Re: OT sidetracked sisters

Brenda,

I implemented that system on cards in the mid 1980's.  It made loads of
sense and was easy.  I used colored cards to indicate the interval of the
task (red=annual, blue=monthly, etc.)  I got a car box and 43 pre-labled
cards (Jan-Dec, 1-31).  Interestingly, that was really a 43 folders system
... so there is really nothing new on the Internet ;-)  I also carried a
pocket pack of cards held together with a "bear clip" and that set held some
reference material as well as my TO DO list.

When PDAs became reasonable, I migrated to a Palm, and just used the Task
feature for ... well, Tasks ;-) and the Memo feature for reference and
"cards" that had lots of steps on them.  I picked up the GtD idea from
reading the book and because it sounded so good but ditched it as soon as I
became all bogged down in the incredible overhead of contexts and such.  I
would note that the Sidetracked system has as little to do with GtD as 3x5
cards do.  It is just putting tasks on cards.

Today I use a system called AutoFocus which you can read about here:

http://www.markforster.net/autofocus-system/

Some people have implemented this system for the Palm, in OneNote, on a free
web application, for OmniFocus and most of the other GtD centric tools out
there.  I do it with a pad of paper and a small pen that live in my pocket.
It has NONE of the overhead of GtD an so I don't spend my time trying to
manage a system ... I spend it doing things ... which is kind of the whole
point of it all.  However, people over on Mark's discussion forum (there is
a link to that from the above web page) have tweaked the system in so many
ways as to make it as complicated as GtD, if you love complicated ;-)  I
myself, added tweaks to make it have some of the features of GtD that I DID
like, but eventually found that the basic system was best and backed those
out.  I did, however, keep the idea of a few lists and use those in
conjunction with the basic AutoFocus system.

I hope you find a system that works for you.


-- 
Cheers,
Mike


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