Morning Coffee 42: January 30th, 2023

Good morning. At the coffee shop with an Americano and Pure Focus playlist in the AirPods. Thankful for noise cancelation as I lock into writing. Plan to keep it simple this morning with the topic. Let’s begin.

Table of Contents

1. Collapsing Groups
2. GTD Wife
3. Getting Things Done

The Box

• Watching: The Way of Water
• Reading: Daily Creative
• Playing: Ghost of Tsushima
• Listening: Thalia

Roll the Credits: Emily the Criminal, Licorice Pizza, No Time To Die, Avatar (The Way of the Water), Ghost of Tsushima, TLOU: Left Behind, Work Clean, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, The Last of Us Part 1, Avatar (2009), Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Pale Blue Eye, Yellowjackets, Spider-Man

Collapsing Groups

Sofa has an upcoming feature that I’ve been asking Shawn (the developer) for for awhile now. Groups will now be able to collapse and hide when they’re not in use. This allows me to structure my Sofa lists without worrying about things getting cluttered. When I’m done working in a specific group, I can now simply tuck it away so it’s hidden until I need it again.

GTD Wife

Here’s a little story about how I helped my wife with her productivity system.

Getting Things Done

Last week, I sat down with my wife and started teaching her the GTD Methodology (Here’s a beginners guide). It was a fun bonding project for us that also helped her gain clarity on what’s on the horizon.

In front of her was these three little cards from Ugmonk, and with the baby taking her nap, we starting building a simple GTD system.

On the Someday card, she wrote down all the projects she has coming up in the next few months. Immediately, I saw the wheels turning in her mind.

After the Someday card was filled with upcoming projects, we moved on to the Next card. I told her to put the Someday card and the Next card next to each other, and one by one, reflect on each project that she listed out:

“If you were to start on this specific project right now, what is the very first thing you’d do to get that project started? That’s what goes on the Next card. The very next task needed to move things along. And do that for each project.”

The Next card sits right in the middle of our big plans and what we’re doing today. It’s the secret weapon that gets overlooked on most people’s to-do lists.

After going through every project on her Someday card and listing out all of the Next Actions on the other card, both of these cards were now filled up. The Today card was the only one left.

The Next and Someday cards will now guide her each day when she fills out her Today card. When she grabs a Today card, she’ll look at her Next card and see what actions can be done that day to move everything along.

Before, her today list basically had all three cards on one: Huge projects that would take weeks to finish, sitting right next to “Buy milk”.

Our Today List should be bite sized tasks that could be knocked out after glancing at the list. And that’s what I love about GTD: It makes going through life much easier. Even the biggest projects can be broken down to the smallest tasks.

This is Morning Coffee: a weekly newsletter that arrives in your inbox every Monday morning. I write about productivity, technology, and cool things I find on the internet. My wife wants this to be my only job, so pay what you want, purchase my books on Amazon, or join my Music Program.