If you are a GTD fan and purchased a Nokia N95 (or any S60 phone) you may be regretting your purchase now. That is because of the poor PIM implementation on these phones when compared to platforms like Windows Mobile and Palm. One of the main issues is that categories do not sync when you synchronize the device with Microsoft Outlook. Many users, and in fact David Allen’s Outlook 2003 guide for GTD implementation also suggest using the categories for the context.
I like my GTD list to be organized like this:
@Home
Water the plants
Pay Electricity Bills
@Office
Finish the proposal
Get a copy of salary slip
....
Here @Home and @Office are categories which I define in outlook. Without this support my synced up todo list in N95 looks like a plain and long shopping list. It is not easy to quickly look up pending tasks when you are at a specific location. So what is the solution? How do we setup a simple yet foolproof GTD system for the S60 phone?
I explored several options including using online tools like iNozbe and Remember the Milk. They are good tools with mobile interface too, but I hate updating and reading my list over a GPRS connection which is painfully slow. So after using them for a while, I gave up on online tools. I recommend Remember the Milk if you are using a faster internet connection and you are comfortable using a web based interface on a mobile device.
The included Todo application isn’t of much use as it does not optimize the view very well. Longer tasks get clipped off at the edge of the screen. You are better off using a replacement PIM application like the Papyrus or Handy Calendar. I use Handy Calendar which I got free through Handango.
If you can live without Outlook integration, Projekt is a nice list manager and will be excellent for GTD. You can easily create projects and all sub tasks can be added hierarchically below that. I enjoyed using this little software during a short evaluation period.
To work around the problem of category syncing from Outlook, I use a simple trick. When I want to add an item to my GTD list, I use File-> New -> New Task. In the Subject line, I first put the category and then type the full task. So typically my subject line looks like:
@Home Water the Plants.
Then I add the category from the category list also. This is double work, but it solves the problem with the S60 devices. After synchronization with PC, on my N95 I just sort the tasks on Handy Calendar and voila - I have a neatly organized list of tasks by category!
Related: Staying with GTD.
