I’m currently using GTDAlt in TextMate as my GTD processing system. It’s a text based system, so it’s upgradable, portable, etc.

Through the TextMate bundle framework, you get some nice collating of contexts, etc.

GTDAlt does rely on some proprietary syntax, but it’s pretty basic and easily parsable.

There is rudimentary support for iterating through items in an inbox.txt file to generate GTD items.

I created an applescript which will take the selected message in Mail.app and create a properly formated item, using the subject and message: url (you must have MailTags installed so the message: protocol is recognized).

This means I’ll get action items with links to specific messages in my GTD system.

I partner this with a Mail Act-On rule… so when I hit ctrl-1, a GTDAlt item gets created, the message is tagged “@action”, and it’s sent to my one archive folder in one step.

In true GTD fashion, this should only be used for messages that take longer than 2 minutes to respond to. In reality, I need to get better at firing off quick responses to things (or liberally using the delete key). Otherwise, it’s likely I’ll use this to just procrastinate email items away into a black hole.

Download the script

I have spent way too many hours of my life searching for the ideal GTD system. I’ve been through ‘em all: diy planner, kinkless, frictionless, tracks, index cards, printable ceo, and even plain text files. Usually, I’ll spend an entire afternoon just transferring data back and forth… precious, irretrievable minutes lost on pointless migrations.

Every platform comes very close to being good enough to trust. However, all of them fall short for various reasons. ANY system will fail if it’s not a complete pleasure to use. Systems that do not urge me into action are going to disappoint me, no matter how clever.

I’ve noticed a new crop of apps starting to appear in the scene and something struck me about attempts at GTD nirvana. They all essentially do the same thing: they present information in table, outline, and list formats. None of them do much more than help organize a set of lists – this is a great start, though; even David Allen says it all comes down to lists.

The point of this post isn’t to enumerate why these platforms don’t turn me on. Let’s just leave it at, “they don’t.” (Not entirely true, every one of them has elements that I could see co-opting for my ultimate platform, but none of them get me excited about doing things on their own).

I believe that there can exist a GTD framework that not only handles day-to-day battlefields, but can also tap into some different cognitive access points. Why does everything have to be lists? Why not ephemeral clouds? Why not physical devices that urge me into activity by nudging me in the right direction? Do any GTD apps really help you decide what to do next, or don’t they all just present a too broad set of information?

They need to be smarter… What if our GTD platform showed you not all the things you COULD get done to fill your time, but only the very next thing you should get done to evolve your soul?

At the end of the day, yes, I realize that I’m the only one that can make me get stuff done, and I will fully own up to the reality that this endless tinkering is, indeed, a form of procrastination.

That being said, I am pretty convinced that I’m the only one that can build the better system.

… the better system as defined by “what works for me.”

A long, long time ago (okay, 2003), I hinted at an application I was hacking away at called Tock. It was basically GTD before everyone else had read the book.

I even had a prototype. It committed “paradigm violence.”

It should probably be dusted off.

I realized though, that my working style has changed and I really need to field test anything I come up with in a rapid development environment. So, over just a couple hours this weekend, I threw together the Project-Task-Context model in Ruby on Rails.

”Ugh! Not another web 2.0 wannabe app!”

Exactly. However, RoR makes for a good prototyping environment… this will help me get the backend right. It will let me tinker on experiments like, “Tock, give me the 9 things I should work on today.”

I was very close to just forking Tracks, but I realized that there was too much in there just to support AJAX user interfaces. Tock isn’t about that. Tock laughs at web browsers. Hell, he laughs at mice and keyboards.

You’ll see…

Starting is always the hardest part, dont you think? I definitely have a deep infection of plan-it-out syndrome.

studentl.inc: Think About Planning Ahead [5×5s]:

5. Start now. Do something.
Some people are addicted to planning (or the idea of planning). They get excited about all the tools you can use to plan, all the latest, hip ideas that planning gurus offer. But their planning ends up being all that there is…just planning. Planning is not a means to an end. We plan so that we can accomplish (both efficiently and effectively) the tasks that need to be done. I believe that planning is vital to accomplishment. But if we never start, then we are wasting time. Implement your plans.

Earlier today I sent out what amounted to a call to arms to friends and mailing lists. I was urging people to drive towards the objective all creative people should have: to build things.

I urged people to spend 20 minutes today working on whatever creative endeavor they have brewing in the back burner. Move that project into the center of the radar for just 20 minutes.

20 minutes is a very small chunk of time. In any given project, however, there are any number of minor pieces which can be built in that time. The encouragement today was to spend 20 minutes just building. This needs to be focused working time without deviation from activity. This is inspired by Merlin Mann’s dash concept - a good way to beat procrastination is to just begin on a small chunk… Just commit to cranking activity out for a small amount of time. When the dash is over, you’ve easily beaten the first and only hurdle of procrastination: starting.

Running constantly on my OSX desktop is a small timer program called Minuteur. This has worked wonders for me.

I just set it at 20 minutes and hit go. I focus on a single piece of a project until the timer runs out. Minuteur pops up a “TIME’S UP!” window and I can choose to add 5, 10 or 15 more minutes. I often do that simply because I’m on a roll. I’ll also sometimes drop in 10 minutes between working periods for guilt-free play time. That’s usually when I do my RSS reading or grab coffee.

Admittedly, my responsibilities are fewer than, say, a single mom with 2 toddlers who is trying to finish college, but I often find myself devoting 100% of my useful and usable time into other peoples’ projects. Day job work spills into after hours and suddenly I’m barely left with enough energy to get myself home, much less exercise or make a good meal, and much MUCH less build a stunningly cool and beautiful machine puppet.

Since when did I put “making somebody else lots of money sweating blood over their vision” at a higher priority than “following what my soul and mind’s eye are screaming at me?”

That needs to end.

It’s not to say that we all don’t need day jobs. We have mortgages to pay, for crying out loud. However, I think the mistake I often make is letting the day job crowd out the dreams.

In The Now Habit and there’s this concept of the “Unschedule”. Briefly, it recommends starting your calendar by planning in all of your “me” time: Block out sleeping, eating, commuting, and exercising time. More importantly, block out your play time - time in which you are simply NOT working. This is time for guilt free play; guilt free play, incidentally is where I think the best creativity is born.

I also recommend scheduling 20 minutes a day as an unbreakable appointment with yourself every day for every project which you genuinely care about completing with all your heart.

Only then do you block out work appointments: meetings, etc.

Whatever’s left is your day job working time.

If you are anything like me, you’ll be very surprised at how little time you have left over. It’s no wonder we feel overwhelmed at work sometimes - we operate as if we actually had 40+ hours a week to do the jobs we’re assigned. And as Parkinson’s law suggests, we stretch tasks to fill those phantom 40+ hours. Whoops. It’s like buying working hours on credit… we don’t have that much time to complete the tasks on that schedule and so we tend to go home over budget. Of COURSE our energy is low and all we want to do is crash.

So let’s start operating with a more realistic understanding of what time we have and how fast we should work and to what standards we should aspire. That is to say, we start learning when to stop tinkering to get to perfection and just start building… putting projects in the “done” bucket faster and with less energy.

I would never suggest that you go about your day job without the highest integrity and quality of work that you can provide. During work hours, you work, and you work hard; you deliver more value to your employers and clients than they are paying for: 110%, team-player, all that - Work with the mantra “I am here to do nothing but add value.”

I believe that a self-fulfilling prophecy / psychological trick starts to happen. When you realize your time is limited at the day job and also at the passion job, you start to move with grace and efficiency. You don’t feel the need to slack off, mostly because you are aware of how little time you have to accomplish your jobs.

However, you must remember that you have unbreakable appointments with your personal passion projects. When it comes time to work on those, you will find a way to work on them and summon all your energy to build them with the same amount of integrity.

I suggest 20 minutes a day at first. I would guess this will increase over time.

caveat: I think it’s a bit presumptuous for somebody like me, who often struggles with Getting Things Done, to write an article about how better to get things done. Take it with a grain of salt. I’m only regurgitating advice I’ve culled from many other sources.

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