[NTLK] GTD, MessagePad

[Eckhart Koeppen]

On Jan 19, 2010, at 16:59 , Mike Rodgers wrote:

> As I have recently visited several Newton sites I have come across the
> acronym GTD.  Ok, I looked it up.  I'll admit that I have been out  
> of IT
> for about 5 years but I had never heard of this before.  Is this a new
> cult following for Project Managers or what?  Is it big among Newton  
> users?

I've written down some alternative ways how to "get things done" using  
a Newton:

http://40hz.org/Pages/GTD

The essence of the whole approach is:

- any open loop needs to be tracked (written down), you'll forget  
stuff otherwise
- anything which takes more than one physical step to do is a project  
and needs to go on a project list
- defer, do, delegate: if you can do stuff in under 2 mins, do it  
right away, otherwise, it's either a project, it is not relevant, or  
somebody else needs to do it
- each project should at all times have a next action
- you are working off your next action list, i.e. you don't do  
projects, but you do next actions
- actions can be tagged with a context in which they can be done, e.g.  
at the computer, while shopping, or when having a regular scheduled  
meeting with somebody

The Newton is a great tool for this since it does two things really  
well: Maintaining lists of things, and being always available. The  
Notes app is great for capturing projects, but also the To Do list is  
already good enough, and 3rd party apps like DateMan or MoreInfo can  
definitely be used to implement GTD.

GTD is a bit weak on the top down side, i.e. where you start to plan  
from big to small goals, and when you need to prioritize things. Just  
working off next actions is a bit mechanic, and you can get lost in a  
lot of mindless activity. To compensate for that, you can link  
projects to larger goals, and you can bring a bit focus into the  
actions using things like "most important tasks for today" (http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/07/22/the_taste_of_the_day.html 
  makes a lot of sense)

My own setup is to use the Notes app to manage projects: Each project  
is a checklist, and the next action is marked with a checkmark. I have  
also now started to file projects into folders: One for today's  
projects, one for projects to be worked on this week, one for projects  
for this month and one for projects without time frame yet. On top of  
that sits Nitch (http://40hz.org/Pages/Nitch) which fetches all  
project notes and shows their checked next actions in a list.

Eckhart