I am not the most organised of people. My systems generally revolve around piles of stuff, be they physical piles on my desk or digital piles on my computer. This has served me fairly well over the years when I didn’t have much to organise but of late I’ve been thinking it might be about time to get a proper system in place.
The one everyone seems to bang on about is Getting Things Done, or GTD, but while I may be terribly mistaken that does seem like learning to run before I can crawl. This probably means I’m exactly the sort of person who should put aside a few days to get my GTD in situ but I fear I’ll just not keep it going. What I need is something that fits into my current somewhat random way of working and tidies it up a bit.
Remember The Milk was recommended to me last week by Chris due to its Twitter integration. I use Twitter a lot so it makes sense to have a system that hooks into that, so I signed up. Being Twitter-centric it’s a fairly simple thing – send “d rtm Do That Thing Monday” to Twitter and “Do That Thing” is entered into my Remember The Milk account with a due date of Monday. There are a bunch load of other commands I can send but they’re not essential. What matters is when I think of a thing I need to do I can add it to the list in the same ways I update Twitter, either on my computer or on my phone.
So far it’s like any number of other reminder services, but the killer feature here is the Gmail integration. I use the Gmail web interface all the time having moved over from Apple Mail last year so it’s essentially my desktop. Remember The Milk has a Firefox plugin that slots your to-do list alongside your inbox as if it were part of Gmail itself. It looks like this:
(Taken from the RTM site)
What this means is every time I check my email my todo list is right there in front of me. I cannot ignore it as I do with paper-based lists and pin board, nor can I just never load it up as I do with computer-based lists. It’s always there. So far it’s working and hopefully it’ll get me in the habit of actually doing stuff when it’s supposed to be done and then I can move onto to a proper GTD system.
But what’s interesting here is I never have to visit the RTM site itself. I can add things in Twitter or Gmail and tick them off in Gmail, yet everything is going through the RTM server. This kind of seamless integration is really what “Web 2.0″ is about yet if I’m never going to the RTM website ho can they make money from me? The “Pro” upgrade is aimed at mobile users and I’m not sure I need to review stuff while mobile considering I can submit stuff by text to Twitter, but I can see this being a critical part of their offering. $25 a year isn’t much really, though, so if I manage to keep using this for a fortnight I’ll probably stump up the cash. Actually I notice the iPhone service has a 15 day trial so there you go. But meanwhile I can see me never going to the RTM site itself, just using the services that patch into it. This is how the internet should work.
Shame about the stupid name though, but what can do you do? ;)
Nah, the heck with all that. The one thing that GTD emphasises time and again is that your system must fit what you need. If you grab a “neat idea” like this before you get the building blocks in place there’s a risk you’ll try to jam everything into it before you really get it in your head that what you need is to clear your own head.
As you may recall, I used to be a bookseller, and was always cynical about the tosh that used to clutter MBS and Business about improving your life, but GTD is blooming great, and I thoroughly recommend just sitting down with the book, going “Oh, I see!” then scurrying off to Staples to buy a filing cabinet.
RTFM first, Pete, then see how the gizmos are supposed to work with it.
There, that’s you told.
Read the manual? I don’t think I’ve ever read a manual!
Point taken, except I don’t think I’ll get around to reading the book. But I’ll buy it anyway.
My point about how it all integrates stands though. Web apps need to be invisible.
Pete,
I’m with Craig on this. All the fancy systems in the world will not save you if you’re just importing clutter into it.
I’m the most anally retentive person I know about this sort of shit, yet my to do list consists of:
1. a long work to do list split into week, term and dreaming
2. home to do list of longterm jobs / goals
3. post it note pad on the desk with this weeks stuff.
4. important dates to remember on desktop
that’s it.
it’s not the means that are important, it’s getting the basics sorted first.
O, and whilst i’m here, there’ s aJohn Welding exhibition review at my blog (http://rhbfictions.blogspot.com/2008/04/john-welding-drawing-city-part-1.html) and tomorrow the fpi blog should have one as well. Really, really good work.
I’m still in awe over RTM after blogging about it a while back. It goes beyond a simple mash-up to create something that far more useful.
It does look like they are giving Google something for free but what are they getting out of it? Knowing that RTM is a tiny operation made me shell out for a premium account. I’m hoping this’ll help them continue to provide an intensely useful niche service without winding up in Yahoo or Google’s trophy cabinet.
What I really need is a ‘can’t be arsed to do’ list. So I can put all the things I put on my ‘to do’ list on there and not feel bad when they don’t get ‘to done’!
I have the RTM extension running in Gmail, but often find my ‘overdue’ list is longer than my ‘to do’ list.
I guess I pretty much use my ‘high priority’ and ‘low priority’ labels in Gmail as my ‘to do’ list, along with my Google Calender which reminds me via email at 5am every morning what I have ‘to do’ that day – real things that involve leaving the computer and so on. My mobile phone is also constantly beeping with reminders I’ve set.
Sometimes I take the attitude that if I didn’t a) remember it, or b) set a reminder about it…it can’t be that important? Right? And maybe worrying about what ‘to do’ isn’t necessary?
Other times I wonder whether I need to streamline this madness, and then I’d get more done?