GTD, Google Calendar, and Wetting Your Pants
April 20th, 2006 | by GTD Wannabe |Are you a google-maniac? Love GTD? Got so excited about the new Google Calendar functionality that you almost wet your pants? Yeah? Me too! I was excited about another cool Google invention, but I never really thought about melding it into my GTD toolset (which is currently undergoing some changes, but that’s another post…)
Anyway, I was just asked by Isaac of the relatively new Isaac Bowman Thinking Outside the Box blog to check out a post he just did on implementing GTD with Google’s new calendar. Ever happy to oblige, I just checked it out. Very interesting. Especially for people who want to avoid the “man” and Outlook. (I’ll let you in on a little secret – one of the reasons I like Outlook is because I like how the calendar looks. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone.) But when I saw Google’s version of the calendar, I was tempted. Very very tempted. It’s a nice, clean interface, with the kind of views I like, i.e., monthly, weekly.
I found Isaac’s post very informative – and it’s got great examples/screenshots. I remember when I first looked at the Calendar a few days ago, I was disappointed because all of my calendar entries would be the same colour – and I like to colour code them by their nature, e.g., +ToDo vs. +Hard vs. +Info, etc. Isaac’s post showed me that it is painfully easy to create *multiple calendars*. Duh – it’s so elegant! He’s even got different calendars in order to distinguish between Next Actions and Hard Landscape items. I think that there’s only one tiny flaw in using the Calendar as your sole NA holder though – you would end up dating everything. However, if you were to combine the Calendar for your hard landscape (and those NAs that *have* to get done on a particular day), with the older whitepaper for using Gmail with GTD, you could have a very slick, online system.
Now, I can see how I could actually move from Outlook to the Google Calendar. There are two things that would hold me back:
- I hate to be solely tied to anything that has to be online. What happens when I’m out camping or whatever, and have no internet access? Yes, one could argue that I shouldn’t be working anyway, but that’s besides the point ;)
- I’m still attached to my Palm, and although there’s a way to import into Google, there’s no way that I can figure out to export it to Palm. (At least, none that I know of.)
But besides that, it looks like an interesting option. And thanks Isaac, for writing up such a great intro to it!
8 Responses to “GTD, Google Calendar, and Wetting Your Pants”
By on Apr 21, 2006 | Reply
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been so bummed out b/c I can’t figure out how to implement GTD using Gmail and the new Google Calendar.
I thought, “There’s GOT to be a way to use this new calendar, b/c it’s soooo cool!”
I’ve been reluctant for the exact same reasons you mentioned; I’m basically married to my PDA. I use Outlook to sync Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks and LOVE it. I used David Allen’s method for setting up views to show my Calendar & tasks grouped by category (@computer-work, @Computer-home, @anywhere, etc).
http://www.davidco.com/store/catalog/GTD-and-Outlook-p-16173.php
There are a few things keeping me from moving 100% to Google for GTD. One is the fact that I need to be able to quickly enter tasks anywhere. I can do this with the Palm, but not with Google. And, I like being able to see my tasks, calendar, etc while not at my computer. I could use a HPDA, but I don’t want to go that route either.
If you hear of anyone that knows how to make this happen (Google syncing easily with Palm), please post.
http://ThisThatOther.Net/Blog
By on Apr 21, 2006 | Reply
Glad the post was useful. You know, I’m actually experimenting with *not* using Outlook for my tasks right now. Gasp. I’ve been playing with something for a week (a text file-based system, with HPDA templates thrown in every now and then.) I’m not sure if I’ll stick to it, since it doesn’t sync as nicely with my Palm, but I am learning a lot more about Perl. I’ll post about it in a few weeks or so, when I decide if the experiment was a success or not.
By on Jun 14, 2006 | Reply
What palm do you use?
By on Jun 14, 2006 | Reply
Palm Zire 72
By on Dec 8, 2006 | Reply
Checkout http://www.GooSync.com for getting your calendar on your Palm. Just checked and Palm’s look to be supported. I’ve been using it for about a week on my PPC and love it.
This gives you the advantages of working online in your Google Calendar and then offline on your handheld. Synching them up when you get back to a connection…
By on Dec 8, 2006 | Reply
@Aaron: Thanks for the link. I recall seeing a post about GooSync on DownloadSquad, but the comments there were enough to make me pause. Then, when I decided to check it out today, I completely halted. The registration page is insane. There’s no reason they need my physical address, date of birth, and gender. In addition, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the fact that I’m expected to type in my gmail name and password on the same page. Too creepy for me – I’d rather get a goosync account, and then provide them with the info linking to my gmail account. So, no go for me.
By on May 8, 2007 | Reply
GTD for Gmail link is broken I think…
By on May 8, 2007 | Reply
Hmmm, the original site seems to have disappeared, at least for now.
With Google, I was able to find another link for the paper. See http://spaceagewasteland.com/gtd%20with%20gmail.pdf