Scheduling a meeting...

9 more apps to choose from (in addition to WhenIsGood, blogged earlier).

WhenIsGood

Ever tried to find a common day and time for meetings involving more than two people? My experience with this type of problem usually involved a number of emails back-and-forth until a common time slot is agreed upon, which is a great waste of time and resources.

I've started using a web-based tool (thanks, Hari!) that makes the task much simpler: WhenIsGood.net. Simple, free, no-hassle (for starters, you don't have to create an account), and very easy to use. Check it out!

New Year's Calibrations

With 2008 quickly drawing to an end, many of us find ourselves pouring over new year's resolutions.

Venkatesh Rao suggests in his blog that we use this time to do an exercise on new year's calibrations instead.

Great stuff! Strongly recommended!

Tracks: an open source web-based GTD application

Tracks is an open source web-based application to help implement the GTD.

From the website:

It was built using Ruby on Rails, and comes with a built-in webserver (WEBrick), so that you can run it on your own computer if you like. It can be run on any platform on which Ruby can be installed, including Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux. Tracks is Open Source, free and licensed under the GNU GPL.

Many thanks to Michael Vogt for the tip.

Interview with David Allen

The latest issue of the Costco Connection magazine has a story+interview with David Allen. As a bonus, you get a crash course on GTD and its main schematic diagram (below). Well worth reading.

Eat that frog!

Speaking of GTD, this review of the book "Eat that Frog!" (an instant favorite of mine as soon as my friend Scott Bradley recommended it to me, about a year ago) was just published.

Getting back on the GTD wagon

I've been a big fan of David Allen and his "Getting Things Done" (GTD, for short) book and approach for many years. During the Thanksgiving holiday I decided to embark on a "GTD retreat" to try to get back on the GTD wagon. I was encouraged by David Allen's own admission that even he sometimes falls off the wagon (but quickly gets back on it).

My "GTD retreat" consisted of:

• Watching three Google Tech Talks: one by David Allen, and two by Melvin Mann (from 43 folders) "Inbox Zero" and "Time and Attention"
• Adding a few more GTD-related blogs to my Google Reader. The list now contains (among others): Lifehacker, Zen Habits, GTD Times, and Stepcase lifehack.
• Selecting a Mac/iPhone GTD tool. I picked Things (and am very happy with it so far).
• [Very important] Putting all the knowledge into practice, using Things, GMail, and Zimbra (email+calendar) 

I'll be cleaning up my email (and keeping an Inbox Zero policy) during the next few days. I'm sure that the process of going through thousands of emails will generate material for this blog. Stay tuned...