Get Everything Done

I have goals and I use an electronic calendar for appointments, both are combined "work" and "life".

I love your redefinition of Mark's idea to start with "leave work" or "go to bed", and then simply build up to what you want to do before that. Your phrasing of "what is the next event today that will pull me away from my work" really makes this work for me. Brilliant, and so easy. Check your calendar, add the next event as the first item on the list, ask "ITAIWTDBT?", and off you go.

I use a master paper list, plus as many support lists or reminder materials as I like. I struggled with the May 9 No-List at first, always feeling like I was going to forget something. Two things helped...

First, I started a list called "THOUGHT OF BUT DIDN'T ACT - week of 6/6" and just wrote everything on there that popped up but that by following the rules I couldn't do anything about. At the end of the week I reviewed the list and was surprised to discover that I had written down 17 items, had done 11 of them, and of the remaining 6, 4 of them had been on my lists multiple times. So I really had only forgot about 2 of them, and those I actually dismissed. So for me, trusting the No-List didn't result in forgetting anything important.

Second, Mark mentioned something about keeping as many other lists as you like. I took this to mean that I could put "check shopping list" on my No-List and that would work fine. I did the same thing packing up for the Appalachian Trail. I made a separate list that I kept adding to, and I would just work on it when that came up on my No-List.

I've generally been surprised at how many of my tasks have reminders in the physical world already. A calendar entry, an email, a sheet of paper, the item itself. My fears of something worthwhile completely falling off the grid have been nothing more than fears.

I use gmail and google calendar for communication and places to be. I use whatever I have at hand (paper notebooks, iphone notes) for jotting down little notes and ideas. I've found that my phone's alarms app is robust enough and more reliable and straightforward so I use it handle important reminders. Funnily enough, I really like the reminders app as a shopping list since I can add locations to various things I need to buy on the list and if I can uncheck items that will reappear for things I regularly buy.

I'm going with No-list FVP as you are and I've discovered that google tasks (already built into calendar and gmail) works well for it. What I've been doing is putting any goals and projects on one end of the list, lets say the front, and operating the other end of the list according to the rules. This has a nice way of letting me build up to those lofty goals on the end, while still being grounded and making progress throughout the day on the other end with No-list FVP. I wouldn't be able to do this with paper as easily and it's nice to have a list in the cloud to access wherever I am.