When to use areas and when to use tags?

question
#1

Hi,
I am trying to figure out how to properly use Areas and Tags in GTDNext. (I am an upholsterer by trade and am self-employed, so (with the help of my wife) I also do the bookkeeping, office work, giving & tracking estimates, tracking jobs, etc.) Using Nirvanahq (with the GTD method) has been a great blessing to me to help me get more organized.

Although computers have been one of my passions since about 1986 I am very new to the concept of “Getting Things Done”. I am also a complete newbie to GTDNext. "I am coming from Nirvanahq, which I really like. I’ve only been using it for possibly a couple of months. I tried to import my Nirvanahq data into GTDNext, but all of the tasks and projects all came as on long list. The tasks did not stay inside of the related projects. So, it looks like I’m going to have to enter everything from scratch in GTDNext. But, that’s the way it is.

The GTDNext video the speaker said that he tried to keep his number of tags down to just a few. He used these tags: errand, online, phone.

In Nirvanahq, below are the current Areas that I am using. I am not currently using any tags. I am trying to figure out how I can improve what I am doing)

For lack of knowing what else to do, I currently am using all of the below as Areas. I’m not sure how I would use Tags. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about how I could better set up Areas and Tags as I bring my data into GTDNext?

---------------------------------------My Areas (Those underlined)---------------------------------------
(Those in bold would be the parent areas and those indented would be sub-areas, if there were sub-areas)

  • Work (All the various actions that I perform that are not part of the below areas)
      * Client Estimates (Contains Client Estimate Projects, which are series of actions involved to create estimates)
      * Client Jobs (Contains Client Jobs, the series of actions to do the jobs)
      * Office
      * Workshop (cleaning and maintaining my shop [I work at home])
  • Personal
      * Family
      * Food
      * Household
      * UUFC (church)
      * Facebook (the various trade and person Facebooks groups I below to.
  • Writing (I have various writing projects that I’m working on)
      * Websites (maintaining my websites)

Best Wishes,
Stephenstrong text

#2

Hi Stephen;

Thanks for taking a look at GTDNext.

I would suggest keeping the bold items as Areas and then making the sub-areas into projects. So in you’re example Work would be an AREA and “Client Estiatems” would be s project.

The advantage of GTDNext over many other apps is that you could then create a project for each client under your “Client Estimates” project.

You can then take a look at the rest of your areas and sub areas and decide what to do. I personally have an Area for Personal, Family, and Household. For me, food would be a project under household. Church might be another Area, or it could be project under Personal… See what works for you! :slight_smile:

I hope that makes sense! Also, I think it helps to just create a setup and try living with it for a while. Then you will see how you like it and can make modifications as needed.

Take care!
James