I use Remind to handle my calendar; it is ever present on my desktop courtesy of GeekTool. (For more, see your very own 43 Folders — Merlin let me do a guest spot.)

I use the Remember the Milk website for task management — it is accessible by cell phone, Windows machine, Mac machine, and several other locales, and thus isn’t bound to my home machine. And it does it extremely speedily thanks to a lot of Ajax.

As for popup reminders, you can also roll your own by writing a shell script that uses growlnotify to pop up your own message — set to certain times as a cron job.

Sounds like you may want to try iGTD. I have been using it for a while. I checked out OmniFocus, but iGTD better fits the way my brain works. You can set timers and such, although I haven’t taken the time to get those popping up yet as most of the tasks I’m entering right now are not time-dependent.

http://bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/

Peace, Todd Russell

I’m trying out ask Sandy…

It’s email based, so platform independent, fairly quick and easy on the move… On the downside it tends to spam me a little too much, but that can be taken care of.

Now that I have an iPhone, and Entourage Sync Services crashes whenever I enable iCal and Address Book synching, I have been stuck in this nether world of keeping iCal and Address Book manually up-to-date, just so my iPhone and Entourage basically match. I hate iCal and Address Book, but I have heard they are better in Leopard and expect to move to that OS in a couple of months.

I’m still not sure it’s a winner. Task management is so much better in Entourage than in the Tiger version of iCal. It’s not like Tasks sync to iPhone anyway (WTF?). And, no, I don’t want to pay Remember the Milk; I’d rather put my three most important tasks in a note on the iPhone and do it ZTD style.

So, what I’m saying here is that I can’t imagine living outside Entourage now that I’ve got it working so reliably as a GTD-oriented system, but I don’t want to keep duplicating work in iCal and Address Book. Maybe a clean system with Leopard and Entourage 2008 will resolve this Sync Services problem and I should just suffer until its release, but I don’t know.

Looking forward to seeing what people actually do with Apple’s toolset instead of 3rd party apps. I’m tired of downloading and trying new tools… and paying extra for them. Plus, I like how iCal and Address Book sync flawlessly with my iPhone. (Now, if only the iPhone handled tasks, and the Notes synced with Entourage Notes… If Notes are great in Leopard, I guess I’ll be fine with moving to that)

I use to use iCal’s todo alarms. Mostly they would pop up and I would go “I’m in the middle of something else, I’ll get back to that” and then forget. So I’m giving OmniFocus and “check OmniFocus every time I finish something to see what I should do next”. It’s working great. Well, for the first 3 days at least. Not much of a test.

OmniFocus does let you sync things to iCal, and assign due dates, if it puts alarms on them then you are there. If not, you are half way there as you could write a little AppleScript bit to take anything with a due date in a specific calendar and add an alarm…

I haven’t tried the iCal sync yet, since I’m attempting to give a more polling oriented approach a try since interrupt driven hasn’t been as successful as I had hoped.

I just started using OmniFocus and am trying to think of ways to integrate it with Ask Sandy because I have really enjoyed using her for the past few weeks.

I am getting a little confused. I think by to-dos you are actually mean reminders(?). In OmniFocus you can set the start-date/time, so action will not be visible (in the Context view) until the chosen time. My OmniFocus <-> iCal sync is seems to be awry so I can’t tell you if it appears there before or not.

CircusPonies Notebook works extremely well for me. I don’t need “reminders” (or, at least, I don’t use them), but I can set due dates and then sort or scan my various lists for nearly due and overdue items. You can integrate it with iCal, but I find that pretty annoying, actually. I’m able to link my to dos with other pages (in other notebooks) containing the substance of the work. And their clipping services allow me to clip decent amounts of text from the web or from email into my to do lists. It’s very flexible—and even if it wasn’t designed as a GTD program, it suits my GTD needs very well.

George

I use Gina Trapani’s todo.txt script(s) plus a few of my own to handle my next action list. With her scripts and mine working in concert I can handle projects with sequential actions and output structured lists of actions grouped by context. With a little help from remind, I have repeating tasks as well.

I use iCal for my appointments and other “hard landscape” items. I use remind for things I need to be aware of in the future (deadlines, due dates of bills (recurring), people’s birthdays). I use geektool to display remind output on the desktop so that’s why I use it for timed reminders and not as a calendar (which is what I use iCal for). I also use geektool to put my todo list on the desktop.

As far as timed alerts go, I never need more than one at a time, so I just have a cooking timer on my desk and I remember what it’s for.

I can’t comment on reminders although MailTags seems to have a decent system for attaching reminders to e-mails.

I am currently implementing GTD using OmniFocus integrated with Mail.app. It works really nicely. There is a good blog post describing essentially what I’m doing at: http://www.powersecretsforlife.com/content/omnifocus-gtd-nirvana

I NEED AN ANSWER TO THIS GREAT QUESTION TOO! I had been a Entourage user for a long time until I heard the iPhone was coming. Entourage had it all and great integration. It synced kinda well with my Treo using Missing Sync. Then I went to the Apple apps and felt like I had taken a step back. Now I had to use three different apps to do less then one did. But the iPhone was coming. So I stuck it out. Then it came out, GREAT now I can sync my todos and notes and everything else…..not quite. The iPhone notes don’t go anywhere when you sync. Email the note you say? Then why not just write yourself an email? Todos? even a cheap Walmart kiddy Palm wannabe has a task list. I’ve tried iGTD, OmniFocus, Mailtags, Act-on..But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for!!! I’m a Graphic designer that needs a system that can handle multiple projects, multiple tasks, multiple contacts and for them all to play together well. Entourage did it best for me and at times I almost go back to a Microsoft product. OH and then Leopard Mail App had a Notes program and Tasks…ahhh relief NOW my iPhone can sync with my Mac info. NOPE. Fooled again. The icons and silly note book paper look the same…but don’t do much or go anywhere. Attaching notes or todos to contacts or events…not happening. I used to be an unashamed mac fanboy… Leopard was disappointing case of visual bling on Tiger and a step back.

I am a long time Mac OS user and I have migrated to using the various Google services for email, calendar, to-do lists, etc. Not being tied to a particular computer in order to do my work has been a real treat.

Hey there,

• For milestones and deadlines = Basecamp PM (37singals)
• For daily ToDos = A5 Paper-book and pen

Simple and effective method that never have failed me :)

Cheers!

Since I split my time pretty evenly between Windows (at work) and OSX at home, I'm forced to choose platform-independent solutions for my GTD tools.

Sandy handles all of my date- and time-based reminders. I've been using this product since it's earliest beta and I love it.

I use Jott occasionally for capture when I can't easily write things down on index cards (the Levenger Pocket Briefcase is one of my most prized tools). I call, leave a quick message and it's in my email inbox as soon as I get to a computer.

30boxes.com is my calendar of choice. It's quite simply the best web-based calendar I've ever used (yes, it's better than Google Calendar). The interface is snappy and it behaves exactly as you'd expect it to - very Mac-ish.

For projects, action lists (and other lists) I use a large squared moleskine.

Good luck in your search :)

Not quite on point, but since the issue came up in a previous comment, here’s my 5-minute adhoc solution for working with tasks and getting them syncing between iCal on iPhone and iCal on the desktop.

I created an event titled ‘Tasks’, set its time to be the first event of the day (from 12am to 12:15am), and in its ‘Notes’ area I created a kind of simple task list template, just set up in a vertical list the basic context headings that fit my weekday routine - ‘Home:’, ‘Office:’, and ‘Out:’. Beneath each of these context headings I added 4 blank lines headed by a bullet point. Then I set this event to repeat daily on weekdays. My routine changes a bit on weekends, so for Saturdays and Sundays I set up a similar repeating ‘Tasks’ event but with different contexts. That’s it.

Now, I don’t claim to be a GTD adherent and I know this is a bit adhoc, but I like this solution for a few reasons.

First, I personally need to associate sets of tasks with a particular day - and this is a simple way to do that. You just tap the day, and there’s the day’s schedule with the ‘Tasks’ at the top. Tap ‘Tasks’ and there are all the tasks laid out neatly and clearly by context on a single scrollable page.

Second, an iCal Event’s ‘Notes’ field allows for a lot of flexibility to organize your lists the way you want, to enter as much or as little information as you want (I’m not in Leopard yet, but I assume this is unchanged). And because the iPhone/iPod Touch makes it super easy (even enjoyable) to edit, the system is an easy one to stick to.

Third, no problems syncing with iCal.

Fourth, you never have to use the iPhone’s yellow-lined notes program.

Again, it’s adhoc and not particularly original or particularly clever, but until iCal To-Dos sync well with iPhone, I’ve found this to be a pain-free workaround with pretty good results.

I too have been a long Entourage user for email and project management, very happy, and used Palm Desktop for my calendar and contacts (so old but still so good, hard to believe). But when I upgraded to Leopard, and I’m happy to see I’m not alone, I decided to go all Apple: Mail, iCal, Address book for three reasons: all UB, high level of integration, and Entourage’s monolithic database structure doesn’t play well with Time Machine. Plus, I plan on getting an iPhone and the syncing sounds (mostly) good. Oh, and now my wife and I can subscribe to each other’s calendars.

Overall I’m happy but iCal is the weakest of the lot - I’ve just been using To-do’s in both iCal and Mail and Notes a little, but I agree they are very limited.

I don’t have any additional solutions to offer, just wanted to chime in that I’m in the same boat and wanted to acknowledge all the great posts.

I spent Thanksgiving evaluating iGTD, OMNIfocus, TaskPaper, etc. in a search to select a GTD tool. During a break I took the time to view the Filemaker Bento Webex. I had downloaded Bento on the day it was released but didn’t open the program. After viewing the Webex I was intrigued.

In less than 2 hours I was able to set up a very nice GTD project database in Bento with contextual tasks/to do’s. Bento shares it’s data with Address Book and iCal so it obviously plays quite nicely with them — NO SYNCING REQUIRED! Create an Automater script (easy to do in Leopard) to grab text and make a task from any location on your Mac and you can get close to having most of the functionality of OMNIfocus but have the ability to customize to your hearts content.

Add Smart Collections (similar to iTunes Smart Folders) to your database for automated queries. I used Smart Collections to set up my Inbox (tasks yet to be assigned to a project or context) as well as quick views for overdue items, items due in 48 hours, etc. etc.

The key to start up with Bento is this — watch the Filemaker Bento Webex AND add a new field in iCal for Context. Once you have related contextual tasks in iCal you are on the way.

Even if you don’t look at Bento for GTD I would consider it for supercharging iCal’s and Address Book’s functionality. Modify an event, task/to do, Contact in Bento and it’s changed in iCal/Address Book and vice versa. Bento allows multiple views and sorting of tasks/to do’s and events — something not available in iCal. If Address Book or iCal is missing a data field, add it in Bento. You want to attach a file/document to an event — do it in Bento. Even if you’re a Filemaker expert you will appreciate the ease of use and power in Bento. It truly is a relational database for the common man or woman.

Oh, iPhone integration is planned for Bento. Of course all tasks/events created in Bento show in the iPhone because they are iCal events.

I use a GTD bundle that I developed (with plenty of help) for TextMate. It is a plain text GTD app that uses a “plan in projects, execute in context” methodology. It also uses a syntax based on Patrick Rhone’s Org-Fu.

OmniFocus seems great so far. I’m trying to follow the classic GTD methodology using OF and it works quite well, especially when using OFs web interface with my iPhone while away from the office. I’ve been syncing OF tasks with iCal, but since there’s no way to have iCal todos on the iPhone, that doesn’t help much. I haven’t been relying on reminders for todos. If I need a reminder, I make it a calendar item.

I’ve settled on using Google Calendars as my basic calendaring system. Plaxo has been working pretty well to keep gCal and iCal (on different machines) in sync. I’d love it if I were able to keep the iPod in sync wirelessly and if there was a similar way to have todos in sync between my computers and the iPhone.

30boxes for calendar and to-dos, 30box RSS feed to iGoogle, sync to iPod and mobile

I use OmniFocus for GTD, and keep PackRat right next to it in the same space on Leopard. If I need a reminder, I put it into PackRat and periodically sync up to Backpack. A limitation is that PackRat won’t create recurring reminders, for which the web Backpack interface is needed. For on-the-fly creation of actions, etc., I use the OF quick entry or Quicksilver. Quicksilver can also send actions or longer snippets to OF and anything else that has a service (VoodooPad, NoteTaker, and so forth). PackRat uses Growl to popup reminders on the desktop, and Backpack will send reminders to email and/or via SMS. I don’t sync (or carry) other devices, so this setup has all the features I like.

An extra feature that works well is to link Jott to OmniFocus: 1) Send a message to “me” in Jott. 2) Set up the Mail Rule in OmniFocus, 3) then duplicate that rule and modify it to look for Jott emails. Call Jott, and the message gets transcribed, sent to you, then transported into your OF inbox.

I found this zero cost ap a while back and keep coming back to it- whether it is the nifty checkmark in my menu or the unfolding effect when you open it, I find it easy to use and a good tool to organize. It’s a simple to-do list, but grouped by category and color coded (I use a color system on my folders throughout my system so that red=red no matter where I am looking) for those of us with color-manipulated ADD. Not nearly as ‘plugged in’ as OmniFocus and other aps I’ve played with, but I enjoy it’s simplicity and residency next to my text expander icon.

Check Off comes from Carpe Aqua (log.carpeaqua.com)- really a simple but great little ap.

I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned Thinking Rock, which to me is the absolute ultimate Mac-based (actually cross-platform) GTD solution (plus it’s free!) It’s Ical integration is slightly annoying but gets the job done; everything else about it is fantastic in terms of taking you through true GTD implementation and because of this I can live with the extra required “click” to open the updated Ical file, etc…

It’s at:

http://www.thinkingrock.com.au/

Best - - robjohn

In OmniFocus, you can set the “Start Date” of any ToDo item (in the “Dates” inspector) to be a date say two weeks from today. That way, this ToDo item will not be “Available” for two weeks from now. Two weeks later though, this ToDo item will become available and join the other ToDos that you have lined up in different projects waiting to be completed. This is just the way I prefer reminders to be - not bark at me to complete them, but smoothly join the list of actions I need to get done at the appropriate time.

I use VooDooPad (http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/) for all my lists. It easily links all my lists together. I then sync it to my iPod and I can carry all of my action/waiting for/referenc/etc lists with me. To add to my lists on the go, I jot items down in a thin Moleskin notebook and then toss it in my inbox when I get back to my computer so I can add those items to my lists.

For temporal events, I use iCal to set reminders and meetings. It works fine for me in this limited capacity. As far as Leopard goes, I have not found a use for the notes or to-dos in iCal/Mail since VooDooPad handles all of this for me.

I don’t know if VooDooPad syncs to an iPhone, but if it does, it will be the system I continue to use when I upgrade my phone (waiting for the 2nd generation…)

My Macintosh is a G5 tower next to my home desk, and I do not have a laptop at this time. My workplace loans me a Windows XP laptop, but I “like” it so much that I leave it in a docking station on my work desk, where it connects to a larger LCD. So, for portability: fail fail. From the existence of the base question and the replies above, I have determined that I will stay with my current system until Apple makes a portable Macintosh that can be a “take everywhere” notebook. None of their current laptops is small enough for that, and the iPhone and iPod touch are not really Macintoshes (Apple has said so repeatedly by breaking the jailbreaking). If I could have something like OmniFocus on a hand-held, I’d jump for it.

So what is my current system? I have been using an Apple Newton Messagepad 2100 since around the time they started showing up on eBay. The HWR worked fine for me after only a week of training it. It is small enough to take to every meeting and keep in my man-purse at all times. I have the add-on external keyboard, but rarely use it (or even bring it along) unless I’m on a trip without a laptop, yet need to do more than “taking notes” text creation. The NewtonWorks application is a fine little-sibling to ClarisWorks, with word processing and a spreadsheet that basically do what needs to be done. Hey, tangent-man, get back to the GTD question! Oh, sorry.

I put appointments in the Calendar (duh!). I email those to anyone else who needs to know (such as my wife and myself on my home- or work-based email addresses). I have a default alarm for 70 minutes before, so I can hit snooze for 60 minutes of “finish what i’m doing and/or prep for the meeting” (or 30 minutes of each) and still have time to walk to the meeting room when the reminder goes off. For rare meetings (like dental appointments) I set the alarm for the previous evening.

I take notes in the Notepad for almost everything. I have a folder in the Notepad for a each class of at-work or at-home activity. In each of those I have a Checklist type of note (bookmarked with the JumpN extension) of to-do items. The checklist basically an Outline with checkboxes, so I can refine a task with sub-tasks. When lots of top-level items are checked off, I clone the note, delete the checked items, and move the JumpN bookmark to the new one. Anything that is needed elsewhere gets emailed to myself.

There are no subfolders for detailed organization of notes. When I need to look something up, I tap on Find and enter enough words to hopefully match a short list of relevant notes. It works fast enough that it would actually be a waste of time to have a hierarchical directory structure. Rather than having to make up filenames, I just have to put a context establishment sentence or phrase on every note. For repeating meetings, copy from the previous note. No worse than a hipster (or creating subdirectory names) on that count.

I tried the Calls application for tracking phone calls, but it really shows it’s V1.0 (or V0.8) state. I don’t make or receive many calls, so I stopped using it. I also rarely use the to-do feature of the calendar because lacks the subtask breakdown.

Would I recommend this to new users? Not really, because by the time you get into it like I have, something better will be out there in the market. Then again, I’ve told myself that every year in this millenium and it hasn’t happened yet. Still, it still works for me well enough that nothing else anyone has shown for another system is worth the effort to change.

I too am loving Bento; very easy to modify for GTD purposes, and all sorts of other uses as well. And the fact that it automatically syncs with iCal is a big plus. But my to-do system must work with my iPhone, which Bento doesn’t (yet) do — I’ll have to see it before I believe it; maybe OmniFocus will beat them to it. Why Apple hasn’t worked it out yet is a mystery; I upgraded to Leopard mainly for the improved mail and iCal and Notes functionality in tandem with my iPhone, which turns out to be an inexcusable disappointment.