First Steps into GTD

I’ve known about David Allen’s Getting Things Done for some time now but I hadn’t really looked into it. On tuesday I decided to take action and purchase the abridged audiobook from iTMS. This was partly driven by seeing GTD mentioned around the blogosphere but also because I’d just come off a week of not feeling productive because I was very unfocused. I was making changes all over the codebase of Anzan and I knew this wasn’t a good approach. The GTD audiobook resonated with me and I could see how such a system would work for me. I could also see there would be some challenges in determining things like contexts. Rather than spend too much time worrying about any problems I plunged into the collection phase which really turned out to be more of a mind sweep for me since I don’t deal with paper much. The resultant list of projects/actions is quite large which served to further convince me that I did need to get this stuff out of my head and into a workable GTD system.

I decided to use Kinkless GTD because it seems to be fairly mature given what it is and Omni are working on OmniFocus. I already had a license for OmniOutliner (2 actually because one was included with my MacBook Pro) so I upgraded to Pro and got started populating my Projects and Actions from my mind sweep list. So far Kinkless seems to be working well but I can definitely see that creating the appropriate set of contexts will take some time. To that end I’m considering using Fast User Switching to simulate a work environment vs. a home environment for my computer use. If anyone has tried this please leave a comment with your experience.

Google WiFi and The Cuckoo’s Egg

Google has launched free WiFi service in Mountain View, CA (originally from Daring Fireball.) It isn’t exactly the community computer access mentioned in Cliff Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg, I suppose internet cafes were more in that vein, but for some reason the book leapt to mind when I read about Google’s offering. Strangely I don’t recall if the book was required reading for one of my CS classes or if it was simply recommended. I do remember it being a good read back in the early 90s and I would guess if you have any interest in computer history it would be worth adding to your list.

If you enjoy cyberpunk novels Google’s WiFi service might be seen as a step toward the corporate states of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. (Google’s hometown is Mountain View and many of their employees live there.) Testament to the power of Wikipedia when unable to remember the author or title for this book and found it by entering “Pizza delivery” into the search. Read the book to find out why.