Recommended Electronic Version for GTD?

J

Joe Bryant

Guest
Hi Folks,

Sorry if this is a dumb question but after scanning the boards, I'm still not clear.

I'm a casual ACT! user ready to make the PDA jump. I'd prefer to start off in the "right" direction and avoid a mid stream jump down the road if possible.

My question (and yes, I realize it's loaded): Is there a "recommended" electronic method for implementing the GTD system both desktop and PDA?

I see the Outlook Add In product on the site. Does that mean most folks use Outlook on their desktop to implement GTD? I love the customer contact record keeping with ACT and being able to log what I told the customer last time we spoke (taking it off the mental RAM) But I don't know that running both ACT! for customer notes and Outlook for managing tasks is the right answer.

And then when it comes to a PDA, that's another issue. Palm or Pocket PC? If I stay with ACT, that means Palm. But I'm wondering if the Pocket PC / Pocket Outlook isn't a better way to go if Outlook is the way I handle things on the desktop.

Any insights are much appreciated and apologies in advance for the basic question. Thanks.

Joe
 
H

hamlett

Registered
GTD on the PDA

Although I use the Outlook Add-on (mostly for managing email), I handle my To-Dos with Life Balance (from llamagraphics). Life Balance (on both PDA & desktop) is the only To-Do manager that I've seen that is context specific (rather than merely priority-based) and that has a fuzzy-logic capacity to nudge you to keep the various parts of your life (work, home, relationships, intellectual growth, etc.) in balance. I know it wasn't developed with GTD in mind, but it might as well have been, so good is the fit. You can take a look at www.llamagraphics.com
 
P

pd_workman

Guest
Re: Recommended Electronic Version for GTD?

Joe Bryant said:
I see the Outlook Add In product on the site. Does that mean most folks use Outlook on their desktop to implement GTD? I love the customer contact record keeping with ACT and being able to log what I told the customer last time we spoke (taking it off the mental RAM) But I don't know that running both ACT! for customer notes and Outlook for managing tasks is the right answer.
Click to expand...

Act does have a super-charged conduit for the Palm which keeps all of your customer records and contacts intact. It does not, however, use the built-in Palm databases.

Pam
 
V

vegheadjones

Guest
I recommend Datebk5, at www.datebk5.com. It enables you to use saved views, which works wonders for your Action lists. For example, I have an office view which shows all of my @calls, @e-mail etc. Thanks to the wonders of having a cell phone, I also have a Car view, which shows my @phone, @errands etc. You can use icons to spearate the action lists, phone for @phone, etc. This works very well for me.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
ACT for palm

Be warned, it isn't the fastest palm program you'll ever see ; )

The larger your database, the slower it goes. They suggest a 1000 contact limit for reasonable performance.

Not bad for a first attempt but lots of room for improvement.

Paul
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Yahoo group

There's a yahoo group (link below) that's dedicated to GTD with Palm-based PDAs. There's a camp that favors sticking with the Palm desktop applications (the 'plain vanilla' group) while others prefer a variety of third-party applications. You might get some helpful info re programs and approaches.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GtD_Palm/
 
B

Bryan

Registered
Datebook 5 for Palm

Probably a function of my marginal techno-capability, but I could never get around what appears to be a 200-item to-do limit in Datebook. You can enter more than 200 to-dos, but it'll cause problems viewing your to-do list on "all", which is sometimes useful. I know others have run into the same problem, but again, I didn't get too involved in trying to figure it out...I went back to my old DB3+ :)

And, I know there was a discussion on number of to-do items elsewhere on the board; I'd just note that, especially if you include projects and someday/maybes as to-do categories, hitting 200 wasn't too hard for me at least.

FWIW,
Bryan

PS: So if some kind soul could lead me down the babysteps path to working around this limit, I really would be grateful!
 
V

vauha27

Guest
take a look at t-mobile mda

Joe,

take a look at the T-Mobile MDA. I use it since last october and I will never step back to the two devices solution of pda and mobile phone.

Of course this is a pocket pc 2002.

I do GtD with the outlook addin in the office and use AgendaFusion on the MDA. You may use as much categories as you want. With this software I am able to mirror the GTD task view on my pda (action related!). This is very nice for me, because the tasks are displayed in the same order.

vauha27
 
T

tallmarvin

Registered
I saw a T-Mobile phone on sale today for $325 (after $20 rebate) and am intrigued by having only one device instead of two. However, I feel that what I liked about Palm (currently have Treo 90) was the simplicity of the system itself...no frills, just straight ahead usefulness. Although the Pocket PC has a nicer 'look' to it, Microsoft scares me a bit from the productivity standpoint...I don't want buggy software (my Xp home setup keeps crashing, etc.) to affect my Palm-based productivity system. How long have you had the T-mobile phone? Good reception?

Another thing is...would love to keep my current cell # for a new cell phone...whatever happened to that legislaton? I'm sure that T-Mobile would be cheaper than my current Nextel service, but I'd like to keep the same # since I use one cell phone for business and personal use.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
datebk 5

It can only display 200 items per day on one screen at a time. If you have to-do's integrated with the calendar items then the total of your calendar entries and integrated to-do's can't go over 200.

If you use the split screen mode to view your to-do's you can view as many as you'd like.

hope that helps

Paul
 
C

Cikub

Guest
Re: datebk 5

Paul said:
It can only display 200 items per day on one screen at a time. If you have to-do's integrated with the calendar items then the total of your calendar entries and integrated to-do's can't go over 200.

If you use the split screen mode to view your to-do's you can view as many as you'd like.

hope that helps

Paul
Click to expand...

Yikes! Who would want to view over 200 to-dos at a time?!? I use Datebk5 and the stock To-do application together. When I get the "too many to-dos" warning, it's simply a reminder to me to set DateBk5 to *not* show undated to-dos. Unless you are working with dated to-dos, DateBk5 provides no benefit over the regular To-Do application--in fact, it is much more cumbersome. I use DateBk5's to-do functionality for two things 1) I date my to-dos when I complete them so that I can scan through a week with the split-screen to see what happened (for time reports, etc.), and 2) to help me focus on days when there are so many urgent things to do that I just have to have a prioritized list for the day.

Cik
 
V

vincentpaul

Guest
Agendus and ShadowPlan

Hi all. I use Agendus for my action lists and Shadow Plan for projects. All items in the project in Shadow Plan have the "project code" at the start. Then I link the next action of a project to Agendus so that I really only have to refer to one software (Agendus) to take a look at the things I need to do. The project code tells me that the action item is part of a project and so when that thing is done, I know I have to go back to Shadow Plan to link the next action.

I'm sure you can do the same with Datebook and Shadow Plan, I just found Agendus a bit easier to use :)
 
E

ext555

Registered
Re: datebk 5

Cikub said:
Yikes! Who would want to view over 200 to-dos at a time?!? I use Datebk5 and the stock To-do application together. When I get the "too many to-dos" warning, it's simply a reminder to me to set DateBk5 to *not* show undated to-dos.
Cik
Click to expand...

Someone had run into the warning message and was wondering if it could only display 200 to-do's total. This usually happens when someone has their settings to show todo's in integrated mode and category set to all .

Paul
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Act for Palm OS to manage projects

Try Act for Palm OS to manage your projects. I do and it works remarkably well. I am in the process of completing a short tutorial on how it works .
George :eek:
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Using Act With GTD

I plan to have it done in about 2 weeks max :shock:
 
D

dnimtz

Guest
After playing/experimenting with many different Palm approaches, in my opinion, you can't beat Life Balance. Key features:
- The context sensitive "places" (including open/closed hours),
- the todo list in outline form,
- integration (if needed) with todo db, datebook db
- the ability to adjust importance of certain elements,
- having both a Palm and desktop version synching to each other
- very robust software
... the list goes on and on.

However, a couple cautions:
- like any powerful software, expect a learning curve (believe me its worth it)
- be sure you grab the following articles dealing with how to get going using GtD in Life Balance:
http://www.actionable.org/files/GTD.with.Life.Balance.pdf
http://www.actionable.org/files/StarterFile.lbd.zip (this is a template to get you started)

Others had said this before, Life Balance wasn't created for GtD, but it sure seems like it was!
 
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