Getting things done…
I’ve been an advocate of the Getting Things Done (GTD) for a number of years now. In a management era that seems to be defined by self-organization manuals, this one stands out from the crowd by its relatively simple explanation of why things don’t get done and how to go about rectifying the situation. The everyday solutions are really useful and, when augmented with an electronic diary, provide a great way to keep track of projects. David Allen has a nice business developed around the methodology and deserves the credit he receives.
To whet your appetite, he suggests augmenting a system where each “activity” is organised as a project with a timetable of things to do. The next item is noted as an action and given a “context” (such as a place like “the office”) where it must be achieved. The power here is being organised so that all the action points are listed in one place. An action may involve contacting someone in which case you keep track of responses required, whilst you might receive a communication which needs actioning. Its the simplicity of organising projects in this manner, and keeping track of it, that is a real productivity booster. And the biggest cause of a decrease in productivity…. having to remember “things”!! So he is a big advocate of writing something down as soon as you think of it in order to keep track of it.
Now running such a system with a paper based diary would be hard work, but “going electronic” in a combined PDA/PC setup is the ideal solution. I guarantee that as soon as you create an email folder named “WAITING FOR”, moving all your sent items that you expect a response to in to it, your life will be changed!! Anyway, in terms of a setup for organising projects I have long used Note Studio, a personal wiki-like software that runs on a PC/Palm combination (meaning you can take it with you). It isn’t perfect but has some great features that make it well suited to such a purpose. Unfortunately the developers have stopped working on it and no longer sell it (although if you hunt hard you can find it via 3rd parties). One of the downsides was that it was entirely textbased and didnt allow the incorporation of doodles or sketches.
Enter the recently released NinerPad, a paint/sketch app for the Palm specifically aimed at GTD. As a first release it is remarkably complete offering near-unlimited canvas size, sketch tagging, search facilities, reminders etc. This alone makes it well worth purchasing, however the developer has a real vision for the inclusion of new features including the addition of text entry which would give it the best of both worlds.