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Confidently trust YOUR productivity system so you can focus on what’s truly important.
Trust is a Must
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The Fu Master Productivity Checklist using Things3 - Productive with a Purpose 4/20/21, 9:33 AM
For all of the aspiring Pebble Snatching, Productivity Fu Masters out there,
I’ve created a Fu Master Productivity Checklist with Things3 as the
backdrop. My goal is to provide a framework that will guide others to a point
where they can confidently TRUST their Productivity System.
Did you remember to get back to your boss about that one super important
thing? Is there a thought or idea that’s been buzzing around your head all
day and won’t go away? … and how distracting is that buzzzzzz? How
insanely full is your Today List and how often do your todos tend to rollover
from day to day?
At times, this productivity thing can feel like a moving target. It can be a
frustrating and defeating proposition.
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This checklist isn’t a how to use Things3 tutorial, Cultured Code has an
awesome guide for that. This checklist is all about how to think about using
Things3.
I’ll use the Anytime List as an example: IMHO, the Anytime List is the key to
unlocking the power of Things3 and your ability to trust your system. Over-
stuffed Today Lists & Over-scheduling todos are a symptom of an
underutilized Anytime List. I want Anytime to be a go-to list for everybody
because I know how powerful it can be!
Once you’ve mastered all 10 concepts, you are ready to confidently roam the
Earth as a Pebble Snatching, Productivity Fu Master , spreading
the good word about the impact of being Productive with a Purpose.
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The minute you stray from your productivity system … the minute you skip a
Daily Review or don’t use that Tag the same way you did last time or you
don’t capture that distracting thought immediately in your Inbox … you’re
sunk. You’ve opened the door to doubt. And doubt makes it really tough to
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trust anything.
Doubt is for jerks . Trust is for the cool kids . So, let’s do this.
You’ll find additional details for each Fu Master Productivity Checklist item
below …
You need a single place to put thoughts and ideas when they hit you, no
matter where you are. Capture every thought, idea (big or small!), email,
web link, etc that requires later thought immediately in your Things3 Inbox
so you can get it out of your head and get back to what you were doing!
Head Zero, Inbox Everything gets weedy into how I use Things3 as my one,
true (trusted) Inbox. See how you can utilize quick entry, Siri, mail to Things,
etc to help you master your Inbox.
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Invest just 10 minutes each morning to set your entire day up for success.
I boiled the Internet’s Top Productivity Tips down to one statement. What
I’ve realized through my research is that the best way to set EACH DAY up
for success is to double down on your MORNING and create a simple,
consistent morning routine. And do it that way every day.
I have a Launch Area @ the top of my Lists in Things3 where I keep daily
and weekly reminders that help facilitate my morning routine. I track these
as separate “todos” … you can just as easily use a checklist within a single
todo … it’s completely up to you.
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on the day and thinking ahead to the evening w/ my family. It has really
helped me turn the page and get into Dad mode.
Ask What?, How?, When?, Where? & What Else? for each item in your Inbox when doing your Daily Review.
The goal of the Daily Review is to get you to a point where you have a clear,
concise list of “Must Dos” (i.e. today’s top, I HAVE to do them today
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priorities) in your Today List. If you do a thorough Daily Review, you should
be able to LIVE in your Today list (and not ping pong around in Things3,
hunting and pecking for todos) … all day long!
Check your Calendar – What’s already scheduled for today (and over
the next couple of days)? What actions are required today for these
future events to be successful?
Clear your Email Inbox – Review any unread emails and use Mail to
Things to forward anything to your Things3’s Inbox that requires later
review or follow up.
Clear your Things3 Inbox – For each item, ask: What is this? How
Much Effort? When do I NEED to do this? Where should I put this?
What Else will help me find and / or take action on this later?
Review your Today List – You may have previously scheduled todos for
today … is everything still relevant? Review and tighten your Today List
so it just has the items you Must Do today.
Now Visit your Anytime List – Peruse your Anytime list for other todos
that you need to tackle today. Always take a minute to review your ME
specific todos (non work related) so you always have a healthy dose of
purpose in your Today List!
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… If you have a tight (and trusted) Weekly Review process, your Anytime List
should be the only place you’ll need to go to find Todos throughout the
week.
With focus comes IMPACT . The Weekly Review helps you get real focus
for the week and it’s basically the Daily Review on Steroids:
Get Weedy – You’ll roll up your sleeves and comb through your Things3
setup: Area by Area … Project by Project … todo by todo (including the
Someday List).
Clean House – Each week is an opportunity to do some hardcore
Spring cleaning in Things3. Add, remove & consolidate projects, delete
todos that are no longer relevant, organize and tidy things up. When
you finish your Weekly Review, you should feel really good, liberated
almost. Your Things3 setup should feel as fresh and clean as it did the
first day you set it up.
Pause & Celebrate Success! – Part of my Weekly Review is pausing to
reflect on my Accomplishments from the previous week. It’s too easy to
jump head first into the next thing and that’s no good. Productivity Fu
Masters also ain’t scared to share their goals and celebrate their
successes with others … it creates a mini-support system for your
success + creates accountability for you to do the work. I’ve started
doing this with my team at work and it’s good to realize that you’re
making an impact every single day!
Set a Goal for the Week – Pick ONE WORK Goal + ONE ME goal
(something that’s non work related that’s all about YOU) that will net the
largest impact this week. Think 80/20 rule: What 20% of your efforts
will net 80% of the results? Do these things FIRST. PERIOD. Once
complete, find your next biggest impact item, focus on that one, crush
it, etc. Know this: If you only complete these few items this week, it’ll be
a successful week !
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The Someday List & THIS WEEK – I swear, the Someday List isn’t a
place where ideas go to die ! In simple terms, the Weekly Review
helps you identify what you want to focus on THIS WEEK. Anything you
don’t plan to focus on THIS WEEK should go in your Someday List.
Conversely, during your Weekly Review, you’ll also scour Someday to
see what Projects or Todos you do want to work on this week and pull
them into Anytime. If you do a thorough and consistent Weekly Review
every week, you can trust that your Someday List items won’t fall
through the cracks!
When we have a project, our instinct is to add the five steps “we think we’ll
need” to get from point A to point Z. There are two problems with this: 1) We
often can’t take action on steps 2-5 until step 1 is complete (this creates
noise and clutter in your system) and 2) These are “possible” next steps.
Too often, once step 1 is complete, the flow of the project takes it in a slightly
different direction than what was originally planned. Now you need to go
back and rethink a bunch of todos that are no longer applicable.
Use the Project Notes section in Things3 to list out steps 1-5. When
you do your Weekly Review, you’ll review these details and can adjust
accordingly.
Utilize the Someday List. Someday can be a great place to keep
possible, future todos for a project. Again, your Weekly Review is when
you can confidently review these items, delete the stuff that’s no longer
applicable and adjust accordingly.
Use a 3rd party Notes App like Bear (more on that below). Notes
apps are a great place to keep detailed notes and thoughts and goals
for a given project. With Bear, you can copy a link in the Things3
Project Notes that take you directly to your note in Bear.
I encourage you to play with these options to see what works best for you.
But, like everything else we’ve discussed, once you land on something that
feels right: stick with it and do it that way every time!
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hits you out of the blue. Oh geeze! I need to finish the team meeting
slides by this Friday!
So you cntrl + space on your Mac (quick entry!) and enter “Team
Meeting Slides”. This thought is automatically saved in your Inbox. You
can relax and go back to being awesome in your meeting. This item
isn’t Actionable yet … but that’s ok. You know that during your Daily
Review on Tuesday morning, you’ll dig into this one more and make it
Actionable.
Your Tuesday morning Daily Review rolls around and you come to this
item. You might decide to turn it into a Project: “Complete Team
Meeting Slides”, if it’ll take multiple steps to complete. Or it could turn
into a single, Actionable todo if you feel you can knock it out in one
sitting. That’s what you decide, so the title becomes Actionable:
“Complete Team Meeting Slides”, you set the Due Date = Friday. You
assign the Focused Action Tag. You move it to your general
Work Area. You add a checklist of items to the todo that you want to
include in the Team Meeting Slides.
You can either decide to do it Today or leave it in Anytime where you
know you’ll have an opportunity to work on it multiple times before
Friday.
If it’s a high priority item, you may decide to block 30 minutes on your
Calendar so that you have time dedicated for this specific task. Once
scheduled, you can let it go and move on with your day!
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Back in the day, my Today List was busting at the seems with stuff I had to
do today + lots of extra todos that I hoped to get to today. Frankly, it was a
hot mess. It seemed that I could never complete everything in my Today
List, there was simply too much stuff. The same few todos would start to
shift to tomorrow … and the next day … and so it went. It was super
defeating.
I’ve since realized that I did this because I wasn’t utilizing the Anytime List to
it’s full potential. If I didn’t see the todo dead square in front of me in my
Today List, I was afraid I’d forget about it completely. Why was this?
Because I didn’t trust my system .
Once you complete all the “Must Dos” in your Today List, that’s when your
Anytime List becomes your new best friend. The Anytime List is chocked full
of “Bonus Todos” that are just waiting to be completed! (And IMHO, “Bonus
Todos” are way more fun to complete than the “I hope I can get to it today
23rd item on your over-stuffed Today List todo!”).
Go all in on your Anytime List and you’ll make one ginormous stride towards
trusting your system! You’ll notice that Anytime continues to pop up … it’s
even tied to your success when Scheduling todos …
Think for a minute … when you schedule a todo for a future date, what are
you solving for? If you really can’t take action on the todo until that date,
then great! This is when scheduling is appropriate.
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But if you’re really scheduling the todo for a future date because you want it
to pop up on your Today List as a reminder … because you’re afraid you may
forget about it otherwise … then you’re not using scheduling effectively (and
you’re causing yourself other issues). You may not realize it, but you’re
missing a huge opportunity to utilize your Anytime List.
By definition, a Scheduled Todo = Any todo you can’t take action on until a
specified date in the future.
By definition, the Anytime List = A list of todos that you can take action on
… well, Anytime. If you misuse scheduling, you’re inadvertently breaking
your Anytime list.
I’m more apt to use Due Dates than to Schedule Items. A Due Date ensures
that a todo will pop up in your Today List when you need to see it, but
doesn’t remove it from your Anytime List. When you add a Due Date, you
can have the confidence that the todo will magically surface on a specified
date (if you did somehow forget about it) … but you can also grab it off your
Anytime list and knock it out early if you so choose.
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Simpler is Better
It’s important to use Tags sparingly and strategically. Why? Because they
can add unintended complexity to your productivity system. It’s easy to get
lost in Tags and this is one instance where I subscribe to way less is way
more.
The only reason Tags exist is so that you can whittle a big list down to a small
list so that you can find that one todo you need, when you need it. That’s it.
When used consistently, a simple set of Tags are unbelievable powerful! So
you should definitely use them, just remember: The only Tags you need are
the ones you use to filter your lists.
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Action Tags – Every Todo has ONE Action Tag (initially assigned during my
Daily Review)
Quick – Anything that’ll require low mental effort and will take me
less than 10-15 minutes to complete.
Focused – Anything that’ll take longer to complete. I use this Tag
when bigger picture decisions have already been made and I know it’ll
take me 20-30+ minutes to complete the task.
Journal – I use my Journal Tag when there’s a big topic, idea or
problem that I need to flush out more. Todos with the Journal Tag
require a much deeper level of thought. I use Journaling as a problem
solving weapon and it works every time! (More on this in a bit.)
Waiting – Used when I’m waiting on something.
Errand – Stuff I need to do when I’m out and about.
Call – Something I can’t take action on unless I’m engaged with
someone else.
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People Tags – I have Tags for family, friends and coworkers (anyone I may
want to filter a list of Todos by later).
Keyboard Shortcuts
When you pair Keyboard Shortcuts with a tight list of Tags, magic is only a
few key strokes away! I have my primary Keyboard Shortcuts set up across
the top of my keyboard. This makes it super easy to A) remember what my
shortcuts are and B) fly through them when I filter my Anytime List (it’s
become total muscle memory at this point).
A huge perk is that I can save links in Things3 that take me back to my notes
in Bear. Bear also has a super flexible tagging system that allows me to keep
my Tags consistent between Thing3 and Bear.
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Life is about being in the NOW. Purpose puts you there. Productivity is the
forcefield that keeps you there.
Productivity isn’t the end goal, it’s a means to an end. Being productive for
the sake of being productive isn’t the point. There has to be a purpose … a
Why? behind all of the lists and todos and productivity tools and that
constant, incessant desire to be more productive.
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I use Areas to track “My Why Buckets” in Things3 so I always have Projects & todos that are ME focused!
I’ve spent a ton of time Journaling in Bear about “My Why?” I’ve landed on a
few areas that are Uber important to me … being a Loving Husband, a Great
Dad, a Caring Son, Brother & Friend, an Inspiring Leader, my Health and my
Productive w/ a Purpose Blog. I call these “My Why Buckets” and I’ve added
them to Things3 as Areas because I want to keep them front a center. I then
add Projects & Todos that will help me try to fulfill my purpose for each
bucket.
In The Why is Your Shark Repellent, I tackle the importance of asking WHY?
Why? Because everyone has a Purpose. And when we can confidently trust
our Productivity System, we can redirect our our time, energy and focus to
the things that are truly important.
From their Inbox to their Daily Review to their Anytime List … A true Pebble
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