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Practical walkthroughs and habits. How to capture, triage, and focus without turning productivity into a second job.
29 posts
The two-minute rule is GTD's simplest instruction and its most misunderstood one. This explainer covers where David Allen's rule came from, why the math behind it holds, the mornings where it quietly wrecks your priorities, and the voice-capture twist that makes deferring nearly as cheap as doing.
A GTD inbox works when three things hold: few capture points, a fixed processing routine, and a daily emptying cadence. This walkthrough covers the physical and digital setup, the clarify-first processing rules, and the weekly review that keeps the system trusted.
The GTD weekly review is the habit that keeps the rest of the method alive. This guide walks the clear, current, and creative phases with realistic timing, the checklist that actually gets used, and the fixes for the failure modes that kill the review in the first month.
Why a folder of plain text files outlives every task app you will ever try: portability, search, version control, and zero lock-in, plus the honest tradeoffs (no reminders, no sync magic) and the minimal setup that actually sticks.
A copy-paste daily planner template as one markdown file: three priorities at the top, time-blocked hours in the middle, a capture section for stray thoughts, and a shutdown ritual at the bottom, plus a filled-in example showing the file after a real day.
A markdown kanban board is one file where headings are columns and checkbox lines are cards: Backlog, Doing, Done, with a WIP limit noted under Doing. Cards move by cut and paste, Git history becomes your audit trail, and the board stays readable in any editor forever.
Copy-paste markdown meeting notes templates for a general meeting, a 1:1, a standup, and a client call. Each one ends in checkbox action items with an owner prefix and a due date, so follow-ups stay greppable weeks after the meeting.
A weekly review template you can paste into any markdown editor, built on the GTD review sequence: inbox sweep, projects review, next actions, waiting-for, calendar look-ahead, and a shutdown step, plus timing guidance and the mistakes that make reviews slip.
The complete markdown checkbox reference: exact `- [ ]` and `- [x]` syntax, the space-after-bracket and list-only rules, 2-space nesting, where checkboxes render and where they are clickable, plus a gotchas table for the mistakes that turn tasks back into raw text.
Todoist wins on polish, filters, and integrations. TickTick wins on built-in habits, Pomodoro, and price. A full feature, pricing, and portability breakdown, plus the third option for people who think out loud instead of typing.
