[…] Personal Productivity Of course, one of the coolest things I’ve done since moving is GTD (I was introduced to it at 43 Folders). There are PC tools for it too (see here if you want to use it in a business environment). Check out David Allen’s Outlook Plugin here, his site here, his blog here (though he’s no longer posting, as he explained: “One interesting thing that I didn’t expect was that many people were using my blog as their “intro” to our work. So, as my personal “between the lines” it was beginning to possibly misrepresent the value and nature of The David Allen Company.” - very interesting). Other great posts are here, here, and here. Using Omni Outliner Pro you can actually plug in Kinkless, which is what I’m currently using and it rocks. […]

Well, since your recent articles on GTD, I’ve been flinging e-mails back and forth with a couple of friends who are in the same boat (using GTD and reading your site). It’s true that your comments about not looking for The Perfect App were spot on - after a while, it gets counter-productive, because you spend more time fiddling with programs, worrying about exchanging data from one to another, and trying to make them fit your way of working, than you do actually being productive. And that’s the goal of all this, isn’t it - being productive?

So, my tip is simple: learn the tools you have first before looking for others. Whether you are using a word processor or text editor, whether you have a PIM or e-mail program, learn how to use them. Read the manuals; if there are no manuals, read the help files; if these suck, but books (and support computer book authors like me).

How many people actually know 1/10 of the features in a program like BBEdit; Microsoft Word; Entourage; or others? Learn your tools so you can avoid wasting time trying to find programs that do what you can already do.

I’ll add another suggestion for OS Xers - learn to use Terminal; you’ll get lots of extra mileage out of your work, and you’ll have a fast, flexible tool that is infinitely expandable. (I’ll hesitate about plugging my book on the command line in OS X; it’s neither open source nor free beer…)

Oh, heck, Kirk, I’d issue you a papal indulgence: you can pimp your book here. :)

I guess, in part, I just want to discourage the inevitable “astroturf” campaigns from people who’ve suddenly realized you can “monetize” your crap by posting comments on weblogs. Plus I want to acknowledge (and encourage) the hard work of people who are doing it primarily for the kids, you know? Thasall.

Gus Mueller’s[1] VoodooPad[2] has served my GTD needs quite well. I’m also evaluting a combination of Emacs[3], planner[4], rememberence agent[5] and emacswiki[6]. It requires some finger ballet, but it looks pretty darn good so far.

[1] http://gusmueller.com/blog/ [2] http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad.html [3] http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html [4] http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/wiki/PlannerMode.php [5] http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/wiki/RememberEl.php [6] http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsWikiMode

Okay, Merlin.

The Mac OS X Command Line: Unix Under the Hood is a book on using the command line and Terminal in Mac OS X. No previous experience required - though users familiar with the command line will find stuff they didn’t know as well.

FWIW, learning to work with the command line not only saves time when performing certain types of operations, but also opens up a whole new world of text-only possibilities.

For more: http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=20040922121050755

Have you tried Tasks? There is a free version, and I would say that it has definetly helped me in the GTD arena. Since tasks are defined hierarchically, you can break them up into the 20 minute chunks that you crave :)

The commercial versions of Tasks aren’t free (as in beer), but they do include the source code, which makes them free-er than most.

In GTD, Allen talks about mind mapping. I’ve been using FreeMind which is free in every way. You can get it from SourceForge and it runs on every platform. It took about 20 minutes of messing to figure it out.

I agree 100% with your comments about DavidCo catering to some of the GTD niches. I have a suggestion- why don’t you do it yourself? Have you ever contacted Allen’s company directly with these suggestions/requests? Obviously you can write and have made a substantial investment in the GTD methods. If you can’t justify the effort it would take to turn your thoughts into a product, how can Allen?

Anyway- I’m looking forward to whatever you can come up with in ‘05. If you keep pointing out cool mac-only apps, I may have to bite the bullet and pick up and iBook…

Actually, Allen mentions mind-mapping, but then dismisses what is probably the best and most flexible program, Inspiration (www.inspiration.com). While I don’t use it for GTD, it is without doubt an essential tool for outlining - you can create visual mind-maps and standard text outlines. I use it to outline just about everything I write.

Tasks looks interesting, but I don’t trust anything that requires Internet access all the time. I’m checking out the demo; I don’t know if you can use the Mac OS X built-in web server, but it’s pretty useless if you need the web to use it.