I know David maintains that the flexibility to choose your own list manager is a strength of GTD but I disagree, I think it's a weakness.

There is no one obvious solution for a list manager and this puts up a huge psychological barrier to entry. Given that you don't know what a 'good' list manager looks like until you've tried a few you are almost guaranteed some number of false starts. Too many false starts and frustration sets in and GTD gets dismissed as a nice idea but ultimately not practical. It's probably impossible to measure but I wonder out of all the people that are exposed to GTD how many keep a successful, trusted, system running for a year or more?

The list manager should be transparent to your daily operation in the way that the browser is transparent to surfing the web (you really don't notice that you are interacting with it most of the time). Commonly available business tools like the MS Office suite are not well suited to GTD. They can be coerced into maintaining GTD lists but they never achieve the transparency required to make it easier to use the list manager rather than your memory.

I know that no single list manager will likely work for every type of person but I think Davidco could take GTD to the next level if you come up with some set of affordable products ($90 for a leather notepad, really??) that will address GTD list management for 80% of the world.

If nothing else I would have thought it would just make plain business sense. Right now it would seem like the business can only scale either by selling more books or by adding more coaches. If you were to produce a set of products, especially software products, the business can scale infinitely.

If I had to architect a solution that would work for me I'd implement an server based list manager that would sit on servers owned by Davidco and accessed over the internet through either a web browser or standalone software client. Standalone software allows for a richer user interface experience and offline access to data while the web browser would provide baseline access anywhere a web browser is available. The clients would be free but users would be charged for access to the servers. The key is to invest in making the system "just work" in the way that TiVo just works (people pay real money every month to get the TiVo service when Microsoft offers a completely free alternative in it's Windows OS).

Great post. Thanks Kelly. What are some list managers you'd recommend for someone using a Mac. It seems there are a lot of list managers for the PC world.

Hi Tim,

I'm not on a Mac, but Omnifocus seems to be a popular one for implementing GTD (but I can't say I've used it to know how well it does with the methodology.) Entourage is another one Mac users seem to like.

Kelly

Kelly, nice post. And the list manager is central.

Over about 3 years, I've evolved a complete list manager on a small stack of index cards with a single bulldog clip. Seriously. If you are interested in a description and some photos, let me know. It might be helpful for some folks.

I've only "discovered" the world of GTD and your blog twelve days ago after visiting the Omnigroup website; just finished today listening to David's audiobook "Getting Things Done (Unabridged)".

I'm now learning to use OmniFocus on my mac at home and Excel at work (Windows only environment). At work, I'm currently using a combination of your two Excel templates (18 January 08) and that of Joe Rodgers, but its still early days.

My in-trays now consists of a stack (four trays) In-tray/Actions/Projects/WaitingFor (to my left) and a separate Out-tray (on my right). Is that excessive, would a simple In-tray/Pending/Out-tray combination be better/easier?

Hi,

the best list manager I found is a Project called ThinkingRock.
The software is free, runs on all platforms, you may also run it from a portable device (USB-Stick or SD-Card...), and is specially designed to grab all the advantages of GTD.
Get it here: http://www.thinkingrock.com.au

Get more done

Karl

Andrew,

Thanks for posting about what seems like a passionate topic for you. I will say, there's quite a bit more to the company business plan than "selling books and adding more coaches." But I don't think that's really the core of what you wanted me to respond about.

In terms of selling a standard online list manager that would address 80% of the GTD users, believe it or not, many people are just as passionate on the other side of the fence, relishing in the creative choice and freedom to use (and even build) whatever tool they want to implement GTD--whether that's a simple notebook, online tool or corporate supplied program (which is a requirement for many for some of the core workflow pieces like a Calendar.)

But we certainly are looking at all of this, to see how we can help people get GTD off the ground in a variety of ways and cost considerations. I will pass your feedback along to our technical team about what you'd like to see in an online program.

Thanks,
Kelly

Hi Francis,

You've got the core components. It doesn't seem excessive to me. Within my pending tray are my two pending folders, Actions and Waiting For, that I grab when I travel. I could just as easily see doing it the way you are doing it as well.

So from my perspective, you're right on track!

Kelly

I've tried a fancy notebook, Merlin Mann's "Hipster PDA", Outlook, special paper, calendars, and online managers.

I've recently resigned myself to the fact that not one of them is sufficient, but they are all a part of the same system. For me, this was the revolution that has kept me on top of things and my inbox clean for the past several weeks.

I use one of the above systems in different situations, the key is that I process them all down to one (voo2do.com) when I do my processing.

Hipster PDA captures random thoughts and commitments in strange places. Fancy notebooks are for fancy meetings. Email is email. Calendars are calendars. Special stationary cut up into squares under my monitor capture things when I'm sitting at my desk. I don't count voice mail, because it just goes onto special paper...

Once my inbox is clean of notecards, paper, notes, etc. and my email is to zero - I jump into voo2do and start working. I'm probably spending about 30-45 minutes total per day working things into the system, freeing up a lot of time to get the stuff done.

That's what worked for me. Too much investment into one system only created barriers. Resignation to multiple systems focused me in on the process vs. the tools...

Kelly,

Are there any online list management tools to fit GTD and you recommend?

Hi Tim,

There is a great article on GTDTimes (www.gtdtimes.com) about list manager options:
http://www.gtdtimes.com/2008/03/21/92-vetted-gtd-applications-courtesy-of-priacta/

A few web-based tools that I've personally had experience with, and thought did well with GTD, are:

Remember the Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/)
Google Documents (http://docs.google.com/)
Google Spreadsheet (http://docs.google.com/)

When I get a chance one of these days, I'll write up my experience with Google Docs. I did post a few spreadsheet templates that you could upload into Google Spreadsheet to work with them online.
http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2008/01/gtd_lists_on_ex.html#more

Hope this helps!

Kelly

dear kelly,

someone offered in the blog to show this:

Over about 3 years, I've evolved a complete list manager on a small stack of index cards with a single bulldog clip. Seriously. If you are interested in a description and some photos, let me know. It might be helpful for some folks.

sounds interesting
barry

Hi Barry,

You'll find a great write up of that card system by the author, Joe Ely, over on GTDTimes.com:

http://www.gtdtimes.com/2008/04/28/a-simple-index-card-gtd-system/

Kelly