The Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology defines a project as anything that requires more than one task to achieve its goal, and it is optimized for projects in which the majority of tasks is completed by oneself rather than delegated to other people. Projects that have tasks completed by multiple people are best managed using a project management methodology rather than GTD.

I’ve recently started using NotePlan to manage my todos and I use the Notes section to plan and manage my personal projects. I create a new note using the project name for the title, then I create a bullet list of the project tasks, which is pretty straight forward. What makes NotePlan useful to me for managing these projects is its scheduling and linking capabilities.

To set up linking, I went into Preferences and enabled Append Links When Scheduling Todos. When you enable this setting NotePlan appends a link to the source sheet, either Notes or Calendar, to the end of the todo item. You see the link in both the source and destination sheets and you can navigate between the two by tapping the links.

The key to this process is to only schedule project tasks from the project Notes sheet. If I complete a task on a certain date, you follow the link to that date and see that it is completed.

A Project Note In Noteplan

I have not decided on how I want to handle project tasks that are not completed on a single day. When I determine that I need to continue work on a task on another day I can go to the project note and schedule the task again for the second date. The task will be added to that day’s Calendar sheet and the link to it upgraded on the Notes pages, but the link to the first date is replaced. Consequently, I cannot navigate from the project note to each date on which I worked on a task. Another approach is to create a new task item on the project note sheet for each day on which I work on that task, which means I may have multiple entries for the same task.

I think what I am going to do depends on whether I actually work on a task on a given date. If I schedule a task on a date but don’t get to it, I am just going to reschedule it from the project note sheet. However, if I do work on the task, I am going to create new entry for that task to schedule it for the second date.