11 Ways to Use Delicious for Getting Things Done (GTD)

Posted on January 4th, 2009 at 9:37 PM

Yahoo’s Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a great tool to have in your arsenal to supplement how you implement Getting Things Done (GTD).  In particular, I use Delicious to manage many of my Someday / Maybe and reference lists.  Here is a quick overview of how it works.

Someday / Maybe and Reference Lists

If you are not familiar with GTD, Someday / Maybe lists are a technique to formalize the capture of ideas or possible projects that you want to pursue in the future.  They can be personal or work-related in nature.  As an example, you might want to take a trip to Europe, paint a room in your house, or implement some new initiative at work, but if you are not ready to do any of these right at this moment, how do you make sure you don't lose track of them?

In GTD, you put these into a Someday / Maybe list, i.e. they are projects / things that you may do someday.  In a sense a Someday / Maybe list becomes the “junk drawer” for your brain.

The benefit of doing this is twofold:  1) these Someday / Maybe ideas no longer rattle around in your head because you have a formalized place to put them; and 2) once you start regularly reviewing your Someday / Maybe lists, they should percolate up into current or actionable projects over time -- and you actually get a lot of them done!

Very useful lists include easily categorized topics or niches, such as books to read, places to visit, ideas for work, etc.  A related concept that David Allen also talks about is to keep reference lists as well of commonly used items or information as a way again to keep this information from "clogging your brain."

Using Delicious for GTD

So this is where Delicious comes in.  The Delicious tagging system can be adapted to manage lists of almost any type of information that lives on the web, and it fits in perfectly with Someday / Maybe and reference lists.

Here are a couple ideas that illustrate what I am talking about and can get you started:

  1. Books to Read – Anytime I hear about a book I might want to read, I link to the Amazon page and tag it with @books.  In the notes field I will write about how I heard about the book and/or a synopsis of the preview from Amazon.
  2. Read / Review – When I come across web content that I do not have the time to read, I tag it with @readreview and move on.  I review the @readreview list as part of my daily or weekly reviews and then remove the tag once it has been read.
  3. Ideas – When I read a blog post or article on the web that fires off an idea in my brain I will tag it with @ideas.  In the Delicious notes field, I write down the idea that it inspired or any pertinent thoughts.  You can either create multiple ideas tags or stick with @ideas and also add other tags for specialized ideas lists for different topics.  For example in the book, David Allen gives “Gift Ideas” as an example Someday / Maybe list.  In Delicious you could use a tag of @giftideas or split into two tags: @ideas and gifts.  Either method works and each has its advantages and disadvantages.
  4. Restaurants – I tag restaurants I like (or want to eat at) with restaurant and/or menu as appropriate as well as the type of food (chinese, italian, steakhouse, etc.) and the city and state.  In the notes field I put the phone number first so I have a quick reference for take-out, reservations, etc.  This one is really a combo Someday / Maybe and reference list.
  5. Recipes – Easy one.  Tag the link with “recipe” and the cuisine, type of food, etc.  This is a reference list.
  6. Wishlist – Stuff you want, i.e. CDs / Videos / other items, you want to buy or you want people to buy for you.  Tag a link to the Amazon or online vendor product page with “wishlist.”  (As a side note, there are actually a couple different sites that format your Delicious wishlist links with special formatting to make them more actionable.  One that I recently came across: delishlist.)
  7. Places to Go / Travel Ideas – A list of places you want to go for vacation or other reasons.  Tag with @placestogo or @travelideas.
  8. Tips – I use this tag all the time.  Put it in simply anytime you come across a good tip.  This should be used in conjunction with other tags, i.e.: flickr, delicious, gardening, etc.  This is more of a reference list.
  9. Apps / Software to Review – Same idea as @readreview, but used when there is a software application I want to check out.  I will usually use the tag @software and again remove it once I’ve evaluated it or read through the website.
  10. Things to Do – There could be a lot of variations of how you use this, i.e. things to do before you die, things to do with your kids, things to do with your spouse, etc.  As with ideas you could make the tag structure as simple or complex as you want, but to keep it simple just tag the link as @thingstodo and use the notes field to write down anything specific you want to annotate about the idea.

... and the bonus tip:

  1. Sort All of the Above with a Tag Bundle - Keep all of your lists together by creating a Tag Bundle called “Someday / Maybe," "GTD," "Lists,", "Me", or other group name that makes sense to you.

Two other quick comments: I use the @ symbol generally for the lists that are true Someday / Maybe lists, and standard tagging for those that are more reference tags; also some of the lists I have above I do not share, some I do.  How you decide to implement these is really up to your own personal preferences.

Hopefully you got some good ideas out of the above.  Keep in mind that while I am looking at these within the context of GTD, there is no reason these won't work equally well for the non-GTD practitioners out there.

I welcome your feedback and please share any other thoughts or ideas on how to integrate Delicious and GTD in the comments below.

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