It’s becoming obvious I need some sort of easy-to-use planner of some sort. I’m starting to get overwhelmed with things to do and I’m afraid things will start slipping through the cracks. I’ve tried using GTD with Mail.app but it just doesn’t seem natural. I’m not a big fan of using paper because that just seems wasteful.
My most problematic area seems to be receiving RFQs and then scheduling those to be written. Ultimately I’d love to receive an email with a RFQ, be able to tick a button and get a reminder to write a proposal. I’d like to not have to use Microsoft Entourage for this sort of thing but at the moment, that seems like the only option.
Any suggestions for keeping track of things without having to combine 3 different applications to do it? P.S. I use a Mac.
My name’s Jen; I’m a cynical, sarcastic, ex-drummer who is fond of dark humor. I've held way too many factory & retail jobs but finally found my calling one Christmas holiday in a dark, musty basement. I am now a CSS & XHTML web standards looney and can be found daily—when I’m not at my Mac—at the local fair-trade coffee shop buying an iced-soy mocha no matter the temperature.
I am also the owner of Pop Stalin Design specializing in CSS & XHTML web design as well as custom WordPress themes.
I use a variety of diarying and to-do list applications, web and desktop apps, but the thing that makes our company work really well is having a big whiteboard that we continually update, and rewrite completely once a week.
It works well for me because I think better when I’m speaking, and writing as I speak is easy and decisive. I guess I also think well when I’m in the shower, but we’re not Golgafrinchans so I have held back on installing a shower cubicle in the office.
Thanks Steve. For the time being, I’m actually using Entourage’s built-in Project. Like I said, I’m not digging the whole GTD system. I may like it more if I could automate it a bit more.
Thanks for the kind words about my site. Good luck with yours!
I haven’t looked into it properly yet because I’ve only just started using it myself, but there is a GTD extension which you can bolt onto GMail. So if you receive an email RFQ, you can flag/label it ToDo or something similar. I don’t know if there’s a way to get GMail to send you reminders, but it’s something to look into.
BTW love your site and the concept of what you’re offering as a service. I’m just in the process of starting to set up something similar here in the UK, and will be popping (no pun intended) by from time to time for inspiration.
Hey, thanks for stopping by! How’s it going?
Ex-coworker Natalie? Yup, yup.