The Quest for “Done”
Here is one more round of updates to my “getting things done” quest: After rationalizing a bit more what is actually important in GTD for me, I came up with Nitch, a little tool which lets you use the Newton’s Notepad as a project repository where next actions are simply handled as checklist items. Check one item, and Nitch will show it as a next action, mark it as done in Nitch, and it will be removed from the project checklist.
I find it quite remarkable how in the end, any of my approaches to GTD is leading back to a very strict interpretation of David Allan’s book and articles. As soon as I deviate too much, things stop working for me. It is one of these situations where things seem obvious when reading them, but you have to come to the same conclusion by actively practicing the methods. As an example, Flashpoint did in the end not work well for me because it took too much time to create new projects. But having a complete list of projects is extremely important, otherwise you will always end up having open loops.