Setting up a GTD system in Ally AI

Ally was designed with GTD in mind, but you’d probably not know it. That’s because Ally was also created to impose or enforce as little structure and limitations as possible. If something structural is being considered, for instance, “How should notes be organized?,” it gets filtered through “How would this work with the GTD system?” If it’s incompatible with GTD, or other popular productivity and PKM systems like PARA or zettlekasten, it doesn’t make the cut. For instance, limited nesting can make UI design a lot easier. Many tools like excellent Things, the popular GTD app for the Apple ecosystem, only allow you to nest tasks two levels deep. It’s understandable, but it always felt needlessly limiting. Sometimes breaking a task down until it’s granularized into actual singular “next actions” takes 3 or more layers of nesting and I want that option.

The idea is: create as blank a canvas as possible so everyone can create exactly what they want. In addition, remove constraints that exist only because of convention. Like folders or tags being only collections of documents that can’t store data. This way, not only can you use the GTD system, you can implement it exactly how you want to. If you want to adapt it so that your Tickle File extends 100 years into the future, you can do that. The tool does not get in your way.

The flip side of no structure is, well, sometimes structure and rules and guardrails are helpful. Sometimes we need a pre-defined structure to help us get started. Sometimes the blank page and too much freedom can be counter-productive.

To help you get started, this post outlines one method for implementing David Allen’s Getthing Things Done productivity system in Ally. I tried to stay pure to GTD methods, principles, and rules but this is all inevitably output from just my point of view so I’m not claiming this is the “best way” or “correct way” or “ultimate way” to architect a personal productivity system based on GTD.

You could implement it this way and use it this way. My personal set up is similar, but much more cluttered and less vanilla and “pure.” You could use it as a starting point and then tailor it to your needs as time goes on. You might read this and immediately see an entirely different and better way than what I outline here (in that case, please shoot me an email and let me know! I’m interested in anything productivity/PKM adjacent). In any case, let’s get this done…

Part 1: Creating the GTD structure

To fully implement GTD and drive your day, a GTD tool must give you a digital space for a few things:

The tickle file

When David Allen was writing the first edition of Getting Things Done, the world was transitioning to digital, but far less digital than it is today. He recommended a simple, but powerful, filing system that was basically having a folder for each of the upcoming 30 days and sticking paper reminders into them for the things you want to remember on that day. Each day, you open that day’s folder and take care of whatever your past self felt was important or relevant to present you. Very simple, very easy, very smart.

But, a paper-based filing system may seem antiquated in a time when everyone has a powerful computer in their pocket they use constantly and many of us no longer own printers. In any case, a tickle file system, or at least something that serves that same purpose, is needed to fully implement GTD as it was intended.

Areas, projects, and next actions

This is where Ally’s flexible organization really shines. You can create top level nodes for the different areas of your life:

• Personal
• Work

And you can further subdivide them:

• Personal
  • Projects
• Work
  • Projects

Part 2: Using the GTD system day-to-day

Allen and Ally are aligned on the importance of quickly capturing what you need to with as little friction as possible.

As commitments, tasks, and other things come to mind throughout the day, Ally makes it really, really easy to capture that and consolidate it all into a single place for easy processing later. Everything you add to Ally ends up in a unified Inbox:

From there, it’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping it where it belongs in your node library: