When my wife and I decide to go out to eat, I’m usually the one forced to make the decision of where to go. When I’m not feeling particular I try to push the decision back to her. Invariably though, she will ask me to give her some choices first. This process usually consists of me racking my brain for several minutes, some minor bickering about who usually makes the decisions on where to go, and ends a forced decision and neither of us too happy about how we got there.

It dawned on me today that I should keep a list of favorite restaurants, categorized by location to make this process a little less stressful. So, if I’m up North of town I can pull up my “Restaurants North” list and quickly be able to rattle off 3 or 4 choices. Within each list it is also helpful to group restaurants by how healthy they are. Currently my wife and I are trying to eat better so being able to go directly to the list of all the healthy restaurants would make the process even quicker. The lists can easily be kept in any cell phone these days using a simple notepad application.

How do you keep your favorite dining locations organized?

I am just finished reading the bestselling book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. While I like much of the GTD system, and I’ve actually used a lot of the GTD tricks for a couple of years now, I feel like it’s a very heavy system to use, especially for someone who uses the paper-based system described in the book. I’m still having trouble picturing the entire system in my head (something that is crucial is one is to implement and sustain it on a dialy basis).

A lot of people I’ve talked to who have either read (or started and never finished) Allen’s book have said that the system is too complex, especially when trying to set up the system from scratch. Without a productivity coach sitting beside you making sure you’ve emptied everything from your brain into your system I can’t imagine finding the time to completely implement the system over the course of a weekend. While I think GTD definitely has merit (it’s obviously been successful based on the anecdotes and volume sales if it’s a national bestseller), I think it would benefit from the following suggestions to increase its simplicity.

1. Digital GTD. In the digital age, more emphasis should be placed on a digital GTD solution. I realize that some people may not have such a multitude of actions so as to warrant a digital system but those who do should really consider one. The ability to prioritize tasks, in my opinion, is crucial when you have a large amount of tasks. Paper or note software on a PDA/Smartphone can be cumbersome. There are now many FREE digital GTD systems online that are actually quite good, generally providing some sort of dashboard that let’s you see a lot of information at once. Some will even calculate suggestions for “Next Action” items for you. I use Toodledo.com on a daily basis. In fact, I think Toodledo is so good I just upgraded to the Pro account for a mere $15/yr so that I can do things like add subtasks and see task completion metrics. There are also other free systems out there like Remember the Milk and Vitalist that are also capable. A good comparison of many of the online GTD systems is located here.
2. Tighter integration with email systems. This is a big one in my opinion. While I use Toodledo to manage all of my tasks, I still have email that I have to manage as well as a separate system. I’m always thinking “wouldn’t it be great if I could just integrate Toodledo into Gmail or Outlook”. There are some ways to integrate with Gmail but they’re more hacks than true integration. I’ve tried a product called TrogBar from Priacta and while it does integrate with Outlook, I found it to be a bit combersome and dropped it after a few months.
3. Better intelligence. There is some basic intelligence in a lot of the GTD systems available but I don’t think the apps are smart enough yet. Toodledo has a very basic Scheduler that, given the priority of tasks, will tell you what you should be doing next. But this feature seems infantile at the moment. I hope the developers will expand it in the future. TrogBar actually has a more advanced “scheduler” feature but I often didn’t understand why it would suggest certain tasks. Perhaps this is because of the complexity of attributes that GTD allows for tasks (i.e. priority, due date, start date, status, etc.). Again, I think this will evolve as well with time.

What improvements would you like to see in your GTD system?

Yesterday was an exciting day for Google. They have generated gigawatts of buzz surrounding the announcement of an unreleased Google App called Wave. So what is Google Wave?  Is it a gnarly, surfable wall of coolness or just a realtime mashed-up rehash of distracting technologies?  Wave, according to the Official Google Blog, Wave will combine all of the currently popular methods of communication (email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, and others) into one monolithic system into what Google thinks the world really needs. Talking about the inspiration behind Wave, Lars Rasmussen, co-creator of Google Maps with his brother Jens, said:

“email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the ’60s to imitate analog formats - email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented - blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. - and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point; I was immediately sold”

If you read over the feature list for Wave, you’ll notice a glaring undertone. That is, Wave will form a massive, gelatinous goo of communication between every popular web technology. Think this stinks of Microsoft? Mary-Jo Foley (ZDNet) and others sure think so. But before you file your Google Wave anti-trust lawsuit, let’s consider whether or not that’s actually a bad thing.

The general sentiment among software users that I know who’ve been forced to use Windows and its associated brands is that, “Microsoft sucks but it’s got market share so I guess I’ll just deal with it”. Add to that the tarnishing aftertaste everyone seems to remember when the United States took Microsoft to court because they were suspicious the company was trying to create a “monopoly on the PC operating system market”. But, if Google tried to create a monopoly I don’t think it would have the same effect as it did in Microsoft’s case. Google tends to be a friendlier company, touting Green programs, and offering tons of free software. Google is still not an Operating System company, at least not yet and not in the traditional sense. Google owns all the hardware and users simply connect with a browser. Google also tends to have a better user experience record than Microsoft. So would it be such a bad thing if all your work were done using Google Apps?

Not everything from Google necessarily turns to gold but most of it is a hell of a lot better than what Microsoft tends to kludge together. At this point I think it’s premature to say whether Wave will be a hit or not but it’s clear that the positive hype certainly has more momentum. In all honesty, the thought of combining Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google Docs, etc. into a single application sounds like both a software utopia and a distraction nightmare. Google Wave certainly has potential for both…