Like every to-do program, I”ve also used just about every notebook program, too, and have used the Circus Ponies product for a long time to keep outlines of my readings for class. I’ve never used it for to-do lists, but I can certainly see how it’d work well.

As for the iPhone, I love mine. I think it still has some work to do to catch up to the Blackberry in overall functionality, but the phone has so many other features and is so much better for music and the web that I really had no troubles leaving my blackberry behind.

Good luck with the Mac stuff. If you ever need a hand, drop me a line.

i’m bookmarking a bunch of the links you gave so that i can really delve in as i continue to figure things out. i’ve been using notebook (by circus ponies) for my to-do list (as well as just as, well, a notebook) and i’m liking it okay. i’m not a GTD person so i’m a little more fluid with my planning, i guess (no set rules that i’m following–although who knows, maybe i should!). anyway, thanks for all the food for thought!

As for being offline, that’s what Jott is for. But in those times that you’re not even near a cell signal? I guess you can use the notes option on the iPhone, or — heaven forbid — paper! (I say it like this not to make fun of you, but fun of me. I’ll go out of my way to do things digitally, sometimes to my own detriment.) Yeah, it isn’t as convenient, but it works.

And for me, the times that I’m not near a computer, my iPhone with a wifi connection, or my iPhone with cellular service are pretty few and far between — but admittedly, I don’t fly much, and where I live, there is no public transportation at all.

Well, good luck with your evolving systems. If you do anything fun, let me know.

@Nick: I tried paper, too, including an expensive planner. It worked — for a bit. But then I got tired of having to lug a planner around. Hope paper works well for you. It is the ultimate in simplicity. Thanks also for a great site. I can blow a lot of time being unproductive on your site.

@Eric: dude, I feel you. Bad. I liked Entourage’s project center a lot, but the bugginess got to me, as did the problems with backups. as you know, Entourage keeps everything in a monolithic database, which is horrendous for backup systems like TimeMachine. (By the way, you should go to 10.5 unless you really have a great reason not to — it is much better INMNSHO). Entourage also did a shite job syncing with my apple apps. At one point, it erased all of my contacts (thank god for backups). At another, it duplicated each of them 8 times. At another, it erased all of my calendars. It is buggy as hell, and I just don’t have the time to go fight with it simply for the projects aspect of the program. As for Internet apps being out of sight, I get it: I was pretty much the same way. But one way around that is to use a program like Fluid (fluidapp.com) to create stand-alone web apps that look like other Mac apps. I did this for Remember the Milk and it works nicely. You can do it for Gmail and others too. And as for the net apps being kludgy to work with, I mostly agree, but they’ve come very far, and Gmail is truly superior. Labeling your mail in Gmail is filing it, if you set it up right. Honestly, just a few weeks ago, I was with you in thinking “wow, this web shit is just too ugly and clunky,” but then I gave it a go and found it all remarkably agile and excellent. I really do hate Mail.app, and Entourage sucks so badly in its newest incarnation that I can’t believe that M$ actually released it….well, perhaps you’ll find something worth using in here. At least, I’d suggest, give Jott a go if you haven’t already — it is sweet.

@Tara: I don’t even know what the Webware 100 is (I’ll go google in a sec), but I do use a password manager: 1passwd for Mac (which syncs to the iPhone). Looks to work from a bit different model than your offerings, but you are right, a password manager is a nice thing indeed. I would probably have some personal qualms, though, with centralizing my sensitive password data on some else’s server…

Thanks all for the feedback.

This is a biased suggestions since I’m a PassPack founder — but have you tried adding a password manager to your setup? It helps declutter your mind (no remembering logins) and saves time (no typing them either).

Check passwords off the to-do list

Hope thats useful.
Cheers,
Tara

Ubiquity is essential to me, too. While I got by on Entourage because of the fact that I work mainly from home (or coffee shops) and can have my laptop and WiFi with me most of the time, I do run around a lot, and unpredictably, so I find myself stuck trying to work from my iPhone, which wasn’t synched properly to Entourage. I’ve resorted to writing my most important tasks (MITs) for the day in a Note, but that is somewhat tedious. I’ve played around with Remember the Milk, but Internet apps always feel “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” to me. Now that the iPhone offers clippings, I can treat internet apps like iPhone apps, so I am starting to learn toward playing with this stuff. In the meantime, if Apple offers more fully-feature synching between all of its app’s features and the iPhone in an upcoming update, then it’s only a matter of me finally upgrading my OS so that I can have all my essential info synched.

The missing link is the Projects feature. If I continue to use GTD, the weekly review from a projects view is really helpful to me for planning tasks and appointments, and nothing slices and dices my info the way Entourage does to work this way. I did come across a little app on the web that I no longer have bookmarked (so I can’t tell you the name), but these internet apps can be cludgy and awkward to work with. And, of course, you need Internet access.

Anyway, I’m rambling. As you can see, I’m still wrestling with how to migrate from a system that was working fairly well for me, to a new system that works for me and my iPhone. So, I’m glad you shared your system. I am going to think about what you are up to and whether I might be able to integrate some of it for myself. I already know that I won’t live in Gmail, though I do use an account. I just live outside the web interface, since I like having a mail client to work offline and organize myself (Unlike many GTD adherents, I prefer filing my mail to labeling it and trying to find it later with an intelligent search. This may change when I upgrade to 10.5.2 from 10.4 and it’s easier to label messages in Mail).

I’ve recently gone back to paper — calendar, to-do list and all (email is my only electronic vice!). It’s pretty refreshing, and something that I’ll be writing about in future on PTO.