Aug
1
How To Make Things Better
Filed Under business, life, recommendations, technology |
I am hooked on the religion that is known as GTD (Getting Things Done), and I have also become rather dependent on an application that follows the whole GTD way of, well, getting things done, known as Things. Its a fantastic application! But unfortunately, its not a finished work of art, just yet.
I’ve never played with OmniFocus before, and some people will call blasphemy right about now, but hear me out. The attraction to Things is its simplicity. It doesn’t get in your way with its opinion of how you should manage yourself, it just lets you tell it what you need to do, and its up to you to get crazy with it.
I love that! A tool that simply does what I want to do, the way I want to do it! CulturedCode, the company behind Things, has also released a fantastic Things iPhone app that brings the love on the road with you, awesome! It can’t sync with the desktop YET. Sync capabilities are coming within the next week, and I am very excited about that.
But I didn’t write this post to basically tell you why Things is so great, actually, quite the contrary. I think there are some big gaps in quality in Things, and I am hoping that CulturedCode hears me and maybe takes my thoughts into consideration. Maybe. :)
So, shall we begin?
Web Service Integration
What do I mean exactly? Look at a tool like Evernote. Seamless integration, your information is constantly synchronized. Not with ad-hoc wireless hacks, not with iPhone tethering, not with MobileMe, through good ol’ internets. Why would this be cool?
- Other applications could have access to your tasks! Think Basecamp or Highrise, How cool would it be if a third-party could synchronize too! Not just your Thing-suite.
- Centralized backup! If my computer tanks, or my iPhone is stolen, the data is off my hard drive and in the clouds. Speaking of clouds, how much could it possibly cost to support the userbase with S3? If all the data really is XML, how much space could each user take up, exponentially?
- Alternate, Service-based Revenue Stream! I’d GLADLY pay $10 a month to have this capability. No question, I wouldn’t even think twice about it, and I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that.
iPhone App: Include Proximity Capabilities
I have to say, this is a really neat feature of the OmniFocus iPhone app. It gives you your contexts based on how close you are around them, if you define a proximity (via address or something). I would love that!
iPhone App: Voice Notes
Sometimes the last thing I want to do is type on my little screen, I just want to take my “open loop” out of my head and make it go elsewhere, quick and easy! I know, this kind of thing gets dangerous when I talk about web integration, suddenly you’ve got larger file overheads, but compression algorithms can make this not a big deal, per se.
More In-Depth Syncing
What I mean by that is, if I “schedule” a task in Things for a specific day, or even a due-date. It should create a Calendar entry for me in iCal that corresponds. Obviously it has a concrete date (and sometimes a time), that is easily translatable to a calendar event.
That is all that is coming to me right now, really the biggest thing in my mind is web service integration. That would be killer, on so many levels. I really think thats the missing peice to this whole system, in my eyes…its also missing from OmniFocus (I think?).
Either way, Things is definitely worth taking a look at if you are into GTD, and have a mac.
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I’ve been trying a lot of GTD apps lately and tried Things on your recommendation but I keep coming back to 43actions.com. I used Fluid (fluidapp.com) to create a Single Site Browser app from the 43actions website (and then made it into a menubar app!) so now I have a web-sync’d GTD app on my desktop that matches my iPhone - and it’s free.
@Sean, Yeah, isn’t fluid neat?! (it has all kinds of cool JS hooks too…for another blog post :))
I think the simplicity aspect is what makes Things so attractive. My girlfriend can find it instantly useful, without having any prior knowledge of GTD at all. In other words, its as powerful as it needs to be :)
Although, for the power GTD user, maybe it leaves something to be desired…
I really like Tada-lists (http://www.tadalist.com/), made by 37signals.com (Basecamp, Highrise, etc.). It’s cross-platform and webenabled and really easy to use.
Chiming in for Things, and I agree with what you outlined. That app is simply fantastic. One of the first I tried, I strayed trying to find the holy grail, and came back to Things. It just works the way I want to work, and beautifully at that.
For a compairison of GTD software you can go here http://www.priacta.com/Articles/Comparison_of_GTD_Software.php I know I will be checking some of these out.