Opinions Please: Life Balance for GTD?

[intrigueme@aol.com]

All -

I'm considering "tweaking" my Plain Vanilla Palm GTD Set-Up a bit.

The main thing that I want to do is to move from the "Horizontal Focus" to the "Vertical Focus" quickly and more intuitively.

Life Balance seems to be the simplest "bolt-on" piece of software to emable me to do this.

I've dabbled with the "Trial Version" in the past, but never gone for full-blown implementation.

I'm currently synching to Windows 2000/Outlook w/GTD at work; and a G-3 Mac w/Palm Desktop at home.

The functionaliity of the GTD add-in at work is a must have for converting "digital IN" to tasks & appointments (take a bow NetCentrics); so I don't want to lose that.

Life-Experience Opinions from Life-Balance Users Please ?

 

[ext555]

You'd probably get a response from more users at the Life Balance forum . www.llamagraphics.com

Lot's of GTD implementers there. Life Balance does have some quirks with outlook. Import /Export of Data in /out of LB can really mess things up . Safest implementation is cut and paste items from outlook into LB and manually update the items in outlook and not let LB export changed items back to outlook.

LB wasn't really designed to work with outlook--I think they may be working on making it more "outlook friendly" in the next version.

 

[alsa]

I found that despite what LB philosophy states about being in control of your "next actions" (to borrow GTD terminology I think would be appropriate here) you are always seeing things in your LB main window view (I have used it on my Mac laptop and on my Palm) that you wish you didn't see at that exact time - in other words, your calendar and your "lists" end up being way overcrowded; at least in my case they were. I know you can tweak LB to work how you like it, and the program itself has some AI built into it. The simple response from me would be that LB was trying to control my agenda and not vice versa. I like the combo of Datebk5/ShadowPlan with Shadowlink to jump between these two programs much better.

You might be surprised to learn though that I use LB on my Mac to this day for the sole purpose of keeping a journal in its "entry" window - it syncs perfectly with DayNotez on my Palm. (DayNotez doesn't have a Mac desktop and/or conduit so using the LB program with it's "link-to-Daynotez-on-my-Palm capability is my little trick to get my info from my desktop into DayNotez on my Palm - it works!)

 

[ScottL]

I have found life balance very helpful, although I only use a portion of the program. I ignore the pie chart and the whole issue of credit.

I like LB because it lets me view my life by project/area of focus or by next action. The first tab lets me view my life by area of focus/project as an outline complete with subtasks and sub-subtasks (if desired). Lifebalance feels just right as an outliner, whereas shadowplan, which I also own, never has (YMMV). The second tab lets me review next actions by context. In addition, these next actions are sorted in rough order of priority which is a huge help for me.

Lifebalance is a very flexible and complex piece of software with a large learning curve, but also large benefts. However if you are not careful, it is possible to sink large amounts of time tinkering with LB to get it just right. The more I work with it, the more I'm trying to simplify my set-up and not worry if LB does not behave exactly as I'd like (there are caveats to doing this--feel free to PM me).

There is no way to really be sure if it is right for you except to try it (and I have no experience with outlook). If you do try it, start slowly so you can get used to it, rather then putting your whole life into it at once.

Bob Pankratz (sp?) is a great resource on LB. Not sure if he reads this board, but he does frequent the LB and Yahoo GTD boards.