Let's take a look at a reply we sent to someone who was asking how to use Get It Done for their particular case. Many of you might find it useful:

I need help in determining how to best use the app. I have numerous tasks and projects. From the Allen book, I was thinking about the follow categories: Two broad categories for Professional and Personal. Within these two domains, structure the following areas…Computer work; Telephone Calls; Errands; Office; Someday; Reference; Delegated; Waiting For

I have numerous complex projects for which I am responsible, including dissertations, research projects, manuscripts, and other administrative responsibilities. I am trying to organize my emails in the same fashion that I will set up my system in Getitdone. Help!


In your case, you can start with the most broad category and then move down from there:

Create two ‘Areas of Responsibility’. Areas are the broadest category and when you are in a particular Area you will only see tasks and projects pertaining to the particular Area.


Areas of Responsibility

  1. Professional (or Work)
  2. Personal (or Home)


Within each Area you can further separate your tasks into projects. Projects are a group of tasks that need to get done to accomplish a particular goal:


Projects


Some projects in ‘Work’ Area might be:

  • Telephone Calls
  • Office
  • Computer Work
  • A particular research project or manuscript or dissertation (each individual one will be it’s own project)


Some projects in ‘Home’ Area might be:

  • Errands
  • Shopping list


Projects are set up so that each individual Project will have its own Inbox, Today, Next, and Someday folders. This is done automatically.  Learn about these Focus Areas here.


If you are ‘Waiting for’ or ‘Delegating’ tasks to someone else you should set up different People. Here is an example list of People:


Sharing tasks with people

  • Waiting For (a general waiting for bucket)
  • Reference
  • John
  • Bob
  • Ania


If that particular person has a Get It Done account they will see the task in their Inbox, if they do not have an account it is a general bucket for your own records. If you enter an email address they will be sent a message asking to join Get It Done.


Tags are an even finer way you can organize your tasks. A few ways you might use tags:

  • In any project you might have tags such as ‘Urgent’ to filter tasks that need to get done soon
  • In Shopping list you might tag task as ‘Supermarket’ or ‘Clothes Store’ so you can quickly filter the list
  • In a particular ‘Manuscript’ project you might tag tasks as ‘Chapter 1′ or ‘Introduction’ to see what tasks need to get done for a particular section
  • Some people simply use tags such as ‘High’, ‘Low’ to set a priority.


Tags are very flexible and might be different for each project.


This is a good starting point. The system is very easy to use once you dive into it. You should probably start setting up the app in a fashion similar to this and if you have any questions let us know.