Recommend low cost GTD software that runs on Windows.

S

Ship69

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Hello

A friend is looking for FREE/open source (or very cheap) task management / project management software for Windows and has asked my advice.

However from what I could see most of the best GTD software is still Apple only (e.g. Omnifocus, Things, ToDo).

He wants:
1. Multi-level tasks (with easy moving between 'project' and 'task' and 'sub-task')
2. Ability to have Areas of Focus / Areas of Life (ideally up to 4 or 5)
3. Ability to create your own GTD 'Lists' (e.g. SomedayMaybe, Waiting etc)
4. Fast entry of everything without needing to use the mouse much (i.e. Good hotkeys)
5. Contexts (ideally, for fast entry, should be entered using user-configured hotkeys)
6. "Stars" or similar "do today" filtering
7. Some sort of calendar with easy moving stuff into the future. (plus seeing what you are doing on specific dates)
8. A view showing Next Action per project (ideally with the ability to 'force' additional subtasks onto that view)

Bonus
- Tags?
- Colour marking up?

Personally I'm still using MLO and I haven't looked around for a while. MLO is too expensive for him (c.$30 for Windows ) and in any case it lacks a field for either 'List' or 'Area of Life' which is ultimately quite limiting.
Yes, I tried explaining the GTD is supposed to be 'flat' and that multiple levels can get you into trouble, but he's having none of it!

So, is there any really good new GTD-friendly software out there that runs on Windows?

With thanks

J
 
J

johnmcoulter

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Do they have Microsoft Office? If so the Tasks function in Outlook is capable of making all of those things work. Used it for years before I went iOS and MacBook etc. and went to Omnifocus. So Office isn't free in and of itself but if they already have it then they have the software they seek already. David Allen Co. has a setup guide to configure for GTD, and software for doing the same is available from Netcentrics.
 
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Ship69

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Interesting suggestion. I am 90% sure he doesn't have MS Office but I'll need to check and revert...

I have Office 365 myself and I just had a quick play. But I failed at his requirement 1. I cant get it to create tasks within tasks. Nor turning things into "Projects" and showing the next action per project (point 8.)

Yes, everyone talks well of Omnifocus (including David Allen!) but I think it's now use to Windows users. And it's not cheap at $39.99 for standard version. [Personally I would try and talk him into spending the money if I could find something I seriously recommended !]
 
mcogilvie

mcogilvie

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TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
But the free version of Wunderlist is pretty close. If that isn't enough, then paper is cheap.
 
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Ship69

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mcogilvie said:
TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
But the free version of Wunderlist is pretty close. If that isn't enough, then paper is cheap.
Click to expand...

I had a quick look at Wunderlist. As a basic list manager it looks reasonable,

It was nice to be able to create your own Lists (in the left hand pane) and to drag & drop things easily.
Out of interest how would you recommend implementing Areas of Focus and GTD List?

But unfortunately it fails at my friends' requirement "1."
i.e. You cant have unlimited tasks within tasks and task, and there is no obvious way to move a sub-task to become a task.

[To explain: he told me he doesn't like being "forced to decide" whether a "thing that needs to be done" is a task, a project or a sub-project, because often a small task grows into a larger project and it's a pain to be forced to re-enter it from scratch]
 
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Ship69

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FrancescoPlli said:
Hi J,

i'm a great fun of paper planners for the purpose.

Anyway i moved to digital about 3 years ago and i've been using evernote (in it's free version). It was enough for me since they changed something on their policy recently.

I'm testing onenote, it is now available free for everyone and it comes with a 5 gigabytes of free space on onedrive.

Onenote is full of keyboard shortcuts and i love it for this.

In my experience it's very hard to find a tool that does everything so i'm using a combo of onenote and google calendar (thinking to move to outlook calendar just to stay on the same platform, nothing different from gcal).

To let my gtd system works i need to keep it very simple to avoid the overwelmed feeling.
Click to expand...

Francesco

OneNote has become extremely powerful - interesting! One question how can you filter to (for example) just show tasks that are starred?
 
FrancescoPlli

FrancescoPlli

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Ship69 said:
Francesco

OneNote has become extremely powerful - interesting! One question how can you filter to (for example) just show tasks that are starred?
Click to expand...

If you really need it you can tag things. I'm quite sure that in the desktop app the combination is ctrl+5 (for star). From the "home tab" in the ribbon there is a funcion called "search by tags". If you click on it it will show you all the tags you've put. You can also choose by what order to visualize them.

Anyway tags are customizable in oneNote so you can choose whatever you want to add, remove or edit both icon or description of them.

But as I said I don't use tags because i need flexibility and really fast use both on pc and my mobile device.

The only things I use are checkboxes in my context lists because they are fast to tap on my phone to check tings off as done.

Francesco
 
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Ship69

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FrancescoPlli said:
If you really need it you can tag things. I'm quite sure that in the desktop app the combination is ctrl+5 (for star). From the "home tab" in the ribbon there is a funcion called "search by tags". If you click on it it will show you all the tags you've put. You can also choose by what order to visualize them.

Anyway tags are customizable in oneNote so you can choose whatever you want to add, remove or edit both icon or description of them.

But as I said I don't use tags because i need flexibility and really fast use both on pc and my mobile device.

The only things I use are checkboxes in my context lists because they are fast to tap on my phone to check tings off as done.

Francesco
Click to expand...

Im OneNote(2016), on the "Home" tab, within the "Tags" area there is a item called "Find Tags" is that what you mean?
So, clicking "Find Tags" toggles on and off a pane on the right called "Tags Summary".
If I using hotkey [Control/2] that will make the current Note (i.e. task) get a star icon using the tag called "Important".

But what I can't work out is out to filter the items (i.e. Notes) to just show certain tags.
e.g. How do I just show the "Important" tasks?

OneNote seems to allow you to put in very sophisticated tagging but I can't work out what use the tagging is!
 
FrancescoPlli

FrancescoPlli

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Ship69 said:
Im OneNote(2016), on the "Home" tab, within the "Tags" area there is a item called "Find Tags" is that what you mean?
So, clicking "Find Tags" toggles on and off a pane on the right called "Tags Summary".
If I using hotkey [Control/2] that will make the current Note (i.e. task) get a star icon using the tag called "Important".

But what I can't work out is out to filter the items (i.e. Notes) to just show certain tags.
e.g. How do I just show the "Important" tasks?

OneNote seems to allow you to put in very sophisticated tagging but I can't work out what use the tagging is!
Click to expand...

Yes that's exactly what I meant. Sorry but my onenote is in italian and I'm not sure how to translate every function.

when the list of tags shows up you can open the dropdown menu "group tags by" and select "name of tags" (or something similar in english).
at the end of tag summary window you can find another dropdrown menu to select if you want to search in the entire notebook, section or page etc.

If you click on an item showed in the list, onenote drives you directly to the page of your notebook containing that note.

just try to tag something with the star (important tag) in different areas of your notebook and then open the tag summary window and play around with the options there are many on how to view the tags.
 
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Ship69

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> just try to tag something with the star (important tag) in different areas of your notebook and then
> open the tag summary window and play around with the options there are many on how to view the tags.
Sorry I still can't work out how to just show tasks that are Starred.

Near the top it has "Group Tags By" whose dropdown list I changed to "Tag Name" and then I hit "Refresh Results" near bottom on the right, but it has no effect... [grrr]
 
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Ship69

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Meanwhile, going back to my friend's requirements... Nirvana looks interesting.

> 1. Multi-level tasks (with easy moving between 'project' and 'task' and 'sub-task')
No sub-tasks and no sub-projects (as far as I can see!) - but at least you can convert between Project and Standalone Action easily

> 2. Ability to have Areas of Focus / Areas of Life (ideally up to 4 or 5)
Yes (unlike MLO, that I currently use!)

> 3. Ability to create your own GTD 'Lists' (e.g. SomedayMaybe, Waiting etc)
No. But the main GTD lists (Next, Waiting, Scheduled, Someday) area pre-built

> 4. Fast entry of everything without needing to use the mouse much (i.e. Good hotkeys)
Yes, sort of. Moderate number of hotkeys (sadly not configurable)

> 5. Contexts (ideally, for fast entry, should be entered using user-configured hotkeys)
Yes, sort of. Reasonable Contexts (sadly they can't be entered in the title and no hotkeys for them)

> 6. "Stars" or similar "do today" filtering
Yes.

> 7. Some sort of calendar with easy moving stuff into the future. (plus seeing what you are doing on specific dates)
Yes. Start Date AND Due Date, which is nice.

> 8. A view showing Next Action per project (ideally with the ability to 'force' additional subtasks onto that view)
No.

Nirvana isn't super-cheap but if you use it essentially everyday $39/years works out pretty value. Maybe I can talk my friend into spending a bit more money!

Can anyone tell me which other application other than GTDNext and MLO have Multi-level tasks AND can show one Next Action for each project?
(ideally with the ability to "Force" additional actions onto this list.)

Many thanks

J

P.S. I tried doit.im but it won't install (on Windows 10).
 
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Ship69

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Still no luck at this end. It seems that my version of OneNote ("2016") is different from yours.



Attached files
 
FrancescoPlli

FrancescoPlli

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Ship69 said:
Still no luck at this end. It seems that my version of OneNote ("2016") is different from yours.
Click to expand...

I really don't know why. Mine is the free version donloaded from onenote.com. But this kind of features should be in common among all releases of onenote (I use it since office 2007)

I've just made another test adding multiple tags to a single note and it also worked.



a temporary bug? try to close an open again onenote or moving around other pages before using the "search tags" function

Attached files
 
S

Ship69

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Yes, Trello is an interesting suggestion.

If a Trello Card is a GTD Action this is good because it allows you to give it a Trello Label which could be used as a GTD Context, which as you say would allow filtering to create lists of tasks for each Context.

However how would you define a GTD Project in Trello? (If a Project is a Trello List you can move it around the screen but you cant stack them vertically)

I think I need to see a video of someone who has set up Trello for GTD!

One immediate problem is that it's not going to automatically filter to just show you your Next Action per project. The Filter Card would be a lot more powerful if it told me how many tasks were on screen.
 
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