The first thing you need to do is to decide if it is actionable or not. This could be your inbox on your desk, your email inbox, your unprocessed items in Evernote, your RSS feeds or any other queue of unprocessed incoming inputs. In GTD this is called processing and your goal is to always process your unprocessed queues to zero. When processing start at the top and decide what to do with each unprocessed item until you have completely processed your stuff to zero. Now that you have completed your initial capture you should have lots of unprocessed items in your “- Unprocessed” notebook and now it is time to figure out what to do with all your stuff. And for this reason, Evernote has become the most important application I have on all my devices. I can’t think of a better way to have a friction-free way to getting stuff into my trusted system than using Evernote. It works surprisingly well.Īll of these processes end up with new actionable items waiting for me in my -Unprocessed folder in Evernote ready to process into the appropriate action and context for that item. Similarly, If I am driving, I use Siri to do a voice to text conversion to send it to Evernote. Capturing ideas or actionable items while driving If I come up with an idea or someone tells me something actionable, I use Fast Ever to input it via text or use Sound Ever to record it as a voice memo. One button is all it takes! Capturing ideas or actionable items on the go If I have a physical piece of paper that needs to get into my trusted system I use my ScanSnap to scan it to Evernote. If I am on the web or I click thru to a web site and see something actionable or a reference item I want to save for future use, I use the Evernote Web Clipper to clip the article to Evernote. When I am processing email and I come across an action that is more than two minutes, I forward it to Evernote and drag the email to my Archived folder in case I ever need to original email. I use Fast Ever to add the location of the bookmarks that I place in the podcasts to follow-up on them later in Evernote. On strength training days, I listen to podcasts on my iPhone with the Apple Podcasts player.
This allows your followers to consume your tweets and posts easier. I highly recommend Buffer because it allows you to schedule your tweets and posts so they don’t all come at the same time. If I find an article that I want to share with the world, I use Buffer to tweet it and post it to LinkedIn.
It works across the web on Mac or PC, iOS and Android so no matter what device I am using, I can process my feeds and it will sync across devices. I love Feedly as my replacement for Google Reader and Feedler Pro. Then I go on to process my RSS Feeds via Feedly. If I find an article that I want to keep, I use the “share” function to email it and I send it to my Evernote email address. I start out reading the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and LA Times to catch up on what is going on in the world. On the cardio days, I use the elliptical trainer and my iPad to read while listening to a up-beat playlist to motivate me to keep my heart rate up. Almost every morning during the week I go to the gym and alternate between Pilates, cardio and strength training workouts. This is critical to having a Trusted System and the stress-free productivity that goes with it. The beauty of Evernote is it’s friction-free ability to get “stuff” into Evernote so you can process it later and ensure you never forget anything that is actionable.
Now, I am going to share how I use this system in my daily life. A few weeks ago I outlined how I set up Evernote to be the basis of my Trusted System that I use to run my life.