As I mentioned last time, don't choose a tool that doesn't fit your flow. What does that mean? Here's an example: I thought I'd be clever and create a separate flow for home and work. Since I work at home, the thinking was that I'd further separate my two worlds with two systems. In one corner I had The Hit List syncing to iCal which in turn was syncing with Todo on my iPhone. In the other corner: Toodledoo in my browser (or standalone in Fluid) and on my iPhone. Guess what happened?

I wound up preferring one system over another. In this case, Toodledo (a service I'll dissect in a later post). Todo and The Hit List and even lowly iCal are great, but since the majority of my inbox items fly at me in a work context, I simply wound up using Toodledo more often. That simple cognitive shift of changing to another system wound up enough of a barrier to me to discontinue my hacked-together system. Oh, and it didn't help that my hacked system didn't work right.

The Hit List is a very powerful tool, and iCal works great with my MobileMe account. The hack to sync the two with Todo, also a terrific piece of software, only works so well. My second piece of advice this week: avoid hacked solutions unless you can fix them easily. This goes back to truly learning your system. If you can code your own apps and craft your own workflow, more power to you. If you can't, admit that you won't be able to fix things and look for a total solution elsewhere.

Case in point: so-called Kinkless GTD. Remember this one? I loved it. Add items via QuickSilver into a special, fragile OmniOutliner Pro document and all sorts of magical things happened. Unfortunately, the system was fragile as a glass kitten. Once it blew up on me once, I never got it working again, and had to unlearn a number of methods for capturing and completing tasks. That is not the way to get things done. But the toolset was beyond my capacity to fix it. So take a lesson from Star Trek and don't become dependent upon a tool you can't fathom. Or, at the least, find something with support documentation.

Next I'll show you some questions to ask when evaluating tools.

TASCK is a bare-bones task list-manager web application. What TASCK lacks in features, it makes up for in minimalism. Literally, the only thing you can do on the site is add tasks by hovering over the plus symbol, and either check off or delete them as you complete them. It's unclear what the difference is between checking off a task and deleting it; in either case the list item simply disappears.

Though you don't need to sign up to use TASCK, it's probably a good idea to if you plan on making any serious use of the site. Simply clicking the How To Use link and then going back to the site was enough to lose the short list of items I had entered.

The name TASCK is intended to be a combination of the words tack and task. The site is intended as a task management tool for people that are too busy to fuss with more complicated task managers.

If you're looking for something a little more functional than a plain text document, but without all the confusing bells and whistles that today's batch of GTD-inspired applications offer, TASCK might be right down your alley.

Let me be totally honest here: I am not the world's leading expert on GTD. Nor have I completely settled on a true, universal solution -- because I don't think one really exists. Like most complex problems, there are many approaches, and very few true solutions. Plus, everyone has a different workflow and circumstance, so there's no way to prescribe something for everyone. That said, you will find patterns in GTD implementations (which is kind of the point, especially if you're adhering to a particular type of system -- Behance's Action Method or Zen to Done or whatever).

The point of GTD is pretty simple: get things accomplished effectively and efficiently. How you do that is by 1) making sure you are collecting everything you need to do, 2) managing the lists of to-do's and supporting materials, 3) acting upon the items on the lists in an efficient way. Simple in concept, and devilishly complex in action. It's that big, gray fuzzy area people have so much trouble with, since GTD is a process with a set of tools, not a paint-by-numbers exercise. Over the coming months I'll keep tweaking my workflow and reporting what I've found. We'll take a look at some popular systems, and ways to craft your own in different configurations.

As I said, everyone works a certain way, and there's no one-size-fits-all approach. I'll try to take into account the various approaches to GTD. Contexts, for example, are a variable for many people. Contexts in GTD refer to the "where" you're likely to do something. You don't need to see your "buy milk" to do at work, do you? Contexts help keep lists separate. Some people like a broad set of contexts, like @work and @home and perhaps a couple more. Other folks are meticulous with contexts and creating numerous sub-tasks with proper tags within each.

This week I'll lay out some ground rules for those of you looking to get started with GTD quickly, and what you can expect when choosing a set of tools. But most importantly, what are the things you need to do to ensure you'll actually use whatever system you choose?

Some very knowledgeable people swear by wikis as personal organizers. They work with any OS, they're easy to organize, and they make it simple to link related information in an understandable way. With TiddlyDu2, you can painlessly turn a wiki -- a Tiddlywiki, specifically -- into your own organization system.

You can either work with your wiki online or download it for offline use. TiddlyDu includes important features like integrated goals, projects and tasks that can quickly be associated with your contacts and calendar. Basically, it's whatever you make of it. There's a full Tiddlywiki tutorial available, but it should be fairly intuitive to learn TiddlyDu2 if you've used another wiki before. Download the .html file and start messing around until you get your wiki (and your to-do list) organized.

UPDATE: Dave Gifford points out that there's actually a newer version, TiddlyDu3, so check that out first.

It's only been two months since tasks first appeared on GMail, but the team wasn't content to stop there.

Last night, Google rolled out a new mobile version of Tasks designed to allow users of the iPod Touch/iPhone and Android devices to manage their tasks on the go.

The interface is elegantly simple, allowing you to quickly add tasks and notes, and mark items complete.

While tasks you indent from your desktop in GMail display correctly, there's no way to indent a task from your handset just yet.

As an added bonus, you can also now view your task list from any cell phone, as long as it sports an XHTML-compliant web browser.

Don't bother checking gmail.com/tasks from your desktop browser unless you're just after more information - you'll be redirected to the "Tasks in Labs" page.

[ via Official GMail blog ]

If you prefer to keep your GTD application on the desktop instead of using a web app like Remember the Milk, WinWorkBar is worth giving a try.

It's less than a 600kb download and packs a ton of functionality into a tidy sidebar. Features include a time and date display, calendar, task list, and notepad.

Tasks can be created as a one time occurrence or repeating event and can span multiple days. You can also specify percentage complete, not just whether or not a task is finished. The task view can be filtered a number of different ways, including progress, category, priority, or date (creation, change, etc.).

Notes can also be assigned to a range of dates - helpful if you've got an important event coming up and want to be reminded repeatedly as it approaches.

Hotkeys are supported for task and note creation and to show or hide the sidebar.

By default the sidebar autohides, though it's perfectly suited to full-time display on a widescreen monitor. A quick click on the menu button can turn off hiding. WinWorkBar also places an icon in the system tray at startup which provides right-click access to creating new notes and tasks.

WinWorkBar is a free application for Windows only.

The basic idea behind the new time-tracking service BubbleTimer is that it's not productive to track how you're spending your time down to the minute. It makes more sense to bubble in your activities in 15 minute increments, and BubbleTimer lets you do that with one click. Once you've added some goals and gathered some data, BubbleTimer becomes a playground for info nerds.

You can export your data to programs like Excel and Apple Numbers, or you can create attractive tables and graphs from within BubbleTimer. BubbleTimer is all web-based, so you can update it from anywhere. It's free to try, but if you get really addicted, you can buy a subscription for $20/year.

Jay recently reviewed MiniTask, an ultra- simple to-do list application built on the Adobe Air platform. If you're like me and would prefer to avoid installing yet another oversized Adobe product on your Windows PC, take a look at To-Do Desklist.

Like MiniTask, you can add an alarm to an item and hotkeys are supported for adding new tasks and showing your to-do items. Desklist also allows you to assign priority and add extended notes to tasks.

Alerts can be displayed in any corner of your screen, and they're fully skinnable. The program comes with light, dark, and sky themes built in, but you're free to set your own background color or image and change the display font. You can also tweak opacity settings for the alerts.

The full task window allows you to filter items by priority. When your list gets lengthy, it's a helpful way to make sure you're focusing on critical tasks.

I'd like to have option to hide alerts (like MiniTask) or collapse task items, but for simple lists, Desklist is still a good option. It's freeware for Windows only.

MiniTask is a basic cross-platform organization app built on Adobe Air. The learning curve on this app is basically nil, and you'll soon be adding, checking off, and setting alarms for to-do items with ease. There aren't a ton of features, so it's not the greatest for the completely neurotic among us, but if you just need a simple, unfussy to-do list, give it a look.

Let's a take a quick look at what MiniTask can do (fortunately, it's not much!). There's just one window, and you can right-click (CTRL-click on a Mac) to add new tasks and new dividers. You can use the dividers however you like, for different days or different categories of tasks. To-do items have three modes: checked off, not checked off, and alarm. Double-click a task to change the name, and double-click an alarm icon to change the time on an alarm. Seriously, that's all there is to it!

For better or for worse, the Apple AppStore has a bucketload of To-Do apps. If you're looking for a heavy-hitting [and location-aware] application designed specifically for the GTD mavens, you'll want OmniFocus ($19.99), and if you're looking for something a little lighter on the wallet, then Erica Sadun's free To-Do app might just be the answer.

But over the last few months, I've used and grown to love Cultured Code's application Things ($9.99). At the AppStore's debut, the number one qualm that I had with most To-Do apps was that my task lists were only ever accessible via the iDevice. However, just like OmniFocus, Things also works with the identically-named Mac sibling* and seamlessly syncs your to-dos over a local WiFi network.

The appeal of Things isn't just that it syncs, however. The application has always been easy to use, and unlike some competitors, friendly to those not versed in the David Allen Getting Things Done methodology. It's also got a delightful user interface: elegant, admittedly rather beautiful on the eye, the app is one of the few I've tried that actually kept using from day one.

In amongst a swathe of lacklustre applications on the AppStore,Things (like my other favourites Exposure and Twitterrific) is one of the few apps to look, feel and work as though Apple themselves produced it.

* The Mac-only desktop version of Things at the time of writing is still in 'preview' [beta], however the developers have announced it will launch at Macworld Expo in January for $49.

Smart To Do List is a simple Windows utility for keeping track of your tasks. You can set up multiple projects for things like household chores, work projects, or vacation planning. Then you enter a list of tasks you need to accomplish for each project. Just check them off one at a time as you complete them.

The program also includes some nice features like the ability to mark tasks as high, medium, or low priority and to add tags that make it easy to filter your tasks. You can save lists as templates to use again later. And you can install Smart To Do Lists to a flash drive to run on any computer.

The program is available for $14.95. Or you can run the trial version which has all the same features as the full version but only lets you manage 2 projects at a time.

[via Web Worker Daily]

Having a personal assistant is great. If you need a cup of tea, your dry cleaning done or someone to walk the dog simply send your personal assistant out to do those things. If you lack the finances to retain the services of a personal assistant you can get one for free from macscheduler.

Unfortunately, Scheduler for Mac will not get get you a cup of tea or any of the other stuff that a real live personal assistant would do because after all Scheduler for Mac is a program on a computer. But what it can do is automate.

Unlike other basic schedulers that just present you with a dialog box letting you know that you should start on those sales charts now, Scheduler for Mac will actually open up your spreadsheet application as well as the document ready for your review. Scheduler for Mac has incorporated a very easy to use automation process along side the standard scheduling options. When setting up a new task, select the file or application you want open and when the time comes Scheduler for Mac will handle the rest.

Aside from the usual office documents you can also schedule websites to open (think eBay), assign custom audio files to act as audio alerts and customize the visual aspect of the alerts as well.

So while Scheduler for Mac will never take the place of a real live personal assistant, at least your reports will be completed on time.

One of the longest ongoing debates in the productivity/Getting Things Done crowd is about which app works best for keeping tasks in order. Different factions support everything from power tools like OmniFocus to good old pen and paper. Apparently, though, some people miss classic command-line productivity apps like Lotus Agenda. If you're running a Unix-like OS, and you need a solid GTD system, you might find Beeswax, a free, Agenda-inspired app, worth a look.

It's a little tricky to explain how this works, so you might need to check it out for yourself, but we'll do our best. Basically, you have to-do items, and you have categories. If you assign sub-items to an item -- you know, something that takes multiple steps to do -- it's treated like a category. Items can be assigned to multiple categories, so everything is flexible. If you're someone who hates anything that requires a mouse, this is right up your alley.

[via 43Folders]

If you're not one of the 125,000 people who got a chance to try out the cross-platform note capture app Evernote during its private beta, don't despair. Evernote has launched an open beta, so now everyone can give it a try. If you were already in the beta, does this change anything for you? Yes, indeed it does: there are now two types of Evernote accounts, free and premium.

Free users keep all the features of the closed beta, with the caveat that you're now limited to 40mb a month of uploaded notes. If you're a power-user, or someone who's really sold on the Evernote lifestyle, go premium for 5 bucks a month or $45/year and get rid of that cap. Premium also comes with the option of SSL for all your uploads (for all those pictures of the enemy base, we guess) and priority access to the queue for Evernote's text-recognition features.