Yeah, I know how you feel… Not only have I tried a lot of different programs, but have exchanged e-mails with others who are trying to implement GTD as well. “Have you checked out this program”, “This looks like it might work”, etc…

So, I use Entourage. Period. It doesn’t do everything; no program will. But it lists tasks, gives me reminders, lets me link tasks with contacts, and lets me create projects (though I don’t use the project manager for anything other than naming projects).

I’ve got a couple of other programs that I use to organize “stuff”: Circus Ponies NoteBook, BBEdit, and Inspiration when I need to outline stuff and make a flow chart of next actions.

I’ve found I don’t need all the bells and whistles of contexts (partly because I work in one place), nor do I use the 43 folders. 99% of my work is digital, so I have very little paper.

I think it’s much better to find a tool that does most of what you need, then get to work. Maybe once in a while, after you’ve finished all those next actions, cleaned out your inbox, and reviewed the past few weeks, then can you start looking for better tools. But none of them will be superior to a pencil and paper anyway.

Your main problem is my main problem.

Should I use a Moleskine? VoodooPad? An online Wiki? A cheap pocket sized notepad? Emacs/Planner? The GTD webapp from http://www.rousette.org.uk/?

This one trusted system is by far the weakest part of my implementation.

Great post.

So when does a task get promoted to a project? I mean when does “cook dinner” the task become cook dinner the project (slice carrots, wash dishes, layout tablecloth, yell for the wife and kids to come down, carve turkey, etc.)

I’d recommend an index card tickler file. You can buy the same type dividers (the months & 31 days), plus I’d recommend the A-Z ones too. Put it next to your computer. It’s a great inbox and a good way to stash reminders that show up on your index cards.

If the weekly review isn’t working for you, try a different date or time. That seems to help. Sometimes you think a particular day or time will work, but you find you are resistant to actually DOING it then. For awhile, I used the time that I did my morning pages, on Monday morning, for this.

And I’ve gone back to Life Balance for everything. Works well on the Mac and can track my calendar entries. I bought the Moleskine planner just to look hip ;)

@Eugene: Your next actions should be as specific as they need to be for you to complete them in a way you find productive and satisfying. How’s that for a half-assed answer? :)

But, it’s true. For me this depends a lot on what the “project” is. “Cook dinner” might not earn its own manila folder, but mostly because it’s usually something you can do with little preparation and in one place without a break in time. (Thus, it differs from, say, “Build a Rocket Car” or “Read Remembrance of Things Past”).

The important thinking happens much earlier in the day when you realize that tonight is your anniversary so you have to “Find recipe for crepes,” “Write up ingredient list,” “Go to Safeway,” and “Buy a George Foreman Crepe Maker at Brookstone,” etc. Brain work makes next actions.

I think a “next action” represents the immediate physical activity between you and your goal. It should be as specific as you find useful and no more.

same discussion happening in the group: index card tickler is appealing for its size, but then were do you store the stuff you’ve been meaning to read, pay, send, etc? I’d need to file it, tickle it seperately, and then un/re-file it when my index card came up. i’m thinking of starting the manilla folder for physical stuff, and the rest of it goes from the moleskine or index cards i carry into Lifebalance at the days end.

Merlin:

Of course the benefit of all your twiddling has been you sharing your experiences with all these gadgets/processes/products on your blog. So your readers benefit from your generosity . .but maybe you don’t. Some twiddling is par for the course—but stopping and settling into the use of your best-it-can-be system (note I didn’t say perfect, you’ll never get there) has its own great rewards.

I stopped experimenting with my system and I’m much more productive. I use:

Life Balance, as Teri mentions above. Keeps all my calendar, next actions and projects (both pro and personal) in one place, and orders next actions by context (and with any level of priority that I choose to give them or their parent project, so I don’t have to continually make a call on the importance of each next action), but Life Balance also helps me track how every next action is getting me toward project completion and helps me to spend more time on the things that matter—which is really what organization is supposed to be about, right? LB also makes it easier to set up a GTD implementation with templates created by more experienced users…it’s a great piece of software, and the one I chose for GTD after trying other approaches, both computerized and strictly paper. I also liked Life Balance so much I upgraded to a Palm Tungsten T3 so I can take my LB lists with me on the go.

Tickler file. I got into the habit of opening each day’s file BEFORE checking email. Makes a big difference. Get it out from under your desk; it’s hidden there.

That’s it for organization. I keep detailed book writing notes in a Moleskine, create outlines in Inspiration, and write my books in Word. But I don’t count those as part of my GTD implementation—they are just additional tools, not really part of my GTD system of tracking next actions and projects. I have no desire to try out every new calendar/todo software any more, or to twiddle further with my system. Since I locked in on this system I’m getting way more done, and I think that any further experimentation would only make me less productive.

Me, I’m waiting for the Moleskine with 43 little pockets in it…

Heh. I probably should have said: I’m not jumping off a cliff with option anxiety or anything like that. I’m just noting what an ongoing temptation the shiny bauble is for me.

For now—and again this bears its own post—I have a pretty Green Acres setup that’s worked relatively well for me.

• Mail.app with IMAP - For most of of my day-to-day email. I prefer it to any other Mail program for a variety of flaky reasons (mostly because of what other apps don’t do rather than any one thing Mail does particularly well).
• Entourage (again with IMAP) - Entourage’s initial attraction was the “Project Center,” which is that classic widget that almost works how I want. I love having everything (mail, contacts, notes, appointments, etc.) linked and associated within a project. Ultimately—in a much better and more open format—that linking functionality will comprise the killer productivity app for me.
• TextMate & BBEdit - I write all my “writer guy” stuff in TextMate projects, but still prefer to do serious HTML stuff in BBEdit (with dashes of SkEdit and Dreamweaver)
• Quicksilver - QS has completely spoiled me. If I can’t do what I want with Quicksilver, yes, it feels like a drag to me. A big, dumb drag (I’m looking at you, Entourage McLockyuppy).
• IMAP - It’s all abut IMAP. I can freely use Mail.app, Entourage, and my web client interchangeably. IMHO, an IMAP-like future awaits us for all our data. I want everything everywhere and non-destructively (and without the hassle of formal CVS-like checkouts).

So yeah. Entourage—with which I have a rich love/hate relationship—is there because, well, it’s there, you know? And it works okay. A few weeks after undertaking the ramp up to Entourage (and ever since), I’ve wanted to get away. But to what? I’m sticking with it until something really compelling draws me away. I’m tired of living out of boxes.

Anyway. Long response. I’ll try to flesh this out in a post next month.

Great posts, Merlin. As always this site is really helpful.

For me the biggest hangup is simply getting to work. I’m a grad student in English literature, so my working style is actually pretty different from a lot of people on here (as far as I can tell). My work ‘units’ are huge, e.g., “finish this huge 600 page novel”; and I don’t use computers that often, so my day-to-day tools are a Palm handheld, a notebook, some 3M sticky bookmarks, and a pen.

There are certain things GTD just doesn’t address for me: for example, how do you plan when your work needs to happen in large, often unfinishable, units? When one of my tasks is to write a thirty page article on Hamlet, I can’t predictably or truthfully break that task down (yet) into smaller parts that I can commit to. I just have to start working and keep plugging away until it’s done. So far, GTD has had an incredible effect in my personal life—paying bills, returning phone calls, fixing things up around the house, and so on—but a pretty negligable effect on my work life, for which it hasn’t done very much, mostly because the problems GTD is designed to address, which have to do with being overwhelmed by little tasks, are problems I don’t have, exactly.

Has anyone else had these kinds of problems, or found a way to shape GTD to work in this kind of context? I suspect that what I really need to do is simply learn to read and write faster, and GTD can’t help me with that one (so far!).

Josh:

A couple of thoughts—

—when a project involves reading lengthy works, I make a set page count per day the Next Action (eg. read pages 1-100, read pages 101-200, etc.) Whatever daily page amount works for you and your schedule.

—on writing longer projects, I either (depending on the kind of writing project):

break the project down into discrete Next Actions such as Complete research reading or Outline first draft or Brainstorm topics onto note cards, etc. or give myself a daily quota (write five pages of the first draft or rewrite pages 1-20—you get the idea)

The challenge is simply to break the big stuff down into a series of Next Actions. Doing this lets you spread the work out over how every many days you need to given your schedules.

I think my biggest problem with GTD, which I switched to after being a Franklin Planner user for many years (and with which I had this same problem) can be found in the second point of your definition of a project: A project has an outcome that is valuable, desireable, and well-articulated.

In a not-very-subtle way, this statement says clearly that there are individual things a person does and enjoys that really should not be. Unless you’re completely shameless, it’s hard to articulate the outcome, value, and desireability of a project like organize your porn collection (besides, why bother? Hard drives are cheap). And as someone who writes slash, it’s just as hard to articulate the outcome: adoring fans, outraged fans, or just a few “that was nice” emails, maybe? Nonetheless, these are projects that the people doing them take seriously; Covey was blatant about it, but many of the life-organizing processes subtly imply that pleasures are not “valuable” and so cannot be projects.

I did grab a mini-moleskein and have been using it with some success. I learned a pair of useful hacks for it: the first is that when I’m done with a TODO list (every item in it has been done or transferred forward to another list) I cut the corner off where you put the meta-information; it doesn’t show when I’m riffing through the book later. I also invested in a collection of book darts. The cloth page indicator is for today’s journal; book darts on the top indicate active “TODO” lists with the one furthest in being the most recent, and ones on the side point to project description pages. They’re much more elegant and handsome than post-it labels.

Whoa, Elf Sternberg! You’re totally old school. I remember seeing you around the Interweb back in the Gopher days. Thanks for stopping by. :)

I dunno, though. I don’t look at projects in any kind of proscriptive way. Put a little more positively, I just think it’s important to identify why what you commit to doing is valuable to you. Or, why—faced with the hundreds of other options you see in a given day—is a project something you’ll allow to capture and hold your attention to the exclusion of other interesting things. There’s all kinds of good reasons to organize porn—not lest because it helps make you happy (tip: metadata!).

I think there’s an unstated but wildly prevalent (and wildly ill-conceived) impression left by some GTD pr0n: that the work is somehow the servant of the system rather than being the other way round. For me, GTD is just a framework for making sure I do the stuff I need to do and that I make firewalled time for the stuff that makes me happy. The day I start parsing my ideas because of some nutty system is the day that system gets dropped like a bad habit! :)

Another comment on Merlin’s comment on Entourage. I didn’t mention in my comment the main reason I use it for GTD: since it’s my e-mail program, it seems logical to not have yet another program for managing tasks, when Erage can already do so… I think it’s best to leverage what we have, rather than continually look for new and better things.

That file-card tickler file is tempting - I’m a pencil and paper guy, at heart. But I’d feel bad about wasting all those cards after I’ve written on them and completed their tasks. Sure, you can erase what you’ve written, but then they would look used…

Yep, that’s dead on, Kirk.

Entourage, while fa-a-a-ar from perfect, does have a lot of good stuff under one roof, so it makes an attractive all-in-one solution. (I do wish it played nicer with text files and had at least a few OS X Services hooks. I mean jeez. Freakin’ Carbon).

In my case, Entourage is just where I’ve put a stake in the ground for now; I’m not thrilled with it, but I can’t afford to keep shuttling around, casting for “The Perfect Setup™.”

As I’m sure you can totally appreciate, Kirk, when you write about this stuff it’s easy to drop into a kind of fractal hellhole where you’re not sure where the stuff and the writing about the stuff begin and end. Makes ya a little nutty I must say.

(OT, the terminal book is my current bedtime reading; mention forthcoming)

I found the “trusted system” part to be a bit difficult at first too, but I eventually got it all together.

The key isn’t having a single tool that does everything, but having a tool per thing.

So I have a filing cabinet for my paper stuff. That’s a no brainer.

I use Tranglos Keynote (free, windows) to store everything from news articles I may want to refer to, code snippets and passwords.

I use a Wiki for links & as an internet wishlist (not everything is on amazon).

For To-Do I use a pen & paper. Nothing works as well. A small spiral notebook (about 6 inches/15cm tall) works best because you can lay it flat, pages don’t fall out, and if you get in to the habit of dating everything, you know what you did when.

I also write down things I did, not just things I want to do. At the end of the day, I have a complete record of what I did that day, which feels really good. The key here, for me, is to draw a little box in the margin instead of bullet points so I can check off items as they get done. I developed this system half a dozen years ago when working in an extremely hectic, time sensitive environment where I had a lot of responsibility and had to make sure everything I committed to got done. I revived it after I read GTD. Yes, even email related to-do things end up in my notebook.

I rant more about Getting Things Done on my website. I talk about more than just David Allen’s book here.

Speaking of David Allen, there’s a GTD plugin for outlook. If you examine it closely, you can adapt it for any email program. I think someone, somewhere picked it apart & blogged about it.

The last piece of the puzzle is a calendar. I have yet to find a calendar app I lik, but use the Mozilla one in the mean time.

The “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” talks about production and production capacity. GTD is production capacity work. Production capacity work must clearly be balanced with production work. There is nothing that frees us from having to Do The Work. :>

The ‘perfect hack’, whether mind or software, has always been my downfall. Even before adopting GTD as a system (with my own customizations and others gleaned gleefully from here), I ran into the same problem.

The woe of the link-surfer is me.

Moleskine, index cards, and Life Balance is what I’ve settled upon. The first is good for impromptu idea capture, brainmapping and even outlining. The 2nd I’ve found to be the most versatile way of drawing up quicky action lists away from the computer in places where it may seem ‘rude’ to pull out my Clié and Slap it into Life Balance.

I’ve taken the ‘weekly review’ idea a tad further towards the inbox sort by parsing all of the projects and actions i wrote down on index cards yet haven’t done them yet (because they’re either context sensitive or just don’t need to be done now) and drop them into LB.

LB is best for keeping it ‘all together’, but, especially on a palm-based platform, it’s rather time-consuming to get it in there, in the right place, with the right priorities, etc. Having it there to ‘check off’ items and reorder lists as necessary is a definite plus. It unburdens some of the rebalancing that’s needed to decide what’s most appropriate to do Next.

But god help me, I still check out that spiffy and shiny new app, that project management tool, that outliner, text editor … any time I see a new one. Sometimes it’s best just to unplug (or turn off the airport) and just Do.

Procrastination is always more challenging when you can’t IM or link-surf.

After reading Getting Things Done and doing some googling, I ended up buying Above and Beyond time management software. It’s expensive and complicated, but extremely efficient. Packed with useful features, like alarms, hourly chimes, timer, daily reports, etc. It hasn’t magically solved my tendency to procrastinate, but I’ve gotten a lot more organized and productive in the two months I’ve been using it. I’m nibbling away at the procrastination, learning to break things down into little chunks I can manage.

Great post. I especially find everyone’s comments very useful. GTD really does help lower your stress level. I personally use Outlook for my tasks, and sync my work computer and home computer with a Pocket PC. I just try to keep it simple.

My biggest problem is remembering to check my task list regularly. It’s easy to get caught up with other stuff.

It’s also particularly difficult now that I have a baby that leaves no time to do anything.

Merlin,

It’s funny that you mention ramping up to Entourage; I used to use Entourage (and even tried going back to it after my copy of Office 2004 arrived) but in the end, Quicksilver and TextMate became my GTDs of choice, and on your recommendation besides.

I love that they’re just text files. If I’m in the mood to dick around with them, I can tinker with Markdown and exporting to HTML and using TextMate’s scriptability. But I don’t have to. Tha Main Thing is capturing the items and acting on them, and text files are the simplest way, for me.

But listen now, your Quicksilver method of being able to add items to your Inbox list from anywhere, with just a few keystrokes, is so golden to me. I bought GTD and the whole system, and swallowed it whole, from reading this site. I share your problems with the system (weekly review, tickler, amen) but my desk is way cleaner, and my act is way more together, since I started the system.

Thanks for the great site and all the good advice.

Super post (great site). I had the GTD aim of pulling everything together for a long while before encountering the book, in fact spent well over a year working on some software for the purpose - still not finished. But after while standing back from things while working on other (paid!) tasks, I’ve moved my goal a lot closer. When I get back to this stuff I’m going to focus on the content/data I personally produce, before getting back to the more general problem. (btw, I generally use a Wiki installed on a local server for note-taking along with my blog).

I’m a woodworker, and we often joke that woodworking as a hobby is really an excuse to set up and tweak one’s woodshop. Perhaps the same applies here — I also am endlessly tweaking my organizational system(s), and actually rather enjoy it. Still, I feel like I’m (slowly) converging on something that works.

Merlin, I appreciate your honesty in admitting what did and didn’t work for you. One of the most enjoyable facets of this site has been watching you rigorously examine what works and why.

And one of the enjoyable things about the comments is examining where people prefer paper or digital tools for productivity optimization.

To my surprise, I found that managing things in Levenger’s circadex pocket address books was the easiest way to manage contact information with people. Two separate books (different colored-covers): one for work and one for not-work. Contact categories set up for each. Entries color-coded according to category. Pop and reshuffle as needed. For me, it was faster than keeping a digital database, and it quickly solved cross-compatibility problems and data duplication issues between the WinBlowz PC I have to use at work and my beloved G4 iBook at home.

It’s surprising sometimes to see where paper works. And I do like that 43 Folders embraces low-tech hacks too.

Josh:

I’m a grad student in communication theory and I understand your problem. I’m just getting started with GDT over winter break, but I can see this becoming an issue for me as well. I think the key is to limit the time you spend on specific tasks. I’ll often get lost in a literature search, thinking there must be more, must be more … same thing with reading, to a lesser degree, and of course writing. One of my professors who is very efficient and has many publications sets a timer for himself for each task. I don’t know myself well enough to do this exactly or be satisfied with it, but maybe I’ll get there.

I, too, have “finally (and painfully) admitted that my single biggest risk to succeeding with GTD is the time I spend just frankly dicking around with it.”

I like GTD and it’s helped lower the stress level in my life. But I’m appalled at how much time I waste—especially around real work deadlines—fiddling The System, and trying every piece of software that might conceivably fit the workflow. It’s an addiction and a black hole. :-( Every day I visit likely suspects on the Net, looking for the “new best thing.” I actually get depressed when I don’t find something. I’m currently “auditioning” some 4-5 dozen apps, scripts, and productivity hacks. Result? Total confusion (surprise, surprise). I’m considering picking one or two that seem reasonably competent, and just chucking the rest.

Maybe I can do everything I really need to do in Tinderbox… or just plain text files…

Thanks for a terrific GTD blog.

Get rid of the tickler file. Store your tickets inside the Holy Bible (or whatever), and set an appointment (or meeting, or whatever you call it) in DateBk (or iCal, or whatever) telling you to put your tickets into your pocket three hours before the show. Works with tax forms, and Valentine postcards, as well.

I’m as geeky as the next guy, but I can’t say I have developed this particular pathology. I’m on a PC and use Palm Desktop to keep my lists. I don’t even have a Palm Pilot, but PD is free, and I’ve been using it ever since I ditched Outlook for Thunderbird. I use “Tasks” for Next Actions, with the Category describing the “context” (e.g. At Home), and “Memos” for Projects. Instead of a PDA I carry a notebook, where I write down anything that occurs to me when I’m away from my computer. I have a tickler file and I use PD’s calendar.

And that’s it. The simplicity is what appeals to me. And it leaves me time to procrastinate in /other/ ways….

I just wanted to say that reading your series of posts has made me purchase Getting Things Done. Thank you.

Though I’m only up to page 4 or so, one immediate concept I identify with is that everything is work. What I’m doing here at the office is work, taking down my Christmas decorations with my girlfriend is work, and typing this comment is work.

With a solid foundation, I look forward to digging into more of the book.

This is all so familiar and frightening.

I am a GTD neophyte of the last, say, 4 months. The biggest problem (so far) is not doing the Weekly Review, properly carving out time (though I try to mimic it on the train ride to and from work).

I have been trying to figure out a split home vs. work system. I’m Windows in both worlds.

The current “system” is:

Outlook 2003 with the NetCentrics GTD Outlook add-in. I like the add-in very much.

Another key Outlook item is the free Lookout indexing add-in. It will index files (including PDF’s) on a disk, plus Outlook mail, contacts, task, etc. It’s blazingly fast and works well.

Google Desktop as an alternative means of searching.

Synching work Outlook to Palm T3 with DataViz BeyondContacts (deals with multiple categories, which Palm does not).

Haven’t devoted the attractive distraction time to figuring if I can sync to the Home Outlook without trashing something on the Palm or Work Outlook.

Key item: a cheap version of the Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase (http://www.levenger.com/PAGETEMPLATES/PRODUCT/PRODIDPG.ASP?Params=Level=2-3|PageID=2398|Category=11-76|special=search|ID=SearchClicked|i=9) with 3x5 index cards for the spontaneous ideas and items.

FireFox; Slogger extension to allow Google Desktop Search to see FireFox page cache; del.icio.us for social bookmarking

I am trying to segregate the non-work email from work, so I’ve now got a home gmail account, which which I now have labels in for things like @Waiting For, @Work, etc.

I just spent 2 hours trying to figure out if I should use Thunderbird on my home PC to get mail from my gmail account (is that a procrastination stunt or what?).

I have decide that I will stick with Outlook and gmail.

The Gmail vs. work email seems to put a tear in the system. I’ll see if it works or not.

BTW, I have “The Now Habit” on order to assess the procrastination issue.