Here is a quick list of some of the main tools I use:

• Laptop: MacBook Pro 15″ [I have the version prior to the one found in this link]
• Email: Mac Mail [I bring my Gmail and work mail into here]
  
• Calendar: iCal
• Contacts: Mac Address Book
• Task Management: OmniFocus
• Capture tool 1: Moleskine journal
• Capture tool 2: Jott for iPhone
• Mobile device: iPhone
• Web browser: Firefox
• Feed reader: NetNewsWire
• Keeping up with Twitter: Tweetdeck
• Twitter on my iPhone: Tweetie and sometimes Twitfire
• Office tools: Microsoft Office for Mac [but considering a switch to iWork at some point]; also use Google Docs a lot — great for sharing documents without doing attachments
• Diagramming, creating flow charts and org charts and etc.: MindManager and OmniGraffle
• Financial Management: Quicken [have to run this on Windows on my Mac — I don’t recommend the Mac version; I’ll be doing a post on financial software for the Mac coming up]
• Running Windows on my Mac: VMWare’s Fusion
• Computer backups: Time Machine

At some point I will provide more detail on each of these and how I use them, but a straight list is hopefully a good place to start in the meantime.

Note that this list is just the electronic side of things (with the exception of my moleskine notebook for a capture tool), and I’m probably leaving several things out. I also have recommendations for the physical side — what type of stapler to get, what type of physical in box, and so forth.

Note that most of the above software is for the Mac. When I was on Windows, I used Outlook for email, calendar, contacts, and task management — and was relatively happy with it because I customized things very heavily (for details, see the David Allen Company whitepaper on Customizing Microsoft Outlook for GTD).

(Thanks to one of my readers for suggesting this post!)

I’ve mentioned often that GTD is very good at the lower altitudes (projects and actions) but not as developed at the higher levels (goals and roles). Within the proliferation of online task management tools in the last couple of years, many of them also reflect this same strength at the lower levels, but less developed approach to the higher levels.

Recently an online service named GTD Agenda was pointed out to me. It is a productivity tool that was designed for implementing GTD with both the higher levels and lower levels in mind. So — after having this on my project list for far too long! — I’ve given it a quick spin to see how well it does.

As I talk about what I think it does well and what its gaps seem to be, this post might also give you a small window into the big picture of my own productivity approach.

[Read more…]

I will at some point (soon, though defined somewhat loosely) blog somewhat comprehensively and in detail about how I have my planning system setup.

In the meantime, I was talking about OmniFocus with a friend today and out of that conversation came a screen shot that captures the “big picture” of how I have it set up. I thought that some of you who use OmniFocus (or are considering it) might be interested.

In fact, this this is relevant beyond OmniFocus as well. I recommend setting up any planning system in this way, no matter what tool you use. This is how I did things in Outlook previously and, before that, did a variation of this with my paper planner.

Here is the screen shot: