| August 2004 | ||||||
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| Jul Sep | ||||||
I'd mentioned earlier that I was trying out the Getting Things Done system. Well, it's been a few weeks, and it's going well.
My two desks at home are clear and usable. (My desk at work is as well, but we moved cubes this weekend so it's no proof of the system.) My email inboxes at work and home are empty. Pretty much everything I have to do is logged in my Circa and the list keeps cycling, indicating that things are getting done.
The reason I like GTD so much is that it's so tool-agnostic. It will work with any combination of paper, computer, PDA that you want. Which lets me use my strange combination of Emacs and paper. So, here's what I do....
My calendar is managed within the Emacs calendar program. Since I live in Emacs and have twiddled with its code before, it's great. I modified Emacs to allow color-coding events in the calendar list. That's available now in Emacs's CVS repository and will be in the next release.
Since I'm not carrying Emacs around
Each week, I print out new cards to keep me with a two-week view of the future. There's plenty of space on each card for me to write extra bits, which can be put in the computer as needed. Since two weeks isn't really enough for longer term planning, I've just added another printout listing the "important" events for the next ninety days. It doesn't list pseudo-events like the sunrise-sunset I have on the daily printouts, nor will it print anything else I've chosen not to mark on the monthly view. That means it prints just enough to make sure I don't have a conflict with someone's wedding when planning something ahead.
This also lives in Emacs, in the Insidious Big Brother Database. It hooks into my mail/news client, Gnus, so it's very easy to keep track of people. I've modified the style of the standard bbdb printing facility also to use my favorite font. I store it in the back of my Circa.
I had a Palm for several years. I have an Ipaq now. But I was never happy at the limited integration of the PDAs with the other tools that I prefer to use. Each pda has its own applications (Palm Desktop, Outlook) and integrates in a cumbersome fashion with anything else. Me, I like customization. Even more, I like to program exactly what I want. So, a couple years back I gave up on the PDA as a PDA (though the Ipaq is still a pretty good game machine for old Lucasarts adventures and such) and switched back to Emacs, which integrates quite well with itself (being the tool I use most often) and is very easy to customize. (Well, it is when you've been using it a decade.) This setup works well for me.
Well, it's integrated extremely well with my existing tools and seems to have made me more productive, so I'm pleased. I'm still getting it integrated into my life, but I think it's going to stick.