consultant
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I just spent the last 3 days solid testing various tools with the intent of trying to do everything in the least number of tools possible. Unfortunately there is no tool that does it all surprisingly if you also want to do collaborative project task management well. If you don't need that, then Outlook is the closest all-in-one GTD tool I found where you can have your GTD system tightly integrated with your email collection, calendaring, and note taking. This is what I found.
I had abandoned Outlook a few years ago and was quite happy with Thunderbird for email collection however since I have a Office365 Home subscription I went back recently and and happy with the exception there is no native unified inbox to more efficiently manage inbox traffic from multiple e-mail accounts (really Microsoft? really?)
I'd suggest anyone looking to do GTD, check out "The Secret Weapon" (www.thesecretweapon.org) which used Outlook + Evernote for at least a good model of how to do it. You get an 'add to Evernote' function in outlook when you install Everote and you don't need an Exchange account to pull it off either, you can use any POP/IMAP account or Gmail/Outlook.com as your email repository. One big benefit of using Evernote is that it's free and if you are not tied to Microsoft products if you don't want to be if you are not currently using them or stop using them in the future. In addition, the web interface is fantastically robust as is the iOS and Android apps. With Microsoft, the web interfaces of Outlook and OneNote and the ios and Android apps are severely limited (obviously to encourage you to buy and use their desktop products.) It's all about flexibility and portability.
I found that Outlook is a much better tool for GTD than OneNote. OneNote has more robust note taking abilities than Evernote, but it is MUCH more clunky/limited as far as setting up views to show lists of tasks based on matching multiple tags. It's really not what it was designed for obviously but I looked into it since it is the MS version of Evernote. Outlook tasks is a much better way as you can create custom views to say show me all tasks at.Work with 1 Now when context.
The problem with using Outlook though is you have to use the desktop app for all your GTD. The Web App is sorely lacking in functionality and only lists tasks by priority. If you use Outlook.com, it's even more basic as far as task management. Because of this, I've decided to use Evernote for GTD instead as it adds a function in Outlook to 'Add to Evernote' similar to add to OneNote but as expected you can more easily and directly link OneNote notes to Outlook tasks (even though you shouldn't be using those if you are using OneNote for GTD, and Outlook calendar events.)
The thing I was really disappointed in is that Evernote, while robust enough to easily do GTD, doesn't have the necessary functionality to also use it for collaborative project task management, especially with team members in multiple organizations. There's no ability to create a client folder with multiple sections (for projects) and then share the sections. Moreover, there's no ability to associated notes (tasks) with groups of users and have them get automated notifications when the status of the task is changed or the task's contents are updated. You need to use something like Asana or Basecamp for that so you end up having your team project tasks disconnected from your GTD system and you have to duplicate your own tasks in Evernote outside the project management system like Basecamp. Boo. Hiss. I would imagine though some of these project management systems could be configured so you can do your GTD there. But then most of these systems do have a good note taking capability with robust filing/organization like OneNote or Evernote and more importantly, they don't have easy ways (that I know of currently) to allow you to move emails in Outlook to tasks in the Project Mgmt System like OneNote and Evernote offer. I think there's a huge opportunity for either Microsoft to improve OneNote in these respects, Evernote to add better collaborative project functions/controls, or Basecamp or Asana to build more GTD like functions.
If you really want to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem, the best solution is to use Outlook Tasks for GTD, get an Exchange account via Exchange Onlin ($4/month) if you don't have it for access to the Outlook Webapp with a little more robust task features than outlook.com, and then use OneNote for your repository. If you do this, you may want to buy the GTD plugin by NetCentrics https://www.gtdoa.com/ (you need an Exchange based email account in Outlook to use it.) This plug-in is costly (around $75) and introduces another application & company essentially to have to manage and rely on. But for someone that doesn't want to create the categories, folders, and views themselves, this plug-in will get you a jumpstart on setting up Outlook for GTD.
Sidenote: It's funny to think that OneNote is really just a replacement for using Word and Windows Explorer / Search. I could see a lot of people putting too much in OneNote and then you have most of your documents in the OneNote file format which is less ubiquitous and transportable than Word, PDF, etc. However if you work for Microsoft or everyone you work with uses MS Office products, it may be the best choice for housing a library of project notes and support materials - I just caution people to think about what would happen should they not want to use OneNote in the future? Could be a lot of copying and pasting into a new document/system going on.
The area that I didn't explore that much is taking an existing project task management system like Asana or Basecamp and trying to use it for GTD. I'd love to hear if anyone has pulled this off elegantly, especially in conjunction with moving email in Outlook to tasks in these systems as then you could simplify down from a 3 tool system to a 2 tool system and more importantly, not have to duplicate your project tasks from the project task management system to your GTD tool.
I had abandoned Outlook a few years ago and was quite happy with Thunderbird for email collection however since I have a Office365 Home subscription I went back recently and and happy with the exception there is no native unified inbox to more efficiently manage inbox traffic from multiple e-mail accounts (really Microsoft? really?)
I'd suggest anyone looking to do GTD, check out "The Secret Weapon" (www.thesecretweapon.org) which used Outlook + Evernote for at least a good model of how to do it. You get an 'add to Evernote' function in outlook when you install Everote and you don't need an Exchange account to pull it off either, you can use any POP/IMAP account or Gmail/Outlook.com as your email repository. One big benefit of using Evernote is that it's free and if you are not tied to Microsoft products if you don't want to be if you are not currently using them or stop using them in the future. In addition, the web interface is fantastically robust as is the iOS and Android apps. With Microsoft, the web interfaces of Outlook and OneNote and the ios and Android apps are severely limited (obviously to encourage you to buy and use their desktop products.) It's all about flexibility and portability.
I found that Outlook is a much better tool for GTD than OneNote. OneNote has more robust note taking abilities than Evernote, but it is MUCH more clunky/limited as far as setting up views to show lists of tasks based on matching multiple tags. It's really not what it was designed for obviously but I looked into it since it is the MS version of Evernote. Outlook tasks is a much better way as you can create custom views to say show me all tasks at.Work with 1 Now when context.
The problem with using Outlook though is you have to use the desktop app for all your GTD. The Web App is sorely lacking in functionality and only lists tasks by priority. If you use Outlook.com, it's even more basic as far as task management. Because of this, I've decided to use Evernote for GTD instead as it adds a function in Outlook to 'Add to Evernote' similar to add to OneNote but as expected you can more easily and directly link OneNote notes to Outlook tasks (even though you shouldn't be using those if you are using OneNote for GTD, and Outlook calendar events.)
The thing I was really disappointed in is that Evernote, while robust enough to easily do GTD, doesn't have the necessary functionality to also use it for collaborative project task management, especially with team members in multiple organizations. There's no ability to create a client folder with multiple sections (for projects) and then share the sections. Moreover, there's no ability to associated notes (tasks) with groups of users and have them get automated notifications when the status of the task is changed or the task's contents are updated. You need to use something like Asana or Basecamp for that so you end up having your team project tasks disconnected from your GTD system and you have to duplicate your own tasks in Evernote outside the project management system like Basecamp. Boo. Hiss. I would imagine though some of these project management systems could be configured so you can do your GTD there. But then most of these systems do have a good note taking capability with robust filing/organization like OneNote or Evernote and more importantly, they don't have easy ways (that I know of currently) to allow you to move emails in Outlook to tasks in the Project Mgmt System like OneNote and Evernote offer. I think there's a huge opportunity for either Microsoft to improve OneNote in these respects, Evernote to add better collaborative project functions/controls, or Basecamp or Asana to build more GTD like functions.
If you really want to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem, the best solution is to use Outlook Tasks for GTD, get an Exchange account via Exchange Onlin ($4/month) if you don't have it for access to the Outlook Webapp with a little more robust task features than outlook.com, and then use OneNote for your repository. If you do this, you may want to buy the GTD plugin by NetCentrics https://www.gtdoa.com/ (you need an Exchange based email account in Outlook to use it.) This plug-in is costly (around $75) and introduces another application & company essentially to have to manage and rely on. But for someone that doesn't want to create the categories, folders, and views themselves, this plug-in will get you a jumpstart on setting up Outlook for GTD.
Sidenote: It's funny to think that OneNote is really just a replacement for using Word and Windows Explorer / Search. I could see a lot of people putting too much in OneNote and then you have most of your documents in the OneNote file format which is less ubiquitous and transportable than Word, PDF, etc. However if you work for Microsoft or everyone you work with uses MS Office products, it may be the best choice for housing a library of project notes and support materials - I just caution people to think about what would happen should they not want to use OneNote in the future? Could be a lot of copying and pasting into a new document/system going on.
The area that I didn't explore that much is taking an existing project task management system like Asana or Basecamp and trying to use it for GTD. I'd love to hear if anyone has pulled this off elegantly, especially in conjunction with moving email in Outlook to tasks in these systems as then you could simplify down from a 3 tool system to a 2 tool system and more importantly, not have to duplicate your project tasks from the project task management system to your GTD tool.