Getting Things Done

[gothick]

I've finally succumbed to the inevitable: it's time to get my life organised. I've now signed up with two Getting Things Done sites, nozbe and neptunehq to see which one of them has the best interface. I'm using one for work stuff and one for home stuff. So far it's a fairly even split...

Anyone else out there use onliney to-do list/GTD things? I need something web-based (at least in part) because I'll have to access it from a PC at work... (I've looked into iGTD on the Mac, and it was a bit pants, so I'm avoiding it for now.)

Comments

Lo-tech...

[fatal-logic.livejournal.com]

I have a small black hardcover diary that goes pretty much everywhere with me, and when I feel I have time to think about what needs to be done, I leaf back through it to the latest lists I wrote - whatever they may have been related to.

Most of the time I'm happy to let it sleep in the book, my head might explode if I tried to look at it too much... one thing I'm not sure I want to web-enable!

Re: Lo-tech...

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing, all the way through to it being hardcover and black, but it's more about capturing thoughts for fiction purposes. I do use it also as a reminder/notebook, and review it every week, but I'm finding I'm much more organised with the more rigid structure and easy editability of the web-based thingies. They're both based on the GTD principles, so for any particular "project" you nominate a "next action" and on the main "stuff to do" page you're presented only with the next single simple task for each project. You can also break it down by contexts, so you can say "I'm at work, rather than at home, so what stuff have I got to do that's appropriate right now?"

Re: Lo-tech...

[fatal-logic.livejournal.com]

I had a look at the book in Waterstones today, and one thing he said struck a chord - that for him, everything is work.

I'm not sure that's what I want. Structure and organisation are all well and good, and that's what I do 9-to-whenever. But I don't want every last pocket of my life to be run off a list.

Re: Lo-tech...

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

Some people don't need this stuff, I'm sure, but as a big procrastinator with a terrible memory, I find it really helps.

Remembering to do the fun things is just as important as remembering to do the work things... And being able to stick stuff into a reliable system for dealing with later helps me to counter my gadfly mind, by letting me file those random thoughts somewhere where they don't distract me from the job at hand. Otherwise I'll tend to flit from project to project, never finishing anything... Plus it stops me worrying all the time about what important thing I should have done that I've already forgotten about.

Another important thing is that it stops me taking on more stuff when I've already got more planned than one person could do in a lifetime :)

And I still do lots of spontaneous stuff that's not in the system, too :)