I blogged about iGTD vs OmniFocus a while back, but I've been streamlining my GTD (Getting Things Done) system lately. June is a great month... around here. Things slow down, people disappear, I go to camp, take a vacation, and finally have time to do some of the things on the backburner that I've been putting off. A lot of my Spring was taken up by big projects that didn't have a lot of tasks, just work on this magazine until it's done.. that sort of thing. Things were under such a time crunch that I began to neglect my GTD reviews. And a big chunk of the reason for that was the way that I was using the system.

OmniFocus allows you to decide whether or not a project's tasks can be completed in any order (parallel - grocery list, misc. tasks, music I want to check out, etc.) or if they'll be completed in a specific order (sequential). The easiest way is to set up your tasks and make them parallel. It takes a little more time to properly set them up. And even after setting up the project correctly, you still need to utilitize the filters in OmniFocus to really keep yourself from pulling up your list of stuff to do and being completely overloaded by the sheer number of tasks staring at you.

One of the key principles of GTD is to boil things down to next actions. What is the next action on a particular project... lifting directly from the wiki page:

For every item requiring attention, decide what is the next action that can be physically taken on that item. For example, if the item is, "Write project report," the next action might be, "Email Fred for meeting minutes," or, "Call Mary to ask about report requirements." Though there may be many steps and actions required to complete the item, there will always be something that needs to be done first, and this step should be recorded in the next actions list. Preferably, these steps are organized by the context in which they can be done, such as "in the office," "by the phone," or "at the store."

And the point of remembering that is that I've finally taken the time to set up my projects so that I'm only worried about the next action. Instead of seeing this for the upcoming calendar project:

By setting it up so that my main workflow is using a filtered perspective that only shows actions that are available to do right now... be they next actions, or actions in a parallel list that really is parallel, I get this:

Notice also that the Ads project from the first image is missing. I have it set not to show up until it's time to work on it. Since I can't work on it right now, it's hidden. The author of the GTD book talks about having a trusted system—one that you know will remind you of something when it's appropriate. That involves being organized and setting this stuff up ahead of time, actually reviewing every task in your system once a week to keep it on your mind, and being familiar with your system. He recommends using whatever you're comfortable with. A lot of folks just use a Moleskine notebook. You can use a Palm device, or the cheap and dirty Hipster PDA—whatever works for you.

Another way that I've been able to move from intermediate user to advanced is through making my system mobile. I love OmniFocus, despite its UI flaws, but since I do most of my work on my Mac Pro, I keep it there. But when I'm at home, I'm on my Macbook Pro, and when I'm out and about, I'm on my iPhone. Not having ubiquitous access to my GTD system has really limited my use of it outside of work. David Allen (GTD author) really recommends that you let your system run your work and personal stuff to really get the most of it. And you need to keep the number of inboxes and lists you use to a minimum. The more places you keep things, the greater the chance of it getting lost. That's why I've been dying to have my OmniFocus with me all the time, and come next week that will be finally a reality with the launch of OmniFocus for iPhone, which will hopefully be a launch title on the App Store on the iPhone. One of the cool features that the mobile version will have is a location awareness. If your work requires you to do a lot of specific things at specific places (GTD calls these contexts, I have several set up in my system—@home, @computer-work, @meeting, @church, etc), then OF for iPhone will sense your location and show you tasks which can be completed nearby. I can see how that would be useful for some people's workflow.

In the meantime, I only recently discovered that someone has written a handy AppleScript for syncing OmniFocus with Toodledo, a free web-based to-do service. It's not OmniFocus for iPhone, but for keeping up with tasks I need to work on at home, or for errands I need to run, groceries, etc. It's already been a major improvement in my workflow. And you can use Toodledo on any cellphone with a WAP browser (most have at least that functionality).

Another crucial piece of the puzzle is having a universal capture tool—a way to capture tasks and ideas, no matter where you are. It could be a notebook that you ALWAYS have on you, but for me, that's my cellphone. OmniFocus allows you to setup tasks by emailing yourself an email with a special format, but with Toodledo, it's just as easy to add a task that way, but what if you're driving? That's where Jott comes in. You register with Jott, and it will know your numbers, so when you call it, you can leave yourself voice messages, but the real beauty of it is that it transcribes your voice into text. So you can send emails with it (to other folks, or in the case of capturing tasks, to yourself). Better yet, you can send tasks to Toodledo directly from Jott. So I just call the Jott number, say "Toodledoo" and then say what I want to remember, whether it's a great idea from a sermon I've listened to, or something I thought of that I need to remember to do, and when I pull up my GTD system a few minutes later, there it is. It's great for when you think of something you needed to do when you're walking out of work, or when you're driving.

So why does all of this matter? Since Jamie and I don't share the same tastes in music, we usually listen to Dave Ramsey podcasts when we're in the car. Dave likes to talk about how when you implement his system, people usually end up finding that things go faster than they thought. They get raises, promotions. He attributes that a blessing, but that sounds a little bit like a prosperity Gospel to me. I think it has more to do with learning to be disciplined. Your boss might take notice that you are being more organized and reward you for it. It also makes you more disciplined in other areas. Maybe in losing weight for instance. At any rate, your mind works a bit like a computer. You have nearly infinite storage up in your head, but you can only actively deal with so many things at one time efficiently. And the problem is that your brain doesn't remind you of things to do WHEN you need to do them. When I go to the grocery store without a list, even if I only need 5 things, I will inevitably forget 1 of them. GTD is all about getting all of the stuff you need to do out of your head, freeing you up to focus on what you need to do next. And it's about setting up contexts so that you are reminded of what you need to do when you're there. I have a Wal-Mart context for instance for those items that I can't get at the grocery store.

iPhone 2.0 software and 3g tour from Apple
Still lacking on the disclosure of how the GPS turn by turn function will work. You can do live tracking of where you are, but what about where you want to go? :-(

Rhapsody launches mp3 store
They allow you to listen to the entire song once before buying. That's a start... still not my dream feature of 3 listens, but a start. Scratch that... it's only 25 free listens a month. Site unbookmarked. :-(

Sandy
A couple of my friends use this service for their to-dos... Sandy is like a personal assistant. You just CC email things that have a date on them and you get a reminder. It goes beyond that though.