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July 14, 2008

GTD & Google Spreadsheet

Easy accessibility to your GTD lists is key. If your brain thinks it will take longer to get something onto a list than to hold on to it in psychic ram, it will have no incentive to let go of it.

For those of you who are fans of Google spreadsheet as a GTD list manager, a quick way to get actions on to your lists is to create a "form" for new entries. What a form will do is give you a few simple fields to capture next actions. What you enter will automatically get filed onto your spreadsheet (setup as GTD lists) in the proper format. No need to even navigate to your spreadsheet.

Here's how to set that up:
1. Once you've created a Google spreadsheet, open up your spreadsheet on your desktop
2. Go to the sheet you are using for next actions (will be easier if all next actions are in one sheet)
3. Click on the Form tab
4. Click on Create a form
5. All of the columns in your current worksheet are captured as a form and will open in a new window
6. Once in your new form, hover over the Categories question, select Edit, and create it as a drop-down list instead creating options for each of your contexts (quick fill on the first letter of the list name will work if you don't use the @ at the beginning.)
7. Change the Next Actions question to the format of Paragraph text for more space to type
8. When you are done making changes, click Save, then Next, choose recipients. You don't actually have to send it to anyone. Just create a bookmark for the unique URL you see there. I added it as a button on my Firefox toolbar called "Add Actions."

What this gives you is a simple web page that includes all of the fields you need for capturing a next action on the fly:

For those of you with web access on your phones, this could make getting things onto your lists much faster and easier. If you primarily work from your desktop, keep an open window for this form when you start your day so that you can easily toggle over to it.

Posted by Kelly at 01:46 PM | Comments (8)