星期四, 九月 21, 2006

Getting started with “Getting Things Done”

[webnote]
[GTD] 
 

Getting started with "Getting Things Done"

Getting Things Done

GTD coverI'll be talking a lot here in coming weeks about Getting Things Done, a book by David Allen whose apt subtitle is "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity." You've probably heard about it around the Global Interweb or have been buttonholed by somebody in your office who swears by GTD. (It probably takes a backseat only to the Atkins Diet in terms of the number of enthusiastic evangelists: sorry about that.)

Like I did the other day with Quicksilver, I wanted to provide a gentle, geek-centric introduction to Getting Things Done, so that you can think about whether it might be right for you. It also gives you time to pick up your own copy of the book and get a feel for how David's system works. (You can support 43 Folders by buying the book from Amazon, but it's also up at ISBN.nu and, of course, on shelves at your local bookstore). You'll also eventually want to grab some of the other GTD essentials, like a ton of manila folders, a good label maker, and a big-ass garbage can. It's time to get your act together, hoss.

The Problem with "stuff"

Getting Things Done succeeds because it first addresses a critical barrier to completing the atomic tasks that we want to accomplish in a given day. That's "stuff." Amorphous, unactionable, flop-sweat-inducing stuff. David says:

Here's how I define "stuff:" anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn't belong where it is, but for which you haven't yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step. [pg. 17]

Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff has no "home" and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around.

Worst off, we're too neurotic to stop thinking about it, and we certainly don't have time to actually do everything in one day. Jeez Louise, what the hell am I, Superman?

So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven't forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your "stuff" has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?

So how does GTD work?

This is a really summarized version, but here it is, PowerPoint-style:

  1. identify all the stuff in your life that isn't in the right place (close all open loops)
  2. get rid of the stuff that isn't yours or you don't need right now
  3. create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
  4. put your stuff in the right place, consistently
  5. do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
  6. iterate and refactor mercilessly

So, basically, you make your stuff into real, actionable items or things you can just get rid of. Everything you keep has a clear reason for being in your life at any given moment—both now and well into the future. This gives you an amazing kind of confidence that a) nothing gets lost and b) you always understand what's on or off your plate.

Also built-in to the system are an ongoing series of reviews, in which you periodically re-examine your now-organized stuff from various levels of granularity to make sure your vertical focus (individual projects and their tasks) is working in concert with your horizontal focus (side to side scanning of all incoming channels for new stuff). It's actually sort of fun and oddly satisfying.

GTD is geek-friendly

When I first saw Cory's notes about Danny's Alpha Geek talk, I knew I was with my people. I had been using GTD enthusiastically for a couple months at that point and immediately saw a bunch of common ground.

I think Getting Things Done appeals to geeks for a lot of reasons. Overgeneralizing for effect:

  • geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues
  • geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
  • geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at "mission statements" and lofty management patois
  • geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
  • geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
  • geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they're currently using)
  • geeks like fixing things on their own terms
  • geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

The OSX angle/warning

A majority of what I'll be talking about is going to be independent of platforms and specific tools; a lot of what's happening here will be more about behavior and thinking than the specific flavor of your tools. I will spill the beans by admitting that my own GTD implementation relies primarily on a handful of text files (which I think might appeal to some of the command-line folks out there).

But I do want to warn the Mac-haters that there will be occasional—nay, frequent—detours into the specifics of implementing GTD on OSX. If that's going to freak you out, maybe you should sit this site out. I'd understand completely (but, fair warning, I really won't suffer a lot of on-site bickering about it).

Thing is: GTD has attracted a huge audience of PC users—one suspects in part because David Allen sells an Outlook plug-in for Windows. But I've had a difficult time finding many deep resources on how to do GTD on a Mac. So I really do want to look at how things like Quicksilver, iCal, BBEdit, NetNewsWire, and the almighty shell script can make this easier for all my Apple sisters and brothers. Deal.

So what next?

I've hit the stuff that's been important to me, but YMMV. If you're still on the fence, try a few of the links below and check out Amazon's "Look Inside" for the book—it features the TOC, index, and a few pages from the introduction.

I also encourage folks, both novice and seasoned, to ask and answer questions here via comments (keep it nice, please). It'd be swell if this could be like a book club thing where we round back up after a week or three to look at how people are liking GTD and how they're implementing it. I'll be here, and maybe you will too.

Links

(I'll continue to add good starting resources here, so check back periodically.)

Getting Things Done book

Excerpts from Getting Things Done

David's sites

Essential resources (Print these—now, Grasshopper)

Other good stuff

Update 2005-11-06

It's driven me crazy for a long time that I got the nomenclature on this post so wrong. Throughout it I use "nerd" where I really should be using "geek."

Many of the geeks out there have been nerdy enough to point this out to me (numerous times) over the last year, and, as popular as the post has been over time, I think it's worth fixing the error. So, there. Fixed! And with my thanks.

Apologies in retrospect to all geeks, nerds, dorks, spazzes, and mouth-breathers; it was an inaccurate choice of words, and 43 Folders regrets the error.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 at 16:25 and is filed under life hacks, tips, features, gtd, productivity, world of work, classics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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91 Responses to "Getting started with "Getting Things Done""

  1. Michael Williams Says:
    September 8th, 2004 at 17:04

    I'm very keen to follow along with this series of posts. However, I'm awfully busy (probably because I'm so disorganised!) How necessary is having a copy of the book or even reading the whole thing going to be?

  2. Merlin Says:
    September 8th, 2004 at 17:14

    I think you'll find plenty of good tips without reading the whole book. I would grab M Vance's Outline to give you a high-level understanding.

    Once they get into it, a lot of people find they want to immerse themselves in GTD completely for 2 or 3 days to get everything in order—a lot of folks say it pays back the time investment by a factor of many, FWIW.

  3. Marilyn Langfeld Says:
    September 8th, 2004 at 19:49

    Have you checked out Daylite, from MarketCircle? It's primarily for sales management, but folks often discuss DTD on it's email list.

  4. josh Says:
    September 8th, 2004 at 22:05

    I really look forward to the OS X-specific info. I'm a Mac guy who picked up GTD after seeing all the nerd cred it had online. But despite reading the book, I haven't implemented it yet. I'd love to see what files you use, what lists you keep — even the lists themselves (or some bowdlerized version, since you'd understandably like to keep some things private). I'm just curious what level of detail you get down to in your lists.

    Anyway, Merlin, I've been a fan of all your online work for a while now, and I really look forward to reading more in the coming weeks.

  5. Matt Whyndham Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 5:56

    Cheers for this, don't forget to polish M Vance's outline as you go through. It's a wiki. Yes, helping others is an actionable item. I'm hitting the stationary cupboard … er .. tomorrow.

  6. Mike Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 6:35

    Check out Life Balance (http://www.llamagraphics.com) for excellent GTD helper software for Mac OS X (and Window and Palm I think).

  7. Lost Positives Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 7:44

    Getting Things Done?

    Usually, what I hate about "getting things done systems" is that learning them is such a time consuming process.

  8. Spinneyhead Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 7:45

    I'll do it later

    I really need this book- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity.

    There's an introduction/ review here.

  9. Arbitrary Deranged Digressions Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 8:39

    Getting Things Done

    43 Folders: Getting started with "Getting Things Done�? I haven't looked at this yet, but it seems like it would be useful for many 'people…

  10. Lon Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 8:41

    I've had the book for a few months now and I'm finally getting ready to implement. I'm thinking of using a wiki as my organizational tool. I work in a cross-platform environment so I frequently switch between Mac, Windows and even Linux. I think something web-based yet simple, like wiki, might be my best bet. But I'm interested in knowing if anyone else has ever implemented GTD with a wiki (I couldn't find anything on the davidco forums.)

  11. Merlin Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 8:54

    Lon:

    I think a wiki is a terrific idea. I run both Instiki and VoodooPad on my local Mac as well as PHPWiki for "PantyWad." Instiki would really be my hands down choice for a simple wiki except that many ISPs haven't caught up to the version of Ruby needed to run it. :(

    For you, depending on your needs and skills, I'd look at either Usemod or PHPWiki. I think the latter may be better for GTD because of the cool category stuff. But Instiki is so damned pretty and fun to use (plus it supports Markdown!). Usemod is pretty basic, but it just couldn't be easier to set up.

  12. Todd Dailey Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 10:13

    Merlin,

    Love your site, found you through Bradlands. I'm new to GTD and this is a great resource.

    I hate your fixed center column width though. On my cinema display the side borders look positively silly. (Want a screenshot? :) ) Any way to talk you into making the center column a non-absolute width? I feel like I'm reading a very very long sidebar. :)

  13. Frank Cienniwa Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 10:34

    I would love to see the Advanced Workflow (PDF) but am unable to open it. Can you try to make it available? I need to get my team on the GTD plan.

  14. Gordo Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 10:36

    I read GTD, then started to consider how to implement it.

    My solution? Use email.

    Mail.app with my imap server is proving to be a good fit for me. I can use mail.app offline to edit/queue messages, which syncs with the imap when I go online. I am not tied to a duct taped solution, infact, email is a rather elegant solution.

    Next steps, getting a rim pager, to capture those fleeting thoughts and get them into the system.

    Also setup a mailbot to reply with summary of what is in some mailboxes.

    Why re-invent the wheel? :-)

  15. Lon Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 10:50

    Instiki is, in fact, the wiki system I've settled on. I've used phpWiki and MoinMoin on other projects but after using instiki I'm hooked on its elegant simplicity. I haven't used Markdown–Textile seems more my style–but perhaps I should try it to see what all the fuss is about.

  16. anil dash's daily links Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 11:11

    the rise of "getting things done"

    http://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/2004/09/getting_started.html…

  17. Merlin Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 12:00

    Todd, you need a smaller display, that's your problem. ;-)

    Good call. I like it better. Thanks.

    (Now send me some schwag. I've been buying your goddamn computers for almost 20 years!)

  18. ghostwheel Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 12:16

    Getting Things Done

    It'll change your life!

  19. grubi Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 12:25

    So, you're going to go into why using a wiki for personal use is a good idea? Because I've heard it from several sources, but I cannot seem to imagine it. Perhaps some sort of demo would be helpful :-)

  20. Rain From Vermont Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 13:50

    43 Folders: Getting started with "Getting Things Done�?

    Just discovered a brief description & collection of links about Getting Things Done over at 43 Folders.

  21. JP Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 19:14

    Instiki is the way to go, at least as far as managing the many lists is concerned. What stumps me, though, is the management of the myriad project support files I sometimes need to link to list items (or calender items…grr, iCal).

    Voodoopad gets the file-management aspect right, because you can drag actual files into each wiki page, but I just don't like the feel of Voodoopad.

    I'd be interested to hear how others keep their files associated with list- and calendar items in OSX.

  22. Todd Dailey Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 19:44

    JP,

    I'm just getting organized myself, but I'm leaning towards Circus Ponies NoteBook for electronic project files.

    http://circusponies.com/

    Download the eval and see what you think. I like the tabbed notebook view, and it seems very skinnable if you don't like the default views. I don't see any real to-do list management, so it's probably only approvriate for support files, but it may work out.

  23. scribblingwoman Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 19:48

    I don't have

    time to Get Things Done (via Boing Boing); perhaps I should start just reading the first lines of novels (via…

  24. Bibi's box Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 19:56

    Procrastination

    I am a procrastinator: I will go do, but tomorrow. My problem is not be lazy, is do things more interesting before and the others still on in line to do. I have more problem with procrastinatination than those, much more. I really want to change, but …

  25. ANVL Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 20:15

    GTD

    aka "Getting Things Done". Quite serendipitous, since just this morning I was contemplating the fact that I have 3 ToDo lists in different places (Outlook, notebook paper, and my head), and none of them match or are integrated. Then, I…

  26. Derek Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 20:19

    I am very interested in all of this as I begin another semester of school.
    Would anyone care to elaborate Gordo's query into using email to facillitate the organization principles of this system? I am jusy a little reluctant to stray too far from beloved email cockpit, especially after I have crashed and burned with the Franklin and Daytimer systems already. Thanks to all for the informative posts.

  27. Steven Jarvis Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 20:26

    Merlin: can TypePad do Comment thread RSS feeds (like WordPress)? This would be a great one to track that way. I've never thought of them as that useful, but I think I'm starting to see the light.

  28. Hilarie Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 22:05

    This is perfect. I just stumbled onto this site (via del.icio.us) and wouldn't you know it…I've been thinking about picking up a copy of "Getting Things Done" for the past few days.

    I saw GTD while looking for an audio book (on iTunes) of "The Now Habit", which I just read and loved. While I highly recommend "The Now Habit" to any procrastinators out there, I could still use some more tangible strategies for becoming more productive. Hopefully "Getting Things Done" will do the trick for me.

  29. John Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 22:09

    VoodooPad.

    I've found it to be perfect not for large scale Life Balance-style organization, but for little stuff like remembering passwords, lists of jokes, copied text for web sites, simple to do lists, and so forth. I used to just have a big old directory of text files. Voodoopad is a good replacement for big old directories of text files. Don't get too fancy with it and you'll find it's ideal for its scope.

    (I also use it for writing. Compare it to dedicated creative writing applications like Ulysses. I've found that wikis, once you have a good workflow, are way more useful- you make an index page, a note page, etc.)

  30. marc brown - blog.blog.blog. Says:
    September 9th, 2004 at 22:37

    43 Folders

    This year I have started becoming much more organized that I've been in the past, with all my business and everything else, however I could always use more help. Merlin Mann gives us 43 Folders a blog about Getting Things…

  31. bongoman Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 1:30

    For implementing GTD, I've tried them all: DayLite, VoodooPad, OmniOutliner, LifeBalance.
    And I've now settled on Entourage 2004 as my main GTD tool. It syncs to the Palm nicely, I have all my Projects, tasks and hard landscape in one spot AND it rocks being able to have project-based email.

    At the core of Entourage's usefulness as far as GTD is concerned is of course the Project Center. I suspect that a more perfect solution could be developed in FileMaker Pro, but for something straight out of the box it works really well.

    I never thought I'd be extolling the virtues of a Microsoft app but it is a pretty polished bit of software, especially when it comes to GTD.

    Bongoman

  32. padawan.info Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 2:51

    Your to-do list, soon in a feed near you?

    There is some kind of conspiracy going on in my usual web sources that focuses on life hacks, more life…

  33. David Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 5:09

    I'm not convinced that software "process talk" is applicable to software development.. let alone real life. But, if you feel that you can refactor yourself, why not outsource yourself as well?

  34. Josh Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 6:00

    I've been using GTD for a couple of months — not a huge amount of time — and I've tried a ton of software solutions. For me, the best solution is turning out to be simplicity: text files and MacNoteTaker. I'm hoping that this site will help me simplify further and even get rid of my Palm as an organizational tool; I'd like to rely ultimately on printed lists and note cards.

    I'm just not convinced that GTD is a method that a) requires a lot of tech and b) benefits from complicated tools. The goal of GTD is get things as much off your mind as possible, and software — even simple stuff like Instiki, which has quite a few clicks before any project to-dos are recorded — makes you think about the software. Before you know it, you're spending time improving or rethinking your wiki, notebook, or outline. This is exactly not the point of GTD. I think this site has the right idea emphasizing tools like QuickSilver and its 'append' function: make things easy, transparent, and immediate if you can.

    Here's a good example: for a while the best solution I'd settled on was to use OmniOutliner on the desktop and a Palm with Shadowplan, a great PalmOS outliner. The advantage of SP was being able to see all of my projects at a glance, any time. But to record a new to-do, I inevitably ended up having to open SP, navigate to my project, zoom to the appropriate area of the outline, add the to-do, and shuffle around the items to achieve what seemed a sensible order. This not only took time — it made me think in a way I'd prefer not to.

    Lately, I've switched to flat text files and index cards. I carry my Palm for contacts and a calendar sometimes, but when I think of an idea I write it on an index card and leave it at that. I save all the thinking / processing for the "Processing" stage of GTD, and I separate "Collecting" from "Processing" as much as possible. You would be amazed how much this helps with keeping stress-free. In my experience, the single greatest insight in GTD is that collecting, processing, and doing all need to be separate parts of your day or week. A lot of software tools get you into collecting and processing, and sometimes even doing, at the same time — e.g. Entourage, where you're writing emails while you're looking at your Project lists while you're recording new tasks.

    Obviously, whatever works for you works for you: but I would encourage you, if you haven't tried it, to try out radically separating collection, processing, and doing. This requires unplugging a bit from cool software (I love VP and OO, for example, and miss playing with them), but it means that you need less of a complicated, one-stop-shop application to get things done and can focus more on clearing your head.

  35. Gordo Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 8:12

    I agree with Josh, that simplicity is best. The process should be transparent, low barrier to capturing ideas, otherwise you don't do it.

    I had a pager for work and before reading GTD, I was sending myself reminders by email. Then when I read GTD alot of things started to fall into place.

    I setup snipsnap a wiki/weblog to capture some links and more rich info. Of course about the same time I changed positions and no longer had access to the RIM pager. I treid using my sell fone to send sms for reminders, but it was not as easy (for me) to enter in the text. So a used RIM is on the way from ebay.

    As for my email layout, just followed the suggestions in GTD. Also added a small filing box (not a whole cabinet) for 'real world' paper.

    The thing that occurred to me that would be a 'neat toy', would be a knoppix cd image that could scan an image into a pdf, bonus if it did OCR. That would bridge the gap from dead tree to digital world.

  36. Merlin Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 10:04

    But, if you feel that you can refactor yourself, why not outsource yourself as well?

    Good one. I would totally do that…if they dramatically improved their support quality.

    Actually, it's the system that gets refactored, not the person. I want to update the program, not the wetware that's running it. :)

  37. Kris Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 10:04

    Like Todd, I've been using Circus Pony's NoteBook. Each project gets (at least) a page. Actions and support info gets listed on the page. I can tag actions with a context keyword and a next action sticker (both could be keywords or both could be stickers). I can then use the super-find feature to get a context list.

    This works because I mostly work at home. It would be harder if I needed to use my Palm for anything other than reference. Features that would make NoteBook better for GTD would be sortable super-find results, "smart pages" (which, like Tiger's smart folders, would display a dynamically-updated super-find result), and Applescriptability, which would let me automate interactions between NoteBook and iCal, for example.

  38. Who knew? Says:
    September 10th, 2004 at 21:43

    Getting organized

    Recently, I have begun to feel a little disorganized and mostly unproductive. I submit as evidence the lack of posts this week. True, I was in the Madison, WI home of Althouse, with a lot of customer related activity occuring outside the normal busines…

  39. Junkyard Says:
    September 11th, 2004 at 20:20

    sdfghxcv

    perfect timing. getting things done. start….

  40. LinuxBrit Says:
    September 12th, 2004 at 5:21

    More books and stuff

    This article made me order Getting things done, and I'll be interested to see if it can help with the mass of work I always have queued up at the office..
    I've been playing a bit more poker, and am still doing well :) I spent my winnings from the ot…

  41. Savior Machine Says:
    September 12th, 2004 at 8:46

    Lets Get Orgamanized

    I am a disorganized mess at times. Papers everywhere, things stacked up on top of each other with "plans" of organizing them. So when I saw this book Getting Things Done making the rounds online and getting some rave reviews….

  42. Emily Says:
    September 13th, 2004 at 5:52

    Not a user of GTD myself (though maybe I should be) but I thought I'd chime in with a software solution or two I've seen floating around.
    Eastgate's Tinderbox seems to have a pretty big base of GTD users and seems like a neat solution. There's some stuff in the support wiki including document templates.
    HandyShopper for palm also has some GTD templates, but I haven't checked them out. And I think I've lost the url for the software. The user group is here.

  43. Medley Says:
    September 13th, 2004 at 7:01

    43 Folders

    It seems that everyone and their cousin is linking to 43 Folders, so I might

  44. Asymptomatic Says:
    September 13th, 2004 at 13:19

    Getting Things Done - A Summary

    Here's a nice summary of a book that I should add to my reading list - Getting Things Done

  45. Elizabeth Says:
    September 14th, 2004 at 20:46

    I wanted to chime into this conversation as one of the co-creators of Circus Ponies NoteBook.

    I was introduced to GTD back in 2001, not long before Jayson and I founded Circus Ponies, and it greatly influenced my input into our design of the product. I'm not a 100% GTD follower (I already had a pretty solid system of my own in place), but some of DA's methods struck me as so brilliant I've long since replaced pieces of my own system with pieces from his. :-)

    Many of the feature suggestions that are mentioned in this discussion have also been mentioned on our User Forums and we are working to incorporate them into the next major release of the product. While our intention is to make the product useful for anyone, we are particularly interested in hearing from GTD users. We find they are highly self-aware and make excellent constructive suggestions.

    We also invite Mac users who would like to get organized to try NoteBook free for 30 days and to take advantage of our Discussion Forums which we read and respond to religiously.

    Many thanks to DA for refining such a great system.

  46. Big Bob Buddha Says:
    September 15th, 2004 at 2:01

    The in-tray of life is never empty.

    You can spend forever trying to empty the tray or you can learn to transcend the tray.

    Letting go of the tray is the true path.

  47. Merlin Says:
    September 15th, 2004 at 2:04

    There is no tray, Bob.

  48. McFilter Says:
    September 15th, 2004 at 10:06

    Getting Things Done

    43 Folders is an ever expanding collection of tips and tricks to help you be more productive. And it isn't just for geeks, the common thread binding the ideas is a system for organizing your life, called GTD. GTD stands…

  49. Anonymous Says:
    September 15th, 2004 at 15:55

    http://www.lunchwithgeorge.com/lwgblog/2004/09/pauls-getting-organized.php

  50. bonsai bratwurst breiwerk Says:
    September 17th, 2004 at 9:26

    Getting started with "Getting Things Done"

    43 Folders: Getting started with "Getting Things Done"…

  51. The Organization Says:
    September 21st, 2004 at 2:17

    links for 2004-09-21

    43 Folders: Getting started with "Getting Things Done" I wanted to provide a gentle, nerd-centric introduction to Getting Things Done, so that you can think about whether it might be right for you. (categories: article blog gtd post) GettingThingsDone…

  52. Rich Says:
    September 22nd, 2004 at 18:16

    Has anyone tried to integrate Pocket Informant (Pocket PC) with GTD? Any tips?

  53. xian Says:
    September 24th, 2004 at 13:27

    One tool that helps me quite a bit on OS X is flyingmeat.com's VoodooPad, a desktop wiki. It functions as sort of a hyperlinked equivalent of endless manila folders.

  54. derek Says:
    September 26th, 2004 at 2:01

    I don't know about you guys, but I am able to get pretty far with Yahoo mail and their calendar. I am able to access all my context lists as my web homepage on my sanyo 8200 phone, and the beauty is that it won't show me any folder in which I have no unread (uncompleted tasks) messages in a mail folder. I really think this is important in the same way I like to just carry around a piece of paper and a pen to capture thoughts and stuff during the day… it is just the most convenient and direct. this info has got to be web accessible for me because i want to be as nomadic as possible. i want to live the dream. I send an email to myself, plop it in the list and there it is as an unread message waiting for completion. when i am done, pop it into the completed task folder and then the endorphin droplet soothes my cortex. admittedly, i am not managing 200 projects and jumbling a buttload of tasks, but i don't see how that would make much of a difference. i can't stand the idea of my lists only being accessible on one computer or pda while i am out bopping around. good luck to all and i would like to start a thread of sorts that is for people who are attempting to do the GTD thang with just paper in hand, folders at home, and web mail where ver they are. with yahoo upgrading their email system to oddpost features, it can only get better, right? who's game?

  55. Mac Geek and Gadgetry Says:
    October 1st, 2004 at 14:54

    Getting Things Done

    A couple weeks ago I came across 43 Folders and I was intrigued by this post about "Getting Things Done" which is, evidently, the biggest thing since sliced bread. Essentially it is a list-based process for tracking and completing tasks

  56. writing my name in water Says:
    October 7th, 2004 at 14:06

    Travel

    Spent three days in Austin and Houston this weekend; had a great time. In transit at Newark, I loosed a large mental poop when I realized, on line at airport security, that I'd left a knife in my bag. Thankfully…

  57. writing my name in water Says:
    October 11th, 2004 at 14:33

    Do; go

    Share was cool last night. I left Beth to her C homework in Astoria (pang) and showed up there around 7 pm. It was very quiet at first, then things picked up like mad (~9 pm) when the featured set…

  58. Move the Crowd Says:
    October 17th, 2004 at 17:20

    I've Been Assimilated

    A few weeks ago Anil mentioned the semi-cult that is the book and methodology 'Getting Things Done' (GTD). I don't know how I'd never heard of this 3-year old book, but I guess it's better late than never. After researching…

  59. dan Says:
    October 25th, 2004 at 12:07

    Merlin, it'd be great if you posted a rundown/comparison of Instiki, VoodooPad, phpWiki and other engines. I'm new to wikis — and to serving websites from my home machine — and some perspective on their relative merits would be really helpful.

  60. Merlin Says:
    October 25th, 2004 at 12:20

    Dan:

    VodooPad is just a local OS X app. While it has excellent wiki-like functionality, it doesn't, to my knowledge, actually serve pages to a browser.

    Instiki runs on Ruby, which can be hard to find on an ISP, plus it serves over port 2500, which is verboten on most ISPs I've talked to. It is, however, a breeze to setup and use on your own mac. And if you have a way of doing dynamic DNS or otherwise have a domain hardwired to your Mac or Home network, you can serve wiki pages to the world over port 2500, no problem. Just poke a hole in your firewall and forward the port on your router's setup. That's what I'm doing now (as an experiment).

    PHPWiki is very powerful and has lots of bells and whistles. I'll probably use it again, but have been choosing to do stuff in Instiki wherever I can, because it's so much easier to use IMO.

    Again, I should mention–I don't personally use wikis for GTD stuff (and am not entirely sure how I would). I find wikis most useful for individual projects that are changing quickly or need lots of brainstorming. In the GTD system, I suppose I'd place wikis more in the class of "project support."

    Hope that helps.

  61. robWillis 5 Says:
    November 22nd, 2004 at 10:08

    gtd

    as i near the end of 2004, i can't help but to look back and reflect on how i progressed through the year. if i had to give one word…

  62. Pascal Says:
    December 27th, 2004 at 3:07

    Have you tried searching for books at Pricenoia.com? It's an International Amazon comparison engine I was introduced a couple of days ago.. It compares prices and adds shipping costs. It also has a nice price evolution graph..

    Getting things done compared at Pricenoia.

    Diferent from isbn.nu but useful anyway!

  63. Nosce te ipsum Says:
    December 29th, 2004 at 4:12

    43 Folders: Getting started with "Getting Things Done"

    The good folks over at 43 Folder s have got a piece up on Getting started with "Getting Things Done" .

  64. Aldoblog Says:
    December 29th, 2004 at 15:48

    Getting things done

    I was introduced a couple months ago to the work of productivity guru David Allen, finding a glowing review and an overview of his organization system on the 43 Folders weblog. But buying the book has had unintended consequences.

  65. Mike Hohnen Says:
    December 31st, 2004 at 3:40

    Hi
    I have spent quite some time pouring my life into Day Lite using the GTD philosophy over the past days. The advantage of daylite to me is that i gives me *next task' for each project - the down side is that there is a lot of admin in order to get it organised. But i have decided to give it a serious bash for a week now.

    Info :

    www.marketcircle.com

    Marketcircle Inc.
    431 Alden Road, Units 19 & 20
    Markham, Ontario
    L3R 3L4 Canada

  66. Mike Hohnen Says:
    January 1st, 2005 at 4:28

    Forget my previous post - i have now deleted DayLite of my system. It 'accidentally' deleted 2 projects of the file. And as DA first rule states move the stuff out of your brain to a system you TRUST - well i don't anymore.

    Next step is i am testing Two Due a shareware todolist that may do the job : http://www.powersurgepub.com any one tried this?

  67. [jb] jim brayton Says:
    January 9th, 2005 at 16:30

    ONLamp.com: Keeping Your Life in Subversion

    Revision control is great for collaborative projects and distributed projects. How well does it work for individuals? According to Joey Hess, fantastically. He's kept his home dir

  68. Core/Dump: opinion, babes and bondage... Says:
    January 14th, 2005 at 22:50

    A while back I started working with re-organizing my life.

    PDF LinkA while back I started working with re-organizing my life. After looking around at the situation I came across…

  69. WebBlog Says:
    February 14th, 2005 at 21:18

    Getting Things Done

    While reading a number of blogs on my daily blog-tour, I kept coming across this thing people would refer to as GTD of "Getting Things Done". Well, my curiosity was aroused last week, so

  70. WebBlog Says:
    February 14th, 2005 at 21:44

    Getting Things Done by David Allen

    While reading a number of blogs on my daily blog-tour, I kept coming across this thing people would refer to as GTD of "Getting Things Done". Well, my curiosity was aroused last week, so

  71. aellath Says:
    February 17th, 2005 at 12:29

    These are all things i've read/learnt years ago. i start, then forget. Ah, well. Glad something works for all of you.

  72. arcticzoo Says:
    February 21st, 2005 at 23:09

    flickr

    found out about flickr after reading up about gtd at 43folders which led me to lifehacks….

  73. Amanita.net Says:
    March 10th, 2005 at 9:21

    links for 2005-03-10

    Getting started with "Getting Things Done" The art of productivity, by David Allen. Apparently it's a good program for geeks? [via sleepingwolf] (categories: books)…

  74. Amanita.net Says:
    March 10th, 2005 at 10:23

    Quicklinks for 2005-03-10

    Getting started with "Getting Things Done" The art of productivity, by David Allen. Apparently it's a good program for geeks? [via sleepingwolf] (categories: books)…

  75. nigel kersten Says:
    March 12th, 2005 at 21:43

    Analog is the new Digital ?

    So the Hipster PDA and the whole Getting Things Done system seems to be popping up absolutely everywhere these days.

    I have say I'm kind of enthused about it, maybe because it kind of fits how I organise my email life, and perhaps everything else cou…

  76. polar icecap Says:
    March 18th, 2005 at 9:22

    iPod photo

    As a reward for finishing my latest project, I'm buying myself an mp3 player. Specifically…

  77. polar icecap Says:
    March 18th, 2005 at 9:23

    iPod photo

    As a reward for finishing my latest project, I'm buying myself an mp3 player. Specifically…

  78. polar icecap Says:
    March 18th, 2005 at 11:12

    iPod photo

    As a reward for finishing my latest project, I'm buying myself an mp3 player. Specifically…

  79. The Ninth Wave Says:
    March 18th, 2005 at 14:39

    I'm gonna get things done!

    inspired primarily by this 43 Folders post, I picked up a copy of Getting Things Done at B&N today on my lunch break, and am getting geared up to dive in…

  80. Day By Day Says:
    March 22nd, 2005 at 11:06

    43 Folders: Getting started with Getting Things Done

    I read Getting Things Done back in November, based on a recommendation from a friend. I was dong a search for some time tracking software and noticed this

  81. Stompy.org Says:
    March 22nd, 2005 at 16:17

    Getting Stuff Done

    I am chronically disorganised and always have been. But, through my interest in notebooks I found Merlin Mann's site dealing with personal productivity through a combination of geek methods, and David Allan's "Getting Things Done" book - and in…

  82. tecosystems Says:
    March 24th, 2005 at 17:36

    On Blogs, Multi-Tasking and Continuous Partial Attention

    In spite of my best efforts, my blogroll continues to expand like our runaway national deficit. I prune it actively, I unsubscribe to things I like but don't have time to read (I miss you BoingBoing), but seemingly every day…

  83. Catbytes.org Says:
    March 25th, 2005 at 4:23

    Definitie van een nerd…

    Tijdens mijn zoektocht naar leuke dingen voor mijn pocketpc vind ik echt hele leuke, nerdie, websites.

    Op een daarvan, 43folders.com kwam ik de perfecte definitie van een nerd tegen. Alsof iemand mij beschrijft. Okee, nerdette dan.
    Het is in het e…

  84. Stompy.org Says:
    March 27th, 2005 at 15:20

    Getting Stuff Done

    I am chronically disorganised and always have been. But, through my interest in notebooks I found Merlin Mann's site dealing with personal productivity through a combination of geek methods, and David Allan's "Getting Things Done" book - and in…

  85. sammy baby Says:
    April 9th, 2005 at 20:59

    Perhaps I missed it in all the comments, but: one of the 43 folders denizens has been in the process of writing a Ruby on Rails app (like Instiki, mentioned in a previous post) designed to implement the GTD methodology.

    I messed with it, a little. Seemed quite neat. If you have the means to throw up a rails app somewhere (and are therefore, virtually by definition, a Big Geek), check it out. It's called Tracks.

  86. Signal vs. Noise Says:
    April 11th, 2005 at 13:13

    Backpack Preview #2: Reminders

    This preview doesn't come with a screenshot, but it covers a concept central to Backpack: Usefulness (with a capital U). Backpack is basically a two pillar product — it does two things really well. One of the things it does…

  87. Tom Markiewicz Says:
    April 20th, 2005 at 19:21

    Getting things done

    I recently started reading a new book entitled Getting Things Done by David Allen. I'm sure many have heard of this title, as did I, but I finally picked it up to see if I could add some more efficiency to the "to-do" overload I have. Being better …

  88. Brianmitchell.com Weblog Says:
    April 22nd, 2005 at 6:17

    links for 2005-04-22

    Fort Ebey State Park (page 1 of 2) (tags: stateparks washington travel mountainbiking camping) Google Groups : 43 Folders…

  89. Brianmitchell.com Weblog Says:
    April 22nd, 2005 at 12:53

    Links for 2005-04-22

    Fort Ebey State Park (page 1 of 2) (tags: stateparks washington travel mountainbiking camping) Google Groups : 43 Folders…

  90. Brianmitchell.com Weblog Says:
    April 22nd, 2005 at 12:56

    Links for 2005-04-22

    Fort Ebey State Park (page 1 of 2) (tags: stateparks washington travel mountainbiking camping) Google Groups : 43 Folders…

  91. Brandon Harvey Says:
    April 28th, 2005 at 14:27

    My basic puzzle: I needed multi-platform access to my lists, Windows and Mac, often from different places. Can't assume any particular set of software on any machine.

    My Solution: For a document format, use text files, rather than anything fancy or proprietary such as Omni Outliner files, wiki pages, etc. For a storage location, get some free WebDAV-able space. I use the free 100MB from spymac.net. On both Win and Mac, I can treat that web storage as a folder, like any other folder on my computer (but slower).

    BUT: there are hangups with this method. Would the OS and the apps let me actually edit a file that is sitting on a WebDAV folder in this way?

    On a PC, the answer is, only through MS Word. You must name the remote file .rtf or .doc, and if you double-click on it, Word will open it automatically. (There is no "Open With…" choice for remote WebDAV files — there's just Word. Even if you remap so that .doc files open with something like Abiword, clicking a .doc file in the WebDAV folder boots into Word.)

    Sadly, if you suffix a file with .txt, you can't edit it at all thru WebDAV (unless I'm missing something). You'd have to make a local copy, and edit that. Now you have synchronization problem and overhead — a bad scene.

    On a Mac, the answer is simply yes, you can edit over WebDAV, but saving and opening are both slow.

    My wish list:

    I'd like to leave these files in .rtf, rather than .doc. But because of Tofu, I've realized how great columns are. I'd like to edit an .rtf file in columns. But Tofu doesn't let you edit — it just lets you look. So for now, I'm using .doc files, with three columns. This means having Word open all the time, which I'm less than thrilled to do.

    .rtf doesn't actually include column formatting information, and I don't want it to. I just like to edit this way, because it lets me put everything onscreen in one view. Currently, my lists are 20 or 24 column inches long. Without columns, I have to scroll up and down all the time. I know that on the PC I'm stuck with MS Word for the time being, but on the Mac, a Tofu-style editor would be a great tool — much more useful than Tofu-the-viewer.

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