Inbox Blinders?
Things are coming along nicely for the new GTD app. It allows management of Projects, Actions, and Contexts, plus it has a nice little Inbox for collection. The missing link at the moment is that transition from Inbox to Action/Reference/Delegation, etc.
If you have an opinion about this, please chime in. How would you like to deal with your Inbox items in a GTD app? There are a couple of ways that I can see, but perhaps you will have a better idea. The way I see it, you can:
- Deal with the entire list of Inbox items in a Mac-ish table view, or…
- You can deal with them one-at-a-time in a more strict GTD way
The second option would be a method that followed very closely the process diagram in David Allen’s book (the one on page 36). This would be more like a step-by-step screen gently prodding you to make the clear decisions required for each Inbox item, eliminating extra “fiddliness” as Merlin might call it.
What do you think? Feel free to post or email my first name at this domain name.
David Allred wrote:
THis biggest thing I am looking for in gtd app is ical integration (so it goes to my palm)
about inboxes… I like the mac-ish style (like mail) that is how most of the gtd are doing it
Posted on 07-Aug-06 at 1:57 am | Permalink
Need your input for new Mac GTD app wrote:
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Posted on 07-Aug-06 at 4:02 am | Permalink
iMatt wrote:
Looks like the program is coming along very well. Good job!
iCal integration would also be important to me. I’d settle for Google calendar.
Time-fixed commitments are key to the GTD, so effective calendaring is a must.
Thanks for taking this project on. It will be excellent and I’m looking forward to it.
Posted on 08-Aug-06 at 2:31 am | Permalink
Brian Exelbierd wrote:
Why choose? I realize that it is more work, however flexibility is the key to GTD. There are very few walls, and you should ideally not create any that are not necessary. Additionally I would bet that most folks change their modality based on the situation.
Posted on 09-Aug-06 at 1:54 pm | Permalink
laurel wrote:
I came here because someone posted the link on the kGTD forum. I have never succeeded in getting kGTD to work for me; I’ve also looked at DevonThink (which I love, but not for this), ActionTracker (based on FMP and quite usable except AFAIK you can’t look at a whole project with all its subprojects and NAs laid out in tree form), Frictionless (much like KGTD but with added features), a couple of web-based ones, and I am now trying out ThinkingRock. So far ThinkingRock is the only one that isn’t missing something for me; it doesn’t have iCal integration, but for me that’s not a dealbreaker, at least not yet.
Still, I’m very interested in what you’re doing. For me the biggest features would be: 1) the ability to look at/create a whole project in tree form; 2) the ability to gather all current Next Actions into a list, ideally with one keystroke combination or button push.
As to your question above, I agree with Brian: flexibility would be great.
Posted on 09-Aug-06 at 7:59 pm | Permalink
Wesley A Kring wrote:
Working GTD from iCal and Mail is what most interests me.
-1-
I prefer to see an entire list of in items.
-2-
Gentle prompts would not thereby be impossible to implement, would they?
Posted on 09-Aug-06 at 8:24 pm | Permalink
Jon wrote:
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Most of your statements echo an email exchange with Eric Allam of 52 Reviews. Basically, flexibility is key — both “stay out of my way” and “help me do this,” depending on the situation. Right now, the Inbox is a complete list of collected items. I am adding a toggle button to show only the top item in the pile when desired. This top item will disappear when placed into a project and/or context and the next one will show up. Click the toggle again, and it will show the whole list (the default). I can personally see this toggle being used when the number of collected items gets overwhelming or distracting.
Cruftius: First of all, nice name. Second, drag and drop will be supported but I am still working out the possible interactions between all of the drag targets. Once I have played with the options, I may post a topic to cover this thing specifically and get more input. Third, I agree about the Inbox Anywhere concept. It is essential and I am a big fan of QS. Thank you for sharing your ideas.
Fans of Trees: I understand why trees are useful in some situations and that the end goal is likely to see associations with parent items (actions in projects, projects in subprojects, etc…please correct me if I am wrong here). At times though, trees can become unweildy (a beef I have with forcing GTD into an outliner-only environment), so I have a set of interface widgets working together to achieve the same goal with less fuss. More on this when I can show some screenshots.
Posted on 10-Aug-06 at 12:18 am | Permalink
Cruftius Minimus wrote:
Both would be ideal, but #2 (as a list) if you have to choose, so that emergency-scanning is possible.
Rather than (or as well as) using a dropdown to assign context and project to an item, have you considered allowing drag-and-drop to a list of contexts and projects? The item would then disappear from the Inbox when it has both project and context for example.
Dragging multiple items would make processing related actions quicker.
Only downside I can see is when the list of projects is long and needs to scroll, but that’s probably a non-issue if the list is a foldable tree. One that scrolls and unfolds during drag would be sweet.
This is off the topic of the Inbox, but as a tool for review DnD may be nice if it’s workable, e.g. to be able to easily drag actions to a new context with little brain or finger power required.
Also should mention that a way to get tasks into the inbox easily from an applescript or shell script (for QuickSilver/LaunchBar/whatever integration, like kGTD) is essential for any GTD tool I’d consider using.
Posted on 10-Aug-06 at 3:08 am | Permalink
iMatt wrote:
Calendar and address book integration would be important to me. If that’s not possible, integration w/ gmail and google calendar would also be useful. You have a great idea, and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product!
Posted on 10-Aug-06 at 9:28 am | Permalink
Brab wrote:
I just found (and subscribed to) your blog through the kGTD forum. I should say that I’m a happy kGTD user (in the sense that it works for me), but I would rather use a dedicated application.
About the Inbox, I agree that flexibility is nice, but I should say that DA’s advice to process the Inbox one item at a time sequentially has helped me quite a bit (otherwise some things just become stale in the Inbox because I don’t want to think about what NA should go with them). So I would really like to have the option you proposed to only show the (oldest?) item.
About a GTD app in general, I think one of the most important thing is how well it’s integrated to the system: ease of input (like the Quicksilver script for kGTD which I use many times a day), ease of reviewing (following Merlin’s advice, I do most of my ‘fetch next NA’ from iCal, so iCal synchronization is nice, and PDA synchronization is even better), and ease of linking (to reference documents for a project or an action). For instance, most of my reference/project data is kept in VoodooPad files, and I have added a column to kGTD with a link to these files, one per project.
Sorry for the long winded post, but (as many) I guess I’m searching for the perfect GTD tool.
Posted on 10-Aug-06 at 9:40 am | Permalink
Matt wrote:
I would vote for the second ‘lead by the hand’ option too. I agree with Brab that the sequential processing concept is really useful to help keep you focused.
I think a ‘wizard’ type affair (do we use that term in mac-land?) *that can be driven from the keyboard* would be the way to go.
Posted on 12-Aug-06 at 7:39 pm | Permalink
laurel wrote:
Just to say: I’d be happy to beta as well.
Posted on 13-Aug-06 at 10:39 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
Ok, laurel. You’re on the list.
Posted on 14-Aug-06 at 12:23 am | Permalink
laurel wrote:
Sorry, me again. I can’t remember if this has come up, but something else that is really key for me is dependencies. Often there is a series of tasks on a project that have to be done in order. It would be great to have the next one come up automatically when you’ve done one. (Hope that makes sense!)
Posted on 14-Aug-06 at 10:46 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
Laurel, post anytime. I appreciate the input and value your opinion. The dependencies you mention are important to me as well and this is how I am building the lists — when viewing tasks under a project, the tasks can be ordered in whatever manner you wish. The top one is the Next Action. When you check it off, the next one instantly becomes the Next Action. In the context view (@email for example), all of the actions or Next Actions can be ordered too. So, you can actually place a Next Action from ProjectA in front of one for ProjectB and the app will remember your preference.
Posted on 14-Aug-06 at 9:14 pm | Permalink
laurel wrote:
That sounds really great!
Posted on 15-Aug-06 at 6:35 am | Permalink
umop wrote:
I just found this site. I’m very interested in being on the beta list for this. I’m currently using kGTD with some success. Definitely looking for a replacement as updates seem to have ceased on it.
Posted on 16-Aug-06 at 3:48 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
umop: You’re on the list.
Posted on 16-Aug-06 at 7:56 am | Permalink
Bob Sloan wrote:
I’d vote for the blinders–this part of GTD discipline really helps me. BUT, for me, I’d want an option to get next message, OR, next message and its entire thread, since I often get threads to process. (In an ideal world, also a choice of Mail.app or Thunderbird, but that’s probably much more work.)
I too would be very interested in being on the beta list.
Posted on 18-Aug-06 at 8:31 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
Bob: Thanks for the input! You’re on the list.
From your comment, it sounds like you are picturing the Inbox as being in your mail application, so one clarification is probably in order (since there isn’t much in the way of screenshots on the site yet) — the app itself has an Inbox that can catch items as they come up. This is like the physical Inbox in Allen’s system, and this is the part of the app that will allow both the blinders or a full stack view, depending on the user’s selection from a filter bar above the list.
My desire is to also connect this with Mail so that items that get tagged show up in my app. I’ll check into the Thunderbird plugin option as it is a nice client and open source too. Tagging an entire thread is interesting too and I could see that being very useful. Once I get into the weeds a little more on this one, it may deserve its own blog post.
Posted on 18-Aug-06 at 9:09 am | Permalink
Graham wrote:
You may want to take a look at Lotus Agenda and see if you can take anything from it. It was an extremely flexible database for managing ‘things’. There were no boundaries and little structure natively but both could be imposed by the user. It was released as DOS freeware.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Agenda
The program itself was way ahead of its time and still has a dedicated fan base. Its successor, ‘chandler’ has lofty goals but seems to do too many things without doing any of them well.
Posted on 31-Aug-06 at 7:02 pm | Permalink