Simplicity Is Bliss

For a change I know that I am not alone if I say that I keep arguing with my GTD and productivity setup. There are many blog pages and white papers filed with good advice and best practice setups and I may have read 90% of all those. And of course there is the fact that GTD and productivity isn't about tools or setup and I have personally acknowledged this here and here. Still, something is complicated in this digital world with all those nice tools everyone tries to sell or even give to us for free - it messes up everything, really. Back in the days where you did not have much of a choice but had to go with those limited tools available and where not every day a RSS feed article or a Twitter message told you about the latest and greatest, things felt better or at least simpler, somehow.

What comes in goes strange places

Actually, when I recently engaged in reviewing my capturing behaviour and tool-set, I realised things go strange places. Some tools I use for purposes they aren't designed for and generally my capturing did not have any structure to it. Does capturing require structure? When you are living a digital lifestyle I would tend to say 'yes'.

First you should look at what you are capturing and in which context you are doing this. For me, I see the following capturing behaviours:

• Surfing the web finding different snippets
• In phone calls or meetings capturing information, decisions and actions
• Being somewhere having a thought or idea
• Being out and about and spotting something of interest
• Brainstorming a new project or concept

These are roughly the categorise that sum up my capturing behaviours. Before we look into those in more detail, we first need to see what it is that we'd like our capturing to improve upon.

Keeping capturing straight-forward

When I started to look at improving and simplifying my capturing, I set out the following goals that I wanted to achieve:

• As few capturing/collection tools as possible
• As few inboxes as possible
• Simple and straight-forward storage and retrieval
• Best and only one tool for the job at hand

Next I started at looking what I currently use for capturing and how I use it. Without going into this long and somewhat depressing list of failures and expensive software licences, I quickly found out that I used tools designed for rather structured capturing, e.g. OmniOutliner, for unstructured notes and that the amount of tools I use just causes the same type of content to end up in different places. So I had the need to look into this more deeply, a band-aid would not do.

Think through Capturing

You need a way to structure this special review and I decided to brainstorm a bit about my capturing setup which resulted in the below mindmap.

Putting structure to my thinking and my needs helped me quickly to revert some decisions and create a as-simple-as-possible setup for my capturing needs. Large parts of it are digital and that is just because most of the time I am either in front of my Mac or have my iPhone with me. But still paper is part of the system and sometimes remains unbeatable.

Build a use-case based setup

Inst ead of working tool-centric I thought more about my capturing use-cases and what will best help in those cases. Keeping my overall goals for capturing simplification in mind, of course.

• Meetings - I don't find it very polite to use your notebook during in-person meetings (whether internal or with customers) so my choice for this will always be paper with the exception of workshops where you may use Mind Mapping or other software to work straight on the screen as a group. You may also encounter flip or white board drawings which you either need to capture on paper as well or use a camera to make a photograph of it (more on this later)
• Conference Calls/Web Conferences - In 90% of all cases I would be in front of my computer for these occasions. Hence I would be able to use simple digital capturing using a text editor, word processing or some note taking tools. If I, for whatever reason would like to use paper, that should be fine as well.
• Phone Calls/Somebody dropping by - The classical unrequested interruption that happens everyday. Although I divert people to my voicemail very often and catch them later, I still pick up the phone quite often and of course talk to my colleague that drops by my desk for a minute. You typically just capture small snippets and actions in these type of conversations - so paper would be the best and easiest tool to use.
• Surfing the web - This encompasses everything online from news sites, blogs, research to Twitter and Facebook really. And I tend to find very different types of content on the web: Quotes I'd like to remember, inspiring designs or pictures, articles I'd like to read when I have time, things I may want to buy, feeds I'd like to subscribe to and so on. Making a single tool choice here is difficult since the content may be very different and consequently I looked at how I would use the content itself. Snippets of text or images is something I need to review and see what they mean to me specifically, websites I will be using more often need to be bookmarked, feeds I want to read should be subscribed to in my RSS reader and articles that I want to read need to be made available to me when I have the time. As you might tell this is the most complex use-case and it also reveals the complexity of the digital lifestyle itself.
• Ideas - they can come everywhere and at anytime. Either because you have been juggling some thoughts over a latte or something somebody said or you see triggers an idea and you need to be ready to capture this. There are many forms of capturing those: Write down some words, take a picture, record a video or a voice note. All possible these days.
• Brainstorming - when you sit down for a few minutes or even hours and think something through. You are not yet in the position to fully structure the endeavor, but you just want to do a mind sweep and see what all surfaces on the specific topic. That's where I love using Mind Mapping.
• Structuring and Planning - This very different to all other use cases since it represents a combination of capturing and clarifying or reviewing - in essence bringing structure to things. This is what I do when I plan a (GTD) project using a Project Charter - I need something that allows me to bring my thoughts and considerations into a clear and in a best case, standardised structure. Outlining does exactly that for me.

You might find more or at least other use cases for yourself when brainstorming this, but once you have them you should be in fairly good position to determine the tools of choice (as few as possible) and the places the captured content goes to (as few as possible again). Here is what I ended up with.

Capturing tools - not for tools sake, but serving the use-cases

• Paper for Meetings - serves it well. If I have to take a image of a Whiteboard drawing I either scribble it down or use my iPhone to take a image note in Evernote - paper goes into my physical inbox and the image into my Evernote Inbox notebook
• Minutes from conference calls or web conference are capture as simple text notes in Evernote on my Mac and go to my Evernote Inbox notebook
• Quick notes or actions from 1-on-1s (call or somebody dropping by) go onto paper and into my physical inbox
• Snippets I find on the web like quotes, images, text or entire URLs are captured into my Evernote Inbox notebook
• Websites I need to use more often (e.g. online tools) do not got to any inbox since the two-minute rule applies: Make a bookmark in Safari right away
• Feeds I'd like to follow also don't see any inbox and are subscribed to in less then two minutes using my RSS Reader (NewsFire)
• Articles I find and like to read later go into Instapaper, my digital version of a @read/review file (not fully substituting it since I may also have printed white papers or presentations I need to review). With it's iPhone App Instapaper makes those articles available for offline consumption, i.e. on a flight, as well
• Ideas, whether in text, audio or visual form are captured using Evernote's iPhone application and go straight into the Inbox notebook
• Brainstorming happens using Mind Mapping software (MindNode Pro) and mind maps either go into my file inbox on my Mac (see simple GTD filing on the Mac) or right into the support material folder of the project subject to the brainstorming
• Structured notes or plans are done using OmniOutliner and without exception always related to a project and consequently also get filed into the support material folder of that project

Hang on, where is the list manager here?

Spot on, the unavoidable list manager is missing in those use case and tool scenarios. While I use OmniFocus and I am quite happy with it, I do not use if for any of the scenarios above. It only becomes a inbox if I have a clear action trigger like "Buy beer for the party". For all other occasions I prefer to first clarify what I have captured and what it means to me before creating an action or project in my list manager.

The bottom-line of Capturing in GTD for me

So in summary you will find that I actually have three inboxes for notes: Physical, Evernote Inbox and a Mac OS Inbox folder. Bookmarks, RSS Feeds or articles go straight where they belong and do not hit a Inbox at all. Where you may find this being still too complex, it is as simple as I could get (and you should not get any simpler than that, Albert Einstein once said).

In terms of tools I rely on paper (not Moleskine, but junior legal pads where I can rip out single sheets and toss them into my physical inbox) and Evernote. The remaining tools like browser bookmarks, Instapaper, Outlining and Mind Mapping software are also important, but more purpose bound.

So I ended up with three inboxes (next to my email and voicemail inboxes) and two to six capturing tools that cover 90% of all ubiquitous capturing needs. I'd be very interested to see how your setup differs from mine and how you get along.

Loading mentions Retweet