The Quest to Get Things Done

I've been struggling to find a good computer program to Get Things Done.  At first, it seems like such a thing should be relatively easy to get right.  However, I have tried several, and have yet to find any that are completely satisfying.  I have used GTDInbox, todoist.com, rememberthemilk.com, Tracks (tracks.tra.in) and experimented some with the OmniFocus beta.  The key features that I cannot live without are:

1. Keyboard access - the *entire* interface must be keyboard accessible.  I should be able to query, complete, and create todo items with just my keyboard.
2. Email integration - many todos come via email, so it's critical to be able to turn those emails into todos.
3. Overviews - I want to see my actions all at once, grouped by context or by project as I choose.
4. Focused views - I want to be able to limit my view and just look at actions in a specific project or context.
5. Web access - I want to store my data on the web, so I can access the data from anywhere.
6. Hosted access - I want it to be on someone else's server, so I don't have to worry about setting up a server, backing it up, etc. on my own!
7. Cheap/free - I do not want to pay for this service.  Feel free to put Google Ads or something, but I don't want to pay for this.
8. Fast - it should be quick to load, create, complete actions, etc.
9. Archiving - Good at archiving completed projects and actions without creating clutter.
   

Sadly, while each of these applications all support some of the above features, I have yet to find one that supports all.  Here are my assessments of the above applications:

1. GTDInbox - Integrates well with email, provides good focused views, web accessible, hosted access, and free.  Does not have good keyboard shortcuts for creating, or completing actions, somewhat slow (because it sits on top of GMail), and archiving projects creates some mess.
2. Rememberthemilk.com - Excellent keyboard access.  Web-based, hosted service, free, and fast.  It does have email integration.  It is pretty good at archiving completed projects and actions without creating clutter, though over time it will accumulate a long list of 'archived' lists.  It supports focused views well.  Really, the main place that RTM fails is in allowing good overviews of projects and contexts.  You have to mouse over each item to see what tags it has.  In my RTM GTD system, the tags are the projects and contexts, so the tags are critical to understanding the list item.  Having to mouse over each one makes that really hard!  There are two things that could be done to improve this:
1. Allowing lists to display 'grouped' sub-lists by tag (the user could specify a list of tags to use for grouping, which would appear as sub-headings inside of the bigger list)
   
2. Displaying tags directly on the list item.
3. Todoist.com - is web-based, fast, and hosted.  It supports some keyboard shortcuts, and email integration.  It is free.  It does well at providing focused Project views.  You can use tags to simulate contexts, but it is hard to review the big picture of the contexts you use.  I'm not sure how it does with Archiving.  The main failing points of todoist are the Overviews, and it could have better keyboard access.  Similar to rememberthemilk, you can 'tag' your actions with contexts to enable searching.  However, central to GTD is the idea that you review actions by context (when you can do them, and what you need to do them) rather than by project (what you are doing and why).  Todoist gives a solid overview of your projects, and you can review actions by project.  You can search for tags, and use tags as contexts, but this makes it hard to look at the big picture with respect to contexts.
4. Tracks - is web-based, can be found hosted for free at http://tracks.tra.in/, and supports some keyboard shortcuts.  You can create actions with keyboard shortcuts, but you cannot complete them with the keyboard.  This is the main limitation to the application.  I would like to see keyboard navigation a-la GMail, or rememberthemilk.com.  It is reasonably fast, and does a pretty good job of archiving (same issues as RTM).  It looks like there's some experimental email integration, but not easy to get at without chatting with the sysadmin.  This application really shines in its Overviews.  When you add tasks by project, it shows them all listed by context.  You can hide and show your contexts as you like.  It also provides decent focused views by context or by project.  I like this application a lot.
5. OmniFocus - I really like OmniGroup, and their applications are slick.  I really want to like this application.  It supports excellent keyboard access, focused views, overviews, and is fast.  It does support some web access, but I don't like the way it's done - it sets up your mac as a web server, and makes you access your todos over the net via your mac.  That means that if my mac dies, or is asleep, or isn't on the net at all, I can't access my todos.  That's not acceptable to me, so I have been unable to really dig in and learn this application very well.

That's all for now.  Please let me know if you have any good leads to applications I should try.

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OS X System Lockups

The way my Macbook Pro has been behaving recently is troubling me.  I have experienced frequent system lockups - unable to force quit applications or do anything to remedy the issue.  The only way I seem to be able to fix it is to hard reboot the machine (which I hate to do!).  I have a few leads, but nothing solid yet:

1.  10.4.10 - I have seen some threads pointing to faulty airport network drivers under 10.4.10.  Since I am running 10.4.10 over an airport network most of the time, this could contribute to the issue.  None of the threads I have seen mention a complete freeze, however.  For that reason, I think that this cannot be the root cause of the issue, but just a contributing factor.

2.  Firefox 2.0.0.5 - I have found several threads that blame Firefox versions after 2.0.0.3 for system freezing, memory leaks, and other issues.  Many of these threads even suggest that the issues are cross-platform.  However, I have seen this issue a few times when no browser at all was open.  Also, I have tried using the Intel-optimized builds at http://www.beatnikpad.com/ which seemed to work better (but still exhibited the freeze), and Flock (same thing happened).  It could be the combination of the browser (network connections) + the airport bug, but still seems far-fetched.

3.  Lookupd crash - there are many threads out there that mention that lookupd can crash, leaving behind symptoms that are remarkably similar to those I have seen.  Spinning beach balls, inability to force quit, and general unresponsiveness of the system are symptoms.  In fact, I have seen messages like 'launchd: Server 47c3 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[6486]: exited abnormally: Hangup' in my system logs, which strongly suggest this may be the issue.  Unfortunately, despite installing Unlockupd (which most point to as a solution to this issue), it has recurred.

4.  cmd-tab freeze - in a recent version of OS X, there were numerous complaints of a freeze that occurred while switching applications using cmd-tab.  I have not seen mention of this occurring in 10.4.10.

I have tried the usual suspects - repairing permissions, checking for corrupted preference files, disk repair, removing system caches, rebuilding the extensions cache.  None of these seem to have fixed the issue yet.  I can't wait  for the next incremental release - this constant crashing is driving me crazy!

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