TMTOWTDI

This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media.

Edit: clarified in some places and added more info.

I like to be really productive when I work, and I like to know what the heck is going on. At the same time, I am not the best at remembering my long list of things to do or places to be off the top of my head. While I found paper lists to be useful to a point, I found that tools on my computer made managing my life super easy. Over time I’ve adopted various portions of David Allen’s Getting Things Done action management method.

I am a dedicated mac user (and a switcher!), and I’ve found a ton of great mac apps that streamline my time on the computer, where I spend the majority of my time working or playing (and alternatives can be found for Windows as well!).

Email

Moving from my ISP‘s email to Gmail was like crossing the Iron Curtain. Suddenly I had tons of storage space and was able to access my email through an excellent user interface. As well, search became useful! Today I use my email as my primary inbox for tasks and information, especially because of my iPhone’s constant presence.

Calendering

The logical next step was towards maintaining a good personal calendar, and a great option was only a link away at Google Calendar. After switching to a mac laptop, I moved to Apple iCal, but I back up my calendar to Google Calendar using the excellent utility Spanning Sync.

Tasks

The hardest part of getting organized for me was finding the right task management software. I knew that paper just did not work for me, though I love using my moleskine notebook for notetaking when I attend conferences or otherwise go to hear speakers.

I didn’t begin a trusted GTD system until found an app that I liked. I tried way way way way way way way way way way way too many GTD apps (Note: a number of those are cross-platform). Eventually I settled on iGTD, which is free and was excellent until the sole developer stopped work. I jumped ship to the $80 OmniFocus and have been in heaven ever since. While it certainly is not perfect, I’ve finally settled into a system I can trust to keep me organized and on task.

Knowledge

I’m someone who tends to collect tons of random information that I want to keep. Right now everything is fairly spread out and hard to combine into something useful, but I have permanent links in Safari and Firefox, reference links for the future in delicious (thank you pukka!), whole website pages in Evernote (cross-platform with a webapp!), and DevonThink Pro for the miscellaneous knowledge that I forget two seconds after committing to the database (router config settings anyone?). I also use a password manager for all of my logins for websites, FTP servers etc.

Scrivener is my choice of software for creative or academic writing of all sorts–term papers, blog posts, and the like. Pages and Bean work great for most school assignments and random files full of text. Bookends is a fairly good bibliography management utility (yes, it formats all your works cited pages for you! ☺).

For school notes and anything else that works better in outline form, I use the great (mac-only)OmniOutliner (by the OmniGroup like OmniFocus).

Also, I finally committed myself to having “current projects,” “files,” and “school” folders on my Desktop with everything filed fairly neatly.

Putting It Into Practice/Conclusion

I like to believe that when I work on anything, I am proceeding at the fastest possible pace my mind and body are capable of (okay, okay, three hours of sleep slows me down, but not much). I know where everything is, I know what I need to do and when I need to do and when it’s due, and I have all of the tools to do everything as fast as possible.

I want to end with a special shoutout to the most amazing application of all, quicksilver. Quicksilver allows me to launch any file or app from the keyboard in seconds. But, it can do so much more, from moving or appending text to files to sending emails, viewing and editing my bookmarks, opening links, to controlling iTunes or my FTP client or the operating system…. Learn it, love it, live it mac users. Windows users, check out this list here for some poor alternatives ☺.

I hope you can be successful with your quest to be productive.