We discovered GTD (David Allen's Getting Things Done) a few years ago and have tried to master it as best as we can. We have used solutions ranging from Outlook to kGTD in OmniOutliner which has been both feature rich but never quite perfect. We also know that the OmniGroup is working on a full featured GTD application called OmniFocus which is set to beta in the next month or so. While we wait for OmniFocus, 10.5 Leopard and the iPhone we thought we would dream how it would all fit together in one big GTD love fest.

What We Know

The first thing to do is to look at what we know about what is coming up in both Apple's 10.5 Leopard and the iPhone.

• Leopard (10.5) and the iPhone will be release around the same time (June 2007)
• 10.5's Mail includes Notes & Tasks
• The new notes have embedded tasks that sync with iCal
• The new notes can be organized using Smart Folders
• The iPhone will sync with the Mac & iTunes
• The iPhone will have a calendar and a notes application

A good little list of functionality, now how would we put in all together?

GTD's Projects, Tasks & Contexts

One of the levels of GTD is to have projects with associated tasks (next actions) that need to get done to complete that project. Tasks have contexts which are where you can do them (Calls, Work, Home, Internet, Email, Google). The idea is that you can go to a list of tasks organized by context and while in that context and starting doing. So if you are on the road with a phone you just go to your "Calls" list and start calling. All those calls are associated back with the projects and by doing them move the projects along. Simple right?

When we look at some of the features of the 10.5, Mail, Notes and the iPhone we see a fews ways to GTD with them. Of course, since none of this is released, it is all pure conjecture on our parts, but bear with us as we try to get things done in the future.

10.5's Mail & Notes

So it looks to us that in the new Mail you can have notes with lines that can be turned into tasks and related to calendars (see screenshot). Sounds like Projects, Tasks and Contexts to us which is great.

So in traditional GTD style you create a project (Note) write down a bunch of next actions (Tasks) and make sure they are in the right context (Calendar). You can look at the different calendars (contexts) in iCal or by sorting in the tasks view in Mail.

Take It With You

There is less information on how things transfer to the iPhone so we will go out on a few limbs here and say it will at the very least contain most of the features in the desktop applications. Your calendars and tasks will sync onto your iPhone and should be able to be looked at individually or all together. You will be able to mark tasks as done and in doing so it will sync up with your tasks in Mail/iCal/Notes.

The notes, we are guessing, will sync from Leopard Mail and will be able to handle rich text like images, urls and attachments.

Getting It Done

The future is now and here is how we could see setting up our GTD system with all these new features in real life scenarios.

Scenario 1: We get a new email about a neat new project to start a website. We like the idea so we click on the "New Note" button in Mail (or use the key commands). We quickly begin typing away a bunch ideas and thoughts on the project in list form which starts to build our project out. After completing our note we go back and select the things that are tasks and put them convert them using calendars as contexts (emails, calls, google, Internet). Out of that comes our project which are kept in our calendar as task and syncs to our iPhone. The only thing that is unclear is whether those tasks in the notes are connected to the tasks, meaning if they completed in the calendar does it get completed in the note?

Scenario 2: We want to review our project so we head to our projects (notes) and see where each one is, what is complete add or delete things. We could keep our Someday/Maybe list in a project note that doesn't get converted to task until we are ready. We could start a new project on our iPhone while out and about and process it when we get back.

OmniFocus & Beyond

It is be very interesting to see how OmniFocus fits in these scenarios, how well it plays with tasks that start as notes in Mail. We hope we can step it up a bit and use OmniFocus to include much deeper collective views to track projects. We could also use Smart Folders to group projects (Active/Inactive) or tasks (Waiting For).

Since now of this exists yet it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out but for you GTD people who use OSX, the future looks very bright.