GTD software tools

[alHank]

What applications are you using to get organized with to-do lists and
implement Getting-Things-Done methodology?

Is anyone using new tool "MyLife Organized"? I found some pretty good
recommendations on it here:
http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/MyLifeOrganized

and on other Internet placed.

It seems it is perfect for "Building a Smarter To-Do List":
http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/12/building-a-smarter-to-do-list-part-i/

Does anyone have any recommendations on other good to-do software so
that I could compare?

al

[stevecooper]

I'm building my own at the minute, using text files to keep hold of my
lists, and some other programs to turn those into more useful,
printable cards and pages, for my hipster.

I've tried quite a few systems for short periods of time, but almost
all of them fail me in some regard; they don't hold the info I want, or
they don't export easily, or they can't deal with GTD, or they don't
sync between my work and home PCs. I've just got to the point where
rolling my own is more satisfying.

Seems that everyone needs something different - some people care about
syncronising with a palm. Some have macs. Some have Windows. Some
people use good old-fashioned paper. What's your particular setup?

[two.o...@gmail.com]

Mark one satisfied customer. I've been using MLO for six months at
least, and while its no where near perfect, its the happiest I've been
with a software package. I'm one of those obsessive tinkerers, and I
haven't had the need to change since I've started with MLO (before
that? Ecco, bonsai, outlook, paper, infoselect).

Pros:
--Very good at allowing you to define projects and subprojects and
tasks to each of them, all with a context or six. They get translated
well into the to-do list.
--The support has been fantasitic. The Google Group has some activity
everyday, and the developers actively watch and discuss. I have
literally watched the software evolve to the majority-user tastes.
Compared to packages that are no-longer or barely seeing development,
this is big.
--Very good recurrence options if you use em
--Allows for flexibility in how you enter it - doesn't try and lock you
down to a methodology very often.

Cons:
--Well, its not done. Most of my cons can be answered by items in the
planned features list (which is published somewhere.. search the
group).
--Not particularly cheap
--Because its flexible, it takes some time and experimentation to get
something that works for you
--Printing is a new feature, and isn't great yet, although the actual
format is very customizable.

That's just an off-the-cuff snapshot.. I'm in no way affiliated with
the product, just a mostly satisfied user.

[alHank]

Thanks Stevecooper, however building own software tool is not my case
:)

>What's your particular setup?

I use Outlook at work all the time as task tracker. I have many tasks
and have to monitor many projects in the same time. However Outlook
does not allow you to add subtasks to a task. This is why I was looking
for a good and easy to use personal task outliner. Preferable with
Outlook sync. I would like to be able to combine tasks into projects. I
also use Palm when I am out of PC. I am thinking about switching to
PocketPC soon though. I am a visual thinking person and I use
MindManager for brainstorming.

For this configuration MyLife Organized (
http://www.mylifeorganized.net ) is the best tool I have found so far
(I looked at dozen before). However I would like to listen from people
on 43folders about tools they use to make a right choice.

>they don't hold the info I want, or they don't export easily,

MLO easily exports (and imports) to XML, tab delimited plain text,
MindManger, Excel. You can also create your own HTML like templates to
design your own print reports.

>or they can't deal with GTD,

People on the Internet say that MLO is one of the best choices now to
implement GTD: multiple contexts, next actions concept, projects. In
the same time MLO does not say me how to organize my workspace. It does
not have strict rules and I can setup it as I like. I have seen several
templates for MLO which implement completely different approaches.

>or they don't sync between my work and home PCs.

I use flash drive for this (MLO does not require installation and could
be run right from flash drive). All my info together with MLO itself is
always with me on my flash drive!
I also set up sync MLO with my Palm through Outlook (they do not have
Palm edition but do have edition for PocketPC). It works perfect.

But as always there are rooms for improvements. For example I would add
more visualization and "color coding" to the MLO's outline.

Looking forward to listening the opinions about MLO and other to-do
organizational software tools.

al.

[alHank]

thanks Olives. This is great to hear a success story from a real MLO
user (and thanks for Pros and Cons)

>Very good recurrence options if you use em

Yes I use them and I found them more flexible in MLO then in Outlook
because you can trigger the recurrence by completing subtasks.

>Allows for flexibility in how you enter it - doesn't try and lock you
>down to a methodology very often.

Together with nice interface this was the reason why I started with
MLO. The more I use it the more I like it now.

>Well, its not done. Most of my cons can be answered
>by items in the planned features list

It seems it has almost everything I need now. I will look at the list
of planned features. Thanks.

>planned features list (which is published somewhere.. search the
>group).

Yes just found it:
http://www.mylifeorganized.net/products/my-life-organized/features-plan.htm
terrible organized indeed :)

>Because its flexible, it takes some time and experimentation
>to get something that works for you

Yes this is what I like and thanks to this tool that it allows me
experiments.

Thanks for the success story. I am seriously considered to buy MyLife
Organized soon.

al.

[GoogleNerd]

I think a case of itchy softwareitus is spread by all copies of GTD
sold...

I, like a lot of folks, have spent too much time wondering from app to
app looking for just the right fit all the while loosing sight of the
big picture. The process of GTD is suppost to help us to GTD, not
hinder it, and my endless search (so it seems) for just the right app
is just a plain time waster.

So I decided to make Outlook work since its free (well, free on my work
provided machine), supported by our IT staff, already setup for my palm
for away from the office work, and well documented on the internet. The
catch is that Outlook has to be tricked into GTD...

I would suggest you check out this outdated and buggy, but very
relevant webpage: http://home.comcast.net/~whkratz/id85.htm

Grant

[Jonathan]

I was using King Design's tasks (http://kingdesign.net/tasks), but
switched over to NextAction
(http://trimpath.com/project/wiki/NextAction) about a month ago.
NextAction is a single page HTML/javascript web application that runs
on your local desktop. That means it's cross-platform, and if you are
willing to copy it to a server somewhere you can access your GTD system
from multiple machines as well.

It's VERY lightweight and simple with a clean AJAX interface and was
designed with GTD in mind from the start. The only downside is that
it's pretty much a technology demo built by a single developer, so it's
not being particularly actively developed (also because it's done to
some extent). If NextAction were integrated with PocketMod
(http://www.pocketmod.com/) to print foldable 3x5 sheets it would be
pretty much perfect for me. The only thing I could possibly need at
that point would be some sort of integration with a reminder service.

The biggest downside is because it's a local web application, you have
to remember to hit <ctrl>s and save the html file each time you make
changes or they will be lost (this quickly becomes automatic). That
said, it's open source so you can modify to your hearts content (and if
anyone manages the integration with PocketMod I'll just throw money at
you)..

[David Rosam]

I've just dropped Palm Desktop for Backpack (http://backpackit.com), and it's a revelation!

I'm using a page per project and the tags for contexts and tickling.

Single NAs go on an appropriate context page. If anything on the page needs to be tickled, then they go at the top of the list and the context page gets a tickled date.

Stealing an idea from the PigPog method, the page name gets the NA and the project name.

I hope that makes sense!

David

On 11/11/05, Jonathan <jonathan...@gmail.com> wrote:

I was using King Design's tasks (http://kingdesign.net/tasks), but
switched over to NextAction

(http://trimpath.com/project/wiki/NextAction ) about a month ago.

NextAction is a single page HTML/javascript web application that runs
on your local desktop.  That means it's cross-platform, and if you are
willing to copy it to a server somewhere you can access your GTD system
from multiple machines as well.

It's VERY lightweight and simple with a clean AJAX interface and was
designed with GTD in mind from the start.  The only downside is that
it's pretty much a technology demo built by a single developer, so it's
not being particularly actively developed (also because it's done to
some extent).  If NextAction were integrated with PocketMod
(http://www.pocketmod.com/) to print foldable 3x5 sheets it would be
pretty much perfect for me.  The only thing I could possibly need at
that point would be some sort of integration with a reminder service.

The biggest downside is because it's a local web application, you have
to remember to hit <ctrl>s and save the html file each time you make
changes or they will be lost (this quickly becomes automatic).  That
said, it's open source so you can modify to your hearts content (and if
anyone manages the integration with PocketMod I'll just throw money at
you)..

--
David Rosam
+44 (0)70 440 76726
Blog http://dangerous-thinking.com
Photos http://rosampix.blogspot.com

[David Douthitt]

David Rosam wrote:
> I've just dropped Palm Desktop for Backpack (http://backpackit.com), and
> it's a revelation!

I've been using the Palm To Do application (under PalmOS 4.0) in
conjunction with ShadowPlan. Works pretty well. I keep projects in
ShadowPlan, and perform use the To Do app to "flatten" the lists into
contexts. Keeps everything in one place.

Then on the Mac side I use Now Up-to-date and Now Contact for all of my
calendar and contact needs along with the Palm apps. I understand Now
Up-to-Date and Contact 5 synchronizes with iCal; this would be the icing
on the cake (I'm practically obsessive about portability and open
standards and cross-platform availability....)

However..... mentioning Backpack made me think of Remember the Milk at
http://www.rememberthemilk.com - a site designed just for lists! And
designed by the creator of the Linux distro TinySofa, a distro I've
admired for some time - an open-source spinoff of Trustix.

Only problem some have had (while using GTD!) as reported in the forums
is that too many categories (contexts) leads to a crowded set of tabs.
But it looks quite good to me, has ATOM exports, email alarms, and
oodles of other abilities. Backpack is more for generic web pages.

I also like OmniOutliner Pro, but I do have a tendency to collect
software :-) Too many applications to use, and not enough time to use
them all :-)

[donethingsgetting]

After going through numerous PIMs, I've been using essentialPIM.
Includes tabbed notes, calendar,todo,scheduler,contacts, can have info.
pulled from Outlook and flexible import/export features. Just have to
keep my notes tabs organized well, that's just because I keep up with
so much stuff!

[David Rosam]

On 16/11/05, David Douthitt <ss...@mailbag.com> wrote:

Backpack is more for generic web pages.

I hate to disagree, but no! :-) You haven't even scratched the surface.

Start by allocating a page per project and use tags for contexts and tickling, and you have one (web) app that does everything Palm Desktop and Bonsai (the outliner I used for a while) but so much more directly.

[Chris Lott]

On 11/16/05, David Rosam <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Start by allocating a page per project and use tags for contexts and
> tickling, and you have one (web) app that does everything Palm Desktop and
> Bonsai (the outliner I used for a while) but so much more directly.

How do you see your next actions-- page through your projects? Are
your NAs stored as lists on the project page?

c

[David Rosam]

The NAs are stored as a list on each project page, but I've stolen an idea from PigPog on Palm Desktop and put the actual NEXT action in the page title - so it reads something like - *Project Name* Call John.

This page would have @Phone as one of its tags, so clicking on My Pages, and then @Phone gives me a list of all the @Phone NAs.

So I just choose a project, blast down the NAs until I have to stop, put the next NA in the title and move on. Using a tabbed browser, you can keep the @Phone list open while you open each project in turn to work on it.

If I put a date in the tags - eg 20Nov - I can click on that tag in My Pages and I have a tickler for those NAs.

Single (non-project) NAs are stored on context pages - eg @Computer - which I've tagged with their context, so the page appears in the @Computer list accessed from My Pages.

The last wrinkle is you can tag each project with the word Project, and you have a complete set of projects easily accessible when you do your weekly review.

HTH

David

[Chris Lott]

On 11/16/05, David Rosam <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The NAs are stored as a list on each project page, but I've stolen an idea
> from PigPog on Palm Desktop and put the actual NEXT action in the page title
> - so it reads something like - *Project Name* Call John.
>
> This page would have @Phone as one of its tags, so clicking on My Pages,
> and then @Phone gives me a list of all the @Phone NAs.

[...]

> If I put a date in the tags - eg 20Nov - I can click on that tag in My
> Pages and I have a tickler for those NAs.
>
> Single (non-project) NAs are stored on context pages - eg @Computer - which
> I've tagged with their context, so the page appears in the @Computer list
> accessed from My Pages.
>
> The last wrinkle is you can tag each project with the word Project, and you
> have a complete set of projects easily accessible when you do your weekly
> review.

Thanks-- this is a great approach!

c