What's your go to app for managing to-dos, notes, clippings etc. and staying organized?

Ok, I have been working on a productivity app for a while now, so I have done quite a bit of research on this. It's been about a year and I'm still developing my own methods, but I'll give an overview of what I've learned so far. It may get long-winded, but hopefully it can help you and others.

If you have ever heard of or looked into Getting Things Done (GTD), then you can probably skip or skim the rest of this post. I recommend reading the book, but I'll do my best to give a high level overview of the system here. It has really helped me a lot.

Let's start with a flowchart of the process:




Almost all of that is about managing to-dos. Notes, clippings, etc. all fall under "references" in that flowchart. I understand that your question is mostly about organizing references, but personally I find it helpful to integrate todos ("actions" in GTD terms) and references in the same system. After all, almost all of our notes and references are kept around to help us perform some action in the future, right?

On to the explanation...


EVERYTHING starts in your Inbox. This is the Capture phase of GTD. Don't try to remember anything, ever. One GTD mantra is "our minds are for having ideas, not for holding onto them". For all of this to work, you absolutely must make this one habit in your life: capture absolutely everything. Every thought or idea that you have even the slightest inclination to try to remember for later, capture it in your Inbox. It's ok to have multiple inboxes. We all have email inboxes that capture for us automatically. You might have a physical inbox on your desk that other people put things in. Or you might have an app that follows the GTD method with an Inbox to capture everything else. Or you might use Trello or one of the other apps you mentioned and set it up with an inbox.

However you have your inbox(es) set up, you have to set a reminder for yourself to empty all of them every day. Inbox ZERO, every day. You MUST clear your inboxes in order to clear and settle your mind. The entire rest of that flowchart describes how to empty your Inbox, and they make up the next two steps of GTD: Clarify and Organize. Personally, I think of these as just 1 step because you do them at the same time. Clarifying is asking yourself "what is this?", and then Organizing is putting it where it belongs (the majority of the flowchart).

Asking "is this actionable?" basically divides your inbox items into the two basic categories: todo's (actions) and references.

If it is not actionable, maybe you realize it's not so important after stewing on it all day, so you trash it. Done, off your mind. Maybe you want to stew on it some more at a later day, "someday / maybe". You have a perpetual reminder to review your "someday / maybe" list every week/month or however often you want. The important thing is it is out of your mind and in a trusted system so that it's no longer bouncing around in your head. Or if it's a note, a website bookmark, or whatever other type of reference, you file it away in your system (discussed in next post).

Now, if this inbox item IS actionable, then it gets processed through the rest of the GTD system. Ask yourself "what is the very next action that I must take in order to make progress toward this goal?" Defining these "next actions" is really the heart of the GTD system.

Maybe it is just a single step action, in which case you ask a new question: "will it take less than 2 minutes?" This is sort of a productivity boosting short-circuit. The 2 minutes is a rule of thumb, but the idea is that 2 minutes is roughly the amount of overhead involved with putting a task on your to-do list. Rather than bother processing it, just do it. Done. If it takes a bit longer than that, ask yourself if you are the right person to do it. If not, delegate it, and then file it on your "waiting for" list, and include the person's name. Set yourself a reminder to follow up on progress, and also set a perpetual reminder to review this list to collect any stragglers. If it is something for you to do, there are only two remaining options: put it on your calendar, or put it in "next actions". Treat your calendar as if it's sacred. Do not clutter it with random todo's. Only put on your calendar things that must be done on a particular day, or at a particular time. I don't care if you want to do something on a certain day, don't put it on the calendar. It goes in "next actions", which is what most of us might consider the basic to-do list.

"Next actions" can get pretty long (I have 186 items on mine at this moment), in which case it can be counter-productive to constantly scan over such a long list. Many things will simply never get done. We have to filter it, and the main filter is called your "context" in GTD. Your context includes things like where you are, who you are with, what tools you have available, or any other criteria that can help you to determine things that you can possibly do at the moment. After all, if there are numerous things on your to-do list that you can't possibly do right now, you don't need them cluttering up your list. For example, maybe you want to organize your bookshelf, but you aren't home. Or maybe you're at the camp, so you filter by your camp context. This is where a digital system with GTD features comes in handy... contexts can be implemented as labels or tags, and you can filter however you want to generate a short to-do list on the fly. You can also filter by time required. The idea is we shouldn't waste time looking through an endless list of things to do. It must be filterable.

On to multi-step actions, otherwise known as "projects". Probably most of the things we do are part of some larger project. Projects might be clearly defined at work. They might also be clearly defined around the house. But even seemingly simple tasks can be considered a project if you can break it down into two or more steps. Whatever the case, your list of projects is maintained on its own list. You can think of each entry on this list as simply a reminder to determine a new "next action" that will move the project closer to completion. Set a perpetual daily reminder to review your projects and make sure that each one has ONE next action. Some projects can be planned ahead a bit, but generally GTD recommends not to, because the best laid plans never go to plan.

Organizing Notes & References


This is going to be personal preference, but I will share what I've found to be helpful.

As I mentioned, most of the things that I save are intended to help me to actually do something in the future. For this reason, I like my to-dos and reference system to be integrated so that I can attach notes and things to whatever project they are related to. A lot of times, these references might just be a list of potential next actions for a project. I say potential because, as we all know and as I mentioned, the best laid plans.. etc. But I like to store these ideas so I don't forget them, but I also don't want them cluttering up my to-do list if they might not ever need to be done. So, instead, they are just attached to the project, filed away in references for later. Sometimes I attach photos as references, or web bookmarks, or whatever. The point is, these things need to be attached to the project or action that you need them for. That's why I wrote that novel above to go over GTD first. I have not found a better to-do management system than GTD, so any reference system that I use must work well in that system.

If you don't think GTD fits your mind or workflow, feel free to ignore everything I've written up to this point, and see if this next idea is more your speed.



Zettelkasten - literally "box of notes"

Less literally, a mind map for your whole brain.

I only recently ran across this idea, so I don't have as solid a grasp on it as I do GTD, but it basically works as follows.

Think of it as an external brain. Over time, if you stick with it, you will accumulate your whole body of knowledge in your zettelkasten.

There are only a few basic principles:

1. Each note should focus on a single thought. It might be a single sentence, a single paragraph, or maybe a couple of pages. Generally, though, the shorter the better. One thought, one note.

2. Each note must have a unique identifier. Most people use a timestamp as an ID because it serves the second purpose of recording the time that you had the thought.

3. Notes should have a name/title

4. Use tags instead of a category or folder structure

5. Create links between notes by using their unique IDs.


That is the foundation of your zettelkasten. It very much resembles the internet, where each page has a unique url (ID), a title, hopefully focused content, and links to other related pages. Your zettelkasten is searchable by text, filterable by tags, and connected by links.

I have not even begun to check out zettelkasten apps, but I'm sure there are a few. I can imagine many powerful features that a zettelkasten app might have. Maybe it can automatically suggest links for you to make. Maybe it can list notes with few links, suggesting that maybe you should flesh out the thought with more notes and links. Maybe it can use ML to search the internet for new ideas to add, or recognize relationships between your tagging system and suggest tags.



I'm sure it's not for everyone, but to me this sounds like a great way to model and organize notes.

I've had trouble finding the perfect app/resource for this and I know a lot of other people feel the same.

IMO the issue is that the things that are of the most importance for a certain type of professional aren't robust or elaborate or pretty enough for others. A lot of the folks designing and obsessing over these things tend to be younger and tech-minded, resulting in a ton of overkill and fluff for others. As good as the GTD culture can be, I feel like now it's a hobby for a lot of millennials who really don't need all these tools for their work, whereby people are actually adding layers of complications to their life/job that were otherwise unnecessary.

My ideal app would have:

To do
Great note taking capabilities (typed) with great export options and robust but streamlined markup
Preferably something aesthetically pleasing
Good web clipping
Strong Apple pencil functionality, including whatever you call on-PDF-highlighting/markup
Perfect sync

I've tried a ton of options. I don't need tools for an aspiring novelist. I don't need mind mapping or the ability to collaborate on a colorful chart with Joey in marketing. I love Bear but markdown is obnoxious for many of us.

Evernote, Apple Notes and OneNote are all the closest to what I want (Bear other than markdown). Evernote is a clunky and unsupported POS at this point, but I'm holding out hope it's going to be rebuilt as promised. OneNote is actually quite good but I have sync issues and I hate having to open/close notebooks.

So for now I'm using:

Apple Notes - Written notes (cons: limited markup, no highlighting)
Notability - Apple Pencil Notes and PDF Markup (cons: shitty typed notes, ugly)
To Do by Microsoft - Pretty sure this used to be Wunderlist

I definitely think GTD is a valid concept and that it can at least help most people in some ways.

But I do think "organization" and EDC has become an industry and fad, especially people my age and younger. I really think there are people who spend more time on organization than actual work. I've perused a lot of sources in my quest for the perfect system (see, I'm part of the problem) and it's amazing how often I see people on Reddit explaining complicated learned processes they implement - "All my brilliant ideas from the subway go in a Moleskine which I then copy into Bear, all of drawings of my cat go in here, my favorite lyrics I put..."

Whether it's apps or the thousands of field note rip off companies or pens especially designed for bullet notes - it's just out of control. It's sort of become the millennial version of Boomer "meetings about meetings." Just layered bureaucracy to shield the fact that people's jobs and lives really aren't complex or interesting enough to merit all these trappings.

Anyway, I'm ranting so don't take that as a personal affront to GTD, which is legit. I just get frustrated because it's amazingly difficult to find simple, aesthetically pleasing and professional tools that aren't bogged down with shite. Frankly I'd love to just go back to pen and paper, but objectively it'd be kind of irresponsible to do so (for me at least).

I use "Google Calendar". Simple to set up appointments. Works across your platforms/devices. Recurring or non-recurring. Good reminder system. Good search feature. Link your existing Outlook calendars. There's a place inside each appointment to include a GoogleMaps link. Works for me...

At my age - yellow stickum notes

Agree with all of that.

I think my issue centers on the fact that the most invested in productivity/organization are the types who want more complex/interesting/nuanced/innovative solutions (and my thesis is that very few of these people actually need them), so it makes sense that app developers and the like cater to them. That's where the hobbyist/utilitarian divide comes in.

But I'll take responsibility here too, because if I'd spent 1/10th of the time looking for the perfect solution on merely adapting a good-yet-imperfect tool to my purposes, I'd have been far more productive and far less annoyed.

I'm interested in GTD, but I also don't want to make something so complicated. I like the takeaway idea of keeping that inbox empty and breaking down things into actionable or not, but not sure how to take it from there without making it a huge complicated mess. Something as simple as having 2 folders - "actionable" and "inactionable" and just go through those every day and either make a Trello card, a flag, or whatever and do whatever needs to be done with them.

We use Trello and Teams as an organization and I think it works ok for most groups, but I'm a sales engineer that's been in the company for 10 years. I mostly get sales-related tasks that I manage through Trello and Salesforce, but because I have been in the company for so long and have a purely technical background, I wind up helping out with our infrastructure & operations teams and things can get chaotic sometimes. On top of this, I'm studying some Python to learn coding on the side. Very easy to have different things bouncing around in my head.

Currently my email inbox kind of works to the opposite - I never delete anything, but I do keep everything read so that I can keep up with unread things and I use Outlook flags to manage email chains that I need to keep up with or have some action I need to take. I have folders set up for automated notifications from monitoring systems and or mail groups like NANOG, but I mostly operate straight from this inbox that's never empty, yet it's never occurred to me that it's probably better to empty it and work from that

I should say - I had not heard of GTD before this post so I appreciate your posting about it.

I always feel disorganized at work no matter how much I try to organize. None of my note-taking or project boards seem to really be THE THING, it's more a patchwork of things and since I don't have a system, shite gets all outta whack sometimes. I suppose that's what this thread is all about.


I'm definitely going to implement emptying my inbox. I've already started - I literally deleted all emails (deleted emails are archived also) from everything before today, then went through today's emails and found a couple I missed. I've created "actionable" and "inactionable" folders so I can go through them. It's so foreign to me, having nothing in my inbox.

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Certainly appreciate you taking the time to write all that up. Your posts and the subsequent discussions certainly gives me a lot to think about - What do I want out of it ultimately? How much time should I put into it? How complex/simple do I want my system to be? What's the right balance, so that I stick with it and don't get overwhelmed by the process itself etc.