GTD is a collection of relatively simple tactics for coping with, prioritizing, and organizing the things you want to do. Many of the methods relate to organizing your own projects, using a handful of context-based to-do lists (e.g. a list of things to do at the office, at home, while waiting in line, etc). These lists consist of simple tasks. Those tasks are, in turn, derived from another list, of “projects” – things that require more than one task, which can be anything from planning dinner to writing a novel to helping your kid apply to university.

I have never seen next actions mentioned like this: tasks that are derived from another list, a list called projects. The thing I like about OmniFocus (and TaskPaper) is that projects are outline headings, and next actions are simple rows. It naturally blends the two together.

I used Strflow today with OmniFocus, which is pretty good for an interstitial journal. I can quickly bring it up and leave a status update about projects. It is handy when making a phone call and logging what we discussed.

I made two shortcuts, which work on the selected action’s project:

1. Journal About Selected OmniFocus Project: ask for a quick status update, then it automatically tags the note with the project name converted to a hashtag.
2. Open Selected OmniFocus Project Timeline: opens the timeline based on the project name.

I created a journaling shortcut for OmniFocus a couple of months ago, but it is built on top of DEVONthink. It doesn’t automatically get the project, and storing these entries in DEVONthink will make my status updates get mixed with project-related assets, which I don’t like.

By the way, I can also add pictures to Strflow entries, which is kind of hard to do in DEVONthink.

I used to do interstitial journaling in TaskPaper, and I’m not sure yet if Strflow is better or worse than TaskPaper, but at least it is available on iOS, too.

These days, I’m using TaskPaper for “brainstorming,” not journaling. TaskPaper is a pretty cool outliner, so I can quickly create session notes related to the selected OmniFocus action. But these are just fleeting notes… I’m using TaskPaper as a temporary thinking tool.

I can also share Strflow notes with other apps, like Day One, or add them to Drafts, where I can process and export them to other places, transforming Drafts into a tool that migrates text-based information between apps.

Also, I like how the Strflow timeline was made to look like a chat app. In a way, it feels like the old Twitter feed, where we posted random thoughts to get them out of our heads. It is a private version of that.

A nice tutorial on using GTD with TaskPaper.