Getting back into GTD

So I haven’t properly being doing GTD recently. However I still really believe in the system. My new copy of the book arrived last week, after I gave Dad my copy. I’m convinced that with a few bits and bobs this system would be very achievable using the technology I have around me day to day.

I’ve looked at some of the systems out there like Midnight Beep’s Inbox and kinkless Getting Things Done (kGTD). However they still don’t do quite what I need. What I’m missing is a better level of support between my S60 cell phone and my Mac.

This is where learning Cocoa comes in. Something else I believe is that Applescript makes awesome GUI glue. It provides something akin to Perl or Shell Scripting does on the command line. However Apple, in it’s infinite wisdom, didn’t see fit to extend Applescript support to the bluetooth helper apps in OS X. This means that without Cocoa you can’t extend your working environment to include your mobile phone.

The next step for me, and the one that I think will ultimately make GTD work within my lifestyle, is syncing my To-do lists with my phone. Whilst my phone is not the most convenient of collection devices, it is with me constantly. This means I can easily check my To-dos for a context by looking at my phone, and collect if I need to. When I am at my computer it then takes over the functions the phone was performing, but also makes sure it regularly syncs. The important of bluetooth is that I am not required to remember to sync the phone, plug it in or anything else. It just exchanges information with the computer every 30 minutes or so.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to write a new cocoa app to manage my To-dos, use kGTD or Inbox, or just plain ole text files. And, of course, I still need to figure out the phone end. Being an S60 phone I have the pyS60 language at my disposal. Alternatively the Notes program talks textfiles.

All in all there is a lot to consider but if I can get it right I think this would be the most complete GTD system I could possibly need.

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