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Multiplatform GTD Tool?

Hi!

I was wondering if there were a good recommendation for a multiplatform GTD application. I'd like to be able to have my system span both home and work, be mostly digital, and at the same time not be network-dependant.

My situation is thus:

My hardware at work is a Windows laptop. My home system is a MacBook. Bridging the two is an iPhone and a USB drive.

I am reluctant to use anything that is web-based, as some of the tasks are "sensitive work things" (client names, etc.), that compliance-type-folks would frown upon putting in the public internet.* On the other hand, I do want to be able to suck information in from other tools (Outlook, Mail.app, the web, etc.), so a completely analog solution isn't right on the other side.

I tried Thinking Rock, and will stick with that if it's my best play. However, I tried the OmniFocus beta, and fell in love. Is that going to be ported to Windows? Are there other good multi-platform options? Are there platform-specific tools that play well together?

*I will grant that there are risks with information once it leaves the office on that USB drive. However, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate it, it is not subject to any terms of service out of my control, and it lacks the prima facie ickiness ("you put our client info on google's servers?!?").

mdl's picture

text files

There's always the old fashioned approach: text files.

Lots of options here. One simple approach would be to keep a separate text file for each context (+ one for projects), using whatever tool works best to append new items to each file (Quicksilver, cat, etc.). Delete lines once they are completed. (If you want to keep an archive of past actions, put the files under version control.)

One caveat: I only know Mac and Linux, so I don't know what types of utilities for manipulating text are available on Windows (other than Cygwin stuff).

You could then sync these to the iPhone as notes. You could also print these out if analog suits your fancy.

Use some sort of sync utility (rsync, unison, subversion) to move the updates back and forth over the USB drive. Or, if that's too complicated, you could simply read and write to files directly on the USB drive.


For what it's worth, here's my own setup (two Macs at home and Linux at work):

  • Vim outliner to manipulate comprehensive GTD outline (actions, projects, someday/maybe, other lists).

  • A few scripts to extract context and project lists from the main GTD outline and print out a daily sheet of lists.

  • Wonderful text based calendar called remind (been around since the 80s).

  • Subversion over remote server to keep the computers in sync. (This could just as easily be done via a USB stick.)

If I needed to add a Windows machine to the mix (God forbid), I would install Cygwin to get Unix tools.

 
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