In terms of my more general organisation, I still use a variety of “buckets” (Allen’s term) to collect stuff prior to putting it into my PDA. The PDA is generally handy, but I still make use of paper notes in very-obvious places, especially at night, and I have a handful of computer docs and of course emails that have stuff in. I’m in the process of refining the system so that everything actionable gets into the PDA, EXCEPT someday/maybe ideas (in GTD, any project that you’d like to do but can’t commit to right away gets put into this category). I put them in as a PDA memo when I think of them, but keep them as text document lists on my PC longer-term. When I review (theoretically weekly) I can move things back into the active projects list if appropriate.

Reference material is stored mostly as documents in a ‘ref’ hierarchy on my PC – some stuff is obviously in Gmail but I generally “print” a PDF of it (using CutePDF) and save it locally. Out-and-about reference gets jotted in the PDA and transferred when I can. I also have a two-tray desk tidy that I use one tray of for reference paperwork – there’s never that much for me at the moment – and the other tray is a bucket for bits of paper, receipts, and so on. A lot of it finds its way into the bin eventually: for stuff I do need to keep (payslips, for example) I’ve bought one of these which is like a mini filing cabinet! (Additionally, much cheaper – I have no need for anything like the quantity of dead-tree reference storage that a proper metal cabinet merits.) Stuff that is specifically reference for one project goes into a separate ‘projects’ hierarchy, in a subfolder with the same or similar name to the project.

Something that I haven’t seen covered in GTD yet (I’m only on chapter 2!) is long-term archival of “stuff I’d like to keep for nostalgic reasons but will never need to look at again”. Mostly the digital sort, for me, though at home I have plenty of the paper sort. For now I have an ‘archive’ hierarchy on the PC, but within that, everything is a bit higgledy-piggledy. I want some means of storing it all, such that I can easily make incremental, not-too-frequent backups to optical media – which suggests in folders by year. I have things that span multiple years, though (e.g. documents from my GCSEs and A-Levels, and even Keystage 3) as well as things that really feel better organised topically, like sound effects from various ADC shows I sound-designed for, and photos from family holidays.

(Yes, I’ve completely stopped having a “My Pictures” folder like Windows wants you to. Picture folders from specific trips that fit the description “only for nostalgia, I’ll never *need* to look at these” go under “archive”, whilst random images that might be needed go, unsorted, under “ref”. Images that relate directly to a project (either a current or someday one) go inside that project’s folder.)

There are a few minor problems I’ve encountered in implementing GTD as a student. First, Allen’s “two-minute rule” (If you can do something in two minutes or less, just do it, right now) doesn’t really work for me. Sometimes I’m working on, e.g., an essay, and I need to totally concentrate, so if another action comes in, I have to add it to the PDA system no matter what. At other times, I’m not particularly doing anything, just generally absorbing information or mulling something over, and I can easily drop it to just-do a 10-minute or even 30-minute long task, without entering it into the system. I’m not sure if this element will go away when I stop being a student – I suspect not – so I need to work out whether I really should be doing it differently, or what.

Related to this is the fact that, as a student, I have some very long-duration actionable items, by GTD standards. If I’m set an essay to do, it’s a project: but eventually there will be a single action item which is “sit down and write the damn thing”, and that can take a while if it’s a tricky topic and not meant to be under exam conditions. An even better example is revision: that’s a project, but the individual actions are all things that have to happen again and again, over the course of a few weeks, with the only end-point being “having actually sat the exam”. GTD, being more intended for office/corporate executives, doesn’t seem to really explain how to deal with such things. It tends to cause me (if I don’t actively monitor myself for it) to ignore these really long, hard-to-tick-off actions in favour of doing a lot of shorter but less crucial actions. I haven’t found an answer, either: I’m just getting on with the revision as best I can. Perhaps there’s an answer somewhere in the rest of the book!

(FYI, I’ve been running a heavily bastardised *buntu-based linux installation on my oldish Dell C640 for some time. I’ve messed around with the packaging way too much to call it Ubuntu or Kubuntu – indeed, at various times I’ve tried not just the GNOME and KDE packages, but Xfce as well (Xubuntu), and then settled on Fluxbox with GDM underneath. This was before the concept of Fluxbuntu existed. After spending a lot of time yesterday customising the Fluxbox interface, I succeeded (somehow) in removing all display managers. I then put XDM on, and now Fluxbox comes up, but without functional menus… so I can’t even launch a virtual terminal. Ah well…)

My longer term aim is to actually build a linux install from the ground up – I want Fluxbox, but I probably don’t want a lot of what comes with Fluxbuntu. This might signal my first change from *buntu for some years…

Oh yeah, and to conclude my previous post, Airset is vastly overengineered for my needs, but does sync well to Palm devices, so I’m using that. I plan to set up some complicated iCal sharing at some point between Airset, facebook, Google Calendar/Mail, and other webapps, which could be quite cool.

• Google Spreadsheet
• Google Mail contacts
• Flexadex
• AirSet with Palm Desktop
• A TiddlyWiki with Twab, possibly on my PDA if I can get a free PalmOS browser.

I haven’t yet tried any of these properly, save GMail contacts (sort-of). AirSet seems to be the best option so far – my PDA is generally the most failsafe method of “having stuff with me whenever I need it”. This is mainly a note to myself, but if anybody has other suggestions, info on the above ideas, or wants to test one of the systems for me, do please go ahead, and leave an appropriate comment. I just don’t have time to sort out a new contact system at the moment, but I’ll come back to it…

In other news, SeeqPod is really cool. So is the related Songerize.

I’ve stopped using Gmail specifically as a GTD tool, and rely solely on my PDA as “trusted system”. I am just starting to star emails that contain action items, mainly things that would just get an @email context anyway, so I can look through my emails without getting out the PDA, and still accomplish things. This kinda-sorta goes against the bucket-philosophy of GTD, but it works for me. I have really gotten on top of the InboxZero strategy: once I’ve got used to starring, I will always be able to process my inbox to empty every time I check. As it is, I normally leave one or two emails in the inbox that don’t fit into one of my vaguely project-esque labels, but they never stay there for more than a few days.

An interesting development that the geekier among my readers will have heard of is that Gmail has now released IMAP support on all accounts, including Apps. I debated for a while switching back to Thunderbird, which can be customised into a very nice Gmail client; I initially moved to Gmail because I needed a long-term email solution, and because of that, I waved goodbye (with a tear in my eye) to TB. However, now I’ve got used to The Gmail Way, and their web interface, I can’t see any reason to bother with TB: it’s just another application to have open, and my desktop only has so much RAM (even more of a concern on my ancient ubuntu/fluxbox-based laptop, which I struggled to read mail on via TB all summer). I don’t want to know every 5 seconds if I have a new message or not, so having to consciously browse to my Apps account is a good thing; and I get the exact-same interface here (my room) or on one of the departmental computers, or indeed anywhere else, which means I can productively check email away from my desk. This helps in many other ways – on a shared computer I have much fewer distractions, so concentrate on processing all my mail, and then actually getting on with tasks.