For the first time in a very long time, today I am truly happy with my GTD management system.
It's affordable, accessible from anywhere, works with all my programs. I can put Next Actions in any context, any order, even multiple ones. I can connect them to any project, and when one context becomes more important, or one action or project more urgent - I can simply drag and drop it in the right place; or rather - reshuffle it.
You got it. I'm not using a digital system at all. After trying the Outlook Plug-In, Vitalist, HiTask, TadaList, ThinkingRock, Backpack, ProjectEngine, and GTD implementations on Palm, Gmail, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and the Windows file system - It turns out that what's been keeping me back is my obsession with technology. (Who knew?!) Now I found that I am most happy with what many now call the "Hipster PDA."
I use a bunch of index cards in 6 different colors, fastened with a clip. A complete implementation of all the GTD lists. Light. Fast. Easy to use. I can always add more cards (I have about a thousand blank ones here anyway), and it fits in my pocket easily.
The one popular solution that I haven't tried yet is iGTD for the Mac, which sounds great. But since I don't (yet) have a Mac, and since even if I had a Mac it is unlikely to fit in my pocket, I am very happy with this solution.
And let me tell you, it's true what they say: checking off a task is so much more satisfying when you get to actually cross it out!
4 comments:
IGTD seems to be a nightmare of bugs. I just downloaded it to try, and I keep having to restart the app because the UI hangs or displays garbage. I think there is something structurally wrong about how it stores and retreives data. (One big XML file??)
Hey there,
I'm not sure about how iGTD saves files, but I know people who are very enthusiastic about iGTD's capability to work with other Mac applications.
On the web site it seems that the developer will be launching a PRO version soon. Perhaps it's on its way to becoming a fully rounded commercial solution.
Anyway, I'm probably not going to use iGTD even when I get a Mac, because the Hipster PDA is working so well for me. Now, it's true that it's going to be hard managing a hundred and fifty projects on index cards, but using a D*I*Y Hipster I think you could probably pull it off very nicely.
I'm now alfa-testing OmniFocus, and I think it will be the app that I'm going to stick to. The user interface is a dream of simplicity, and the logic of how the program implements GTD is crisp and clear. It will have integreation to Mail and iCal, and that is about what I need in terms of integration with other Mac applications. On top of that, the alfa is rock solid in terms of stability.
Interesting!
Now all I need is to actually get a Mac. :-)
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