Finally got the Things 3 app set up for GTD using the setup guide the David Allen GTD website provides. The setup was easy and intuitive but I ran into one tiny snag for my tasks.

I get a task from work that has multiple steps to it. According to the GTD philosophy, the title of the task would be the project. All the steps are next actions that go in the various contexts separately.

Example

Project: Add the image to the website

Next Actions: 1. Get the image from server 2. Upload the image to the site

So that part is easy. The project goes on the Projects list and those next actions go on the Computer list. All three get tagged with the Work tag as well as the acronym of the client.

Problem

The snag I was running into is when I click on the client’s tag in Things to get into Focus mode for the client, I got every Project and Next Action for the client.

That was unacceptable because it switched me from Focus mode to Sky Falling mode. I needed to find a simple way to focus on just the current task.

Solution

If SKU numbers work for record labels around the world, they should work in a to-do app. I tried giving a Project and its Next Actions a SKU number with the client acronym and a number like mpls–001.

It totally worked. I went into the Anytime section, clicked the tag for mpls–001, and I got just the Project and Next Actions for that tag. Totally blissful.