Although a little too simple for my taste, Do It (formerly known as “To Do”) is one of the “oldies but goldies” around the Mac software community. Yes, I know, I am being mean, after all, “Do It” is only one or two years old – the author blog haven’t been updated since last year, but hey, we know how this works pretty well – but in today’s rapid moving world, two years may seem like a lot.
Do It is one of the “missed things from the operating system” that somebody thought to write, launch and maintain, filling a gap in the list of necessary applications. Looking at its structure, “Do It” only have categories and tasks (with priorities, deadlines, and linked files or URL’s). Simple enough for the less-than-average user, but flexible enough for an experienced GTD-er.
How can you use this tiny little Mac app in order to implement a slim GTD workflow? Easy, just name your categories like contexts (after you have correctly identified your contexts, of course). So, instead of thinking at your categories as projects containing tasks, think at them as contexts in which you are acting. Here’s the “Office” context, for instance, with only one task in it:
Adding a task is a question of hitting “option + N”, pretty much standard. The task details will be shown in a semi-transparent floating window:
One thing to note is that the task adding / editing window will resize itself, if there are other details to be shown for a specific task information. For instance, here we are editing the task’s deadline, and integration with iCal:
Did I mentioned integration with iCal? I guess not, but this is also one of the strong points of “Do It”. Another one will be the ability to export your tasks into an iCal-readable format (.ics) which you can later import into iCal.
Each task you add can have up to 3 priorities (colored red, orange, or green) and an external object linked to it, being it a file or a web URL.
Keep in mind that you won’t have real projects with this workflow, and you’ll have to correctly split your current projects into multiple actions, and set up your next actions, before adding it to “Do It”. You don’t have any filtering options, so you’d better chose the red color for your next actions, as the default ordering is priority-based, and like this you’ll have your next actions always in front of you.
“Do It” is ‘donation-ware’ so if you feel you want to reward the author, I strongly encourage you to leave a donation for him.
A very minimalistic GTD workflow can be implemented with the tiniest application in the world, if you really want. Which reminds me the fact that GTD is not a software you buy, but a process you implement and follow.
[tags]gtd, do it, minimalistic, software review, productivity, mac os[/tags]
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