My GTD System

January 12th, 2008 Comments(0)

I adopted the GTD methodology almost one year ago, even before I own a Palm Treo 650. I tried several software to make GTD work more conveniently and effectively. Through some practices, I believe probably I could establish my GTD system “officially”.At first, let’s review the original GTD conceptual diagram from David Allen’s book at first:

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From the above diagram, we can conclude four types of utilities which may be necessary if you are applying GTD with a digital device (PDA or PC or UMPC)

  1. Inbox
  2. ToDo List
  3. Calendar
  4. Project Planner

And then look at my own system diagram:


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The major software I am using to apply GTD are:

  • Natara DayNotez: 

I take this as the main inbox. We can type words into it directly, and if your hands are not free for typing, you can just take a photo or record a piece of voice.

DiddleBug, BugMe, Slap are also recommended. No one is the best, just use the one you like.

  • Life Balance:

It’s an awesome ToDo List application, but not only a ToDo List. With the context support, we can easily get what we should do at a particular time and spot.

  • Iambic Agendus:  Datebook, Contacts
  • Natara Project@Hand: A client on Palm for MS Project files.
  • Natara Bonsai: A outline utilities, if need to plan a project with few resource and dependency, this is enough.

The detailed process is:

  1. When some ideas, tasks and other stuff come out in my brain, I just open DayNotez and type into it or take a voice record. I map DayNotez to “Opt+Hardkey2″, so that it can be accessed quickly. These coarse stuff are put in the “inbox” category. If I am free for a while, I will process those stuff in the “inbox” category. If it is not actionable, change its category to “Reference” or “Maybe”.
  2. If it is actionable and can be done in 2 minutes, do it right now and change its category to “Processed”.
  3. If it can’t be done in 2 minutes, but also a one step action, I will create a todo entry in Life Balance with a particular context and category.
  4. If it can be broken down, use Bonsai or just Life Balance, or MS Project on PCs to break it down, and then create entries in Life Balance.
  5. When I am changing my context(spot, time or target contact), I will change the context in Life Balance as well and do the next action according to the order.

The contexts in Life Balance:

I use three flags to make up a context. The first one indicates whether it’s a next action or a “waiting for” action. The second one tells the spot or target contact. And the third one is just a category which is used for import and export. Some example are: !NextAction@Computer$FamilyLife, !NextAction@LvQi$Career.

Palm OS

July 03rd, 2007 Comments(0)

I am a Treo 650 user, and don’t think Palm OS is inconvienient although it’s a single task operation system. But abviously, Palm OS is behind the time comparing to Windows Mobile. A host from CNet cite a report to describe the relationship between the mobile that you are using and your characters. That report does’t includes the Treo 650 or any Treo seriese. But the host are using Treo 680, he said with humor, “If you are using Treo 650 just like me, you are contributing to a dying company”.
But today, I read a news from CNBeta.com, which says Palm annouced a new Linux based operation system. in May and this os will be delievered in 2008 as Palm OS 2.
I really enjoy that, especially because it is linux based. Probably at that time more and more applications will be easilier plant into Palm platform. And also I prefer Palm’s design and consumability(I had a Windows PDA for two or three months).