After nine months working remotely full time, I found myself drowning in paper. Handwritten notes, lists — so many lists — references, and sticky notes accumulated around me faster than time and mental capacity could process. But with a cluttered desk comes a cluttered mind. The added volume of email, meetings and chat messages weighed me down even more. I had lost the ability to be proactive or think past the most urgent task in front of me. Stressed and anxious, I was afraid I would drop one of the dozens of balls I struggled to keep in the air. I knew I was working harder than I should to achieve less than my workload demanded. Burned out and overwhelmed, I desperately needed a system to help me organize my work. My life raft came in the form of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, and Microsoft OneNote.

Distributed Cognition

Lucky for me, I write shit down. I know better than to rely on my memory for ideas, reminders, and action items. Because of this, I’ve been building an external mind to capture and store information. This process of getting things out of your head and into objective, reviewable formats is referred to as “distributed cognition.” By capturing thoughts externally, you free up space in your mind for other ideas. Store thoughts in your mind and you’re likely to forget them or limit the flow of other ideas, ultimately limiting your productivity and creativity.

For example, you’ve surely needed to memorize a long number for a few moments. You repeat it in your head over and over, solely focused on this one thing. One distracting thought and boom, gone. Need to go to the grocery store? Try memorizing the five things you need and most likely there won’t be room for the thought that you’re also low on eggs. But go with an external list and your mind has the freedom to wander.

Thanks to my habit of writing everything down, I had already built a sort of external mind. Unfortunately, my external mind was a disorganized shit show of handwritten notes, lists — so many lists — references, and sticky notes. That’s where David Allen’s book, and Microsoft’s OneNote, came in and saved me.

This is a good quick introduction to using OneNote for GTD. It outline a very clear, usable, and simple system for GTD. I liked the simplicity of the system especially as a way to get started with GTD or reset and get back to the basics. The writing was clear, supported with a lot of screenshots, and was not unnecessarily verbose. I'm an Evernote guy using GTD. OneNote looks great. Tags, though, can really get out of hand. Anyway, assuming OneNote has Google-strength search capabilities like Evernote, maybe just put hash tags in either your title or text. That way you can just search for #NextActions (or what have you). Start Getting Things Done (GTD) by using these templates for OneNote from Auscomp.com. 10 FREE & 18 PRO TEMPLATES; FREE Templates. Get Things Done for OneNote - Purchase Options You’re not just getting one template, you’re getting an entire Notebook full of clever sections, pages & template. OneNote has checkbox style tags that allow you to tag and then check off items, very handy. Create a Notebook for GTD, with tabs for Today, the current month, Active Projects, Support Files. OneNote has checkbox style tags that allow you to tag and then check off items, very handy. Create a Notebook for GTD, with tabs for Today, the current month, Active Projects, Support Files.

Capturing Open Loops

Getting Things Done is an organization and productivity system. The book delves into painstaking detail at times and probably could have been shorter, but with thirty-five years of experience as a management consultant and executive coach, Allen knows his stuff. I took what I wanted from the book and left what I didn’t.

The first tactic I implemented that immediately paid dividends when it came to my productivity and reducing my stress was capturing my “open loops.”. Allen defines open loops as “anything pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is.” Open loops are the thoughts that leap out at you at seemingly random times when you’re least likely to be able to act on them. Everything from planning a vacation, emailing an agenda in advance of tomorrow’s meeting, or picking up milk.

Not capturing these thoughts, to-dos, actions, etc. is like going to bed without an alarm clock. You spring up in the middle of the night afraid you overslept and have little peace of mind. That is precisely what was happening to me, but with work thoughts.

So I set to capture every “open loop” from my mind, scrap of paper or lingering list with Allen’s instruction. The more I captured, the more open loops sprang to mind (a benefit of distributed cognition) and the more confident I felt that tasks wouldn’t fall through the cracks. Already, I felt more in control of what I needed and wanted to do.

I created another document to capture meeting notes after experiencing the benefit of keeping notes electronically. I could keep everything together (in a searchable format) rather than shuffling through notebooks to find that note containing what that guy said in that meeting two (or was it three) weeks ago.

Do you know about OneNote?

I can’t be the only person who didn’t know about Microsoft OneNote. I only “discovered” OneNote late last year and it’s changed my life. In case you’re uninitiated like I was, it’s a digital note taking app where you can create digital notebooks and add sections to the notebooks, then pages to the sections. So long, Word docs! I keep everything in OneNote. I have a work account where I keep a master work notebook and a personal account where I have notebooks on everything from this website to ideas for my Youtube channel, Big Appetite. Small Kitchen., ideas, goals, etc. It also syncs to all my devices so I can access my notebooks anytime, anywhere as long as I can access my Microsoft account.

Next Actions

Once I formed the habit of capturing open loops and started using OneNote, the quality of my life improved. I’m serious. Despite being an organized, high-performing person, I was wasting a lot of time struggling to get organized, and causing myself a lot of unnecessary stress.

David Allen goes into great detail regarding what to do with open loops once they’re all captured; specifically, how to determine your next actions. According to Allen, the next action is the most immediate physical, visible activity required to move a task or project toward closure. It cannot depend on any other action. For example, if you have an open loop to talk with your child’s teacher, then the next action is most likely to email them and ask to meet.

This way of thinking about immediate next actions has helped me to move so much forward. Often my tasks and projects (personal and professional) are large and feel overwhelming. I sometimes don’t know where to begin. Getting in the habit of identifying immediate next actions has increased my productivity and decreased that sense of dread, and therefore procrastination (which we all know compounds stress and anxiety).

Staying Organized

At the end of any given day I may still find myself with pages of handwritten notes and dozens of unread emails. Staying organized requires proactivity. I take the time to transcribe notes into OneNote and am vigilant about the cleanliness of my inbox. Otherwsie, I can end up right back where I was — disorganized and stressed.

Now, having captured my open loops and updated my master next actions list, I am able to shut down my computer at the end of the day with peace of mind. No more waking in the middle of the night in a panic. No more starting my day with anxiety because I have no idea where to begin. It is a beautiful thing and one more lesson I learned to help me achieve a simpler, happier, more peaceful life.

In this article I’m going to discuss how I moved from Omnifocus to OneNote for implementing the Getting Things Done methodology.

OneNote is a great cross platform general purpose digital notebook application from Microsoft. The cross platform nature of OneNote suits me really well since I have an Android, Mac and iPad and am constantly switching between each.

This doesn’t represent the only way to implement GTD. Customize it to suit your particular way of working (and share what you did in the comments!).

OneNote organizes content in Notebooks, Sections and Pages.

My basic setup consists of the following.

• A single Notebook labeled GTD
• Multiple Sections as follows
  • Collection
  • Project List
  • Next Actions
  • Someday or Maybe
  • Checklists

Using Outlook And Onenote For Gtd

Each of those has one or more pages within each section. I’ll talk about each of these in turn.

A note about OneNote. Hyperlinks are your friend. I link individual project pages to my Project list. I also link out to Dropbox folders for things I have stored digitally. It saves a few seconds every time I need those items.

Collection

The Collection section consists of a single page labeled Inbox. When I’m in a flow state and an idea pops in my head I can quickly get it into my Inbox using a number of methods.

Getting Stuff into the Inbox

I wanted a way to get things into a single inbox in no matter where I am or what I’m doing. What I settled on is building out some workflows using the service Zapier and the OneNote API.

Zapier connects applications to each other via their application programming interfaces (APIs). With Zapier and the OneNote API I could easily append items on a page.

It’s the glue that makes my collection process easy. I’ll show you each of the workflows I’m using below.

Email

Getting stuff into my inbox via Email is handled using the “New inbound Email” trigger and the “One Note” action within Zapier. It’s setup as follows.

1. Create a new Zap
2. Set the Trigger to “New inbound Email”

This will create a unique email address that you can use to send content into Zapier.

Now, connect it to OneNote

1. Add a OneNote action to Zapier
2. Select the “Append Note” action, it might be listed under “less common options”
3. Give Zapier permission to access your OneNote account
4. Setup the template that maps the email content to OneNote
   1. Set the note book to the name of your GTD notebook
   2. Set the Section to “Collection”
   3. Set the Page/Note to “Inbox”
   4. Set the Content Type to Text
   5. Set the Content to the email subject line. I actually append the text “Handle email” before the subject so it shows up in the Inbox in a nicer form.

I then add the Zapier email address to my address book so it’s available everywhere. When I receive an email that I need to take action on I just forward it to my inbox. I can then process it during my review.

Google Assistant

I want to be able to use the “Take a note” function on my Android to append a note to my inbox. Unfortunately, while OneNote supports “Take a note” it can only create a new page. This isn’t exactly what I want to do.

Instead, I rely on using Trello as an intermediary with Zapier.

I have a Zap setup that will Append a Trello card to my Inbox whenever a new card is created on a board. It’s pretty hacky but it works. You can follow a process similar to the one above but replace the New Inbound Email trigger with a New Card in Trello trigger.

Alfred

Alfred is a killer productivity app that lets you work more efficiently by giving you the ability to control actions on your Mac with the keyboard. One great feature is the ability to trigger automated workflows. This feature allows me to quickly capture ideas into my trusted system without interrupting my flow.

To get this to work, I use the Zapier for Alfred workflow developed by the gang at Zapier. You can follow the instructions on that link to learn how to get it running.

Once it’s running you can add things into your system by tapping a key and typing

onenote This is an item for my inbox

It’s a game changer for me because it keeps me out of the rabbit hole I often fall into when I break flow and enter another application.

Project Lists

David Allen defines projects “as any desired result that can be accomplished within a year that requires more than one action step.” Those projects should go on a project list. Within OneNote I have a section labeled “Project List.” This section has a number of pages.

At the top, is a page titled Projects. This page lists all of the projects that have multiple next actions. Then, I have a series of pages for projects that contain my project support material. Each of those is hyperlinked into the main project list.

Not every project in my Projects List needs a project support page but for the more complicated projects it’s handy to have everything linked up in one place.

A Project Support page uses the following template:

Page Title is the Project Name, I use the same name that appears in the Project List

Then I have the following sections

• Purpose / Principals
• Outcome
• Brainstorming – where I keep notes
• Next Actions – where I keep a running list of next actions, this is helpful if I think of a bunch of tasks during brainstorming
• Notes – a place to keep miscellaneous notes related to the project

Next Actions

This sections consists of a series of pages for each of the Categories or Contexts that I care about. Here’s my list but feel free to create your own.

• Computer
• Read
• Email
• Errands
• Calls
• Home
• Waiting For
• Thinking

Someday Maybes

I keep my Someday Maybe list in its own section. I do this in case I want to keep more than one page for Someday / Maybes.

Checklists

Finally, I have a set of checklists that I use to help keep me on task. I’ve always loved using checklists. If you haven’t read the Checklist Manifesto, I recommend checking it out.

Here’s my current set of checklists

• Morning Review
• Weekly Review
• Monthly Review
• Mental Sweep Checklist

Morning Review

I like to keep my system in check so every morning, I do the following:

Using Onenote For Work

1. Process my email inbox
2. Review my calendar
3. Review my GTD inbox
4. Review my Next Actions
5. Review my Projects List
6. Review my tickler file

Doing this everyday gets me ready for the day and makes my weekly review easier.

Weekly Review

My weekly review checklist is an expanded version of the Morning Review. I basically follow the process outlined in the book to get Clear, Current and Creative. The only variation is the things I check when I’m “getting clear.” I’ve described that below.

Getting Clear

• I’ll look around my office for any loose paper or things that don’t belong and stick them into my inbox.
• I then follow the mental sweep list to get a bunch of things out of my head. I don’t like to do this at the computer because I tend to get distracted. Instead, I’ll grab my iPad and jot things using the Notes app.
• I then go through my various inboxes and process them.
  • I’ll check my various email accounts, and process them.
  • I’ll check my physical inbox and clear that out
  • I’ll check my OneNote inbox and move things to projects and next actions
  • I’ll clean out my Mac Downloads folder
  • I’ll also clean out a special folder on Dropbox called 1Scans. This folder contains content I’ve scanned in but haven’t filed in my digital system yet.

I’ve mentioned that I use Zapier to get my stuff into my system. How do I deal with handling things while I’m on the go? I’m using a Google Pixel phone and the OneNote application. OneNote for Android lets me create shortcuts to specific pages right on my home screen.

I’ve created a link to my Errands page so I can easily check it whenever I’m out. There’s also a link to my Inbox which gives me another way to get things into my system.

Are you interested in using OneNote for implementing GTD? If so, you can download my GTD Template.

If you have your own tips for using OneNote for Getting Things Done I would love to hear them in the comments.

Posted in Productivity

2 Comments

Jasonon November 19, 2018 at 7:01 am

Hi Joe, Nice blog post. Saw your link on the GTD page on Reddit. I like the way you organize your project lists. It can be tough to get things done as a new engineer without some kind of good system. This was helpful for me. Can you share a little bit about what you review with your checklists? Thanks for sharing!

ReplyJoe Cotelleseon November 19, 2018 at 7:38 am

Thanks for the feedback Jason. I just updated the post with my Weekly Review Checklist. My 1Scans folder is probably a blog post on it’s own.

I actually started GTDing years ago when I was an engineer too. It definitely helped me get my head around things. It’s probably going to take you time to sort out how to deal with your own project lists plus things in your Issue tracking system.

One way you can deal with that is just add a “Check JIRA” task to your Morning Review checklist.

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Joe CotelleseDoylestown,PA

My first professional job involved playing video games for 9 hours a day. After experiencing early signs of brain rot, I decided to teach myself how to write software.

My entire career is characterized by this “why not?” attitude.

I'm currently the co-founder of AppJawn, the software company behind the amazing recipe organizer app ClipDish.

I also help transform companies into product driven organizations as a fractional CPO.

Affiliate Disclosure

On blog posts where I discuss products I may include affiliate links. If you click on one of these links and buy something then I get a teeny-tiny commission. As of this writing I think I make enough to buy a cup of coffee once every couple of months.

I don't get any paid compensation directly to write product reviews. I think that's pretty scammy.