Why all GTD Software is broken (for me at least!)

[Jeff Templon]

I have spent the last few weeks doing the latest round of my quest for the "right" GTD system. Once again I come up empty-handed and arrive back at "good old" Toodledo. I guess before I even start, I should say why I end back at Toodledo: it is rock solid, the web app is accessible everywhere, and there is an excellent Android app (Ultimate ToDo List) which is also rock solid and works just fine in offline mode. I can put up with a lot of irritation in a GTD system, but I cannot put up with a system that cannot work well in an airplane nor can I trust a system that every so often just loses a task.

So why am I not happy with Toodledo? It is too complex. There is a large set of things you can set for a task: start date, due date, status, goal, priority, context, tags, folders ... and these things are all pretty much independent of each other. If I decide to move a project from one context to the next, it's not a given that I could just tell the project "now you are at work, no longer at home". A project has individual tasks and each of them has its own independent context. If you implement projects using the parent task / subtask system it's even worse. You can have subtasks of a parent that reside in completely different folders. Which in most cases is sheer nonsense, and results in tons of clicking to update the various fields of all subtasks to be the same as the parent task. Except of course the status field, because usually only one of the subtasks is the "Next Action".

Also : Toodledo has no concept of a defined order of tasks: order is the result of sorting. To get your tasks into some reasonable order, you wind up fudging, like adding a "start date" to the task and sorting on that. This date of course has to be frequently updated, because you probably don't finish things when you think you would, and then that low priority tasks you thought you might get to a month ago is riding at the top of your todo list for no good reason.

So I went looking. What was I looking for?

• A "cloud" based system. I regularly use four different computers (work desktop, home desktop, laptop, and android smartphone) and they should see the same view of my tasks. Either I can spend a lot of time manually synchronizing, or find a system that will work via Dropbox, or a system that is "cloud" based, which really means only that all your tasks are stored somewhere on the internet; the thing running on each of the computers knows where that "somewhere" is and keeps the view on your computer in sync with what is on the task server.
• Task import of some kind. I've found out the hard way that I can't really get an idea of how a system will work for me until I have a hundred or so real tasks in the system and actually try to use it. Entering 100 real tasks takes a long time. So unless the system looks otherwise perfect, I don't even bother if there is no good import method. Acceptable import methods are e.g. direct import from Toodledo, import of a CSV file (that I can export from Toodledo) or the ability to email tasks with metadata syntax, so that the tasks can be directly sent into the proper contexts, folders, get the right due dates and tags, etc. I have a script that zips through a CSV export from Toodledo and mails the tasks off. Not as nice as direct import but it still works.
• A good user interface, preferably one that lets me drag and drop stuff, one that minimizes the amount of clicks things take. And preferably one that lets me make my own ordering of tasks, independent of due dates or whatever.
• A solid android app on which sync works perfectly, which can be used in offline mode (meaning as well that tasks entered in offline mode will be synced once an internet connection is available again!). It should also have an excellent user interface allowing for quick capture of todos and quick viewing of (or marking "done"!) the most important tasks.
• A viewable archive or log of completed tasks, including the date completed.
• Even better is if one is able to record time spent on a task, and this information is also available in the archive. And the archive can be exported to e.g. a CSV file for processing outside the system.
• Documentation. It's amazing how many systems out there have no documentation whatsoever!
• Ability to email tasks to the cloud interface, including setting metadata like due date and project name via a special syntax.
• Ability to search the task list (including attached notes) and also filter the task list given some criteria. An optimal filter system allows boolean composition of filters, like "todo in (Folder A OR Folder B) AND (Context is Computer or Work) AND Status is NextAction".
• Task export of some kind. I've found out that sometimes I think a system is going to work and it doesn't; then I want to migrate to something else. In order to do so, I need to have some sort of task export, one which is complete enough that I can import it to another system and not have to manually sort things into folders, set due dates and tags, etc.

One more thing while I am at it (and off all the systems I looked at, only Nozbe works this way): actions (todo's) added to "Projects" should have a default focus or status of NOTHING. Should not even show up anywhere except in the list of actions for that project, until that time at which you give it a context, a "next action" status, a due date, whatever. Why? Think about it. Take "wallpaper Lisa's room" as a project. I need to:

1. get all the stuff together I need to remove the old wallpaper
2. remove the old wallpaper
3. set a date with Lisa to go look at new wallpaper
4. pick out the new wallpaper
5. buy the new wallpaper
6. buy other supplies like glue, brushes, cutting tools, etc
7. put down plastic sheeting to protect the floor
8. put on the wallpaper

When I enter these tasks, they surely do NOT belong in the inbox (which is where some GTD systems will put all new tasks, regardless of where you enter them). I know where they belong : they belong in the project folder as tasks in the project. Not all of the tasks are actionable, so they certainly do not all go in "next" focus area like some other GTD systems will do. At the start of the project above, steps 1, 3, and 6 might be "next actions", the rest are all "waiting for steps 1 or 3 or 6". That is not the same as "Someday"; what someday means in GTD is "I might want to do this someday". When I am ready to remove the old wallpaper, I put "remove the old wallpaper" task into the "next action" state, and at that moment it should show up in my next actions list. Not before.

Think about Allen's book, written back in the days of paper: you wrote a next actions list, that only contained the next action for each active project, along with some projectless "next" actions. You wrote the list in an order that made sense to you, you did not rely on some external sorting engine to do the ordering for you. Projects had their own folders with project plans in them. When you identified a new action associated with a project, you did not immediately put this action in your inbox. Also, you did not go through all your project folders once a week and collect all the not-yet-actionable items on those projects onto one giant massive "Someday" list. IMO, a good GTD software system should behave the same way.

Developers of GTD systems : you are hereby challenged to come up with a "complete" system. Like my old professor Joe Redish said: 0.8 is not equal to one. However, 0.96 is equal to one.

Now, I present the systems I looked at, and what was good and what was not, and why ultimately I could not use each of them.

The systems I looked at: GQueues, KOI Tasks, SmartyTask, ActionComplete, HiTask, GetItDone, Nozbe, Thymer, and Conqu.

Note: the forum will not allow me to post the whole article, it's too long. You can view the comments about the individual systems (the whole thing actually) at here.

Conclusion

I'm still waiting ... and still struggling to make Toodledo work for me in the meantime! I am following Nozbe, Thymer, and HiTask closely to see what they are doing with Android. I may still give Conqu a serious test, and will probably check back on GetItDone at some point to see whether the robustness has improved. Any of the above systems could still make the cut if they make the right choices!

 

[twillybee2]

I feel your pain!

I, too, have been through several months of searching (though, it seems, not quite as extensively!) There's solace in "companionship" ... knowing that my lingering dissatisfaction is not an isolated experience. (It's also rather depressing.) Thanks for tossing out the throw-down challenge to any/all future providers! I second the request!

PS I'm not an exclusive mac-user, so didn't even try out Things, but (if you're familiar with it) I'm curious if you have thoughts ...

I have spent the last few weeks doing the latest round of my quest for the "right" GTD system. Once again I come up empty-handed and arrive back at "good old" Toodledo. I guess before I even start, I should say why I end back at Toodledo: it is rock solid, the web app is accessible everywhere, and there is an excellent Android app (Ultimate ToDo List) which is also rock solid and works just fine in offline mode. I can put up with a lot of irritation in a GTD system, but I cannot put up with a system that cannot work well in an airplane nor can I trust a system that every so often just loses a task.

So why am I not happy with Toodledo? It is too complex. There is a large set of things you can set for a task: start date, due date, status, goal, priority, context, tags, folders ... and these things are all pretty much independent of each other. If I decide to move a project from one context to the next, it's not a given that I could just tell the project "now you are at work, no longer at home". A project has individual tasks and each of them has its own independent context. If you implement projects using the parent task / subtask system it's even worse. You can have subtasks of a parent that reside in completely different folders. Which in most cases is sheer nonsense, and results in tons of clicking to update the various fields of all subtasks to be the same as the parent task. Except of course the status field, because usually only one of the subtasks is the "Next Action".

Also : Toodledo has no concept of a defined order of tasks: order is the result of sorting. To get your tasks into some reasonable order, you wind up fudging, like adding a "start date" to the task and sorting on that. This date of course has to be frequently updated, because you probably don't finish things when you think you would, and then that low priority tasks you thought you might get to a month ago is riding at the top of your todo list for no good reason.

So I went looking. What was I looking for?

• A "cloud" based system. I regularly use four different computers (work desktop, home desktop, laptop, and android smartphone) and they should see the same view of my tasks. Either I can spend a lot of time manually synchronizing, or find a system that will work via Dropbox, or a system that is "cloud" based, which really means only that all your tasks are stored somewhere on the internet; the thing running on each of the computers knows where that "somewhere" is and keeps the view on your computer in sync with what is on the task server.
• Task import of some kind. I've found out the hard way that I can't really get an idea of how a system will work for me until I have a hundred or so real tasks in the system and actually try to use it. Entering 100 real tasks takes a long time. So unless the system looks otherwise perfect, I don't even bother if there is no good import method. Acceptable import methods are e.g. direct import from Toodledo, import of a CSV file (that I can export from Toodledo) or the ability to email tasks with metadata syntax, so that the tasks can be directly sent into the proper contexts, folders, get the right due dates and tags, etc. I have a script that zips through a CSV export from Toodledo and mails the tasks off. Not as nice as direct import but it still works.
• A good user interface, preferably one that lets me drag and drop stuff, one that minimizes the amount of clicks things take. And preferably one that lets me make my own ordering of tasks, independent of due dates or whatever.
• A solid android app on which sync works perfectly, which can be used in offline mode (meaning as well that tasks entered in offline mode will be synced once an internet connection is available again!). It should also have an excellent user interface allowing for quick capture of todos and quick viewing of (or marking "done"!) the most important tasks.
• A viewable archive or log of completed tasks, including the date completed.
• Even better is if one is able to record time spent on a task, and this information is also available in the archive. And the archive can be exported to e.g. a CSV file for processing outside the system.
• Documentation. It's amazing how many systems out there have no documentation whatsoever!
• Ability to email tasks to the cloud interface, including setting metadata like due date and project name via a special syntax.
• Ability to search the task list (including attached notes) and also filter the task list given some criteria. An optimal filter system allows boolean composition of filters, like "todo in (Folder A OR Folder B) AND (Context is Computer or Work) AND Status is NextAction".
• Task export of some kind. I've found out that sometimes I think a system is going to work and it doesn't; then I want to migrate to something else. In order to do so, I need to have some sort of task export, one which is complete enough that I can import it to another system and not have to manually sort things into folders, set due dates and tags, etc.

One more thing while I am at it (and off all the systems I looked at, only Nozbe works this way): actions (todo's) added to "Projects" should have a default focus or status of NOTHING. Should not even show up anywhere except in the list of actions for that project, until that time at which you give it a context, a "next action" status, a due date, whatever. Why? Think about it. Take "wallpaper Lisa's room" as a project. I need to:

1. get all the stuff together I need to remove the old wallpaper
2. remove the old wallpaper
3. set a date with Lisa to go look at new wallpaper
4. pick out the new wallpaper
5. buy the new wallpaper
6. buy other supplies like glue, brushes, cutting tools, etc
7. put down plastic sheeting to protect the floor
8. put on the wallpaper

When I enter these tasks, they surely do NOT belong in the inbox (which is where some GTD systems will put all new tasks, regardless of where you enter them). I know where they belong : they belong in the project folder as tasks in the project. Not all of the tasks are actionable, so they certainly do not all go in "next" focus area like some other GTD systems will do. At the start of the project above, steps 1, 3, and 6 might be "next actions", the rest are all "waiting for steps 1 or 3 or 6". That is not the same as "Someday"; what someday means in GTD is "I might want to do this someday". When I am ready to remove the old wallpaper, I put "remove the old wallpaper" task into the "next action" state, and at that moment it should show up in my next actions list. Not before.

Think about Allen's book, written back in the days of paper: you wrote a next actions list, that only contained the next action for each active project, along with some projectless "next" actions. You wrote the list in an order that made sense to you, you did not rely on some external sorting engine to do the ordering for you. Projects had their own folders with project plans in them. When you identified a new action associated with a project, you did not immediately put this action in your inbox. Also, you did not go through all your project folders once a week and collect all the not-yet-actionable items on those projects onto one giant massive "Someday" list. IMO, a good GTD software system should behave the same way.

Developers of GTD systems : you are hereby challenged to come up with a "complete" system. Like my old professor Joe Redish said: 0.8 is not equal to one. However, 0.96 is equal to one.

Now, I present the systems I looked at, and what was good and what was not, and why ultimately I could not use each of them.

The systems I looked at: GQueues, KOI Tasks, SmartyTask, ActionComplete, HiTask, GetItDone, Nozbe, Thymer, and Conqu.

Note: the forum will not allow me to post the whole article, it's too long. You can view the comments about the individual systems (the whole thing actually) at here.

Conclusion

I'm still waiting ... and still struggling to make Toodledo work for me in the meantime! I am following Nozbe, Thymer, and HiTask closely to see what they are doing with Android. I may still give Conqu a serious test, and will probably check back on GetItDone at some point to see whether the robustness has improved. Any of the above systems could still make the cut if they make the right choices!

 

[Jeff Templon]

PS I'm not an exclusive mac-user, so didn't even try out Things, but (if you're familiar with it) I'm curious if you have thoughts ...

Hi,

Yes I did try out Things. I liked it OK; one nice thing about it was that I could keep all Macs in sync via dropbox. Then I got an Android phone (my first smartphone), and only later realized how useful the dang things were. Things only does iPhone, no Android. That was that!

IIRC Things suffered from the same Project disease as most of the products reviewed here. I had a "Someday" folder the size of the Mississippi.

Thanks for responding!

JT

 

[mcogilvie]

Wow, that's quite a rant. I think you ended up back with Toodledo because it is the best of the internet todo list managers, both in my opinion and in market success. I've looked at some of the others you name, and they are mostly not very good. Most will not grow up to be good either. Toodledo does have a lot of fields you can use, but you don't have to use them. It was difficult for me to tell from your post exactly how you are using it, but I can imagine many ways to meet most of your goals with Toodledo. As someone who has spent too much time looking for that perfect system, I can assure you it does not exist. You can get a lot done with a 50% good list; it doesn't have to be 96%. My system is not broken.

 

[Jeff Templon]

Hi,

Wow, that's quite a rant. I think you ended up back with Toodledo because it is the best of the internet todo list managers, both in my opinion and in market success. I've looked at some of the others you name, and they are mostly not very good. Most will not grow up to be good either. Toodledo does have a lot of fields you can use, but you don't have to use them. It was difficult for me to tell from your post exactly how you are using it, but I can imagine many ways to meet most of your goals with Toodledo. As someone who has spent too much time looking for that perfect system, I can assure you it does not exist. You can get a lot done with a 50% good list; it doesn't have to be 96%. My system is not broken.

It was not meant as a rant, it was meant as a serious comment on the state of todo lists. Most of them are at the 75% level, at least for me as clearly stated in the title of the post. What works for you may not work for me and vice versa. On one point I have to agree with you, Toodledo plus Ultimate ToDo together are a rock solid system. I never have to worry about stuff being out of sync nor losing tasks. I also pointed this out in the post, as well as that being the main reason why I stuck with Toodledo. It might be at 50% but at least I can trust it to always be consistently 50%.

I am convinced that it is possible to do better than Toodledo, much better. I pointed out in the post how a couple of the leading contenders could accomplish that. Let's see what happens!

Thanks for responding, and you said you could think of many ways to solve my problems with Toodledo. I am already working on one (which is to not use sub tasks anymore), I am interested in others, particularly in how to have Toodledo order things the way that I choose.

JT

 

[Yara.Kadulina]

That's normal

For as long as David Allen has been around, he has been searching for the perfect tool. Programmers have worked for him, and still, there is nothing that will do the GTD perfectly. GTD itself is what makes your life better, but just better, not perfect...

 

[supergtdman]

Have you tried Nirvana? This is what I would use if I had no iphone, ipad and macbook with Omnifocus.

Btw This is project support, you are mixing actionable stuff with future plans, that's why only Nozbe has this, Nozbe is a nice app but it is a somewhat customized implementation of gtd (some like it, some don't), so don't expect this anywhere else -

"One more thing while I am at it (and off all the systems I looked at, only Nozbe works this way): actions (todo's) added to "Projects" should have a default focus or status of NOTHING. Should not even show up anywhere except in the list of actions for that project, until that time at which you give it a context, a "next action" status, a due date, whatever."

 

[enyonam]

I concur!

I am in a very similar boat. It's December and I'm in the middle of my yearly review and thinking about the kinks in my system I'd like to work out for the next year. I use eProductivity on a work laptop (windows platform with Lotus Notes) but also have a BlackBerry (infact 2 - one work and one personal), an iPad, and my home computer. I really love eProductivity and my general set up but I just have too many devices, especially in this country where BlackBerry service does not appear to be reliable enough, for my on-the-go system. And I have too many inboxes. My thought is the cloud is the solution but I cannot seem to find one that checks all my boxes.

So I agree. Software vendors should think more about the cloud and how to use multiple devices ... on multiple platforms.

I think the closest is probably Evernote but I'm finding it very hard to give up my eProductivity features for a 100% Evernote solution!

 

[mmorowitz]

Excellent post and I totally agree. I spent years bouncing around "GTD software" and I found every single one to fall short in at least one critical category.

Ultimately, I found that the best GTD software for my purpose isn't actually considered GTD software at all: Evernote.

I now use a custom setup on Evernote using tags, folders, and saved searches. It's cloud based, syncs silently, a clean & flexible-UI, works great for easy capture, and generally satisfies all my GTD needs.

I learned that GTD implementations are too personal and that any one software developer's view of GTD is likely to fall short. The only reasonable solution for me was to use flexible software that didn't focus on GTD.

 

[Richard Love]

My Life Organized - like Churchill said of democracy, it's the worst form of government except for the others.

I use it, it works, and I'm lucky to have it.

 

[ScottL]

Perfect=enemy of the good

Put another way, all the energy you spend on looking for/at etc different systems is energy better spend actualy doing.

Scott (who after trying several systems has gone back to the simple joy of paper Time Design system).

 

[Jeff Templon]

My Life Organized - like Churchill said of democracy, it's the worst form of government except for the others.

I use it, it works, and I'm lucky to have it.

Hi Richard,

I should have been more specific when I said "cloud". Cloud meaning to the extent of being independent of which sort of desktop. MLO is windows-only and I am a Mac guy. I even tried the Crossover trick, but the new MLO release (3.6) had broken compatibility with Crossover, and nobody seemed to be in a hurry to fix it.

Too bad because it looked pretty good.

Thanks JT

 

[Yara.Kadulina]

Exactly!

Put another way, all the energy you spend on looking for/at etc different systems is energy better spend actualy doing.

Scott (who after trying several systems has gone back to the simple joy of paper Time Design system).

I second that entirely. You should decide for yourself if identifying the perfect GTD software is compatible with your goals. If you worked in David Co company or some other productivity/consultant/ time management group, it would be your job to do this. Right now I am guessing that your job is something else entirely. Accept a system that works the best for you, and run with it. Don't search for perfection. Better Get Things Done well, then try to get them done perfectly and waste your time.

Nevertheless, I am sympathetic with your frustration about the GTD tools. It would be great to have a perfect tool.

Yara

 

[Suelin23]

Yep totally agree. So many apps say they are for GTD, but when you try to use them you honestly wonder if they've read the book or just a book review.

I think you need to decide your musts and wants, it's too hard to get something that meets every spec you want. I like Pocket Informant, which is great in some aspects but doesn't even address some. Maybe later versions. However the integrated calendar and task list is great, and I usually work off the context lists sorted by priority and use icons for energy type. No time field unfortunately.

 

[Carber]

Evernote with outlook

Any experience using Evernote on ipad/iphone with outlook as your main task and calendar manager?

 

[supergtdman]

Any experience using Evernote on ipad/iphone with outlook as your main task and calendar manager?

I do use evernote on ipad and omnifocus and it's awesome. I'm sure you could replace omnifocus with outlook.
Though omnifocus is made specifically for gtd and action management and works great on ipad while outlook is not a gtd app to begin with and can't be used on ipad.

Personally if I had to go with this setup then I'd rather just evernote as a single tool. But evernote and omnifocus combination is a lot better than only evernote for many reasons.
The main reason is it's more convenient because I'm using apps for their strengths instead of using workarounds and hacks to fit my system into an app which wasn't even designed with gtd action management in mind.
It's possible but pointless because cons outweight the pros. It's possible because action lists are not exactly difficult to create regardless of tool. The tricky part then though is managing it all with as little effort as possible. That's where interface and design is key. How many clicks it takes to get to where you want to get? How much time it takes to input and retrieve stuff? And so on.
Nothing is perfect though but you want to have as little resistance when you use the system basically.

 

[Carber]

Omnifocus and outlook

I do use evernote on ipad and omnifocus and it's awesome. I'm sure you could replace omnifocus with outlook.
Though omnifocus is made specifically for gtd and action management and works great on ipad while outlook is not a gtd app to begin with and can't be used on ipad.

Thanks for the reply, but not sure I completely follow. You use Evernote on iPad and omnifocus? Are you syncing with a pc? What is the setup you are using (devices and software)?

 

[supergtdman]

I use ipad, iphone and windows desktop
I use evernote on all devices and omnifocus only on ipad and iphone. Actions and projects are not synced with desktop but all the non actionable data (project support, general reference and also media) is completely cross platform and in sync.
There is no need to sync actions and projects with the desktop because I can always check them on my iphone/ipad which is more convenient anyway. It's much more useful to have action lists on a mobile device. I don't use desktop for gtd system, I use it as a separate tool for work.

 

[LG User]

LifeGunk as your calendar, goals and idea manager

You should try LifeGunk. It is a life management and social networking website. There is a YouTube video on what it is, and it does address some of the issues you talk about with these GTD software, notably the "cloud" aspect. It's a website, so all your tasks, activities, ideas, etc. is available on any device that has internet access (including Android devices). I personally use it for work.

 

[LG User]

LifeGunk for organizing dates and goals

You should try LifeGunk. It is a life management and social networking website. There is a YouTube video on what it is, and it does address some of the issues you talk about with these GTD software, notably the "cloud" aspect. It's a website, so all your tasks, activities, ideas, etc. is available on any device that has internet access (including Android devices). I personally use it for work.