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Tool Updates: D*I*Y Planner; GTD Tiddly Wiki Plus

There’s been some interesting activity lately on two of the productivity tools that a lot of our readers like to follow.

D*I*Y Planner 3.0

D*I*Y Planner 3.0 (Classic/A5 Edition) | D*I*Y Planner

Douglas Johnston has recently released v 3.0 of his Classic/A5 D*I*Y Planner. If you haven’t seen this before, Douglas has put together a Creative Commons-licensed version of the plain-paper templates usually associated with Costly Paper Planners. But he’s added some lovely design touches as well as some creative templates that are meant to support GTD and other popular productivity systems. Douglas says, of this version:

Way more professional and extensive, covering not only time/project management but also lifestyle, health, creativity and more (e.g., life balance, storyboards, diet tracker, finances, exercise log, story submissions, etc.). Nearly 200 pages of templates are included.

While, in my opinion, the recent ‘net obsession with “things you can print at home” has gotten out of hand — y’know they have graph paper in stores now? — Douglas has added a lot more than blue quadrille lines here. This is thoughtful stuff, and if you love the immediacy of paper but don’t want to spend a fortune on a big folio from Staples, this may be right up your alley.

N.B. Fans of a tricked-out Hipster PDA can look forward to an index card edition late next month. Until then, the 2.0 HPDA edition is still available on his site.

GTD Tiddly Wiki Plus

GTDTiddlyWiki Plus - your simple client side wiki

Although I’m a little confused over exactly who’s doing what to which version (why does my brain freeze up whenever I see words like “wiki” and “plus”?), it appears that GTD Tiddly Wiki Plus is a project to revive the popular (but stalled?) GTD Tiddly Wiki. According to Ted Pavlic, on the 43F wiki:

GTD TiddlyWiki Plus is much better than GTD TiddlyWiki because it is not a derivative of TiddlyWiki; it actually is TiddlyWiki. This means that plugins and macros can be added and the system can be upgraded as new versions of TiddlyWiki come out.

I haven’t spent much time with this new release, but I’m intrigued by the idea of “plug-ins” as well as the idea that Ted plans to afford a “kGTD-like usage” for the GTDTWP.

I played with the last release of GTD Tiddly Wiki last summer, and I think it’s a fascinating chunk of functionality. It’s not really my particular cup of tea for everyday usage, but I really recommend you have a look for yourself. I get so much mail about the best way to “live” on two or more computers, and — at least from a “GTD system” standpoint — this seems like one novel solution.


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Cliff's picture

Did you notice there is...

Did you notice there is now a calendar function in the GTD TiddlyWiki?

If you click on calendar a graphical calendar will popup and if you click on day then a tiddly with a particular date will popup!!!

I love GTD TiddlyWiki sooo much :)

Aries's picture

Thanks for the link to...

Thanks for the link to DIY Planner 3.0, Merlin. I hadn’t heard about it before, but those templates are snazzy!

Brent's picture

yeah yeah, tiddly wiki is...

yeah yeah, tiddly wiki is cool.

fabulous to use - perhaps useless… but it sure is fun.

Miguel Marcos's picture

fabulous to use...

fabulous to use - perhaps useless… but it sure is fun

I started using it many months ago to create a library of online documentation for a behemoth internal app where I work. It works like a charm. Search is great. The ability to edit on the spot is spectacular. I’ve got it set up to create automatic versioning backups. In sum, a tremendous tool.

Ted Pavlic's picture

Plus, GTDTW(Plus) allows you to...

Plus, GTDTW(Plus) allows you to print directly to 3x5 cards. This makes it a great Hipster PDA companion.

Now that GTDTWPlus has UploadPlugin built in, it can be easily synced to a web server accessible from anywhere. In fact, even if you’re in the most restrictive of browsers (like Safari) you can just “save to web” all the time making your web GTDTW your only GTDTW.

PLUS, GTDTW could theoretically write to ICS files making it able to “talk” to iCal (and other ICS users) without having to use some sort of magnical JavaScript-AppleScript bridge.

I have tried a lot of different GTD tools on both the PC and the Mac, and GTDTW gives me the most satisfaction. It gives me the most integration of projects, actions, and contexts (via tags and tag queries via plugins) without needing to depend upon a beast like OOP or FileMaker (though it does depend upon a web browser which is a mixed blessing).

About Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann's picture

Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who started the website you’re reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today. Also? He looks like this, answers questions, and has something like a life.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written recently in the past few years is a short essay entitled, “Better.”

 
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