Merlin’s tip for doing a fast mind-sweep is critical to GTD success, even for those who haven’t “fallen off the wagon.” The recent 43 Folders entry rightly points out the importance of this sweep for getting back on track, but I find that it helps on those days when I experience Idea Floods. These floods may be a product of inspiration, great coffee or some other brain chemistry magic. Either way, they can make it hard to focus on the action at hand. By doing several of these mind sweeps during a day where the Idea Floods are really rolling, one can keep on task and get back to the ideas when time permits without having that disturbing open loop in the background nagging and stealing focus.

One important note: if you have the ability to leave the current task and run with your flood, do it. GTD is a tool to support creative thinking and the execution of ideas, not the other way around. While diverting one of these floods feels like (and probably is) the wrong thing to do in most cases, sometimes there isn’t a choice in the matter. If you’re on site with a paying client (or helping your child tie their shoe), they naturally deserve your undivided attention. This flood storage can be the best availabe option in this situation. When you return to your Inbox processing, give these ideas the attention they deserve, starting new projects, placing them on your someday-maybe lists, in your project support folders, etc.

On Tuesday, it will be exactly one month since my first blog post that hinted at my upcoming GTD app for the Mac. This post is to bring you up to speed on the progress and give you a peek inside the trusty 12 inch Powerbook.

First, The Goods

Thanks to the powerfull Xcode toolset, I had a working version of a GTD app to manage Projects, Actions, and Contexts ready in less than an hour. Yes, I’m serious…in less than an hour without writing a single line of code. This app was, of course, a little hard on the eyes but it worked as a sort of real time KGTD substitute.

If anyone is interested, I can post a quick tutorial on how to do this using Xcode, Interface Builder, Core Data, and Bindings. All of this is free and included with the OS, which in my opinion should be the case with any OS.

I know better than to release the aforementioned ugly app though, as Mac users have high standards. This higher bar is one of the things that makes the platform what it is today. Plus, my planned feature list includes much for than basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete).
After building this quick prototype to play around with my Core Data model, I started to build the real thing. At this point, things are getting closer to a private beta. The majority of the hours are being clocked against the user interface, getting it to look and feel just like a Mac user would expect, building icons and all of that good stuff.

The Books

The Hillegass book that I started with has turned out to be a real treat. He gets to the point, shows nice examples, and it lays flat to aid in reading on a treadmill :-)

I also picked up a copy of Step Into Xcode, by Fritz Anderson. This book is nice because it focuses on the Xcode tools specifically rather than getting into Cocoa or Objective C as much. It is an ideal companion to Hillegass. It is also worth mentioning that the Hillegass book doesn’t touch Core Data so the coverage in Anderson was nice to see.

The Resources

Most Cocoa developers probably already know about CocoaDev, Cocoa Dev Central, and Cocoa Builder. All of these sites have been most helpful when Interface Builder wasn’t. Specifically, the Core Data Class Overview and Build a Core Data App tutorials by Scott Stevenson served as a welcome kick start down the Core Data road. Having a background that includes a large amount of relational data modeling and object relational mapping didn’t hurt either.

One other boost was Uli Kusterer’s UKToolbarFactory. Oddly, both of the books didn’t even mention toolbars and Interface Builder doesn’t have direct support for them in the same drag and drop way as other interface widgets like buttons.

What’s the Next Action?

If you don’t ask yourself this question all day, then you’re not doing GTD :-) My next action is to open an image editor and turn my paper sketches into a kickin set of toolbar icons. Maybe I can get a few screenshots up after that and drop the private beta shortly afterward.

The announcement of OmniPlan makes my previous post about a GTD-on-steriods app both true and false. The world is so not boolean.

The crew at Omni has created quite a stir with their latest software release tease. Many are guessing that it will be some sort of KGTD-on-steriods app. Somehow, I don’t see this being the case.

Why Won’t It Be a GTD App?

I would imagine KGTD has helped to increase sales of their most excellent OmniOutliner Pro app. Releasing a standalone app would possibly canabalize their own revenue stream while limiting their traditionally open platform approach. OO Pro can already support GTD-like functionality using AppleScript as Ethan has so brilliantly shown. KGTD is a reason to purchase the Pro version of OO for a large number of GTDers.

The other reason that I offer to back this up is that I really, really hope they are not releasing a GTD app :-) Seriously, if they do, it will probably rock and I will use it. However, I have been working on my own app and in the spirit of a fun tease, I have included a blurry picture as a hint:

Why Create a GTD App for Mac OS X?

If you have to ask, then you are not in the GTD camp :-) Other than that, I have some reasons behind the madness.

• I have a personal need for this app, which, if you are an engineer, you know that this increases the odds of completeness and greatness for any app.
• I have a solution for the problem of ubiquitous capture.
• KGTD is awesome, but it is not real time.
• Nothing is available that supports the full GTD process.
• KGTD works best for those fortunate enough to work on a Mac all day.
• I have a ubercool super secret idea that will make you giddy.

So there you have it. More details and an official announcement are forthcoming.