Notebook with "To Do" written with roller ball

Productivity in my Personal Life – 1. Introduction

Productivity, as a self-confessed geek, is something towards I take more than a passing nod.  Having looked into many different ways to track what needs to hold my attention, I seem to have settled on David Allen’s GTD methodology.  Whilst at first glance, this seems like a lot of hard work, once it becomes completely natural to your life, it really does pay for itself.

Whilst trying to pull my system together, I had several requirements that made things a little more awkward than most set ups.  The following were my requirements

Productivity Requirements

  • Needed to be able to keep my lists available to me wherever I am
  • Couldn’t install any extra software on my computer at work
  • Needed to be able to “inbox” tasks wherever I am – work, home, in town etc.
  • Unlike most “geeks”, I don’t have a computer on at home 24/7, so turning my computer on would be an obstacle to overcome when at home.

It looks like relying on a computer program such as Outlook is ruled out, as whilst I have Outlook at work, I couldn’t sync my work computer to my phone or my home computer as I am on a secure PC.  Several other mediums sprung to mind.

Potential Productivity Solutions

  • Paper – a notebook is easy to carry round, however, it is yet another thing to carry around!
  • Phone.  Two ways to use this:
    • App on phone
    • Web app

The advantage of using a web app is that I can access my lists wherever I have internet (my own PCs, phone, library etc).  However, having been caught in situations where I have no data on my phone, this method isn’t without it’s risks.  Similarly, using a phone app means if I forget my phone, or the battery dies (which it frequently does!) then again I am stuck.

The solution I settled on was a combination of Android App Ultimate To-Do List synchronised with web app Toodledo.

Over the coming weeks I will talk you through exactly how I set these up for my particular needs and hopefully you will gain something from it.


Series Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. How I use Ultimate To-Do List
  3. Supplemented by Toodledo
  4. Improvements that could be made

Image by stock.xchng by Mattox

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