Without explaining my whole process, here are some general tips from trying to do this various ways over the last few years:
- Regularly review your TODOs, and keep them up-to-date. This is way more important than the tool you pick. Pick a slot in your calendar, fight to protect that time, and stick to it. Ultimately all these systems are just a UI veneer on you regularly deciding what’s important. It’s easy to focus on tools and not sticking to a regular process.
- Start small It’s very easy to barf everything you want to do into a system and then be completely overwhelmed by it. If this is a problem, use the review process so that you always have a list of what you actually expect to do in the next day, week, and month. Be realistic.
- Have goals at different time horizons, and have reviews for them. The GTD system of daily, weekly, monthly and annual reviews works well for me.
- Become comfortable with putting complex multidimensional things into coarse little buckets. E.g. this is a task, this is a goal; this is kinda for project A and B, but I’ll put it here; this deadline is self-imposed, this one is for a release, etc. etc. There’s no trick here apart from keep doing it, realize that these are only abstractions which are supposed to be useful to you. You’ll change them over time, but...
- Aggressively separate doing your review system, and improving it. It can be easy to sit down to review what you want to do in the next week/month/year, and end up fiddling around with how your system works. Both are neccessary, but the reviews must happen, and improving your system is a separate activity which you can schedule when appropriate!
Finally...
- Dont sweat it. It takes work, and everyone’s system is more of a mess when you look at it vs. hear them explain it. The most important thing is regularly dedicate time to thinking about how you want to spend time.