Could you recommend books, tutorials, videos, online courses, or anything really that teach the fundamentals of personal organisation?
David’s videos on org-mode and org-mode related stuff assume one is already familiar with personal organisation and is not a scatterbrain slob like myself.
Thank you!
Getting Things Done by David Allen is a classic.
GTD is good. Rainer König has a course on Udemy on integrating GTD with org mode, which I found helpful. A newer spin on GTD, sprinkles with a bit of Zettelkasten thinking, is “Building A Second Brain” (BASB) by Thiago Forte. The book is okay, but I found that the course material (and second book) is a way to milk the idea more than adding much value, but YMM. Props to Thiago for finding a way to get rich, in any case.
On Zettelkasten, I think the book “How to Take Smart Notes” by Sönke Ahrens is the best I have read. It’s very different from GTD. GTD is about getting stuff done (action items), Zettelkaste/note-taking the Ahrens way is (mostly) about thinking deeply and developing thoughts. BASB makes a claim for the latter, but is in my opinion much more about taking action. Definitely some useful insight there, though.
At some point I stumbled on Carl Pullein’s YT channel, where he covers his way of managing and planning projects (and life), which has been resonating with me quite a lot lately. He also has pretty fresh book out ( Your Time, Your Way), and has bunch of other courses as well, see his site.
I took the free COD (Collect Organize Do, with roots in GTD) course and at end of that he has 50% off coupon for other courses, which I’ve purchased but not worked through many yet.
I’m working through his book right now and implementing Carl’s workflow recommendations, the COD method, the time sector system etc. It’s early to tell if I will stick with this in exactly the prescribed way, but his methods make a lot of sense to me and I will try them for at least a few months now.
Right now I switched to the Todoist app for main planning as he has the most workflow recommendations with this tool, and it’s good on tablet/mobile syncing which I need. But I’m still doing project notes with specific detailed task lists in org-mode and denote. My org-roam + denote + custom org files just grew out of hand in the end for any effective planning. We’ll see if I end up long term on a new working method based on Carl’s ideas, maybe I can replicate them well with org and some custom agenda etc views later.
Another RANDOM post from within emacs. Slow progress, but it’s progress.