MentalPolyphonics
Where have all the plumbers gone?
One thing that was sad was people emphasizing...My personal GTD system is implemented on Evernote, which has both a web interface and a native iPhone app. Although I always have my iPhone on me (I don’t bother to sync my calendar to the web), I need a desktop interface for doing mass note management, entering long note contents, and cranking through @online notes.
Every note in Evernote goes in one notebook: I have the standard GTD setup although most of my notes are in Next Actions. Every note can have multiple on-the-fly user-defined tags, which I think is vitally important for a GTD system. Evernote can filter the list of notes by tag, but can only do tag intersections (eg: @downtown AND @saturday), not unions (eg: @home OR @downtown) nor other algebra (eg: @home AND NOT @online) – my lists are small enough that that’s not a deal breaker. More annoying is that Evernote can’t do tag hierarchies (eg: all @saturday notes are @weekend), so I end up overtagging. There is no note nesting or linking which I suspect might be useful if I were doing heavier GTD project managment.
I suspect Remember the Milk is better, but I’m not sure it’s $25/year better. I have a design for a better system in my head but I’m happy enough with Evernote not to implement it.
Kyla
I use Remember the Milk. I’m only doing a pseudo-GTD though, because I’m lazy and I don’t do much. I don’t think it can do complicated tags like that, though. Or maybe it can, I’ve never tried.
Jack
I asked Kousin Lynn White what system she uses because she’s the single most productive person I’ve ever met.
Turns out she independently came up with a simple GTD (including long and mid-term planning with weekly reviews and 43-ish folders).
Her only context seems to be “@agendabook”, but I’m not productive enough to give her advice on that count. We’re doing some experiments with superproductivity (one hour of effort to accomplish more than one hour of tasks), but I’ll save that for a future post.
Personally, I’ll get higher returns focusing on normal productivity first.
Dan
For implementing GTD you can use this web-based application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version is available too.
Jared
@Kyla: RTM can do tag algebra. I don’t think it can do tag inheritance, but a good tag algebra system can fake that.
OmniFocus is by far the most powerful cross-platform task management tool, but it’s $80 for the full license. It even has iPhone GPS integration!
Jack
Bottom line it for me: Are these apps really more useful than a hipster PDA and some manilla folders? How much more useful?
It seems to me that a hipster will get you 80 or 90 percent of the way there.
Jared
@Jack: The cost of modifications to hipster PDAs is way too high. GTD systems need to get out of the way or you just won’t use them.
Kyla
BTW, ThinkingRock is a pretty good GTD program too. It slows my computer down too much to use, though.
Ryley
Jared, I want to try this… I need a lesson though, evernote is too flexible, I can’t immediately see how to force it into the system you’ve described…
It has a BlackBerry app (which I haven’t grabbed yet), which makes this worth trying for me… That and Google Notebook is dead.
HOWTO: Get Things Done with Evernote | MentalPolyphonics
on June 3, 2009 at 9:02 am
[...] by Jared on Wednesday, 2009-June-3rd at 9:02 am As requested: [...]