Getting Things Done
I’ve mentioned David Allen’s Getting Things Done in the past. It’s a great introduction to one man’s system for organising work. David Allen is a highly esteemed productivity consultant and GTD was written in the prime of his worklife.
Strangely, GTD has become something a cult spawning entire websites devoted to Allen’s methods.
When starting to come to grips with running a company of five instead of two, the book was a good starting point for redoing my systems.
Personally I think GTD a little bit of overkill. I’m not sure one can function as tightly roped down as Allen wants one to be. It kind of fits the Polo shirt and place in the suburbs and on the golf course middle manager but I’m not sure it would do for Michaelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci.
There have been interesting attempts to bring GTD to the web browser via javascript but there was too much data loss to make that a viable solution.
For those who are into GTD and on Mac OS X, a Polish programmer has put out a lovely Cocoa version for free called iGTD.
You are a busy person, aren’t you? And there’s an easy way to track all things that have to be done… and to get those things done! iGTD takes some concepts from Getting Things Done methodology and makes them easy to understand and use in your every day life.
It’s a gorgeous application. Simple icons, standard OS interface widgets.
Igtd
Other pluses. Feature: iGTD uses the existing databases for iCal and Address Book. Benefit: No duplicate data entry – finally an application designer figured that one out. Feature: Linking to documents in the Finder. Benefit: No hunting for the missing file when you need to get to work. Feature: Instant Task Search. Benefit: Easy to find your task notes quickly if you are on the phone and have to look something up (although GTD rules out the telephone most of the time!).
Still I’m not going to try to move into iGTD myself. At least not now. I don’t find time spent overorganising brings commensurate dividends (oh if I could have the months of my life back spent playing around with a PDA (Palm) before 3 years later moving back to a simple black book).
But if you are in the mood for reorganising from the ground up, iGTD would be a good place to start.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has put the full organisation into iGTD about database reliability under stress and whether iGTD brings a productivity boost over the long run.
Very cool … I’m downloading and trying it out right now …
I have been using iGTD for a couple of weeks now. I lost my addictive Palm on a flight from Taipei to Tokyo, never replaced it. Have had a Palm since 1995, considering a few options other than a Palm as I am a Mac user and the Palm desktop software is ugly and so dated. Thinking I am heading back to pen and paper, the simple “black book”. Simple is best. As I well over a dozen websites to oversee, a simple page per website keeps me organized and focused. Check out http://www.eslspider.com or http://www.healthyexpat.com if you are seeking an ESL job or expat health insurance.
Cheers!
Hello Sam,
So how are you enjoying iGTD?
I agree – the Palm sync issues with Mac were one of the reasons I finally abandoned mine (I think I managed to lose data three or four times before I finally had enough – with paper one experiences far less data loss, although important information does need to exist in electronic backup as well).
I was surprised by the amount of AdSense on your websites. For me it made them basically unreadable. I don’t know whether your revenue streams are AdSense based or from product but to improve useability you should cut way back on the AdSense.