Jonathan Wylie

As we conclude this series of articles on Getting Things Done With Google, I wanted to take some time to look at the final piece of the puzzle. GTD practitioners call it reference materials. These include, but are not limited to, notes, receipts, images, websites, and other materials that don’t already have a home in your system. You need a way to keep track of these, and the best Google tool for the job is called Keep. Let’s take a look at how it works in practice.

In my opinion, calendars are more important than most people give them credit for. If you want a bird’s eye view of what your day, week, or year will look like, then nothing beats a well-organized calendar. What does a well-organized calendar look like? I’m glad you asked! In this post, I am going to include some of my favorite strategies to help you get the most out of scheduling your time with Google Calendar.

I’m old enough to remember the early days of cloud storage. I used to tell teachers that it was like having a filing cabinet that you could access anywhere you wanted, and on any device you felt like using. Then I realized the error of my ways. Every physical filing cabinet I had ever used had files that were neatly labeled and meticulously organized with the aid of those ubiquitous green file folders. Somewhere along the way, we lost some of that organizational structure when we started using cloud storage. However, help is at hand.

Gmail is the most popular email service in the world. Most of us have used it for years and are pretty comfortable using it to read and send emails. However, there’s a difference between knowing how to use email and knowing how to manage email. If you don’t have a system to help you stay organized, the hundreds of emails you get each week will quickly overwhelm you. So, here’s how to use the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology to manage your Gmail inbox.

I used to use Post-it notes a lot. They were on my desk, on my computer, stuck to the wall, and in my teacher manuals. However, they are not without their shortcomings. For instance, if I was not at my desk, I wouldn’t be able to recall that important piece of information from one of those important yellow Post-it notes. I needed something more universal, a way to take my tasks with me everywhere I went, as well as the ability to add to my task list at a moment’s notice. The answer was there all along. I needed a digital task manager.

I used to think about the word “busy” as a positive word. I would come home from work and my wife would ask me how my day was. I would reply, “busy”, like it was a good thing. It implied that I was always on the go. I was never short of things to do. I was working hard and doing as much as I could to fill my day. And then I thought about it. Many of those things were true, but I didn’t necessarily get a lot done. Here’s how I fixed that.