Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success

Hope you all have had a great week. I passed my exam last Monday that I had been studying hard for over the past few weeks. I made some great Mind Maps that sure did help with the retention of information.

I must write more about my experiences with Mind Mapping as they help me with so many aspects of my life.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is a another great post from the MindJet Blog about Getting Projects Done. This post looks at using Mind Manager 8, Google Docs, and Basecamp to streamline your project process. These great posts keep on coming out of Michael Deutch, well done!
• My second link is a link to a post outlining 69 Great OS X Time Savers. Being a Mac User and somebody who loves saving time I found this a great little list. I do most of the items on the list but I did pick up a few new tips.
• My third link is a link to a nice little post about Ubiquitous Capture with regards to GTD. I have written a few posts myself on Ubiquitous Capture as they in my opinion, are a key to success with GTD
• My fourth link is a link to a nice little post about Mind Mapping and GTD. This is from a blogger who luckily attended a Making it All Work seminar in Amsterdam.
• My fifth and last link for this week is an Introduction to GTD for Fashion People from the Ann Ching Wang blog. Nice read from somebody with a different perspective.

I attended another Northern UK Bloggers meetup on Friday. Another great meeting and great to share ideas and thoughts with fellow bloggers.

Wishing you all a productive week, as always!

Andrew..

Tracks GTD is a Ruby on Rails web-based application that is meant to serve as a hub for users to organize their life and work within. The system is an open-source (hence, free) program from the Tracks team of developers and is an impressive platform which offers relatively immediate accessibility for anyone new to the application.

Tracks GTD looks great and is easy to get running as the installer even includes the WEBrick Webserver. The program runs smoothly on Windows and Mac operating systems alike.

There is a bit of clutter to get used to but nothing is so bad that it will get in the way of day-to-day use of the system. Everything looks very clean with functionality having obviously been placed as a priority of the design contributors working on Tracks GTD.

The homepage for the application isn’t too pretty but this shouldn’t be much of a deterrent for most users as it isn’t necessary to view every time the program is run.

Considering the level of in-depth coding which has gone into the Tracks GTD platform, the design does a great job of highlighting significant aspects of the program while stepping out of the way enough to ensure quick, smooth load times.

The interface hosts a lot of great features and represents a solid array of the organizational plans or tools set forward by David Allen in the Getting Things Done Methodology. Everything is extremely customizable, a fantastic trait for users who wish to play with the system and tweak it until it’s set up for the model that can provide them with maximum efficiency.

The system automatically refreshes new data entries and allows for quick updating of various categories and sub-categories (including GTD staples like Projects, Tasks, Next Action, and Someday/Maybe groupings) along with different geographical contexts (like at home, at computer, at phone and so forth).

Users can receive RSS, iCal and plain text feeds as well as highlighting and display options which pop-up tasks scheduled when they are chronologically relevant.

There is also a stat feature which displays your productivity over a set period of time through a visual display, a feature which isn’t really important but that still provides a bit of satisfaction for having achieved set goals and projects.

Some of the options are fairly unnecessary but, just the same, Tracks GTD doesn’t have any glaring flaws that should hold anyone back from giving it a try.

One of the best aspects worth mentioning in an overall review of the system is that of Tracks GTD’s ongoing development.

The open-source nature of the application makes it encouraging for feedback and new designs to be submitted to the Tracks team from those who have adopted the platform as part of their organizational process. This level of user interaction fosters a sense of community and encourages even better versions of Tracks GTD to be released in the future.

While there are other GTD organizational systems worth looking at, Tracks GTD is one of the best, downloadable options out there for those looking into implementing a GTD app in their daily life.

The platform is fairly unorthodox in terms of information input and display but Tracks GTD is also one of the most unique and deep programs currently available.

For that feature alone, it’s a good idea to take it for a spin yourself and see if it’s the right productivity tool for your work and life style.

Be sure to check out this Tracks Screencast that is in Quicktime format and as always, I love to hear your comments!

Just watched a nice little video from fellow productivity blogger, Jared Goralnick over at Technotheory.com.

I thought I would share it. Cannot believe I had not noticed this before and I am sure I will now use this all the time!

Got any other neat little Firefox tips? If so, let me know by leaving a comment below.

This week say my RSS Subscriber count hit 3000 for the first time. It is a bit lower right now but that is normal for Feedburner on a weekend. Hopefully it will bounce back and always be above the 3000 mark.

Yet another Sunday hitting @home. I have been fitting taps today in the bath and seem to have pulled my back, great with a busy week ahead!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is a Mind Mapping website that I found out about from a blog comment here on my blog. The website is IQMatrix and they provide a really cool collection of Mind Maps. Check them out.
• My second link is a link to a post about Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety from Sid Savara. We all know the anxiety posed by public speaking and this post does a good job in breaking the fear down in order to manage it.
• My third link is a link to a new time management system called AutoFocus. I always like to read these new time management systems and compare them to the GTD Methodology. Worth a read.
• My fourth link is a link to a review of Ready For Anything. This was David Allen’s second book after Getting Things Done and before Making it all Work. I must admit that I started Ready for Anything and never finished it. I will, just not high priority for me and it is in my system!
• My fifth and last link for this week is a review of that previously mentioned third book from David Allen, Making it all Work. The review is from Genuine Curiosity and the review is a pretty good synopsis of the book.

I have got some interesting ideas for this week and I have to get some review posts edited and posted on the site.

Wishing you all a productive week, as always!

Andrew..

This is a nice little video from the Internet Business Mastery that covers Getting Things Done and how you can use Mind Mapping to Get Things Done.

The video shows the use of MindMeister. I also use Mind Manager from MindJet on my Mac and PC.

I love Mind Mapping, do you?

Just a quick note to thank all my readers and subscribers as I have just hit my last goal which was to get to 3000 RSS readers.

If you do not already subscribed to my blog, I would love you to do so. This way you receive all the latest productivity and motivational posts in the RSS News Reader of your choice.

Click on the rather cool and very large to grab your attention RSS Icon below if you are not already subscribed.

Next target is 4000, let’s see how long this takes me!

Just a quick post to let you all know that the Nozbe GTD Application is now available for free download from the iTunes Store.

Nozbe has been up to now a web based application without any desktop client. The launch of the iPhone App has made Nozbe mobile, and surely appeal to a much wider audience.

Now, I do not use Nozbe myself, and the main reason has been due to the lack of the iPhone client. So, maybe now I will take a proper look at Nozbe as I do like the idea of having a Web App front end to my GTD system and this is what is currently missing from my OmniFocus set up.

OmniFocus is App based and I use it on my Mac. I would welcome the use of a cloud based web app and will try to get Nozbe working for me.

Full review of the iPhone App will follow. Check out the review of Nozbe I did a while back whilst I get the iPhone app review ready.

Note, I am an affiliate with Nozbe so these links will earn me money if you decide to sign up with Nozbe.

As always, I would love to hear any experiences you have with Nozbe or the Nozbe iPhone App.

I have had a really big report to finish this week for a client, probably the largest I have ever done so my head has been busy and I have not had much time for blogging.

I am happy to say that I finished the report but I do not like having a piece of work that totally consumes your time. I feel trapped with this type of work and try my best to avoid it at all costs.

I have a lot going on and when I have to focus on a sole project like this for a whole week it does upset my rhythm. Surely something I need to look at and blog about!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

• My first link for this week is a link to a post from fellow productivity blogger Dragos over at eDragonU about using Travel as a Personal Development Tool. I love to travel and I have been fortunate enough to travel to travel to many countries and I agree that if used right, travel can really help with personal development.
• My second link is a link to a four part series (and growing) on Evernote and GTD. I love Evernote and use it in my GTD setup along with OmniFocus. I picked up some good little tips from these posts so check them out.
• My third link is a link to a post from TXFX about why Things is not a GTD App. I found this through a link to my blog in the post and the post certainly makes interesting reading.
• My fourth link is a link to a post from the Daily Herald titled Its High Time To Get Organized. Being a GTD Advocate and Productivity Blogger I couldn’t agree more so what are you waiting for!
• My fifth and last link for this week is a link to a nice little review of Tracks, the Ruby on Rails GTD App. I have done a review of Tracks which I aim to get posted this week.

Don’t forget that if you have a great post that you would like me to link to, the best way is to link to me in your post as I pick up all trackbacks and usually respond in kind.

Alternatively, leave me a comment on one of these posts or contact me via the contact form.

Hope you all have a very productive week ahead. I know I will!

Andrew..

The OmniGroup have today released version 1.2 for their iPhone OmniFocus application.

I have been using OmniFocus both on my Mac and iPhone since beta versions of both products.

I have had my gripes with OmniFocus on the iPhone, mainly due to the speed and I am glad to say that v1.2 definitely feels snappier, but still there is still some room for improvement before that annoying lag is removed from the application startup.

Here are a list of new features in v1.2 of OmniFocus for the iPhone.

• The Nearby view now displays each context as soon as its distance is determined, rather than waiting to figure out the distance to each context before showing any results. It also scrolls much faster.
• Checkboxes are much easier to touch.
• When creating a new action, the keyboard appears immediately rather than sliding in after the screen.
• On the home screen, Settings have moved to the Info button in the bottom right corner.
• The Reset Database button in Settings will now reset the saved sync password in addition to the database, and will then take you back to the original welcome screen.
• Syncing automatically compacts the database on a regular basis, but when syncing is not enabled there’s now a Compact Database button in Settings. (There’s also some text there indicating how many tasks are stored in how many zip files, so you can tell whether your database could benefit from compacting.)
• Added underlying support for the new autocomplete settings for projects and groups which are coming in OmniFocus v1.6 for Mac.
• Actions without contexts are no longer considered unavailable

Version 1.6 of the desktop app has just gone to Sneaky Peak so that will hopefully be due out soon, bringing with it improvements.

Zoho is a popular project management program which has only been available for desktop and laptop usage up until last year.

The addition of the iZoho iPhone application is meant to branch the service out to smartphone users who require access to the organizational software while away from the computer.

The release of iZoho effectively boiled down the existing formula of the program in order to provide an optimized experience for mobile users.

This effort has resulted in the iPhone version hosting only document, presentation and spreadsheet access, something which is still fairly impressive but ultimately of lesser worth than competing programs.

Users are able to open, edit or create new Zoho documents and organize their data through this format but are forbidden write authorization for the other two categories.

While it may be useful to view presentation and spreadsheet information the document-only usage of iZoho cuts the service off from being of any real use past a simple convenience for pre-existing Zoho users.

Although there is certainly nothing wrong with iZoho it’s difficult to shake the feeling that there are better uses of your time and effort while perusing the software.

Taken as what it is, iZoho is sufficient as a somewhat limited productivity app but fails in holding itself up against the competition and it’s own, non-mobile renditions.

Do you have any experience with iZoho? Please leave a comment and share if you do.