Tuesday, May 2

Getting Things Done: am I a Hipster now?

Well, despite the nifty Applescripts I posted on Saturday, I've come to the realization that my iPod is not the best place to keep my GTD lists. Managing them is difficult to do on the fly (since it has to be hooked up to a computer), and the screen is too small for the amount of time I feel I'll need to be spending with the lists.

I've gone the route of the Hipster PDA (PDA is intended to stand for Parietal Disgorgement Aid, since there's nothing digital about this personal assistant). I'm keeping all of my next actions lists on index cards held together by a small binder clip. These are infinitely portable, modifiable on the fly, and easy to reorder.

The act of physically writing my actions down (as opposed to typing them) helps me to think of them as more permanent than the ephemeral bits that were keeping them together before. And there's nothing quite like actually crossing something off of a list... it's a way better feeling than hitting the 'Delete' key and watching letters disappear.

This is still in the testing phase, but I think it will work well. I'm still using a version of the scripts I mentioned (just to keep calendars and contacts on the iPod), but all of the TextWrangler bits have been removed from my personal copies.

2 comments:

Lauren said...

I'm so proud of you for making the effort to find a system that works for you. I think you're definitely on the right track.

I love you!

Harry J. Sachz said...

that's funny... going from one extreme [nerd solution] to another extreme [caveman tech] in the search for better organization... this route does make alot more sense though than your previous one though... best of luck to you...

btw, google calendar and its ical compatibility (with added text messaging) had me hooked from the second it was released... now if only wireless PDAs ran OSX...

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-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
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------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------


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