The Republic of Geektronica has a short but useful entry on “the trouble with to-do lists.” The trouble with these lists is, in short, that if you have everything on them you get really intimidated and try to avoid looking at them. Geektronica suggests some work-arounds utilizing Remember the Milk. Since I’m in need of some serious GTD recovery, perhaps I will give it a shot.
The only reason I haven’t done so already is I have an aversion to cute cartoon cows.
Thanks for the link. It’s been interesting to see how David Allen’s observation about GTD implementation was correct for me as well: I got really into it at first, stuck with it for a while, then realized after a few months that I still had some serious changes to make. I think it’s time for a re-read of GTD.
The Outlook book by Michael Linenberger is really good for the Outlook bound (read: those on corporate networks), but I think there’s a need for more Web2.0/Gmail approaches to total task management. GTDInbox (formerly GTDGmail) is one such approach, but I haven’t gotten into it since it’s a lot of labeling and no reminders. RTM is separate from email, which is a little harder, but it’s just so fast and so slick that I can’t justify using anything else. Hit t, type the task title, enter, d, due date or time (e.g. “10 min” or “tom” for “in ten minutes” or “tomorrow”), enter, and you’re done. Amazing.
It looks like a great tool. I’ll probably try it out. But the truth is that my powerPC macs don’t have a lot of ram and Firefox uses a lot. I use Camino, normally.