How do YOU use Nozbe? This is how I'm doing it...

It’s been a while since my last blog update… we’ve been busy designing the newest features for Nozbe (yes, you will be able to create your own contexts very soon!).

Let my start by saying: Nozbe users – you rock!

We’ve had great feedback from you, especially on the Nozbe forums and we want to hear even more from you… so I’d like to challenge you:

Tell me how YOU are using Nozbe?

How is Nozbe helping you to get more done, to improve your work-flow and productivity… etc.

To make this a proper challenge, I’ll give you my example:

How Michael Sliwinski – the guy behind Nozbe – is using Nozbe every day

1. Projects help me organize stuff

First of all, I have MANY projects in my projects list. Like Davida Allen says – every action that requires more than one step is a project – so I’m following his rule every day.

I’m dividing many complex projects into small ones – like if I work for my client – BuySculpture.com – I rename this into shorter "BS" and put this list of projects:

BS – BuySculpture (for all the stuff that needs to be done for this client)
BS – Shop (for all the actions connected with BuySculpture.com Shop-Gallery)
BS – Marketing (for all the online marketing activities for BuySculpture.com)

This helps me keep things organized and stay focused.

2. Non-project actions are easy to manage

Some actions don’t fall into certain projects… so what to do with these? You can solve it in two ways, I’m doing it like this:

- I create very broad projects like "private", or "business" to narrow down the actions loosely related to my private life or my business life and then I put these actions there. It works for me brilliantly.

- You could also have a simple "stuff" project and put non-project tasks there too.

I prefer the first solution – to create a theme-like like project, that is, a project that you would not call a project as such, but a theme that would help you relate to the "stuff" you are putting.

Actually, if you think about it – my private life is a kind-of project actually (just a bigger one) :-)

3. Next Actions keep me focused and help get stuff done

The "Next actions list" is THE idea that convinced me to start implementing "Getting Things Done" and building Nozbe.

I just love reorganizing my actions and "starring" the ones I need to do NOW. Later I just switch to "Next Actions" view in Nozbe and off I go processing all I have to do action-after-action!

4. Notes

Notes are very important part of my work-flow – every time I need to add some information to a certain project, I just open a new note and put it all there.

The cool thing with Notes in Nozbe is the fact that you can show/hide text bodies of notes so you are kept from distractions – no need to read a note which is meaningless in this moment.

There is an additional thing I do with Notes – keep a diary. I keep a Nozbe development diary and put every day a new note summarizing what I’ve done and where we are with Nozbe.

5. Contexts

As of now, there are only default contexts defined by our development team… but as you very well know, this is soon to be changed and everyone will have an option of defining their own contexts.

I use contexts a lot, especially phone, mail (which I use for both email and mail), computer, office, etc. It’s great to be able to process all the actions in each context.

As my company members are located in different cities and we all work from homes, the "office" context doesn’t apply to us… but I found a cool way of using it… when I want to plan work for my workers.

Whenever there is an action I’m planning and one of my workers is to perform it, I give it a context: "office" and at the end of the day I’m reviewing this context in order to see what they have done and what they have not.

Now it’s your turn!

OK, here’s how I’m using Nozbe, and how are you doing that?

Please post your story on Nozbe forum

or if you have a blog - post it on your blog, and let me know, and I will update this post and link to your blog post.

Thanks and keep up Nozbe’ing!

One of Nozbe users (gpmartinson) wrote on the forum:

I literally was able to sit down and go through everything that was on  my mind recently and put them in to a structure. I am putting together  a couple of large video projects that have a number of complicated needs and it helped to put things into a structure.  It forced me to think concretely abotu the abstract, which is truly the value of the system and GTD.