GTD Wannabe

Drumroll: Your Comments/Questions Answered

There were so many great comments and questions in response to my post about finding GTD Tracks and the subsequent one about what I liked about it so much, that I decided to address them all in one mega-comment here.

1.  Lyman signed up for GTD Tracks.com because the price was right.

@lyman: I’m glad the info helped.  I’ve been nothing but pleased with GTD Tracks – the owner is very responsive.

2.  Bdizzy was surprised he/she hadn’t thought of Tracks (Bdizzy has been trying to guess which application I was going to choose).

@bdizzy:  Hehehehehehe.  You should have seen the review by now; it’s here if not.

3.  Chris commented about his own experiences with Tracks, and how it didn’t work out for him.

@chris:  Thanks for the comment.  I’m noticing a bit of a performance dip when I’m downloading stuff.  To the point, where I shut down downloads if I want to use it ;)  As for the “only one next action”, I’m actually the opposite way.  Some applications died for me because they forced me into that paradigm.  But, you could probably get around it by using tags, as the forum post recommends.

4.  CWE asked why was Tracks better than Outlook or Excel.

@CWE: There really is no one solution that’s going to work for everyone.  I got along quite well with Outlook for GTD, especially once I started creating macros.  However, something was missing for me – perhaps a fun factor.  In addition, when I do get a job, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to keep using Outlook anyway, hence part of my reason to start searching for alternative means.

As for Excel – it’s a great program.  Probably the best database program I’ve ever used – because it’s so simple to use, and yet so powerful.  However, having done a lot of work getting my todo.txt and perl system going, I wasn’t in the mood to try creating another application from scratch, even with such a good platform to start with.  I just want to use something that’s meant to do what I want it to do, and does it nicely.

5.  Robert had a question about mobile syncing.

@Robert:  Unfortunately, that’s the one thing that tracks doesn’t do – there’s no syncing to the mobile.  I make do by downloading the text feeds and putting them on my palm, mostly for emergency purposes.

6.  Ryan suggests that I check out Toodledoo again, since they’ve made some changes. 

@Ryan:  I must admit, I really did like Toodledoo but was put off by the main screen.  I wish you hadn’t told me that had made some changes to the view – now I’ll have to check it out!  Sigh :)

7.  Michael asked if it was possible to create a next action in Tracks without a context.

@Michael:  Interesting question.  I tried it out, and no, there doesn’t seem to be a way.  However, you could make some sort of default/empty context, e.g., Inbox, to use when you don’t want to assign an actual context.

8.  Rue asked about syncing with my palm.

@Rue:  Sorry, as I said above, there’s no syncing between tracks and palm.  I do make use of the downloaded text feeds, but it’s not a true synchronization.  Wouldn’t that be cool though – to be able to do try syncing between Tracks and Palm.  Wow.  …wishful thinking here…

9.  Robert wanted to know what the $89 app was that had me looking for a new application in the first place.

@Robert:  Well, I’ve just posted about it tonight, so I can let you know – it was FusionDesk.  Read my post about the Tool That Almost Was to find out what the good, bad and ugly were about this application.  And I’ll give you a hint – the price tag wasn’t in the *good* category!

10.  Ewonk wishes that tracks could handle both hierarchical and/or sequential next actions.

@Ewonk:  Based on my research, some applications offer either a hierarchical approach, or maybe even a linking approach, where next actions can be viewed in relation to each other.  In my opinion, your example for the hierarchical approach could just be turned in a Project (rem that in GTD anything that requires more than one action is a project).  You do have a point about not being able to link next actions sequentially though – that would be a nice feature.  I think there would need to be another dimension in the database for that to work, e.g., action A becomes visible when action B has been marked complete, or something like that.

11. Luke Melia, a “committer on Tracks and the person who has implemented most of the differences between what you see on tracks.tra.in…and GTDTracks” notes that the Tracks user forum is where he gets a lot of his inspiration re what to work on.  He encourages us all to participate in the forum for bugs/features.

@Luke: Thanks for the comment – it’s nice to hear from somebody behind the magic.  I thought that GTDTracks was a new version, but I didn’t realize that tracks.tra.in was using the most *stable* release.  Interesting.  I’m already reading the forum faithfully (and have even posted) and am hoping that I’ll have more constructive things to say in the future, after I’ve used the application more.

And that’s it for the comments and questions re my using Tracks (GTD Tracks).  Thanks to everyone for taking the time to submit a comment or question.  I really appreciate the feedback :) :) :)