GTD with Pocket Informant - Andy.Y.Lin

I’ve been using Pocket Informant to implement Getting Things Done, now that Life Balance, which runs only on Palm, Mac, and Windows, is unavailable. Here is how you can do GTD with Pocket Informant

Categories
I start with a system of categories to achieve what I need. I group categories like thus:

• Category (just general item category)
  • Business
  • Personal
  • School
  • Work
• @Action
  • @Agenda
  • @Call
  • @Computer
  • etc.
• _Location
  • _Anywhere
  • _Home
  • _Lab
  • _Office
  • _Work
• Goals
  • Goals - Financial
  • Goals - Personal
  • Goals - Someday
  • etc.
• Projects
  • Projects - Escape from Death Star
  • etc.
• zCalendar (calendar categories)
  • Personal
  • School
  • Work
• zContact (contact categories)
  • Business
  • Friends
  • School
  • Work

Categories can be in more than one group, so for example I just use “Work” (not _Work) for my tasks, calendar, and contacts.

By giving each task a category, location, and action, this lets me use filters effectively. I can filter based on action, location, or category. For projects, I make sure the project category is also selected so I can see all tasks associated with the project. One caveat: I haven’t been able to figure out how to make categories appear in the Categories view when there is no task in that category, so I simply create a task for each project to keep it visible:

@pH: Rebuild kitchen

where @p is for Project (and similarly @g for Goals), and the following capital letter hinting to the location (Home, School, Work, etc.)

You can associate icons with categories, making it easy to see at a glance what categories your tasks are in, and also letting you double-check that a task has been categorized completely. However, since I have numerous goals and projects, I assign one simple icon for each category, as my color-blind eye helps make it difficult for me to attribute individual icons to each goal or project.

Task Custom Views
Pocket Informant allows the use of Custom Views, which essentially are saved view settings that you can easily switch to. My Custom Views are like this, with the filter criteria under each:

• !All Tasks - In Progress (the “In Progress” serves to remind me that this view only shows tasks in progress, not for “All Dates”)
  • Add all _Location categories to filter
• !Home Tasks - In Progress
  • Add _Anywhere, _Home to filter
• !School Tasks - In Progress
  • Add _Anywhere, _Lab, _School to filter
• !Work Tasks - In Progress
  • Add _Lab, _Office, _Work
• @WaitingFor
  • Add @WaitingFor
  • Note: you can expand this view to @WaitingForHome, etc. by adding _Location categories to your filter and saving as separate custom views
• Goals
  • Add all Goals categories here
  • Again, you can branch this out by adding particular goals
• Projects
  • Add all Projects categories here
  • Can branch this out as well by adding particular projects
• Categories - All Dates (shows all tasks for all dates, excluding completed tasks)

That’s it for now. Perhaps in the near future I will explain how I use ABC/123 Priorities to deal with tasks, but I need to streamline that first.