How I Learned to Stop Bullet Journaling and Love the Things App
The Things 3 app is expensive. It’s also been a revelation for my personal quest to Get Everything Done.
The road to ditching my bujo (RIP dear beautiful dot-grid Leuchtturm 1917) is a twisty one. It started over a year ago, when I first listened to the By the Book podcast episode on the Getting Things Done productivity system. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, it must have been several years now, because I remember thinking of a specific place I could put my Tickler folders in the Alabama house…
Anyway, this is neither here nor there. The idea appealed to me, but I never actually read the book or implemented it.
Then, during our trip to Kansas City in September, I discovered my in-laws’ copy of Getting Things Done. I snagged it for home reading…but still haven’t managed to crack it open. (It doesn’t help that Kristen and Jolenta describe it as an incredibly dry read on the podcast episode.)
The next step in my journey toward digitalized productivity was the Lucid app, which I’m still not entirely sure is worth paying for, but I enjoyed the free trial after it was targeted to me on my Instagram feed and then couldn’t bring myself to cancel it, so…take that as you will. Getting Things Done is one of the books available in summary form, so I “read” it, and then thought to myself…is there an app for this?
The first thing that came up when I searched was the Things 3 app. At $9.99 for the iPhone app only, it ain’t cheap. But the reviews were excellent and abundant, so I took a deep breath and downloaded it.
Instant magic.
Well, maybe not instant. But right from the start, I could tell I was going to love the app. First off, it has a tutorial that’s actually super helpful in guiding you through all the great features if you take the time to do it.
But more than the great tutorial, it was everything I’d been looking for in a productivity app but had never found. I’ve always wanted something with the ability to customize repeating tasks — as someone who works at home, I want monthly tasks (or bi-yearly, or whatever) to just show up on my to-do list when I need to do them. That’s actually kind of difficult to accomplish with a bullet journal.
The Things app can do this. Even better, you can choose to repeat something regularly (like, as I’m writing this it’s the 15th of the month and I need to pay a couple bills, so that’s on my list for today) or on completion (so if I don’t get around to feeding the sourdough starter immediately, it will repeat a week after I do complete the task).
The app also lets you break down tasks into projects with multiple steps, and offers a handy little pie chart graphic so you can see how close you are to finishing.
Another thing that’s great: it integrates with your phone calendar, so any appointments for the day show up at the top. It would be slightly nice to have more customization to create an actual schedule for the day, but as it is, when I see that Theda has speech at 8:30 that morning, I know that some things will have to shift. Plus, there’s the option to push a task to “This Evening”, so I can focus on clearing out my non-evening tasks and ignore anything in that category.
Really, to go over all the features here in this little post would take forever and be pointless. I ended up liking the app so dang much that I purchased the iPhone version, trialled the much-more-expensive desktop version ($49.99 for that, yikes), and then pulled the trigger on it.
I’m still discovering all the ways to make Things work for me. Whenever the kids mention that they want to make something or do something, I put it in my Inbox so I remember to work it in. I’m also considering scheduling recipes seasonally, so I don’t forget about, say, the pumpkin muffins I love to make so much once sweater weather hits. It’s also a good place to keep shopping and gift lists. Oh, and it will be the perfect place to put my “Jarrod Please Do This” list.
Do I miss my bullet journal? Honestly, aside from the sentimental factor, no. Doing the pages every night took time. Things is mostly plug and play. Every Saturday, as suggested by Getting Things Done, I do a weekly review to see what’s coming up, what projects I’m working on, and where I need to schedule things to evenly distribute my week.
So, there’s the review. Take that as you will. But really. Download Things and let it fix everything that’s wrong in your life.
Do you have a favorite productivity system or app? Prefer paper or digital? Drop a comment below and let me know!
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