Rogue Wolves is the professional website of freelance software consultant Scott Langevin.
GTD > Inbox
Submitted by scott on April 11, 2007 - 3:12am.
After hearing about Getting Things Gone (GTD) on the web for years now I have finally decided to see what all the fuss is about and find out more. If you haven't heard about GTD it's a productivity/organization system to help you "Get things Done". The system was created by productivity guru David Allen who published a book on the subject: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. (Note if you buy the book using that link you will support Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. I figure I've gotten so much from his site that if I can get him a few extra bucks it's the least I could do)
So I bought the book and I'm halfway done it but now I'm considering what tools I'll use to implement my workflow. For physical things like mail, forms, etc I will use metal stackable trays for IN boxes but for the majority of my "stuff" it will be digital. I want some good tools to keep track of everything on my mac and then sync everything to my Palm Tungsten T3 for mobile calendar/todos/notes.
After a bit of research here are choices I'm looking at for Mac tools:
iGTD
Pros:
- Built for GTD
- Developer is very actively developing application (updates almost every day)
- iCal sync
- Tagging
- Lots of praise from the GTD OS X community
- Freeware
- Excellent Quicksilver support
Cons:
- Cluttered UI
- Not very mature
- Closed data formats!
- No export features (yet)
Actiontastic
Pros:
- Built for GTD
- iCal sync
- Opensource
- Simple User Interface
- Not bad Quicksilver support
Cons:
- Not very mature
- No Smart Folders
- No tagging
Journler
Pros:
- Extensible with AppleScript
- Fantastic journaling application
- Allows audio recording, video, text and attaching files to entries
- iLife support
- Mature application
- Tagging
- Amazing Smart Folder support
- Freeware
- Quicksilver support (via services plugin)
- Great export features
Cons:
- Not designed as GTD application (but could be used as one)
- No iCal Sync (some iCal integration can be achieved using AppleScript
I've been using Journler now for research, notes, etc for a month now and it's a fantastic tool. This is why it would be great to also use it as a central point for GTD but it definitely wouldn't be as feature rich or polished a solution as the other two applications. I'll play around with them and see what I think. Anyone else have some good thoughts or experience with GTD?
These days I need to work on my organization. Between working on my PhD (course work, research projects, dissertation), consulting, personal projects and life in general my current systems are in need of tweaking. I'm hoping GTD is as good as all the buzz says it is. So far from what I've learned it does have promise. We'll see how it goes...
Have you used Ghost Action?
I'm just starting the same process of deciding on a app to use and I'd be interested on your thoughts on Ghost Action.
Ghost Action
Hi Adam, no I've never used Ghost Action and I must admit I overlooked it when I was researching applications. It looks fairly stream lined. It doesn't seem to support smart folders or tagging? These features can be very handy if you want to further filter your Next Action Lists. For instance your "Work" context might have 50+ next actions and maybe you want to quickly see all next actions that are related to "client A". With tagging you could tag each project/task with "client A" and then quickly filter your next actions to show only those tasks. It's very handy.
Also, on the Ghost Action webpage it doesn't look like you can create Someday/Maybe tasks or defer tasks? I haven't installed the app so maybe you can do this?
I'd suggest you install iGTD, Ghost Action and Actiontastic and try them all out. I've settled on iGTD because it suits my needs. It's still a bit rough in areas but it's getting better with each release.
I hope this helps. Thanks for the comment. I'd love to hear what you decide to use.
I've been down the same path
Oh that's awesome. I started that book like a year ago and half way through was at the same point as you...I wanted to implement it digitally. I tried Backpack I think but it didn't really work out (I didn't find any of the other software you found ), so I started writing my own software. But of course, I needed to learn ajax for that, since it would have to be an online thing to be useful for me. Needless to say, I stopped getting much else done at that point and that's pretty well what he says not to do in the book .*sigh*. So I decided to stop that craziness.
I use Google Notebook for it for now. I just have a notebook called 'Brain Crack' with sections for Inbox, Reference, waiting, etc. (watch http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html to see why I called it Brain Crack). Not as nice as having it synced with my Google calendar though. Still, every little while I start writing a 'goddamn login page myself' for my perfect GTD app...
Glad to see though that someone has the same thoughts as me! Now, I just have to actually finish the book :). Sadly, I still haven't finished it, but I do like and use a lot of the tips I got from the first part of the book.
iGTD
I wasn't as ambitious as you to try and create my own from scratch. Even though it didn't work out at least it gave you experience with modern web development. That's worth while. So not a total loss.
I'll have to check out Google Notebook. Ah Ze Frank...what will we do without you?!
I think like most people I have also spent more time on the first 1/3 of the book and glossed over the last 2/3's. I'm going back over it because there is a lot of really good material in the WHOLE book that I need to re-read.
I'm going to post what I ended up using for a solution soon and how it's going, but here is condensed version. I ended up using iGTD which is a fantastic program (mac only). I then sync it with my calendar/todos in my calendar program (iCal). Then I can sync my Palm to iCal so now my "stuff" is in iGTD, in iCal and in my PDA. Also, I publish my calendar information to the web so it's also available online if I want. I could publish it to google calendar or any other web calendar that has support for ical publishing. Awesome!
So essentially my data can be where ever I want it. So far the GTD methodology has made a big impact and I've only been using it a short while. I'll see where I am with it in a month.
gtd
I just started reading Getting Things Done a few days ago and am considering using a web-based platform to track my "stuff," because I have to use a PC at work, but have a Mac at home. I've found two programs that sync with Google's calendar. One is Remember the Milk and the other is Toodledo. Since I haven't finished the book, I can't report any pros or cons for either just yet. Good luck with your quest to gtd.
Great Idea
Thanks for the comment Susan.
I was also thinking about using an online application such as Backpack or Google Calendar but what kept me from doing this is that I don't really like trusting my personal data with a third party. For some this will work great and is probably a really good option. The other problem is taking my data with me when I'm offline or don't have access to a web browser but for Google calendar there are third party applications to synchronize your desktop calendar applications (I've never heard of the applications you mention - will have to take a look). You may want to take a look at Spanning Sync for synchronizing iCal with Google Calendar on the Mac. I've heard really good things about it.
Good luck with mastering gtd and blog about your experience so others can benefit from it! If you do it would be great it if you dropped me a line here to let me know.