OmniGroup: Kinkless GTD and

When I first started playing with the concept of using GTD in my work flow I hadn't read the book. I had just stumbled on Merlin Mann's excellent 43Folders where he spoke of an amazing script called Kinkless GTD. This was a plugin for OmniOutliner Pro, which is also an excellent program that I sometimes I regret I don't use more often.

Kinkless was great and didn't feel as hacked as it actually was. But eventually the author Ethan J. A. Schoonover seemed happy with the feature set and put the project into more of a maintenance mode. It was certainly useable but us gadget freaks love the newest thing and trying it out.

Enter OmniGroup, the people that brought us OmniOutliner, they contacted both Merlin Mann and Schoonover and asked them to consult on the development of their own GTD centric to-do app that would be named OmniFocus.

OmniGroup is one of the most successful independent Mac developers out there, and its certainly not due to them giving away their software. OmniFocus carries a price tag of $79. That certainly isn't shareware and maybe a bit steep for a single use app.

Is it worth the money? I'm going to be using it exclusively for all my productivity needs this week and give it a thorough kick to the tires. I'll be doing my first brain dump tomorrow morning at 6:30, so immediately after jogging and getting ready for the day. If I get a chance I'll write a short update on how the brain dump worked for me.

I'm off now, an Asterisk PBX, a firewall and a nonsensical error message have a hot date planned in the morning.

GTD WebApp: Remember The Milk

I have tried to hate it. I have abandoned it. I have scoffed at it. But I have always come back to it. Remember the Milk is my love hate relationship in the GTD Webapp field. It does so much right, but it does so much wrong as well.

Remember the Milk is not built to be a pure GTD webapp, to get that to work you have to be a experiment a bit and make filters for your searches. And it doesn't work perfectly with a real GTD mindset. But you could make something quite useful by applying saved searches or filters to your tasks.
As you see above I have a couple of predetermined smart lists that I can quickly query my lists through. Computer-Next for next actions I can do when I am sitting next to a computer. Ironically since this list is accessible primarily through a computer that is one list where I don't really ever have excuses for slacking off. Have an Important But Not Urgent list to put those none critical tasks that you would like to get done sometime though. An example of that for me is ordering some replacement parts of a heart sensor I use when jogging. All of these contexts should make sense to people that follow GTD. If you are a serious productivity geek you should be familiar with GTD by now. If you have not you can pick it up by clicking here:

Furthermore Remember the Milk includes a very excellent AJAX interface with hotkeys. Once you get used to the hotkeys adding tasks, modifying them and prioritizing them becomes intuitive and a snap. There is a bit of a learning curve but you'll catch on quickly.

I also like the taskcloud, these are getting more common place these days in all sorts of different apps and are quite useful. Other features abound even though some of them seem utterly useless. Why is there a location feature if it is not going to allow you to just do on the fly location entry. It be nice if it would attempt to solve your daily traveling salesman problem. But it doesn't.

What I REALLY REALLY don't like about Remember the milk is the lack of task hierarchy. I can't preplan a common array of tasks that that need to be done in sequence with the next one popping up the previous one is completed. Hiveminder does that. Other apps do that. Why can't Remember the Milk?

Pros

• Excellent Interface with AJAX
• Integrates well into work flow, very efficent to use
  
• Available with Google Gears, gMail, gCal, Iphone, Mobile version
• Interfaces well with JOTT

Cons

• Sequenced task lists can be a nightmare due to lack of certain features.
• It can't really be integrated into a 100% GTD workflow
• Some utterly useless features

Conclusion
While Remember the Milk has obvious shortcomings. It is currently the best Productivity Webapp that I have tried. I highly recommend it, just keep it simple. And I would absolutely love if they managed to include sequential task relationships in a future update. I'm just saying.

GTD WebApp: Hiveminder (Runner-Up)

The first webapp I'll be writing about is Hiveminder.

Hiveminder and I had a three month relationship in late 2007. There are a lot of things it does better than any of the other options out there, but there are some things that it just does not do as well as the competition. This eventually led to our break up, but fret not Hiveminder is a good choice.

The Interface
I like the interface, but I don't love it. Its best feature by far is its ability to chain tasks and make them interdependent. The lack of this feature with other webapps was a deal breaker for a while and I hated having to artificially play with filters and tasks to achieve what Hiveminder had built in.

It also has things such as the braindump feature that allows you to enter a large number of tasks at one time in the Hiverminder markup language for tasks. It makes it very easy to put tasks into the system and it becomes second nature as time passes.

Once tasks are in the system, you are supposed to do them. But tasks that do slip will then be brought back up by the Task Review function which is pretty neat to rearrange priorities of tasks as your needs change. Truly a useful tool. No longer need to call Ozzie at OzzieCorp? Been ignoring the tasks so it pops back up? Kick the task to the curb in the review.

But here are problems. The inferface, in my opion, is ugly and it clutters the tasks. It does not intuitively use tags to make task views easier. This in the end was a major reason Hiveminder and I were only a fling.

GTD Integration
My personal version of GTD is a bit bastardized from what the actual system is but that is alright a lot of people have their own quirks. One thing that is very important for my implentation are tags and 'duration tags' and more importantly the way that my brain handles these. My brain does not work very well with the Hiveminder tags implentation. I'm sure some people love it, but my brain just doesn't think like Hiveminder does. This prevents me from using my GTD version with Hiveminder.

Pros:

• Braindump
• Task Chains/Dependent Tasks
• Good feature set

Cons:

• Ugly Interface
• Task list and tags that are not intuitive
• Does not integrate with the rest of my work flow
• Not that GTD friendly
  

Summary

Hiverminder is a good choice for your goto productivity webapp. I used it for a while but it just didn't stick. It didn't feel natural in my work flow and it did not integrate with me as well as some of the other implentations out there. Their dependent task system should be copied by all other Webapps. It's not only a good idea but I don't understand why it isn't a standard in all GTD apps?

FireGPG: An easy Gmail plugin for GnuPG

I have used FireGPG some on the side for about a month or so. The problem with encryption in the business world is that you need to make it as unobtrusive as possible in your work flow. If it becomes too much of a bother it just wont get used and you are back on square one. I have learned that forcing good habits on people does not work if it involves an extra keystroke or two.

Now FireGPG is a pretty good idea. It integrates GnuPG into Gmail and Gmail for your domain which I use through out my personal sites as well as my employers email solution. The Firefox plugin adds a couple of extra buttons as seen below and gives you the ability to choose keys, find keys and automatically detect encrypted emails.

Productivity Geekdom Part 3: How I fell in love with a webapp, and cheated on it

If you are anything like me you have played around with countless webapps by now that promise to help you streamline your work flow. Via GTD or in some other way.

Me? I've tried 7 GTD Webapps. And I always come back to the same one after a week or so. There is another one I really like, but my favorite is just better thought out even with its kinks.
My advice, that I should probably follow as well, is pick one you like and stick with it. If you can it will help you immensely but if you keep on shopping around for a better system it'll just hurt you.

This next few days I'll be writing reviews of 3 or 4 webapps that I believe stand above the rest for their userability and features.

Communicating Securely: GnuPG for Mac OS X Part 1

Reposted from my old now defunct blog and updated

I'm a careful paranoid person... sadly very few people share my specific fears about email and do not take any steps to secure their communications from 3rd parties on the Internet. This is mostly because people are scared of the 'complexity' this security brings with it... but it doesn't have to be difficult to setup or time consuming to operate. Apple Mail.app and Mozilla Thunderbird make it a snap. And today I'll be giving you step by step instructions on how to install GnuPG on a Mac, creating a key and getting ready to use a more secure method of communication.

Productivity Geekdom Part 2: Forcing yourself

Lets face it, deep down most of us are pretty lazy. We procrastinate and avoid things for as long as we can. That is obviously not an ideal way to deal with life or work. So that is where little personal hacks can help you achieve something better.

Your body is sorta like a machine, you take care of it and 'service' it you'll be able to enjoy it for a lot longer than those that don't. I'm currently on a personal fitness down spiral that I am remedying as quickly as I can. I was in pretty decent shape before I broke my hand and stopped being able to life weights.

This enabled me to break my habit. Don't ever EVER break a positive personal habit. So right now I am trying to get myself back into it. It's a slow process

This is where the very nifty Habitizer comes in. It uses the gold star system, just like elementary school to keep track of your habits. And the more you continue to do them the more they become natural and well a habit. Once that happens it becomes very easy.

How to make yourself Work Out by annoying yourself into it

One of the main tricks behind me motivating myself is very straight forward. It is annoying myself into doing something. My alarm clock is across my bed room from me, it is set to a loud beeping noise and most importantly it goes off at 6AM. I don't usually arrive at my office until 8:30AM so you might wonder why I am doing this.

At 6AM I usually, even if my body is trained to wake up at that time, a little upset at being up at that hour of the day. So I force myself to get up, put on work out clothes and walk 4 blocks over the the YMCA.

Now I am pissed that I didn't sleep in and when I get bored with my work out and feel like just quitting half way through this little voice in the back of my head says "Hey you! You just woke up and ruined your morning for this... You better finish this workout to make it worth it!"

I can't work out in the afternoon. I get bored, other people are up and about, there is something good on TV and I could be doing phone calls for my business or other things I can't do while I am in the minority of people that are awake. As an added bonus to my early morning work out, a lot of the top executive and movers and shakers in my city are in the gym in the early morning and it always gives me a good chance to network. Many a business opportunity we have had has come from shooting the shit in the gym at 6:30.

Productivity Geekdom Part 1

"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion"
-Parkinson's Law

This week I will review a couple of my favorite GTD Web apps or task managers. I am not an over organized person by nature and I live in a 'creative' mess. I would also be a perennial front runner if there was a procrastination olympiad.
If one is not naturally get work done fast and immediately type person, and truly few of us really are we really need to develop and trick ourselves into a daily routine that minimizes procrastination and gets your work load done faster. In the end that means instead of being weighed down by procrastination you will have more legitimate quality relaxing time to spend as you please.

Tomorrow we will cover:
Problem One: Forcing yourself to do things

I have over the years slowly discovered certain personal hacks to make myself do things and pull them through that otherwise I would not enjoy or even want to attempt. This for me usually is working out, its especially hard to get back into it after having to sit out due to injury or when work stress just seems to become too much.