentrazione perché sentire lo scorrere del tempo tramite il ticchettio mi mette in un leggero stato di ansia che reputo molto positiva.

I pomodori della mattina sono andati piuttosto bene per essere la prima volta, l’ansia mi ha fatto correre più veloce. Nelle situazioni invece in cui sono abituato a lavorare a più di una cosa alla volta ho perso il vantaggio ottenuto. Tutto sommato l’utilità del pomodoro c’é stata perché ho riunito una serie di cose da fare simili senza quasi mai perdere la concentrazione, rispetto a non avere il pomodoro penso di aver guadagnato molto tempo rispetto a prima. Il guadagno di tempo è stato esclusivamente nel racchiudere le distrazioni in spazi di appena 5 minuti ogni 25, quando il tempo per le distrazioni è così poco si tende a riposarsi meglio e a “vagabondare” meno per il web o per le email in arrivo.

Il resto della giornata si è susseguito a ritmo di pomodori da 25 minuti, più 5 minuti di pausa forzata ad ogni pomodoro e due pause più lunghe da 30 minuti, per un totale di 18 pomodori.

La tecnica mi è sembrata buona per coprire un preciso aspetto della mia attività lavorativa che può essere migliorato. Ci sono anche altre considerazioni da fare su quanto fatto oggi e comunque mancano ancora 6 giorni per una valutazione obiettiva.

Stay tuned!