Actually getting things done with Obsidian Checklist plugin
(upbeat music)
- According to Forbes,the book "Getting Things
Done" by David Allenhad sold 1.6 million copies by 2014.GTD, as it is often abbreviated,is still one of the most popularproductivity methodologies to date.Here's the problem with it.It was written 21 years ago.To put things into perspective,a new online collaborative
encyclopedia called Wikipediahad just come online,the new social network FaceMash
would not be launched for two more years,and Yahoo was about to
laughingly refuse to buythis insignificant little
search engine called Google.So using pure GTD today
is nostalgic at best,and downright inefficient at worst.In this video, I'm gonna talk to youabout which parts of GTD I salvaged, took,and put into Obsidian,and adapted for life in the 21st century.Hi everyone, I'm Nicole van der Hoeven,
and on this channel, I talk
about the different waysthat I min/max my life,including digital tools like Obsidian.GTD has its faults,and I'm going to gloss over
some of the more archaic thingslike having 43 physical foldersthat you rotate every day.And I'm going to focus on three thingsthat I think are worth salvaging.The first is the philosophy.GTD has this philosophy
of a mind like water,which is very meditative and monk-like.
But the GTD system distinguishes betweenthree distinct phases of informationwhen they come into our lives.The first is capturing,and then comes processing,and then comes actually doing somethingabout that information.If you're nodding alongand thinking that it sounds
a lot like Zettelkasten,in a lot of ways, it is.That's why I don't really followa lot of these methodologies strictly,because at some point,
they tend to converge.But I really like that
GTD focus on the fact
that having everything capturedand thinking of capturing as
a separate phase as processingreally frees up a lot of your brain power.I think he was the real
inventor of the second brain.David Allen's idea was to have a mindthat was so empty of
irrelevant informationthat it would flow like waterand be able to take the
shape of whatever you wanted.The second idea from GTDis the importance of
clarifying the next action.
See, sometimes we put thingslike "Do taxes" on our task lists,but that's really vague,and part of the reason
that we don't get it doneis because subconsciously,we resist having to do
something that is so abstract.Putting things into actionable next stepsreally helps me, and might help you,to actually go and do that.It's always easier to think
of things in incremental stepsthan it is to undertake an entire project.
And the third good idea
I'm taking from GTDis the concept of regular reviews.Again, not entirely new as a concept.Agile methodologies from
software engineeringhave been espousing this for decadesin the form of the retrospective.Now of these three ideas,I've already made videos
about two of them.When it comes to the
philosophy of capturingand having a mind like water,check out my video on how I use Readwiseto capture everything that I've reador watched or listened to,
and put the highlights in
one place, which is Obsidian.And I've also talked
about how I do weekly,monthly, quarterly and
yearly reviews and goalsin my objectives video for 2022.So check that one out as well.Today, I'm going to talk aboutthe one that I haven't mentioned yet,which is task management,or how to clarify next actionsfrom an entire project full of tasks.There are many ways to
handle tasks in Obsidian,
but I'm gonna show you
the way that I do it,which is using a community
plugin called Checklist.So I'm going to quickly install
that here in my test vault.I'm going to go to Community Plugins,and I'm going to install
and enable Checklist.So while we're here,we might as well go into
the options for that.By default, Checklist is
going to use the word "Todo"as like, the default keyword.So whenever you use it as a tag,
then it knows that you're
wanting it to be displayedwithin the Checklist plugin.I'm going to say I don't
want to show completed tasks.And the default is to group tasks by page,but I'm going to change that to tag.I'm gonna leave all of these the same.So in GTD, there are four
different groups or categoriesthat you can decide to
organize a bit of informationor a task into.And that is inbox, where everything goes,and after you empty the inbox,
you then decide whether
it goes into one ofthe remaining three folders,which is Next Action, Waiting For,and Some Day Maybe.Now Next Action is filled with, well,the next step of whatever
big project you're planning.Waiting For is for those taskswhere you are waiting on
somebody to do something,so it's not something
that you can progress yet,but it is like, a
reminder for you to do goand chase those people
if it's been too long
and they haven't done whatever
it is you were waiting on.And then the last one is Some Day Maybe.This is a kind of blue sky ideawhere you think it's a cool ideabut you don't necessarily
have concrete plansto do it right now,and it may not need to have a next action.Now if I open this side panel here,you will see a new checkmark icon here,and that is the To Do List.We don't have anything in it right now,'cause we don't have any tasks.Here's how you use Checklist.First, you type the hash,
which is what you would do
if you were using a tag.That's because the checklist
actually does use tags.But it's a special kind of
tag that starts with Todo.Then you could have something
like Todo next-action perhaps,and then underneath that,you create a task, so that's
Command Enter on a Mac,or you can type out the bulletand then brackets with
a space inside them,that's how you make a check box.And then you can say "Do this thing."
And if you've noticed,
it's come up over herein the Next Action section,in the Checklist plugin.This tag is really important,because without it, let's
say let's create a new task,"This task won't be in the checklist."Because we didn't tag it with
the special Todo keyword.So even if we tagged
it with something else,it's not going to show up therebecause it is specifically
looking for that.Now you don't have to set
up these tags in advance,
you can just use them,as long as they start with "Todo."So what I personally do is
I have a Todo next-action,then I have a Todo waiting-for,and now that appears here as well.And then you could do
a Todo someday-maybe,"Maybe this thing someday."I've done the three different folders herefor next action, waiting
for, and someday maybe,because I tend to use my
Daily Note as an inbox.
We can also have another one for inbox,so Todo slash inbox."Rob told me to check out Readwise."And that'll show up here as well.You can really change this structureto suit how you like to work.So maybe instead of having
the to do next action,you want to distinguish between work tasksand personal tasks.So then you do Todo, work,
and then next-action,
and have your work tasks here.And that'll show up
under Work, Next Action.In the Checklist plugin,you can also independently
expand and collapse these,and in the settings here,you can select other tags
if you're using them.But right now, I'm just using Todo.And you can also tick off some
of these tasks within Todo.So you could be on some other page.And by the way, this
works to collate thingsacross different pages.
So if I go into a different page,and I suddenly, while I'm
talking to someone in a meeting,I have an idea of something
that I need to do,then I can just do Todo next-action,and then I'll say "Annie
wants me to do this thing."Even if I have this closed,I'll know that all of the tasks
that are marked in this wayare going to show up here.Another aspect in GTD that's
related to tasks is context.
In GTD, sometimes it's
useful to distinguishbetween next actions that are
done as an errand for example,versus ones that are done at the computer.So I've added Computer
here, and as a task,I'm going to say "Research
more about Mimir."And that's going to show upwith all of the sub-headings
that you've used.Now if you don't want to use GTD at all,you can still use this same approach
and use them like agendas.So if you're talking to somebody,say you're in a meeting with Nico,and while you're talking to Nico,he suddenly says something
that you want to rememberto bring up with your friend Jonathan,then you can type something like"Todo, agenda, Jonathan."Ask him about the book
he recommended to Nico."And then on the side panel here,you can open up the one for Jonathan
when you're talking to Jonathan.I find it really useful,because usually, you remember
things in different contexts,and that way, I don't have
to break my flow of thought.You know, I can just hammer it outand know that it'll still
go to the right placeand I'll still find it.Now cool thing too is that
you can have a person pagefor let's say Jonathan,and you can even use a Dataview queryto bring in tasks that you've markedas needing to be on the agenda
for the next time you talk to him.For example, you can do Dataviewand then type task, from, hash tag,you can even select it
here on the drop down.I'll just enter that.And when I exit out of that,it'll say that in the
page meeting with Nico,I had a task that I
assigned with this tag.So that's just going to
be constantly updating.So on today's note on the left,I could have something that also is taggedwith Todo, agenda, Jonathan.And have another task,
and that will automatically be populatedwhen I open up this Jonathan note.So this is a good way of rememberingthe things that you need
to bring up with people,so that when you see them,you already have a list of thingsthat you need to talk to them about.The Checklist plugin is how
I personally handle the tasksthat I put in Obsidian
in a pseudo-GTD way.But last week, I made a videoon task management in Obsidian,and that was with Dataview instead.A lot of people prefer that approach,because with Dataview,you get to put the tasks in your notes,
whereas with the Checklist approach,you have it in a side panel,and some people don't like that.The third approach is
to do calendar blocking,which I do use for all of the timeand date sensitive tasks.And I use a kind of AI smart
calendar blocking systemcalled Reclaim.So check those out.
Thank you for watching.Choose the system that works best for you,and don't worry about what it's calledor any of the terminology.
[Slovenian] Thank you!