This guide is derived from what I learned about GTD, a helpful set of links, and doing what works on the job.  If you are part of the modern workforce, you most likely spend your day jumping between a myriad of tasks: replying to emails; preparing presentations; creating financial models in Excel; designing the layout for a new feature; and the occasional quasi-human contact by picking up the phone.

I used to keep a physical record of what I needed to do, but it ended up becoming laborious and more often then not, I ended up missing out on important items.

I now use Microsoft OneNote to keep track of my work life.  I spend most of my time on multiple projects that are in different stages and have many moving pieces. I am always taking notes and action items come up.

I needed a way to create a to-do list on the fly, and OneNote did the trick.  By using its tagging feature, you can tag work items right in your notes and have them aggregated automatically:

This system allows me to be efficient by categorizing the kinds of work that I need to do.  Here is what a larger list looks like:

To give this kind of task management a shot, all you need is Microsoft OneNote 2007 and 15 minutes of free time.  I will walk you through setting up tagging.

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