Insomnio - inspiration

tumblr is acting kind of funny.

GTD Software

Among other things, there is one thing i know about myself. I am disorganized. That makes me waste a lot of time, and procastinate a lot. I looked for solutions for this problem, and tried out many different solutions.

I used palms, pocket pcs, my pc, combined with software to maintain a todo list. The main problem I always seemed to have was that it was very hard for me to keep my todo list updated. I had to keep synchronizing my devices, remember to add stuff, etc. I went for the easy solution: plain pen and paper, but it didn’t work either. I discovered that the main thing to keep my todo list up to date was to keep it with me at all times, so, I decided to keep it on my cellphone (a nokia N95 combined with Papyrus which is a better task manager than the default one that comes with the phone) as that’s the only device I carry with me at all times. It finally worked. I’ve been using it for quite a while, and I’ve notice a big difference in how much I can do in a day compared to the old days.

I still need to work a lot on organizing myself, but it’s a matter of time. I think that to make it work, I have to keep it as easy as possible. Following any GTD (getting things done) methodology, and drastically change the way I think and work will always result in failure. I decided to only keep a simple todo list, categorized by the different projects I work on, and that’s it.

The next step for me has been trying to organize my ideas. Brainforest was a very simple and effective application that I loved and used a lot when I had my palm pilot, but that one is gone for good now, and I haven’t found any software similar to it in simplicity and effectiveness. So, I’ve been searching for a while, and finally decided to try out two pieces of software to write down my ideas and getting organized just a little bit more than before. Those are:

• Cayra, a free desktop application for mind mapping and concept mapping.
• BrainStreamer, a personal information manager

I haven’t really used them yet, so I can’t provide any opinions about how good or bad they are…

Here’s a list of other software I found interesting and useful, eventhough I decided that I won’t used them, at least for now:

• uOrganized, todo list, task list and notes organizer
• Personal Brain, visual information manager
• MasterList Professional, task manager
• ToDoList, task management tool
• Life Balance, todo list organizer
• Chandler, the Note-to-Self Organizer
• Ultra Recall, personal information management
• MyInfo, personal organizer