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On-line GTD with Nozbe and Google Calendar

01 09 07 - 10:04 - Bookmark this post

This is a guest post by Jeroen Sangers, self-proclaimed productivity tweaker and blogging (in Spanish) on El Canasto.

Lately many on-line GTD applications have appeared, and while I am still using my good old Outlook/Palm set-up, I am looking for something simpler that does not require synching several devices. After looking at several on-line GTD tools, I decided to give Nozbe a try, and currently run the two systems in parallel.

Nozbe is still a quite new product, and there are some essential features currently worked on, of which the calendar is the most important for me. My days can be full with meetings and I jot down many day-specific reminders in my calendar. Therefore I decided to start working with the de-facto on-line calendar, Google Calendar, also because I read that integration between these two products is in the making.

To make life easier, I have added the Google Calendar widget and the iNozbe widget to my browsers start page iGoogle, so I can see both my hard landscape (calendar) and soft landscape (Nozbe) in a single window.

Collect and process
As I do most of my collection on paper, not a lot has changed here. Whenever I have an idea, I write it down in my little notepad, and as soon as I get home or in the office, I remove the used pages and toss them into the inbox. Of course I also receive a lot of e-stuff, which all end up in my e-mail inbox.
Nozbe is not very suited for collecting, as it forces you to directly create a task, and thus do the processing already. I hope they add the possibility to simply create notes and convert these later into tasks.

Organize
This is where Nozbe shows its power. I don’t have to enter each task one by one, but can enter them all together (one per line) in the text box. This feature speeds up the organizing phase considerably. When creating a task, I can specify the context, the expected time needed, a project and optionally a (repeating) due date. Until they have finished the e-mail to Nozbe gateway, I simply copy and paste to generate tasks and appointments from my e-stuff. Furthermore, you can easily drop and drags to other contexts and projects.
Noteworthy is the possibility to add project support material in the form of notes and files to a project.

Review
In Nozbe I can see my tasks organized per project or per context. There is also a special view called Next Actions showing only tasks for which the ‘Next Action’ checkbox has been marked. I’ve struggled a bit with this feature, as all items on my task lists are Next Actions (The Dave also suggests doing so). I understand that some people already want to enter future tasks, but my task list is already full enough without tasks I can’t currently work on. However, I do use this special view as my Most Important Task (MIT) list, and each morning I decide which tasks I really want to finish today and mark these as Next Actions.

Do
When actually working, I only have my Google start page open showing my calendar for that day and usually my MIT list. When I have finished my MIT tasks, I change the view in iNozbe to my current context, and continue working until the day has finished.

As I spend most of my days either in the office or at home, this setup works great. Whenever I am on the road, I print out my calendar and @Errands list. Both applications have a very good mobile interface, but with my current cellphone contract this would cost me too much.

Conclusion
Nozbe and Google Calendar make a very powerful on-line GTD tool, but you will need at least the Basic plan ($58.80/2 years), as the Free Nozbe plans has a limit of only 5 projects. I am eagerly waiting for some additional features such as the integration between those two products, the e-mail gateway and keyboard shortcuts, which will make this a better productivity solution.

Jeroen Sangers is the creator and main contributor of El Canasto, a leading Spanish GTD community. Born in the Netherlands, Jeroen now enjoys his siestas in sunny Spain. Jeroen has almost ten years of blogging experience and also writes frequently on Brain Tags and The Wizard of POS. His natural laziness makes him an expert in personal productivity.

Like this article? Subscribe to the RSS feed! Used tags: calendar, gtd, nozbe, productivity, software, work

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Jeroen, I have been looking at Nozbe as well the last months. I think it has some very good potential as you describe. I have been messing around with Launchy and the Nozbe API to make a simple collecting gateway but no result so far :-)
Frank Meeuwsen - 14 09 07 - 12:46

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Frank Meeuwsen