Just checking in to see what’s up with your “modifications to the project management part of the site”. Is something still in the works?

I’m evaluating moving off another task management system to one that is more focused on the GTD workflow. I found your site and it looks very good.

I’ve signed up for the 15 day trial, but I must say that as of right now I won’t be converting to the paid membership.

I have over 100 active projects (remember according to David anything over 1 task is a project!) and the way projects is currently implemented with GID is just too cumbersome.

I’m currently looking at another app that isn’t quite as far along as yours – but does seem to have the project side of things working a bit better. (imho).

I’m rooting for you and your site and I’ll check back every once in a while to see if you have projects nailed yet!

Cheers!
James

I’m so glad to hear that Get It Done is revising the way tasks with a given tag are automatically linked to projects. I think this will make a solid application even better!

Thanks,
Leah

I’ve tried out GID a couple of times and the only stopping me getting to be a customer is the project issue.

It seems you are thinking along the lines of using projects along the lines of GTD which is really encouraging.

Is this something that is likely to be changed in the near future?

Cheers!
David

You can still set up your projects so that you can not have context tags assigned to it.

Using your example:
Project “Home Renovations”
- create with tag HR (NOT ‘@errands’ or ‘@home’)
Project “Graphic Design Project”
- create with tag GD (NOT ‘@errands’ or ‘@home’)

task: “Buy drywall paste and trowels” I would tag it with ‘HR’ and ‘@errands’
task: “Finish installing electrical wiring” with tags ‘HR’ and ‘@home’
task: “Visit client’s restaurant to take reference photographs” tag ‘GD’ and ‘@errands’
task: “Set up master page for client’s menu” tag ‘GD’ ‘@home’ ‘@computer’

Basically I assign each task a project tag (GD or HR) and a context (@home, @computer, etc). Doing it this way you can separate your context within each of your projects and they don’t get mixed together.

I like your idea of having AOR’s, and then to have projects as subsets of AOR’s. It’s not strictly GTD but I would use it and I’m sure many others would as well.

When you make this change, will contexts and projects then become totally separate entities? That would make it easier to handle a situation such as the following:

Let’s say I have two projects: Home Renovations and Graphic Design Project

Under “Home Renovations” a couple of my next actions look like this (with associated context-tags)
: Buy drywall paste and trowels (@errands)
: Finish installing electrical wiring (@home)

And under “Graphic Design Project”
: Visit client’s restaurant to take reference photographs (@errands)
: Set up master page for client’s menu (@home, @computer)

For me, viewing tasks by project during the daily and weekly review is essential for defining next actions. Meanwhile, when I’m in the hustle and bustle of actually doing stuff, sorting by context is key.

The way your program is set up, I have to assign a tag (e.g. @errands) to a project (e.g. Graphic Design Project), and if I do that, a task like “Buy drywall paste and trowels” must either show up under “Graphic Design Project”, or not have the @errands tag attached at all. Both of those options are not going to help me be my most productive.

Sorry if I am rambling a bit! I seldom post comments online but your system is SO CLOSE to being perfect for me… and for several others, judging by the comments above. I really hope tags and projects get divorced.

If you add AOR’s and marry projects to that, I bet many will find it useful. But separating tags and projects is absolutely essential for this to be the best GTD system around.

Just my two cents

Clyde

I find more and more I am using ‘Projects’ as ‘Areas of responsibility’. For example I have projects for:

- home
- client x
- client y
- website

I am thinking it might be best to better define ‘Areas of responsibility’ (AOR) and when you change the AOR your entire page is dedicated to that AOR.

I also think projects needs to be different so that projects can fall under a particular AOR. I also think we need to rework projects to make them more flexible/powerful. I would like to ideally share entire projects and set milestones within a particular project.

We are in the planning phases now for this, the difficult part is to make it powerful but at the same time easy to use and intuitive (this is what keeps us up at night!)

keep all the good comments coming!