Using outliner program and working from a project list - pros and cons?

[1drummergirl]

Yes, you are suggesting a significant departure from GTD. Which of course is fine, if it works for you. For me, combining projects and actions in one list would be a disaster. That's where I was when I adopted GTD, and it just wasn't working at all.

Actually, I find the palm outliners Shadowplan and Bonsai to be incredibly effective at handling the vertical and horizontal in one outline in a single app. Without going into a long detailed explanation, you can create one outline that contains all of your projects. Specifically, mine are setup in five levels:

1. Roles
2. Areas of Focus
3. Goals and Objectives
4. Projects
5. Next Actions

To get the horizontal next action view you can setup filters that will filter on a tag or key word. I use Bonsai and I set up all my next actions with a keyword like this - Call: Joe/ABC Proposal. I set up my filter to find all items containing "call:" and there is my next action list. My filters are saved so invoking them requires about 2 taps.

These outliners also have a zooming function that let you focus on a particular level. Very effective for brainstorming sessions and reviews.

Admittedly, I have bounced back and forth between vanilla-ish and outliner systems, but ultimately I found it wasn't my tool that was the problem. I had to develop the habits to make the system effective.

One of the biggest hang-ups I found with the outliners mentioned above is that not all of their features are useful. I used to enter all my next actions in outlook and then use the outliner's import feature. It would then take me forever to move those tasks from the bottom of the outline where they were imported to the right spot in the outliner. I later realized that by entering the item in Outlook, I wasn't really processing the item - I was moving it from one inbox (my paper note or voice memo) to another inbox (outlook). Now, I process directly into my outline and use the find feature in Bonsai to navigate quickly to each area of the outline. Things are much smoother now.