TooDue4U
Registered
I would love to get feedback from this forum on 2 questions I have. You can skip the background blah-blah if you wish and go to the meat at the bottom of this post.
I switched from Franklin Planners to GTD about the turn of the millennium. This is about the time I got my hp iPAQ PDA and I'm pretty sure I was running Pocket Informant on it. My GTD implementation and skills started at medium and went downhill. For the past 13 years of retirement, I've been using Informant as a task manager using the Sisyphus system, which is very unsatisfying. I found this site, downloaded the latest version of David Allen's book, and trolled the forum for the latest ideas.
I'm still using Informant. I had some issues when I switched to Apple silicon based Macs (M1, M2, & M4) and found that the support which had always been superb and near instantaneous had degraded. I can see from the app store that user base is micro sized and shrinking. I decided to shed my longest standing app subscription.
I found the thread from @tlmr about using Apple Reminders, and was intrigued. I decided to implement this approach with a couple of changes and set off to do the huge conversion project. Along the way, I became re-aware of just how tightly GTD was implmented/integrated in Informant. It really is super powerful, well targeted, and looks very low friction at least from an implementation (or reimplementation) perspective. Meanwhile, I found that my Mx problem could be fixed by a configuration tweak. So now I am questioning my full leap into a new system that has not been wrung out and is not purpose-built for GTD, in spite of the huge advantage of the deep integration with the Apple ecosystem.
So, finally, my question: WHY NOT INFORMANT?
When I search this forum, I see massive chatter (8 pages) from 2008-2012 and nothing (1 page) from 2013-2025. I get it, maybe there are better substitutes although I don't see a purpose-built alternative in most posts here. But when I troll the ancient chatter, I don't see any downsides to Informant.
WHAT AM I MISSING?
I switched from Franklin Planners to GTD about the turn of the millennium. This is about the time I got my hp iPAQ PDA and I'm pretty sure I was running Pocket Informant on it. My GTD implementation and skills started at medium and went downhill. For the past 13 years of retirement, I've been using Informant as a task manager using the Sisyphus system, which is very unsatisfying. I found this site, downloaded the latest version of David Allen's book, and trolled the forum for the latest ideas.
I'm still using Informant. I had some issues when I switched to Apple silicon based Macs (M1, M2, & M4) and found that the support which had always been superb and near instantaneous had degraded. I can see from the app store that user base is micro sized and shrinking. I decided to shed my longest standing app subscription.
I found the thread from @tlmr about using Apple Reminders, and was intrigued. I decided to implement this approach with a couple of changes and set off to do the huge conversion project. Along the way, I became re-aware of just how tightly GTD was implmented/integrated in Informant. It really is super powerful, well targeted, and looks very low friction at least from an implementation (or reimplementation) perspective. Meanwhile, I found that my Mx problem could be fixed by a configuration tweak. So now I am questioning my full leap into a new system that has not been wrung out and is not purpose-built for GTD, in spite of the huge advantage of the deep integration with the Apple ecosystem.
So, finally, my question: WHY NOT INFORMANT?
When I search this forum, I see massive chatter (8 pages) from 2008-2012 and nothing (1 page) from 2013-2025. I get it, maybe there are better substitutes although I don't see a purpose-built alternative in most posts here. But when I troll the ancient chatter, I don't see any downsides to Informant.
WHAT AM I MISSING?
