Getting Thing Done (GTD) and the iphone.

copacetic

The iphone is a powerful tool for keeping on top of your day to day, week to week and year to year stuff. If anyone is familiar with the GTD techniques and Dave Allens books there are a few apps that support the iphone, I've tried a few of them and wanted to see what other people are doing.
(a search for GTD will throw up thousands of results if interested)

Remember the Milk and Toodledo are two of the best known online sites supporting the techniques. Toodledo have developed a native app that works very well and there is also a 3rd party app that syncs with outlook if thats what you use in the office. This is why I picked Toodeldo after trying a few others also.

To give anyone no familiar with the GTD stuff a totally over simplified spiel, you basically take every loose end in your life and either tie them up or plan when and where to do them or leave them open for review. The key is to never have that feeling that you are trying to remember something or that it is hanging over you. You've either done it or planned when and where to do it, inner calm should follow (yeah right, seys you).

Anyway the hard bit is to be ruthless about tracking things and deciding what next actions are, but assuming you have done this or are just looking for a simpler todo list app, toodledo may be for you.

You can enter tasks on the ajax site which works like an online app, or on the iphone, or in outlook, they sync up every time you open the iphone app.
With no connection you have the tasks since last updated.

In the toodledo app you end up with numerous tasks that you can sort by priority, folder, date, or imo most importantly context. also of course you can go by priority, starred etc. It also sorts them by importance based on priority and due date combined.

So you may be in work and at your desk so you open the app select context @workdesk and look at what are your things to do there. Or you are stuck waiting on a plane with no wifi but have your phone, so you open up @phone and you should see your list of calls etc etc. If you have wifi you may open an @pc context or @email context. You get the idea, you set up your own contexts that suit you, @shoppingcentre, etc etc.

Anyway, I planned a long more formulated post over on lifehacking but figured why not just thrown this out there and see if the cats lick it up...