I had mentioned that I was struggling with finding a system that worked for me, with my Blackberry, and thought I’d share the results.

I tried to use index cards and found the following barriers.

1.) Tired of hauling around cards. Tried a passport wallet and it was too big and cumbersome. (Had high hopes on the passport wallet (since I don’t like my Levenger pocket desk) so was pretty bummed about that. It was just too big and awkward.

2.) Got tired of copying things from card to card - i.e. when a card only had two items on it, I had to write it onto another card.

3.) Couldn’t quickly scan over my various to do’s as I had to flip through cards.

I finally took the time to write out the requirements for my GTD system, and then ranked those requirements. Here’s what I came up with, although these are not in order.

1.) Easy to use on Desktop, as well as on mobile. (Blackberry 8830). (Definitely a hugely important part of the equation. Too many apps tie you to one or the other, this had to be easy to use, and easy to use on both platforms. This is the biggest hurdle, by far.)

2.) Ability to jump around within different contexts and scan what’s needed, quickly.

3.) Didn’t want to use an app dedicated to tasks as they typically contain too many fields, or can be awkward to navigate around within the app. This includes the native task program in Outlook and on the BlackBerry.

4.) Must work with, or without Internet access, although general assumption is that I’ll have it usually.

5.) Easy to synch desktop and Blackberry. (In my case, I have the [great] advantage of a employer-provided Exchange server with Blackberry Enterprise Server running on it. This is dial-tone to my solution, eventually.)

6.) Take an Occam’s Razor approach - the simpler the better.

So, here’s what I ultimately arrived at.

…drum roll…

The Memo part of Outlook.

1.) I create memo’s in Outlook to signify my different contexts.

2.) It synchs wirelessly and almost instantaneously either way…i.e. from BBerry to Outlook, or vice-versa.

3.) I can work with the same (lack of) effort at my desk or on the BBerry.

4.) I set up my desktop to show ALL of my contexts at once, so I can (very) quickly scan everything and jump from context to context. (You can see a screen shot of this at [http://www.etthost.com/gtd/gd-gtd-screengrab.gif]

TaDa.

Thus far, this has worked for me and it’s now mainly a question of discipline to use the system, which I am finding to be the most difficult part. But, the more I stick to it, the more I like it and find it works for me.

Just FYI, part of my inspiration on this was seeing an article (can’t remember where or when) about a Google exec who said she kept her to do in a simple text document. I actually played with Google Docs as a solution, but a) it assumed 100% connectivity, which is dangerous, and b) you can’t edit Google Docs documents on your handheld, you can only view them.

Anyway, being a notorious lurker I thought I’d take the time to share what I’d come up with. Am doing it here because this post got me really thinking about the requirements of my solution and led me to a system that works.

good luck everyone, I know how hard it can be to find the solution that fits your requirements.

I think I need the digital equivalent of this system and am trying to think of how to accomplish that. My watch has 3 alarms on it (and it’s not a clunky digital watch - it’s a decent suit watch) and I’ve always thought that might be part of the deal.

I also need to give myself the discipline of creating that dial-tone items for the day list in the morning.

Thanks for the post and I personally think the author should ignore the affiliate link comments…they’re part of the deal and everyone knows that. They actually tell me that the author takes this whole thing seriously. If they’re were gratuitous affiliate links, that would show, but these were/are germain to the topic.

Pax, E

Glad we had this talk, guys. No you two go outside and play nice.

Teacherninja—point taken. I need to get back into thick-skinned blogger mode.

Now, I have to go right now and blog my system…

Mumble grumble thanks…..

:P

And not to sound like the blog police, or be just uber critical, but you are saying you found the timer from another site. I didn’t see reference to that in the post. I guess I was assuming this was an original idea, or am I missing something in your comments?