Category Archives: GTD General

General posts about the Getting Things Done methodology.

The Hit List – New Mac GTD App Goes Public

I first saw the Hit List via a blog post over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog back in December 08.

Well, the application is now at public beta and you can download it to have a play with it.

Hit List

The Hit List has come from the Potion Factory, the people behind applications such as Voice Candy and Tangerine.

I would compare The Hit List more to Things than OmniFocus. It looks great, is clean and simple with a great polish. OmniFocus has features coming out of its ears and great integration options.

I have downloaded and installed The Hit List. I am also about to embark on a good look at Things 1.0 so I will report back with a review of both the apps.

Competition is always good and OmniFocus and Things do have a real competitor here with The Hit List. An iPhone companion application is a must so watch this space as I would love to be able to see The Hit List on the iPhone as well.

Take a look and I would love to hear any comments.

MacHeist Helps you Get Things Done

Jott Speech-to-Text iPhone App Review

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Jott
Jott for the Apple iPhone is so simple and effective that it should have come as a built-in feature rather than a downloadable app. The program allows users to take notes through the simplest method possible: talking to their phone.

Perhaps the best feature of Jott is the obvious attention paid toward using the tool as an organizational program rather than just an advanced memo pad.

Users can record and store their voice notes (either in the original audio or as text; the format conversion which makes the app so appealing) and then sort them into to-do lists.

Once a task has been finished the iPhone’ss touch-screen makes crossing off the work as simple as making a quick horizontal line with your finger.

Those who adhere to GTD will no doubt find Jott an invaluable tool for their arsenal as it allows for easy creation of notes which can then be exported to your desktop (or laptop) for sorting into any other organizational software app used to sort out to-do actions.

The application is free but does require a subscription to the Jott service in order to use making it into something of a double-edged positive.

Sign-up is quick and Jott has a strict privacy protection statement in effect so users needn’t worry about much of anything.

Considering the lack of financial investment and the program’s potential for becoming an essential productivity tool, Jott is well worth looking into.

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 4th January 2009

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Christmas is all over with, the decorations came down today and here we are at the first weekly post of the New Year. I hope you all had a great time and I hope you are all ready for the year ahead.

I am sat in a hotel in Basingstoke, UK with only a 2G connection as the hotel has no WiFi. One day all hotels in the UK will have WiFi as standard without charging us £15 for a days usage and ripping us off. Anyway, rant over.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a link to 7 Reasons Why I Love OmniFocus, a great post from GearFire.net, a new blog for me. I am still loving OmniFocus but I must admit that I am tempted to try out Things this week when it is launched fully if not just to reaffirm why I love OmniFocus.
My second link is a link to a Things, the main rival of OmniFocus and the polished Apple Mac GTD App which finally goes live at MacWorld on the 6th Jan. I am going to install this and give it a real run for its money and follow it up with a subjective review. I cannot see my swapping from OmniFocus but who knows..
My third link is a link to GTD-IQ. This is something that is mentioned in the first chapter of the new David Allen book, Making it All Work. GTD-IQ is a a website with a set of simple questions to test your GTD-IQ. Worth a look at to see where you are with your GTD-IQ
My fourth link is a link an article outlining the 11 qualities of a successful manager. This is a blog post from Ajay Matharu. I am sometimes appalled by the management skills found in some large organizations. If you are a manager, see how many of these qualities you think you portray in your style of management.
My fifth and last link for this week is a link to a GTD Summary from the 20something finance blog. Again, another good read and great to see people getting real benefit out of Getting Things Done. I like how the author has broken the book down into simple sections. I have always been meaning to do something similar and this has sparked an idea so watch this space.

Ordering a sandwich and then calling it a night. You would not believe how slow my Internet connection is, hoping it is better tomorrow. Let’s hope I have enough juice to publish this post…

Amazon’s Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions

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Amazon.com are getting into the spirit of the New Year and they have launched a promotion to cover the Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions.

They are taking a poll as to what the top New Year’s Resolution is as well as providing a forum for people to discuss their resolutions. Of course, for every resolution topic there are links to some discounted products on Amazon.com as well, so that can cash in on their advice although I do like Amazon and have no issue spending money with them.

According to Amazon.com, the current Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions are:

Lose Weight
Get Your Finances in Order
Go Greener
Curb Your Vices
Get in Shape
Relax More
Pursue a New Career
Upgrade Your Technology
Organize and Optimize
Start a New Hobby

No real surprises there on that list. If you are setting one of these goals then check the micro site out over at Amazon.com as they do have some good deals on products related to your goal.

My affiliate links are on the links to Amazon so you will be making me money also with your purchases, just thought I would disclose this 🙂

David Allen Interviewed by Robert Scoble

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Just thought I would share this great interview with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (GTD) with Robert Scoble on WorkFast.tv.

The interview is 30 minutes long and David Allen goes through the basics of GTD and how David came to create the GTD system.

This is a great video from two great thought leaders of our time, not to be missed!

What is your Best iPhone Productivity App for 2008?

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The 2008 Best App Ever awards started yesterday and run through to the 6th of January.

Starting December 31st, 2008 we’ll take the 5 top nominations in each category and add 5 nominations from our list of iPhone bloggers, developers, and general web-celebrities for each category to come up with 10 nominated apps for each category. In addition, the 10 apps that get the most votes across all categories will compete for the title of Best App Ever. Please come back and vote for your favorite app in each category.

You have the chance to vote for your best ever iPhone apps of 2008. There is a category for the best ever Productivity Enhancer Application for 2008. The choices are:

Things
reQall
eWallet
OmniFocus
Grocery iQ
Evernote
Remember The Milk
Todo
LDA People
Smart Dialler

I have voted already, and those who read this blog will know the iPhone app that I chose, although there was a close second place as well.

Also, check out the category of Best Productivity Killer and see how many of these you have installed on your iPhone 🙂 I have one of these installed, the Facebook app.

What was your favorite iPhone productivity app of 2008?

Did I Get Things Done in 2008?

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Here we are at the end of another year.

This has been a challenging year for me with some great things and some not so great thing been thrown at my by life. Business has been good, and my company is growing and looks forward to an even better 2009.

I feel like my productivity has really come on leaps and bounds in 2008. I am one of those people who have to be productive. Productivity is essential for me to keep my head above water and to give me the quality of life that I demand.

This blog has grown from 1000 readers to around an average of 2600 readers. I want to get this to 3000 in the New Year so please help me by subscribing via RSS if you do not already. I hope you have all enjoyed my blog over the past year and I hope to make 2009 even better.

I will leave you now with the top 5 posts of 2008, based upon readership.

Enjoy New Years Eve and see you all next year!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 28th December 2008

iXpenseIt iPhone App – Keep Track of Your Receipts

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iXpenseIt is an iPhone application meant to help users to keep track of their daily finances through easy management of purchases and spending patterns.

By making excellent use of the iPhone’s built-in features iXpenseIt can help both organize your expenses and/or get you started on the path toward using any sort of money management tool.

The application keeps records of all inputted purchases and tracks the information in a number of useful manners. Users can choose to view their data through a variety of different displays.

iXpenseIt is capable of creating solid graphs of your spending patterns over whichever range of time you wish to see and thus provides a great manner of creating a visual representation of your finances.

Your data can be exported to your desktop as well, a feature which should help users to archive their spending information into monthly or yearly folders.

iXpenseIt also has the very useful feature of using the iPhone’s built-in camera to capture photos of your receipts so that they can be digitally input before being thrown in the trash.

At $4.99 the iPhone application may be a bit too expensive for some to warrant downloading but it’s a fair price for what the software does manage to pull off. If nothing else, at least the price of the program can be the first item entered into it!