Casa Jonsson

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of Getting Things Done for a friend. In general this is something people do with books they’ve taken the time actually to read first, but I knew enough about the content to make the elevator pitch convincing. This isn’t the first time I’ve encouraged someone to try the hipster personal productivity philosophy without practicing what I preach. (I also got Araceli started with 43 folders a while back.) The hypocrisy has become unbearable, so now I’m giving GTD a shot myself.

I really appreciate the minimalism of GTD and that it’s directly applicable to paper as well as to e-mail and PIM data. An obstacle for me is not having a single place to keep my lists and files, what with paper file folders, e-mail archives, an Outlook calendar and task list, etc. Shouldn’t there be just one repository for this stuff, preferably a digital one that I can Google? This is, of course, not feasible; I don’t plan to start scanning pieces of paper in a hubristic, 1980s-style attempt to attain to the paperless office.

While I do love all things 37signals, neither Backpack nor Basecamp is particularly GTD-friendly.

Enter TaskToy. It’s not impressive to look at, but what it lacks in UI panache it makes up for with tact in encouraging my oh-so-fragile, incipient GTD habits. I’ve got 20 projects and their associated “next actions” entered into TaskToy right now, and I’ve made it my new browser start page at work and at home so I’ll see it at least once a day.

You should interpret this as a rave review of TaskToy, because changing start pages is something I do even less often than enthusiastically recommending books I haven’t read.