As you know, there is a plethora of GTD tools, whether they be online or for a specific operating system. In a previous post, I mentioned that GTD should be very simplistic, if not, it will be easy to abandon the concept. I, like most people desire applications that have plenty of eye candy. But when it comes to the GTD concept, simplicity is key.
TaskWriter, a new online GTD tool is one of those that has the simplicity idea going for it. It is cleanly structured and easy to navigate. TaskWriter offers you the ability to create projects, assign tasks, use contexts, assign due dates, as well as the ability to archive.
Furthermore, it has a calendar where you can see all your upcoming projects. When you select the project on the calendar, the notes that you’ve entered for the project appear at the top. Moreover, when you add task notes, you also have the ability to add the date for when the note was added. I am not sure if this is what the date function was made for, but I think most people will use it for this purpose. It will give people a chance to see the date that was added for the note verses the date of when the project is due. One last thing, is that you can print out a task list which lists the name of your projects, lists each project’s tasks with check boxes, shows the due date of the project, and the notes that were entered for each project.
This is truly a nifty tool that will give the busy person the simplicity that he or she needs without getting bogged down with all the unneeded bells and whistles. However, if there was one feature I would like to see added, then it would be integration with a desktop calendar or maybe Google calendar. I look for this feature in GTD tools only because I am a big Mac user, and I use iCal religiously. As a web developer, such an integration is not easy nor am I suggesting that it should be implemented. If integration with an offline calendar is never implemented, TaskWriter will still be the best, simple, online, GTD tool I have seen. Good luck to the developers as they continue their work with TaskWriter.
Tags: contexts, David Allen, getting things done, GTD, Productivity, simplicity, task list