ThinkingRock - cross-platform GTD application

Filed under: Business, Developer, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Productivity, Freeware

ThinkingRock - cross-platform GTD application

by Jason Clarke Mar 18th 2007

While many other task management applications have found ways to incorporate the ideas put forth by the Getting Things Done methodology that David Allen developed, it seems that very few have been built from the ground up as GTD applications. There are certainly a few web applications that can make that claim, but in terms of "offline" applications, the pickings are pretty slim.

One such application, however, is ThinkingRock. Written in Java, ThinkingRock boasts versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

In ThinkingRock, you work in specific modes that relate to the various levels of the GTD workflow. For example, rather than entering a task and setting the project it relates to and the context at that moment, you can simply use a collection view to do a brain dump of all of the tasks and ideas that are bouncing around in your mind.

Once you've captured all of your "open loops", you can move on to processing them. At this point, you are presented with each item that you created when collecting your thoughts, and an intuitive dialog leads you through the GTD processing work-flow. For example, the first decision you'll have to make is whether an item is actionable. If not, you either archive it, put it into a Someday/Maybe file, or trash it. If it is, then you get to decide whether the item is a simple task that stands on its own, or if it is really a project (multi-action task) that must be planned out, and have multiple actions associated with it.

While we love the collection and processing aspects of ThinkingRock, we're not quite as sold on the screens that you access when it's time to get down to work. They offer all sorts of filtering features, so that you can see your next actions by context, project, or any combination you can think of. This is all very functional, but it just feels a bit off to us. Hopefully it will become more comfortable over time.

Of course for the low, low price of free, there's not all that much to complain about. It was easy enough to move data from the Windows version to the Mac version, which is certainly a plus. As always, give us your best GTD thoughts in the comments!

Tags: David Allen, DavidAllen, Getting Things Done, GettingThingsDone, lists, Task Management, TaskManagement, Tasks, ThinkingRock, todo list, todo lists, TodoList, TodoLists

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Mike Cohen said 11:38AM on 3-18-2007

That's not something I'd use. After trying it for a few minutes I ended up trashing it. A GTD application should fit into your normal workflow, not take over the screen and require switching out of whatever you're doing. I finally settled on iGTD, which is also free. It's non-obtrusive and easy to us. You can create tasks from a menu bar item and it works with iCal for alarms, etc.

Steve Goodwin said 12:16PM on 3-18-2007

Been using ThinkingRock for some months now - Having tried many in the best this is certainly the best one for me.
Very solid and does what it says on the can - GTD. Unlike many, it's not overburdoned with 'extra' features which may or may not be of any use but just extend the learning curve.

The biggest danger of all these choices is that it is far more fun playing with them all than actually 'getting things done'!

John Seiffer - business coach said 12:39PM on 3-21-2007

>>While we love the collection and processing aspects of ThinkingRock, we're not quite as sold on the screens that you access when it's time to get down to work.

John Seiffer - business coach said 12:43PM on 3-21-2007

Sorry last comment got messed up. I meant to say

[QUOTE]While we love the collection and processing aspects of ThinkingRock, we're not quite as sold on the screens that you access when it's time to get down to work.[END QUOTE]

I think the opposite. I like the layout (if not the appearance) of the screens. Particularly the one where I can sell all my actions assigned to all projects even not assigned.

And I like that it runs under windows and on a thumb drive.

I'm actually not excited about the collection and processing part. That's not a big deal in my implimentation of GTD

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