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iCommit: PHP app for doing GTD

Getting Things Done [iCommit.eu]

iCommit Home View

Rainer Bernhardt has put together a nifty little PHP app for doing GTD via a web interface. It lets you wrangle projects, next actions, calendar items, ad hoc lists, and all the other tactical building blocks of GTD all via your (non-IE) browser. The interface is pretty good and typical workflow is quite easy to navigate through. It has nice touches like attachments, per-item effort estimates, printable views, plus Rainer says he may soon offer email integration which would “eliminate use of a separate e-mail app” for workflow-related planning. Wow.

Although I haven’t spent a great deal of time with it, I’m very intrigued by the baked-in “weekly review” functionality, which walks you through most of what you need to look over each week from one interface. Since review gets short shrift from the many folks (like me) who use GTD primarily for task management, I think an addition like this is a terrific idea.

iCommit is, like so many of my favorite apps these days, a non-commercial, one-man operation, so there are a few rough edges, no documentation (yet! coming soon, says Rainer), and it is very much “first come, first served” in terms of seats he can handle on his personal server setup (I hope we don’t cream Rainer’s productivity boxen with this). But iCommit is worth a look if you’ve been craving a cross-platform, low-paper implementation of Getting Things Done.

Screengrabs below the cut — I feel like Michael Arrington!

Home page

Logged-in with a few test items.

iCommit Home View

Project view

iCommit Project View

New next action

Note “Effort” estimate.

iCommit New Next Action View


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Martin's picture

Hmm. Nextaction is nice, but...

Hmm. Nextaction is nice, but in the end I dumped it in favor of Tasktoy. It just got too heavy and slow. Saving would take up to 30 seconds and I always had to remember to take the files with me when moving around. With TT, this is not an issue.

But none of the apps I have tried lets me have nested projects. Big drawback. I assume things like kGTD provide this kind of functionality, but (a) I don’t have a Mac, and (b) I want something web-based. Does something like this exist? (I did not try iCommit yet, so I don’t know if it has this functionality.)

Paul's picture

All of us with Macs...

All of us with Macs have our own apache servers, as well as PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails and all sorts of other fun stuff that make installing these web apps a breeze. I agree that nextaction is a nice app. I really appreciate it’s simplicity. I’ll look into PimliPoche, because I’m really impressed with TiddlyWiki. Mostly I agree that the best solution is the simplest thing that works for you.

Daniel Burstyn's picture

Tracks and the excellent sourceforge...

Tracks and the excellent sourceforge project and such are fine for you webmasters with your own Apache servers, a new computer every three months and I don’t know what else. For the rest of us, iCommit seems nice, as Merlin points out that pesky WEEKLY REVIEW is built in, but for those of us who want something similar that keeps the material on the local drive - I like trimpath’s nextaction which runs on some sort of javascript best. I have tried to make heads or tails of Jacques Tourbe’s PimliPoche which runs on tiddlywiki, as well as GTDTW and Clint Checketts’ version of GTDTW, and I’ll stick with nextaction - I get bogged down by all the eye candy.

But in the end, since I’m using a Palm handheld, and I needed that synchronizability, I left all this stuff behind.

As DA says, use as few buckets as possible, and empty them often.

brian's picture

You said it, Will! Send...

You said it, Will! Send it to the masses!

bonaldi's picture

Crap. I as hoping this...

Crap. I as hoping this was open source, as I’m looking for something to replace TaskToy.com. TT has a better UI, even if it is less pretty, and it remembers where you are on each computer you log in from, so your action list is always relevant. But it’s on somebody else’s server too.

Robb Irrgang's picture

webbased gtd tools are remote?...

webbased gtd tools are remote? doesn’t everyone just run a local apache and webRICK combination? ;-)

(…I guess it’s just me)

Chris's picture

The problem with using tools...

The problem with using tools like iCommit or Backpack for GTD is the fact that they are remote. If I am, say, sitting on a plane or in a coffee shop with no WiFi, I cannot access by to-do lists. This is a big problem, which caused me to abandon Backpack as a productivity solution. For someone who spends as much time online as I do, I did not think it would be an issue, but it was. I really like tracks because it lets you have the whole browser-based experience, but on a local webserver.

Merlin Mann's picture

I actually agree with you,...

I actually agree with you, Chris (in terms of my own usage), But you wouldn’t believe how many cross-platformers — esp. Mac lovers with Windows dayjobs — are clamoring for something like this.

I just puts ‘em out there — even the ones what I won’t use. :)

nick's picture

Having read the book once...

Having read the book once through but not yet implemented, I find myself at one of those situations I call analysis paralysis…I want to implement my GTD, but at the same time I don’t want to choose a tool that will make executing GTD more cumbersome than it has to. And I’m a “home Mac/Win work” user who is in front of a computer more often than not.

So, to tool like this may be what I’m looking for, but in the end I’ll want to be able to run it on my web host’s server. Unfortunately, I’ll probably add this to my del.icio.us and over-analyze its usefulness.

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 is a short essay called, “Better.”

 
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Inbox Zero

The original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation.

Making Time

3-part series on attention management for artists and makers. Read Bad Correspondence, The Job You Think You Have, and One Clear Line.