Things for GTD

I’ve been trying to use Midnight Inbox from Midnight Beep Software as my primary GTD software on the Mac. I really wanted to love this application - it is beautiful to look at and it implements the GTD process at a very detailed level. I am a pretty hard-core GTD person, so a full implementation appealed. But the implementation in the end is too picky and too quirky for me. It may work for you, so check it out. The response to my various questions and comments on the app from the folks at Midnight Beep Software has been spectacular - explanations of how it works and the philosophy behind the implementation approach - certainly among the most responsive, personal support I have gotten from any small software company, both before and after I had paid for the software.

So now I’m back to Things, from Cultured Code, which I had tried before. It has a much looser implementation of GTD, which put me off the first time I tried. But it uses tags in a way that allows them to serve as contexts (part of the GTD methodology), as well as tagging tasks for other purposes. Since I understand GTD well and have used it for a couple years now, I have internalize the use of contexts and I don’t need the tool to discipline me to use them, so tags work perfectly for me. Cynthia and I have been lusting after iPhones and will be getting 3G iPhones soon, so this week’s announcement of Things for the iPhone was a trigger to take another look at Things.

I think that Things will be my GTD answer but the choice of a GTD application is very individual since it gets down to not only your approach to GTD but aesthetic and work habit considerations that are different for every person. I found an excellent review of four of the key GTD apps for the Mac and commented on my experiences with Inbox and Things at greater length at Putting Things Off, a blog labeled by its author, Nick Cernis, as “The laid-back productivity blog.” Since Nick has gone the paper route, as described in his eBook todoodlist, it is interesting that his review of the Mac GTD apps is one of the best. If you are looking for a GTD app for the Mac, check out the review.

If you are interested in GTD and use Outlook on Windows, I highly recommend the NetCentric GTD add-in for Outlook which I have been using on my Windows work machines for several years. It is a very faithful implementation of the GTD methodology with outstanding integration with Outlook’s tasks.

Goosh, Mickey!

I haven’t been very geeky in this blog to date. I’ve only been sort of geeky in life, although since I have become a technical consultant, I’m getting a lot more geeky these days. That said, I have to fess up to being quite happy with GUI interfaces for lots of things. But thanks to a post by Mr. J. Wylie, I now know about Goosh, a Unix-shell style interface to Google. No value judgement - I still spend more time in a browser than in a shell, but for those who like a command-line interface, it is excellent. I may get seduced by things like the wiki command: >wiki [keywords] searches Wikipedia for whatever keywords you type in (no brackets). Faster than loading the Wikipedia home page and typing in the keywords. Thanks to Stefan Grothkopp for Goosh!

It’s been FIVE MONTHS - did I get anything DONE?

I certainly did! I got a new job at SAS Institute as a senior IT consultant, supporting the SAS® IT Resource Management product. I’m having more fun at work than I have had in a long time. I am working with computer performance and capacity planning and SAS, all the things I enjoy most about the computer and IT world.

Information Overload or why we need GTD

Basex, a consulting and analysis firm focused on collaboration and information sharing in organizations has published a new report entitled  ”Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us“. While there is nothing startlingly new, the report is a concise, well-written treatment of the changes in work content for knowledge workers and the enormous impact of having too much information on getting things done, frequently referred to as productivity. They provide a few of the basic rules of e-mail, IM (instant-message) and telephone etiquette but don’t really get into the meat of how to deal with the onslaught of information many of us face. Which just takes me back to how much I need Getting Things Done. If you find it interesting, read the book. Then, at the risk of further information overload, go check out Merlin Mann’s amazing 43 Folders site. There Merlin blogs and provides links to all kinds of resources and discussions on how to get things done. The only trick is finding enough time to read it all - Merlin is incredibly prolific. But take the time - it will be worth it and you will get things done if you use this system.

Getting Things Done is SOOOOOooooooo Satisfying!

The title says it all! It also explains why those of us who become GTD (Getting Things Done) fanatics tend to stay that way. While a number of online postings suggest endorphins may be the cause, various psychological texts and articles are rather equivocal. Anecdotal evidence of satisfaction from completing tasks is overwhelming, so I’ll confine myself to the purely existential, empirical observation that it feels wonderful to have gotten a bunch done today. All very mundane - catching up on my inbox, cleaning off my desk, paying bills and the like - but it has been wonderful to have some time to get everything in order before the new year.

The Smell of Fall

I went outside this morning in my robe to discover the temperature and was greeted with the smell of fall. We have had an unusual autumn this year - the deciduous trees actually turned colors before starting to lose their leaves. Today was the first time I noticed the crisp smell of autumn. It is hard to describe - a special freshness in the air, different from any other time of year. A wonderful start to the day, another beautiful day of sunshine in the desert.

It’s an e-mail…it’s an iCal event!

Apple has finally added one of the features I really like in Outlook to Mail and iCal. Now you can drag an e-mail onto the calendar to create a new event. A link to the e-mail message is created in the URL field of the event. Even if the e-mail is moved to a different folder, the link in the event will still open the e-mail. A side note about iCal Version 3 (installed as part of Leopard): the details of events are no longer shown in a drawer. Instead you double click and a metal surface window with the details pops up with a little triangle pointing to the appointment.

Leopard is up and running!

My new iMac is up and running on Leopard! I chose Archive and Install with the “Preserve User and Network Settings” option. Probably a bit paranoid on my part, since the new machine is still pretty clean. Everything seems to be working, so I’ll clean up the old system folder after things are running smoothly for a while. One interesting little improvement is that the Visual editor in WordPress works now. Even under the Safari 3 beta, the link editor in the Visual editor didn’t work but it does now! I had to set my desktop picture back to the default for Leopard, the Aurora picture under Nature in the Desktop Pictures folder. More as I learn more!  

Fall has fallen…

OK, here in southern New Mexico, it doesn’t fall so much as sneak in. We have a couple deciduous trees in the yard and their leaves have yellowed and fallen, but mostly it is cooler (lows in the 40s, highs only into the 70s and low 80s). Cindy and I realized our bodies have adapted to the climate here when we got chilly sitting outside last evening and it was still 75º out. We are both reeling with the realization that November is less than two weeks away!

Trying out ecto as a blog editor.

This post was written using ecto, a client application for composing blog entries. You can write entries in rich text format or code HTML entries by hand. I’m just beginning my 21 day trial period. The advantage is that I can put a post together in software running on my extremely fast new iMac instead of doing the editing on the WordPress site. So far so good. Links are easy to insert. I’ll have to try pictures next. If I can do all the editing I normally do for my blogs, ecto will be well worth the $17.95 US price.