And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for - today, I unveil the GTD app that has most recently stolen my heart:

First, let’s review my requirements. I wanted the following things from my GTD system:

• a nice look
• easy (for me) to install
• ability to search
• no limits (or at least, reasonable limits)
• view next actions by context
• ability to use a due date
• ability to use a deferred start date

These were my deal breakers. When I was testing other software, anything that didn’t failed one of these tests went into the recycle bin. Other things that I really really wanted were:

• the price had to be reasonable
• I wanted to be able to capture (very) quickly, with as few mouse moves as possible
• view completed next actions
• view staleness - how old next actions were
• ability to associate next actions with projects
• portability

Other bells and whistles included:

• ability to add (clickable) links
• printing
• synchronization with palm
• reminders/alarms
• recurring next actions
• calendar
• timing tasks
• reports

The Solution

The solution I found natively handles all but one of my deal breakers, and I can fudge the last one. It’s also got many of the “really really wants”, and a couple of bells and whistles.

Drumroll Please….

The online GTD solution that I’ve chosen is…

(more…)

The Organize IT blog is having a first birthday celebration party, and I’ve been invited. Whoo! Cake!

Well, not quite as exciting as cake, but almost as good. The author of Organize IT sent out a few questions to fellow bloggers and has organized the responses into an interesting mini-series on GTD talk.

Check out the Q&A in three parts:

• Part 1: What events or experiences initially made you want to be more organized and productive?
• Part 2: Single productivity tip/lifehack…that has had the most positive influence in your life?
• Part 3: Experiences/advice for breaking bad habits and developing new ones?

Photo by PinkCakeBox.

Some time ago, I upgraded my EverNote to version 2.1, which is great, but which has a different format for the database.  That meant that the EverNote Template Editor (ENTE) broke.

I’ve been moping around lately, thinking that all of my templates were now static, I wouldn’t be able to tweak them at all until they fixed the editor.  But they never seemed to fix the editor.

Today, a little birdie (Thanks ads!) that there was a new version of the editor.  I tracked it down (Thanks Leo!) and am in the process of downloading and installing.  It turns out that there was a forum post about it over a month ago!  I don’t know how I missed it.

So, anybody out there, using EverNote and wanting to play with the template editor, for 2.1, head over here to get the new version!

Cute little video showing how not to get your stuff done:

Note: There was a video here, but it was screwiing up my formatting. Instead, head to this YouTube video.

Now I’m going to shut the door, unplug my email, and get my stuff done.Via Ian’s Messy Desk

It’s probably a good thing that I’ve given up on most of my advertising streams. It turns out that you don’t read the ads anyway.

Not necessarily *you*, but people in general. There’s a very interesting essay over at Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox (he has the most amazing essays on usability) that discusses the concept of banner blindness.

The term “banner blindness” refers to the fact that when looking at a web page, users just don’t see anything that looks like a banner, including non-advertising elements mixed in with banners.

Here are some key points:

• Three design elements are most effective at attracting you: plain text, faces, and cleavage.
• The concept of banner blindness is not new; it just keeps getting confirmed over and over again
• The best ad format, in terms of getting you to click, is that kind of pop-up ad that looks like a system error dialog box. You know the kind. Most unethical, and yet, most effective.

What really drew me in during the essay was this set of images. These panes show a heatmap of how users look at web pages. The panel on the left shows where the eye focuses during a quick scan. The middle panel shows the eye focus for partial reading. The panel on the right shows where the eye is focused during a thorough reading.

I find it fascinating that, regardless of how closely we read a web page, we don’t look at the banner ads. At all.

Check out Jakob Nielsen’s full essay; it includes a much better write-up, as well as a couple of video clips, showing how a user’s eye movements track during an online task. Fascinating stuff.