Quadrant IV

I haven’t been looking for GTD software recently.  I’ve finally managed to find a system that works for me, and what do you know?  It is a plain vanilla system utilising Outlook and Pocket Informant.  But regardless of how comfortable in my current system I am, I will still keenly check out anything shiny and new that crosses my path.  So today, when I ran smack into Vitalist, I could stop myself registering to check it out.

One of the things I liked the most was the ability to assign people to ‘waiting on’ items, and move them to a separate list.  Perhaps my biggest complaint with my current system is that while I use the ‘Waiting on someone else’ option with outlook, the tasks/next actions still remain on my list taunting me.  While that is great to keep on top of reminding those people, it doesn’t give me the complete ‘mind like water’ feel because those things are still around.  I find myself moving deadline dates for those things when people don’t finish them on time, which isn’t a major problem, but does require a bit of fiddling.  And because I actually run two discrete systems, it involves some double ups.  I think Vitalist’s separate ‘waiting on’ list is a good choice; it will allow me to keep a list of those things I’m waiting on, without them being on my main to-do list. 

As well as the waiting on list, I’m excited about the projects.  Outlook’s management of projects is famously woeful, to the extent that my project list is actually kept outside of Outlook and only the next actions are transferred.  Vitalist allows you to list your projects, then attach actions to them. 

Probably the one thing I’m not so thrilled about in my quick play so far is that selecting an action for editing requires you to click a small icon on the left of the action.  Clicking the name of the action does nothing, although I rather expect to be able to open the action by clicking on the name, especially as my mouse pointer changes to a hand when I move over it.  Perhaps this is a glich in my computer, so I’ll try again from home.

But all in all, while I’m currently very happy with my vanilla Outlook system, I’ll be keeping Vitalist in the background for the inevitable day when the wheels fall off and I begin searching for the Ultimate GTD System all over again.

Technorati Tags: gtd, vitalist, pocket+informant, outlook, productivity

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Check it out

When I first thought that perhaps 2007 was going to be the year that I got my collective GTD stuff together, I thought, as I normally do, that a computer program would suddenly make everything fall into place and my next actions and contexts would automatically make sense.

So I searched.  Google is indeed my friend, so I did a bit of research.  Now I have a couple of tricky points that affected my choice, most especially my computer setup.  I have a notebook computer that is shared with my husband, and therefore doesn’t really contain anything personal.  I have a desktop that is mine alone, but obviously stays on my home desk.  I have a Pocket PC, which goes just about everywhere with me.  And I have a work computer, which is so locked down that it is practically useless.  I’m unable to install programs, run executable files or even autorun a cd.  I can access a USB drive, but that is about the extent of it.

So in light of my computer limitations, and considering that I haven’t had great success in the past in getting online-only apps to stick, I did a small assessment and decided that something that would work on my Axim (running WM2003se), and sync to my home desktop would be the best bet.  This would allow me to use my data at work on the Axim, as well as accessing at home, especially useful for data entry.

I researched further and found My Life Organized.  I had actually come across MLO before but never really found that I stuck with it.  But seeing that it had gone through a few version changes since the last time, and determined to finally losethe random bits of paper cluttering my desk with tasks written on them, I downloaded and installed.

3 weeks later, it came off my computer and Axim.  The reason for this was not really a problem with MLO; I found the program itself to be easy to understand (with the exception of the priorities, which I feel could have done with a little bit more work on my part to understand), but more to do with how I work.

I’m impatient.I want things done, right now!  And while MLO provided a vast array of options for prioritising, and the wonders of context sensitive to-do lists (which I will admit to still missing), I found the amount of fiddling required to input a lot of next actions in a project really slowed me down.  The task itself went in easily enough, but opening all the little option windows on the right side and changing all the options just didn’t do it for me.

Now I’m sure someone will come along and vehemently defend MLO, and tell me I’m a complete philistine and should’ve RTFM, but even with an option of a standard task template, with the projects and next actions I am managing, every next action would still require a different setting.

That isn’t to say that MLO isn’t brilliant at what it does.  I have already mentioned the context sensitive to-do lists, something I haven’t actually seen anywhere else, and that really embraces the GTD spirit.  I’ll also mention the hierarchicaloutline input method, and the way it can append a project descriptor to a next action.  This last one is actually something I’ve kept.

This is to simply say that while MLO is great, and some people really find it pushes all the right buttons and keeps them organised, the search must continue for me.