Thursday, August 02, 2007

getting organised

Okay, confession time. I'm not wired for great organisation but I know that I need to get better at it if I'm going to minister effectively. So I keep reading and looking for things that might help me in my search for the Holy Grail of a well organised life.

Recently, by an odd route, I found myself watching a demonstration video about a product called Omnifocus. It caught my imagination and I followed the trail to David Allen and the GTD (Get things done) approach. So impressed I've bought the book to read!



Now, I'd never heard about GTD until my friend Mark threw it into a conversation this week. So my curiosity was piqued and I began to read and search the Internet for something like Omnifocus that was available now. This is how I found Thinking Rock.


Thinking Rock is a GTD based idea munching, project organising, action taking bit of free software that runs on Mac or PC (a good thing considering I'm looking to try out Mac-dom in the autumn).

Last year I had a stab at Open Workbench, but I didn't really find it very intuitive and it left me more exasperated than organised. I think that's because I've never used project management software before and I was lost from the very start.
Enter Thinking Rock.

I've been using it for just a few hours and it's fun. Not everything makes sense to me yet, but I can see some really helpful things arising from this kind of system. It's less demanding than MS Project style software and I've already begun to organise some of my tasks and thoughts into projects.

So if you're like me and you're looking for something that might help you plan projects without mangling your brain, you might like to try Thinking Rock. I know there are other applications out there, and I have to say I'm really looking forward to Omnifocus reaching the market at some point, but TR looks like a good solution for the in-between time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I tried GTD but maybe I should read the book. It was too confusing for me, and I couldn't help but think... "am I just wasting time trying to use my computer for too much?" I fluctuate between random to-do lists and using iCal for notes.

Now you've given me another option. I'll let you know if I start using Thinking Rock...