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Bobby Travis

This is a post by Bobby Travis, who wrote with me at 40Tech from 2009 through 2012. Bobby has since moved on to bigger and better things, but I've left all of his great contributions up on the site. - Evan

Latest posts by Bobby Travis (see all)

• Easy Access to US, UK Streaming Services From Anywhere - August 18, 2012
• 5 Fresh Android Games Released in 2012 - July 5, 2012
• Google Chrome Explodes On To iOS, Puts Desktop Experience In Your Pocket - June 30, 2012

A few weeks back we announced a writers’ contest. The folks at GTDagenda, a Getting Things Done app, offered us two free-for-life premium subscriptions to their task (and life) management service ($69.95/year value, each), and we decided to give one of those subscriptions away to the winning writer of an impartial review of the app. The winner of this phase of the contest is Josh, for his exuberant and well rounded take on GTDagenda as a service (congrats Josh!). Check out his review — and how you can win the second part of the giveaway — below!

Josh’s Take

Wow, talk about full featured! GTDagenda.com sets a new bar for the million and one getting things done apps and sites based on David Allen’s system.

I will admit right from the start that the site can be a bit overwhelming. There are goals, projects, tasks, checklists, contexts and more — plus the ability to prioritize and slice and dice in a couple of different ways. Let’s just say there is a learning curve.

Once you sit back and look at how it all fits together, though, the picture becomes less cloudy and you see the genius of the design. Your goals remain at the top of each page, to keep you focused on the overall picture, and each tab walks down from there. So with your goals in mind, you can easily start a project and define the tasks that make up that project.

Typical of most GTD apps, there are priorities and contexts that you can define for each project and task. There are a number of fields to complete when creating an item, which may turn some people off, but once the item is created the data is used in some powerful ways to analyze what you have to do.

My favorite feature, that nearly every other GTD offering is lacking, is GTDagenda’s use of a calendar view. In the top right of each page is the calendar, with due dates in bold. When you click on a date it brings up your agenda for the day with the ability to edit any entries and even add new ones (including memos and meetings). I can’t tell you how nice it is for me to be able to quickly figure out, on a Sunday night, exactly what my Monday will look like. In other task and project management apps, I have often found myself wondering if this next item really a Next (Monday morning), or a Soon (maybe Monday afternoon or even Tuesday). In GTDagenda, I simply set the date for when it really needs to be done, and pull up the calendar. For those who prefer the looser categorizations they are still there, but GTDAgenda offers flexibility to those of us who need just a little more direction and specificity.

The final tab in the app is for Checklists. The checklists are a great way to record those steps that you do on a regular to semi-regular basis. For instance, in projects I have to complete on a quarterly basis, I have checklists because it is nearly impossible to remember all of the steps when I haven’t thought about it for 3 months. Previously I’ve kept some checklists in Word, some in Excel, and some in Evernote…it was a mess. Now they are all in one place, and right there with my daily agenda. Falling just short of perfect though, the checklists seem to be kind of an afterthought here. It would be nice if I could assign due dates, contexts, priorities etc., to them and move them into projects or tasks as they become due; but it is a huge step forward just to have everything in one place. By the way, if you don’t use checklists, read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande — you will wonder how you ever lived without them.

GTDagenda is filled with intuitive features, like auto-populating the date on an item when you are looking at a specific day in the calendar view, shortcuts along the right side of the screen for your calendar (as mentioned previously), as well as for projects and contexts. You can also email tasks directly into the Inbox, which is extremely handy. Overall I’d rate GTDagenda as a 7 out of 10. If it had an iPhone app (as opposed to just a mobile site and an Android app) it would probably jump up to an 8. If it had a better integration with Evernote I’d have to give it another point, but right now it’s a strong 7 for me.

This is is of course just scratching the surface of GTDagenda, with so many features you’ll have to give it a try and see if it’s right for you. Once you do please let us know what you think in the comments!

 

Win Your Own Free-For-Life Premium Subscription to GTDagenda!

Did Josh get you interested in GTDagenda? If so, do one of the following and the Premium subscription of GTDagenda is yours. Free. For life. That’s $69.95 per year. In 80 years, that’s $5596.00.

Not a bad bit of savings, really.

1. Leave a comment on this post stating what you find interesting about GTDagenda
2. Subscribe to this blog by following the RSS or email links at the top, and comment here to let us know (if you already subscribe, comment here anyway and let us know)
3. Follow us on Twitter and Tweet this: Gimme a Free for Life Premium Subscription of GTDagenda @40Tech and @gtdagenda http://bit.ly/bgXFos #GTD
4. Like us on Facebook and post the following: I want! I want! Gimme a Free for Life Premium Subscription of GTDagenda! http://bit.ly/bgXFos

This giveaway ends at 11:59 p.m PDT on Wednesday, July 14, 2010. Winner will be notified by email, and this post will be updated with their name as well. Enjoy!

*** UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments below, the winner of the second portion of this contest is Scot Newbury! Congrats to both Scot and Josh on your wins — Dan from GTDagenda should be in contact with you soon. ***