Hello back and welcome back to Keep Productive this week we're on the second video Which could be done in two Tiago's Things 3 account uses it the task management I'm quite things I've seen screenshots on Twitter But have not actually seen it. So this is going to be exciting for me as well this is a week dedicated to Sort of concepts so you can check out all the other videos in the link in description. So you could tell me again carry on a conversation Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm excited for this. I don't think that an ever Shown my things Like the actual system that I'm using on video anywhere Yeah, we're getting exclusive though Yeah, I'm I'm excited because then I've seen like a lot of emoji use I've seen like a lot of project use and like things raised a prefabrication so feel free to jump in whenever suitable Sure, if I share my screen will people will be able to see it Okay should be perfect yes, so before I show you and I want to kind of full disclosure I didn't clean up or sanitize or censor anything about my task manager I wanted you just like right before this call. What was I looking at? How was I planning my day in my week? so there may be some it may be a bit messy or you know, and you know What's there but um beautifully show if you want me to pull out stuff, right? I'll let you know I'll let you know Okay, um and I want to say a few things about things things isn't just the most amazing productivity app I've been using it since like 2012 or so? it's been a good seven years and I only tried one or two task managers before it and once I found that I was like this is it I'm done and I've never I've never considered, you know moving to anything else. Yeah and I think I know a bit about why that is so it's extremely Minimalistic extremely well design and I think there's something about that. It's made by a German company I think they're I believe they're based in Berlin I have lived the past until recently in in Silicon Valley near San Francisco So I get the Silicon Valley mindset where it's like constant new features Like there's this this demand for every couple months. You have to be releasing something and actually really don't like that. I Want my productivity apps for the most part to stay the same to not be constantly trying new things And the the culture to code team which is the company that makes it they do release new features But they're released them all at once and like every few years Yeah so every like three years I have to completely get used to a new thing but It's worth it because it's it's so well thought out like, you know even after all these years I still discover little details like in the settings or like little ways that things are designed that are just Beautifully crafted it feels like craftsmanship, you know And that's why I just I just support them and love them. But let me kind of jump in here. Yeah, so I think many of these apps are quite similar. I mean, there's not that many ways to organize large amounts of text There's a sidebar over here once you pin hide which is useful right in in the midst of it's a it's the midst of Execution. You don't want to see all this stuff. You want to see just the one window? So you can close that It's kind of like closing a drawer when you don't want all you don't want to see all the crap in the drawer And then the sidebar is is organized a few different ways, so at the very top you have the amongst And the inbox is just like any other program you you say things and they're capture their The way something gets into the inbox the most usual way is the single most brilliant feature of things Which is just I love is the quick capture window Which looks like this? Okay, so there's a there's a keyboard shortcut control spacebar and this little thing fades into view It's especially useful when you're looking at say an email and or website Right, like it's amazing when you're looking at your email or website even just switching to a different application is very jarring Right, like completely changing that your whole visual landscape is jarring So I like that this thing comes up on top of whatever you're doing and then you can just write you know, I'll say send Francesco links to my Website and social. Yeah, and then it enter and then it's just gone, right? There's no you can't if you saw in the window You can say which project this goes to like how it should be organized the tags I say just don't do any of that And then the task shows up right here in my inbox and you can see I mean this is like from one or two days All day long I am what's called capturing open loops Right all day long There's little things coming up coming in and coming up and I don't have to even barely pause what I'm doing I can just capture them in Moments and that's that's the Box one cool thing. I think I'll show you one more thing so If you're looking at a web page, and this works with email too, you can do control options spacebar which is a slight modification and it will automatically sense the URL that you're looking at and it will put it here in the notes and The battle right there like you cannot imagine how useful that is especially for email, right? You know when you have that even lingering in your inbox like forever and it never goes away this could be just a simple way to capture what you actually need to do and then it will have a link to the email and then you hit save and then you can archive that you mail from from your inbox yeah, that's amazing How do you go about? using the project side of stuff because obviously Ben says, it's going to hit him feature. I think because because don't get it straight away. It's pre-built You spend a lot of time in it, right? The the projects here you mean? Yes Yeah, so this is the if you're familiar with GTD, which is really kind of how I started. I'm getting things done The project list is like your dashboard Right, like, you know when you're driving a car you need to see just a few dials like what is happening right now? This is the project list that I use and it is a built-in feature of things you click here on the bottom left and it says new projects and then I can say video Francesco and then if I want I could add an emoji at the beginning and then it pops up right here and actually I a this is a bit of a hack but things expects you to save each Project underneath an area like this. Yeah so that you can say okay what's in content? Click the arrow and there it is I don't like that because it creates it basically spreads out the project so much that I can't see them at a glance so most of my projects I just keep I Just keep in one list at the very top. Oh, yeah, where did that go like this? So then in you know in one window I can see that there are a few exceptions like if there's something assigned to my executive Assistants then I I move the the project under him if there's something that's like a blog project like a series of blog posts I'll I'll keep that under this area, which is My blog which is called praxis. So there's there are some exceptions or for the most part I like keeping them here And this means that I can just you know Or if I'm working on this workshop that I'm teaching soon in LA I can just click it and see only the small set of tasks that are related to that one project Ok, that's pretty interesting. And and I see that like you've got a lot of late to projects. Is that because you've Shared them for a later time just sort of minimize them right so that you've always liked pre-scheduled everything in advanced You know This is a feature, I don't use very often So things has this thing called Sunday This is also online GTD is there's a cult category of someday Maybe things that you want to do Sunday or things that you're not sure you want to do And in this case, this is all these are projects that are Sunday projects But I think this might have been from the previous version of things where it kind of like Carried them over because I don't really schedule later or Sunday projects to be honest and the in terms of like like for example like day to day do you try to Restrict how many applet and how many tasks you've got inside of your today area or I'll coming any given time? Or how do you go? Do you know about filtering as well? yeah, so what I would typically do that, I'll show you this - This is my weekly review This is yeah, I like you keeping keeping a really simple really direct and I just have this kind of pinned somewhere on my desktop It's pretty pretty much memorized now, but sometimes I still refer to it So really just like once a week at most twice a week. I'll just go through completely clear my email inbox capture anything that needs to actually be done in my things inbox like I showed you previously I Check my calendar the last two weeks of the next four weeks So I sort of have like a rolling view of everything that I'm doing I clear my physical inbox and my paper notebook of any thing to do any open loops My computer desktop my downloads my budgets my ever notes By that time I have maybe 30 to 50 new open loops in my things inbox like it's amazing how many new things are Are created each week mom a point. I I prioritize them just higher medium. I only have two priorities Put them into their projects review anything that I'm waiting for review my photos and then I choose my to day tasks And the cool thing about this is like if you were to try to do this first It just wouldn't work. He'd be like oh, but I have something in my images I know something in Evernote, so I need to review my budgets like you'd have to keep going backwards Having done all these nine steps means my today Selection is easy. It's so easy. All I do is I go here to the full list of tasks a priority high So these are only things I've set a high priority and is usually only 10 to 20, yeah Yeah, right. And then from these like let's say I want to do this this week or today I kind of used today as this week's more. It's like things I'm doing over the next week I just do command T adds this little star right here. And then that Appears in my today list and so over the course of the week. This is really my to-do list So I'm slowly working my way through Right. My to-do list isn't always like there's probably several hundred tasks in all of these projects in there Is that can't be here to-do list That's completely overwhelming the actual list that you work from can be ten, you know five to ten items at most. Yeah and Like in terms of I want like about that is actually that you so to write out your tasks in in a very different style It's like almost like written out like you were saying it if you know, I mean, I like that. Yeah, that's really fun and if you've combined the emoji use and in it, for example Let's say you were like trying to drill down inside that today area tu sabes filters them Or do you just strictly easy anytime? You know, I've tried to use those tags so much You know a strict GTD would be something like contexts, right you'd have tags for like at the office in the car grocery store off, you know things like that when I find is that my life is so I'm such a digital nomad where I can in theory do anything at any time You know, I could be writing my book in the checkout line of the supermarket now just because I can do that Does that mean I should? So so I find context is really not So helpful anymore now that we have these these devices So for me the context that matters more is my state of mind Am I in the state of mind to actually start this and finish it? Do I have all the information I need Is my mood and my energy level kind of ready for this? And and to me that's that's a decision that can never be fully automated It's I have to make it on a case-by-case basis But this little I was going to do is make that decision in the moment as as easily and quickly as possible Right that are selecting from hundreds. I'm selecting from ten. I think the the thing that I would take away from the social list you had because what it typically do is ie I do probably what you do is know your number ten is I organize my today first and then go and process everything and realized I've got a lump of other stuff in process for this week So I feel like I need a role reversal like go back and be that sort of process house that was really helpful and How obviously like you plan on continuing these things for you just in the future like there's no plans to stop. Oh Yeah. Oh Yeah, I mean, it's just it's like it really is second nature to me. I mean it takes no energy you know capturing these little quick tasks throughout the day is like completely a habit So I I mean as long as they don't make any huge mistakes or I Don't know sometimes a new generation of software comes comes along that doesn't have like more features but a whole new way of thinking Yeah, and that's usually that's usually the one time I will make that jump is when there's there's a new piece of software That's a completely different paradigm And that that jump is what justifies all of the work of moving. Yeah, that's it Okay, what can everyone find you? I'm most active on Twitter at Forte labs. That's also my website Forte labs co-ceo Which has links to my online courses such as building a second brain, which is the main one Has links to my ebooks my workshops my speaking And I'd love to hear from your subscribers Thank you so much for showing us into things free We're gonna now jump over and share about notion. So that's really quite exciting. If you're an ocean fan should definitely stay around for that Conversation, but I will see in a second Okay